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This paper aims to consider whether ethical persuasion can be part of public relations practice.

The paper contends that the critical issue for practitioners is not whether they engage in persuasion, but whether they do so ethically. Accordingly, a definition of ethical persuasion is derived by examining unethical propaganda. The paper then considers what standard might be used to assess the ethics of persuasion. The notion of “the public interest” – ubiquitously linked to ethical practice in public relations – is considered but found to be too elusive to guide the practice individual practitioners. Other more assessable standards are identified, as is a guiding approach to ethics. The approach to ethics adopted in this paper is rule utilitarianism. The methodology of this paper is deductive and derivative analysis, argument and synthesis, drawn from a broad body of literature.

Persuasion can be ethical, and a definition of ethical persuasion is proffered. The public interest is not a standard that individual practitioners can determine, decide, know, or apply to assess the ethics of their practice. Ethical persuasion can, however, be assessed using other standards, discussed in the paper. Consequently, a set of criteria and standards to practicing ethical persuasion is developed.

The paper does not extend into a discussion of practical persuasive techniques. Therefore, an extension of this examination could consider a thorough assessment of the ethics of practical persuasive communication techniques.

Directly relevant to the daily work of public relations practitioners, communicators, adertisers and marketers, who are interested in acting ethically. The paper provide a basis for a guide to assessing the ethics of persuasive practice.

This paper confronts both the question of whether practitioners can use the notion of the public interest to assess the ethics of practice, and also what constitutes ethical (and unethical) persuasion, and considers how persuation can be used ethically.

In the background of the post-financial crisis era and the transition of China’s economic development, the frequent occurrence of workplace deviant behavior in the economic field, such as stealing and bribery, caused a huge impact on the enterprise. In recent years, the deviant behavior of employees has been increased noticeably. The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of paternalistic leadership on employee deviant behavior in workplace. To have a deep understanding of the relationship between paternalistic leadership and employee deviant behavior, the author’s design rule-oriented ethical climate and self-interest-oriented ethical climate as two mediators in this research model.

Based on social learning theory and stressor-emotion model, this study conducts an investigation of influence mechanism between paternalistic leadership and workplace deviant behavior. Time-lagged data was collected from 226 employees from six cities in China. To test the hypothesis that the authors developed in this paper, the authors use empirical models from the existing literature about paternalistic leadership on employee deviant behavior. They establish multiple linear regressions to test the hypotheses.

This study reveals the direct effect of authoritarian leadership on employee deviant behavior and the moderated roles of benevolent leadership and moral leadership, also analysis the mediated mechanism of self-interest-oriented ethical climate and rule-oriented ethical climate. The results show that the higher the degree of authority leaders show in the organization, the easier to stimulate workplace deviance of employee, self-interest-oriented ethical climate and rule-oriented ethical climate play mediated role between authoritarian leadership and workplace deviant behavior. The interaction of benevolent leadership and moral leadership with authoritarian leadership can weaken the self-interest-oriented ethical climate but has nothing to do with rule-oriented ethical climate.

This study has three main contributions to the previous literature. First, this study explores the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee workplace deviance, which could enrich the research on these negative behaviors in the Chinese context. Second, this study unpacks the “black box” in which authoritarian leadership influences employee workplace deviant behavior. Third, this study further examines the impacts of different combinations of the three factors of paternalistic leadership.

Purpose – The paper presents a content analysis of the 2009 Exposure Draft of Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants in China. It aims to investigate how equivalently the Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants (CICPA) adopts the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) Code with certain adjustments due to specific national circumstances. The investigation is intended to highlight the principles-based conceptual framework approach to settlement of ethical standards and regulation for professional conduct.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Regarding the codes of ethics for professional accountants as a genre of discourse text, this paper applies a content analysis method to the investigation of how the newly revised Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants in China adopts the IFAC Code of the same type. Both semantic content and presentation format are considered in the content analysis.

Findings – This study puts forward the argument that even though CICPA claims to have equivalently adopted the principles-based conceptual framework of the IFAC ethical codification, the rigid legalistic presentation format might, however, deviate from the newly revised codification of CICPA from ethical principles to regulatory rules. Our findings prove a practical and nation-specific form of combining direct import and legal enhancement at a time when the Chinese accounting profession is on its way to converging with the IFAC Code of Ethics.

Research limitations/Implications – One limitation of the current study is the lack of information about the motivation of CICPA in adopting the principles-based conceptual framework approach to ethical codification, besides the pragmatic needs of global economic and business environments. Also, the current study focuses its comparison on IFAC and CICPA, without limited consideration of differences in cultural traits.

Practical implications – Content analysis results and conclusions of the study might render pragmatic the implications for future adoptions of the IFAC Code by various national or regional professional bodies.

Originality/Value – This paper proposes a content analysis, in terms of semantic units and legislative formats in ethical codification documents, to identify the principles-based conceptual framework approach in the IFAC and CICPA codes of ethics.

This chapter seeks to advance the neglected debate on the ethical issues between formal organization and practice arising from innovation in an organization. To that end, the chapter discusses the sources of possible moral dilemmas for practitioners who belong to a practice with a shared identity, values, and standards of excellence, and who need to conform to new rules of formal organization. While formal organization ideally strives for generalized fairness principles for all organizational members when introducing an innovation, the contextualized nature of practices may lead to particular needs and goals of the practice which can only be recognized as such by practitioners and not by formal management, and to which procedural justice cannot respond. The chapter proposes how practitioners may interpret moral dilemmas, aligned with their practice-based identity and ethical values, and what options for action they may seek. The discussion is illustrated with examples of innovation in the field of information systems design.

Despite formal ethics education and ethics-related continuing professional education (CPE) requirements, professional accountants continue to play a central role in enabling corporations to make unethical business decisions and take unethical business actions. Several jurisdictions in the United States require ethics education for licensure, but often the focus is on memorizing rules and regulations, rather than on providing tools to improve the moral practice of professionals and to help them resolve ethical dilemmas. The authors analyzed recent state Certified Public Accountant (CPA) society course offerings and found much more emphasis on memorization than on ethical reasoning to satisfy State CPA CPE requirements. To improve accountants’ ethical awareness and behavior, CPE providers should stress ethical reasoning rather than merely memorizing rules. Such changes will make future and present accountants and auditors more ethically aware, and thus more likely to improve their ethical decision-making. Nonetheless, the authors suggest that effective ethics education and training should start in the classroom with help from departmental advisory councils. Ethics courses offered in accounting programs as well as those offered by CPE providers can leverage the experience of members of advisory councils to create programs that resonate with professionals and foster lifelong ethical awareness and ethical reasoning skills.

This chapter covers basic concepts, ethical theories, and moral paradigms of corporate ethics for identifying, understanding, and responding to the turbulent market challenges of today. The concept, nature, and domain of ethics, business ethics, managerial ethics, and corporate executive ethics are defined and differentiated for their significance. The domain, scope, and nature of related concepts such as legality, ethicality, morality, and executive spirituality are distinguished and developed. Among normative and descriptive ethical theories that we briefly review and critique here are teleology or utilitarianism, deontology or existentialism, distributive justice, corrective justice, and ethics of malfeasance and beneficence. Other moral theories of ethics such as ethics of human dignity, ethics of cardinal virtues, ethics of trusting relations, ethics of stakeholder rights and duties, ethics of moral reasoning and judgment calls, ethics of executive and moral leadership, and ethics of social and moral responsibility will be treated in a later book. The thrust of this book is positive: despite our not very commendable track record in managing this planet and its resources, our basic questions are: Where are we now? What are we now? Where should we as corporations go, and why? What are the specific positive mandates and metrics to corporate executives to reach that desired destiny? This chapter explores responses to these strategic corporate questions.

Indian banking sector is facing a number of challenges, and increasing number of corporate frauds and employee turnover are among the top list. Literature reveals that gaining insights about ethical climate may provide a possible solution and relief from the challenges being faced. This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the prevalent various ethical climate types in the Indian banking industry. Furthermore, it presents interesting results by investigating the effect of five theorized ethical climate types on organizational commitment along with its three components in the banking sector.

This empirical research encompasses a descriptive research design. Sample uses 266 respondents from four prime banks of the Indian banking industry.

Statistical analyses unveiled that all five conceptualized ethical climate types are prevalent in the Indian banking industry. However, the perception of employees for caring climate was the highest among all others. In contrast to the results reported by Western studies, this research reveals a strong negative impact of instrumental climate on affective commitment. Furthermore, it has been seen that instrumental climate is a significant predictor for the three components of commitment (affective, continuance and normative). However, it fails to predict the overall organizational commitment construct. Likewise, opposed to findings of Western countries, law and code, rules and independent climate types have shown significant relationship and impact on organizational commitment for Indian banking sector employees. It has been found that different commitment components are predicted by a diverse mix of climate types in India.

Findings highlight varying strength of relationship and predictive ability of different ethical climate types with commitment. This helps in elucidating that managers and top executives should focus on building an ethical work environment to warrant high-level commitment among employees. Congruence between employee, manager and organizations’ perception of ethics is a pre-requisite for maintaining a long-term relationship among the parties. This study will enable understanding the role of ethical climate in reducing corporate frauds and employee turnover.

This research addresses a significant gap in literature by exploring the relationship between ethical climate and organizational commitment. The study uses data from the Indian banking industry which contributes to expanding knowledge of the relationship in the Indian context.

The purpose of this article is to question whether business is ethical as long as it follows rules, and on this view, to reflect over the relation between responsibility and justice.

To exemplify this relation, the paper is based on in‐depth interviews with a human rights consultant. In this way, the paper presents a story from the field and thus follows a narrative method to retell the story of the consultant leading a human rights project in South Africa.

The paper concludes that following rules is not enough to ensure ethical business in a global market place. As global business rests on dynamics and flexibility, it seems limited that most business ethics rests on bureaucratic notions. The value of also viewing ethical decision‐making as personal responsibility is introduced through the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas.

The study is based on in depth interviews with one person. Although this method ensures access to deeply personal and thorough knowledge about the event, it also has its limitation and risk of bias. Although this paper points towards some interesting relations between personal responsibility and international/organisational justice, more research is needed in the field of personal responsibility to make stronger conclusions.

The paper proposes that people working at the global market place could benefit from being educated in personal ethics and not only bureaucratic notions of ethics.

The paper provides valuable insight into the scarcely researched area of personalised business ethics.