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The purpose of this paper is to explore whether, how and why ethical investment practices of charities differ between two countries with quite different ideological and institutional frameworks – Norway and the UK.

The paper uses mixed methods and a cross-sectional field study design to explore the ethical investment practices of 300 of the largest charities by investments in the UK and Norway. Practices are theorized using the dual lens of institutional theory and social origins theory.

The paper provides evidence on why charities established the practice of ethical investment. The results show that large charities were more likely to have an ethical policy; that charities with moderate public sector funding were more likely to have an ethical policy. In line with institutional theory some Norwegian charities with public sector funding mimic the policy of the Government Pension Fund, and the ethical investment policy of Norwegian charities was more influenced by donors. Institutional entrepreneurs (charity founders) had a more prominent influence in UK charities.

The paper highlights that more research is needed on sovereign wealth funds, their investment practices and how they affect charities.

The findings of this paper highlight the potential role that the ethical investment practices of sovereign can play a soft regulatory function in changing the behaviour of other investors.

To the extent that ethical investment practices are construed as having a positive social impact, then this study shows how a government sovereign wealth fund can influence the spread of ethical investment practices.

This paper, which sits at the nexus of the charity and corporate social responsibility (CSR) literatures, contributes by responding to calls for more research on charity practices in different countries and CSR practices in different countries. This comparison also contributes to the development of institutional theory by shedding light on the institutional influence of a sovereign wealth fund and its impact on others. The paper will be of value to academics, policy setters and regulators.

To protect information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure and resources against poor cyber hygiene behaviours, organisations commonly require internal users to confirm they will abide by an ICT Code of Conduct. Before commencing enrolment, university students sign ICT policies, however, individuals can ignore or act contrary to these policies. This study aims to evaluate whether students can apply ICT Codes of Conduct and explores viable approaches for ensuring that students understand how to act ethically and in accordance with such codes.

The authors designed a between-subjects experiment involving 260 students’ responses to five scenario-pairs that involve breach/non-breach of a university’s ICT policy following a priming intervention to heighten awareness of ICT policy or relevant ethical principles, with a control group receiving no priming.

This study found a significant difference in students’ responses to the breach versus non-breach cases, indicating their ability to apply the ICT Code of Conduct. Qualitative comments revealed the priming materials influenced their reasoning.

The authors’ priming interventions were inadequate for improving breach recognition compared to the control group. More nuanced and targeted priming interventions are suggested for future studies.

Appropriate application of ICT Code of Conduct can be measured by collecting student/employee responses to breach/non-breach scenario pairs based on the Code and embedded with ethical principles.

Shared awareness and protection of ICT resources.

Compliance with ICT Codes of Conduct by students is under-investigated. This study shows that code-based scenarios can measure understanding and suggest that targeted priming might offer a non-resource intensive training approach.

Research addressing the impact of tacit and explicit pay secrecy policies on organizational climates is fairly limited. While researchers desire to explain the impact of such policies on individuals' pay satisfaction, a direct effect has not been supported. This study seeks to better explain how these policies are related to ethical climates and pay satisfaction.

This study draws on ethical climate theory to show the influence of ethical climate types on job satisfaction and a moderating effect of explicit and tacit pay secrecy policies on this relationship. This is accomplished through designing this study by using existing scales from the literature in a survey methodology. A pilot study of 246 undergraduate students was used to validate the measures. Then, a sample of 217 adults was obtained to test the proposed relationships. Linear regression is employed to analyze the data and to test the existence of direct and moderating effects.

The five empirically tested ethical climates each have a direct effect on pay satisfaction. Explicit pay secrecy policies has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between rules, law and code ethical climates, and pay satisfaction. Tacit pay secrecy policies moderate the relationship between caring, rules, law and code, and independence ethical climates and pay satisfaction.

The findings strengthen the literature by demonstrating a stronger relationship between ethical climates and pay satisfaction. While some of the moderating effects were significant, others were not. This was surprising, but present avenues to further test ethical climate theory and the impact of pay secrecy policies.

This study presents practical implications for managers. Understanding how these policies may be viewed differently, depending on the type of climate that is experienced within an organization may help managers evaluate using them. Trying to protect employees or the organization itself by enacting these polices may backfire and create additional problems. Managers may want to evaluate the manner that they communicate these polices through formal or informal means, depending on the type of climate experienced within the workplace.

This study is the first to examine the influence of explicit and tacit pay secrecy policies on the relationship between ethical climates and employees' satisfaction with pay. It leads to a number of directions for further research that may continue to build upon this study in order to further advance scholarly understanding of the importance of ethical climates and pay secrecy policies.

Assesses the extent to which organizational ethics codes, credos and policies are implemented by managers and supervisors in their work. Further identifies and assesses the principal factors that determined the level of consonance between stated ethical policies and values, and their actual practice. Supports and extends previous observations that simply having ethical codes and policies does not guarantee ethical practices throughout the organization. To become a genuinely ethical organization – an important success factor in today's environment – a comprehensive approach and investment in ethical safeguards is needed and should be regarded as a dimension of decision making alongside quality standards, performance, profitability and other strategic considerations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate small business owner/manager’s exposure to unethical behavior, and to examine the influence of unethical exposure on organizational intention to implement ethical policies and practices.

Using a sample of 209 Australian small accounting firms with a path analysis, this paper adopts a modified ethical decision-making model to test the relationship between exposure and personal attitudes toward unethical behavior, and the relationship between exposure and intentions to implement ethical policies and practices at firm level.

The results show that increased exposure to unethical behavior triggered stronger personal attitudes with small accounting firm owners/managers tending toward accepting unethical behavior. In contrast, at the firm level, more exposure to unethical behavior creates cautious overtones and motivates owners/managers to take action and implement more ethical policies, with the underlying aim of addressing serious ethical issues.

The study tests the ethical decision-making model but focuses only on three constructs (i.e. exposure, attitude and response). The aim is to examine whether extensive exposure to unethical behavior would change personal attitudes toward accepting such behavior, and whether unethical exposure would trigger firm owner/managers to take action and address the ethical dilemma by establishing some ethical guidelines. Other important variables (such as subjective norm, personal locus of control) embedded in the ethical decision-making model should be included in future research.

The study draws attention to ethical dilemmas encountered by many small accounting professionals and their organizations. It addresses the importance of upholding the ethical standard and avoiding the extensive exposure to unethical behavior. It also emphasizes the needs for small businesses to establish some ethical policies and practices.

The paper is purposely set out to reduce the gap in studying how small accounting firms make decisions in implementing their ethical policies and practices to address the rampant ethical dilemma faced by their employees as a result of many corporate scandals and financial crises of the past decade. The results are particularly valuable for small accounting firm owners/managers. The findings also have educational and policy implications.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how sales compensation disclosure, salespeople’s perception of corporate social responsibility (CSR) toward customers (i.e. customer-focused CSR), regulatory knowledge and coworkers’ ethical behavior may influence life insurance salespeople’s moral intensity and intentions to engage in misleading sales behaviors.

The hypotheses are analyzed using partial least squares (PLS) regression with the data gathered from full-time life insurance salespeople in Taiwan.

The main findings indicate that disclosing sales compensations will alter the ethical decision-making process of life insurance salespeople. The findings further point out that customer-focused CSR is an important variable affecting moral intensity and ethical intentions.

There has not been any research on the effects of compensation disclosure on moral intensity and misleading sales behavior. The literature gap has led to a poor understanding of the relationship between the compensation disclosure policy and ethical sales behavior. Moreover, previous studies indicate that specific factors (such as moral intensity and ethical intention) are directly associated, while the research shows that as long as a regulatory policy (e.g. the policy of compensation disclosure) changes, the correlation between these variables may shift from significant to nonsignificant (or vice versa). The results are interesting enough to warrant more research, and they also show that the direct link between variables mentioned in previous research is not always stable or universal.

In April 1988, the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRC) (see sidebar) published “AIDS: Law, Ethics and Public Policy.” As part of the NRC's Scope Note Series, the paper offered a current overview of issues and viewpoints related to AIDS and ethics. Not meant to be a comprehensive review of all AIDS literature, it contained selected citations referring to facts, opinion, and legal precedents, as well as a discussion of different ethical aspects surrounding AIDS. Updating the earlier work, this bibliography provides ethical citations from literature published from 1988 to the present.

Develops an ethico‐economic general equilibrium system that is founded on a well defined ethically oriented choice of goods that imparts an ethical motivation to the activities of consumption, production and distribution. Shows that the choice of such a numeraire market basket and its related prices is instrumental on the polity‐market interaction, brought out as the heart of the problem, that is treating ethics as endogenous phenomena of the social order. The resulting ethico‐economic general equilibrium system is thereby found to be only locally stable, not globally stable in its equilibria, which are all policy induced and market driven, perturbed and unsettling as polity evolves.

Cross‐cultural variations in the international ethical environment has the potential to hamper the international activities of the unwary international retailer. This study investigated differences in preferences for policies addressing potentially ethically troublesome retail sales situations among future business personnel from two differing cultures. The results suggest the existence of cultural differences in such preferences. Implications are discussed.