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The purpose of this article is to summarize three Luhmannian critiques on morality, illustrate new roles for morality and add constructive interpretations.

Luhmann has recently been described as downright negative toward morality, resulting in a refusal to use ethics as a sociologist, thus leading to a limited use of his theory in moral issues. A constructive interpretation could support a more functional use of morality in social system theory.

First, Luhmann signals that morality can no longer fulfill its integrative function in society but also that society has recourse to moral sensitivity. Second, Luhmann describes how anxiety is crucial in modern morality and indicates which role risk and danger could play. The author builds further on this and proposes the concept of “social system attention” that can provide answers to individual and organizational anxiety. The author proposes that institutionalized socialization can support an integrative morality. Third, Luhmann states that ethics today is nothing more than a utopia but also that the interdiction of moral self-exemption is an essential element. The author adds that a relational ontology for social systems theory can avoid ethics as utopia.

This article is a programmatic plea to further elaborate morality from a system theory perspective in which meaning is relationally positioned.

This article could potentially provide a more functional application of morality in social systems, thus leading to improvements of attempts of ethical decision-making. The originality of the approach lies in the interpretation of basic assumptions of Luhmann social system theory that are not core to his theory.

Transitional entrepreneurship in distressed economies is a fairly new concept with respect to new ventures in such challenging economic environments. Formal institutional voids are sometimes held up as a reason for the difficulties present in distressed economies, along with exogenous shocks and other upheavals. In this research, the authors seek to contribute empirically and theoretically as to ways in which formal institutions voids can be filled by a culture developed by transitional entrepreneurs. Indeed, in transition economies, formal institutions need to be enhanced by informal institutions to control corruption and other misbehavior by authorities. Iranian economists emphasize these essential reforms to be able to manage current difficulties, yet top down policies cannot help transitional entrepreneurs benefit from the country’s value-adding cultural heritage to informally address this. To study this, qualitative research methods were used to interpret transitional entrepreneurs’ ideology and ethical routines as the ingredients of a commercial culture that can establish soft law that substitutes for formal institutions. This helps to reduce the disfunctionality of formal institutions in distressed economies.

A thematic analysis interviewing key Iranian entrepreneurs and economists is conducted. Also based on an interpretive paradigm, a hermeneutic cycle has been carried out on selected texts. Results have been verified throughout related literature as to come up with a solid synthesized interpreted outcome.

This paper contributes to theory from a new perspective by discussing transitional entrepreneurship and navigating a distressed economy; in which, ideology and ethics as the ingredients of soft law (Newman and Posner, 2018) are discussed as the base to further develop a commercial culture that fills voids of formal institutions. The formal–informal institutional cycle in distressed economies as the major difficulty entrepreneurs face (Peng and Luo, 2000) is important, because they try to increasingly enhance their move toward a market orientation (Bruton et al., 2008). The authors contribute as to how transitional entrepreneurs can complete this process of adaptation and also the fact that those informal institutions do actually respond to those adaptations. The other contribution is to enrich theories about institutions from the point of view of culture. Knowing these facts helps transitional entrepreneurs, because in distressed communities, formal institutions’ function has an important effect on economic performance (Amorós, 2009). This research’s contributions shed light to help government leaders understand the pros and cons of their actions forced on the industry. As it has been characterized in this research, it can turn in to new formal set of legitimacies (Ahlstrom et al., 2008) to root out corruption and help set the economy on a path to innovation and new venture creation.

Transitional entrepreneurs can depend on the less formal cultural-cognitive aspect of ethics and ideology. These entrepreneurs can be working on the burgeoning private sector, who want to connect with the outside effectively to overcome an economy in distress. Transitional entrepreneurs may face governmental institutional intermediaries as a barrier. Formal intermediaries tend to benefit from inefficiencies caused by hierarchal orders and will improve informality in order to overcome difficulties. In this research, institutional theory from the third pillar of the cultural-cognitive sheds light on transitional entrepreneurship in distressed economies, where inquiry is to fill voids of formal institutions as a process of possible linking between new generated soft law derived by beliefs, ideology and professional morality in order to influence (old) legitimacies. The research’s focus evolves on values transitional entrepreneurs utilize to build informal institutions and then impact further on formal institutions to handle distressed communities. This theoretical background expands on subsections to define conceptual building blocks for the study, essential aspects such as individuals as transitional entrepreneurs, the values they utilize to generate soft law, informal institutions and soft law, to manage voids in formal institutions and legitimacy building aspects in policy agenda setting for transitional entrepreneurship in distressed economies.

Service robots are expected to become increasingly common, but the ways in which they can move around in an environment with humans, collect and store data about humans and share such data produce a potential for privacy violations. In human-to-human contexts, such violations are transgression of norms to which humans typically react negatively. This study examines if similar reactions occur when the transgressor is a robot. The main dependent variable was the overall evaluation of the robot.

Service robot privacy violations were manipulated in a between-subjects experiment in which a human user interacted with an embodied humanoid robot in an office environment.

The results show that the robot's violations of human privacy attenuated the overall evaluation of the robot and that this effect was sequentially mediated by perceived robot morality and perceived robot humanness. Given that a similar reaction pattern would be expected when humans violate other humans' privacy, the present study offers evidence in support of the notion that humanlike non-humans can elicit responses similar to those elicited by real humans.

The results imply that designers of service robots and managers in firms using such robots for providing service to employees should be concerned with restricting the potential for robots' privacy violation activities if the goal is to increase the acceptance of service robots in the habitat of humans.

To date, few empirical studies have examined reactions to service robots that violate privacy norms.

This study aims to identify the impact of ethical leadership on ethical voice by determining two paths covering relational identification and psychological safety. The first path focused on relational identification and psychological safety. Alternatively, the second path focused on organizational identification and psychological ownership leading to ethical voice. The specific objective of the study is to develop and test an integrated model of ethical leadership.

The objectives were achieved through the adoption of quantitative research techniques. Two hundred forty-eight samples were collected from the banking sector using quantitative research techniques, and data was gathered through a self-administrated questionnaire. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used through AMOS to generate the results and test hypotheses.

The results suggested a significant impact of ethical leadership on ethical voice, while the other paths’ results, such as relational identification, psychological safety, organizational identification and psychological ownership, suggested partial mediation. The study result adds new insights into ethical leadership and social exchange theory since it tested overlooked paths in the literature, such as relational identification and psychological safety.

The research highlights the significance of ethical voice as a desirable organizational behavior. Ethical voice contributes to a culture of accountability, transparency and ethical decision-making. Organizations should establish channels and platforms for employees to voice ethical concerns and suggestions. This may involve regular feedback sessions, anonymous reporting mechanisms and protection policies for whistleblowers. Leaders should actively encourage and value ethical voices as a valuable contribution to the ethical climate of the organization.

The study found that ethical leaders influence their followers in such a way that they adopt ethical behavior. It is also validated that organizational ethics are shared by employees who interact with ethical leaders. So, departments should train such leaders because ethical leadership positively affects followers’ attitudes and behaviors, and organizations should encourage ethical behavior in supervisors and subordinates. The study also found that relational and organizational identification helps employees develop psychological capabilities, which leads to reporting workplace misconduct. The current study tested these mechanisms collectively and found that ethical leadership significantly contributes to ethical voice.

The current study highlighted the role of ethical leaders in promoting ethical behavior, improving employee well-being and engagement, cultivating collaboration and inclusion, and making a contribution to the overall ethical climate within organizations and society as a whole. Organizations can have a positive impact on the social fabric by cultivating a culture of ethics, respect and social responsibility if they make these considerations their top priorities.

The current study is unique since it is intended to develop and test an integrated model of ethical leadership and ethical voice. This research combines an integrated model, focusing on employees’ identities and self-concepts and examining ethical voice as a behavioral outcome.

The objective of this study is to construct a theoretical framework concerning wage determination, grounded in principles and supplemented by conventional theories. It discusses the Islamic perspectives on minimum wage and examines contemporary challenges and intricacies in its application.

This study uses thematic analysis to create the conceptual framework, drawing upon a review of pertinent literature such as academic papers, books and articles published up to 2023.

The framework encompasses various categories, namely, employee characteristics, job characteristics, market factors, compensation practices and Islamic principles. Each category consists of multiple variables. The resulting framework offers a holistic and ethically grounded methodology for wage determination, aligning with both Islamic and conventional perspectives. This study notes the absence of a universally agreed-upon minimum wage. Islamic economics faces challenges due to the unclear application of principles, limited awareness, legal constraints and a lack of empirical evidence on wage systems, along with complexities in their implementation.

The paper’s limited scope focuses solely on the Islamic perspective on wage determination, without comparing it to the conventional viewpoint. This may have implications for future research.

The insights on Islamic principles and wage determination guide scholars and policymakers interested in promoting just and equitable wages.

This study is distinct in its integration of various factors to propose an all-encompassing framework for wage determination, rooted in the Quran and principles, while also reinforcing the framework with conventional theories. Additionally, it adds to the growing body of literature by investigating the Quran’s stance and principles on minimum wage, as well as discusses the challenges involved in implementing an Islamic approach to wage determination, which has received limited attention in Islamic literature.

This research aims to study budgetary slack from a behavioural perspective, especially examining the effect of gender and code of ethics on budgetary slack ethical judgment.

This study adopts the experimental method of 2 × 3 between-subjects mixed factorial design with 102 participants to test the hypotheses. The participants are undergraduate and postgraduate accounting students at a major university in Indonesia.

The results show that gender affects budgetary slack ethical judgment, in which women judge budgetary slack as more unethical than men. Additionally, the results indicate that individuals consider budgetary slack more unethical when a code of ethics is present than when it is absent.

This study contributes to the management accounting literature and behavioural research by understanding budgetary slack from an ethical perspective. Additionally, this study contributes to ethics literature by identifying the effect of gender and code of ethics on budgetary slack righteous judgment.

This study aims to analyze the relationship between companies’ business ethics (BE) and corporate social responsibility (CSR), with particular reference to policies toward employees, with the aim of understanding if and how the two concepts are linked and to foster a better management of the company-employee relationship through BE and CSR policies.

Through a content analysis, the authors study three issues related to employees disclosed in Code of Ethics (CE) and CSR report of a sample of Italian companies. Next, using a multivariate regression model, the authors examine the relation between the BE and CSR initiatives, related to employees.

The findings show that CE and CSR initiatives are negatively related. They are distinct concepts, but since the authors find that they are connected, they must also be considered in terms of their mutual dependence. To standardize practices toward employees in a code may induce the need to establish additional corporate social responsibility initiatives that elicit legitimate stakeholder satisfaction.

The analysis focuses on employees, whereas several other CSR aspects that can be explored. Furthermore, additional investigation (through questionnaires or interviews) could deepen this analysis. Furthermore, it might be interesting to consider different countries or more variables, such as cultural differences or different regulations.

The results of this research reveal that BE and CSR initiatives require precise and personalized observations to be properly understood; however, as they are linked, they must also be studied in their mutual interdependencies; this can be very useful to define governance bodies and organizational procedures devoted to BE and CSR issues.

This research provides a tool for evaluating and monitoring CSR and BE principles and can be adapted to many business contexts and refer to different stakeholders.

The existing literature on BE and CSR presents opportunities for further study, as these concepts are often studied without insights into their mutual impacts.