Search results

This study aims to investigate how sustainability and ethics are being addressed both by the literature and companies. Furthermore, it seeks to identify the specific strategies that these companies use to foster ethical behaviour and promote sustainability in their business operations.

The study entails a bibliometric analysis and a set of case studies from a sample of companies working in different industry sectors. Based on these tools, it analyses whether – and how – enterprises are placing an emphasis on sustainability and ethics as part of their businesses. In addition, the selected companies' unethical practices or socially irresponsible corporate activities were investigated and presented.

The findings suggest that using an ethics perspective can be a valuable tool in improving the accuracy and correctness of business decision-making. In addition, the paper has identified the fact that sustainability standards can be used to improve customer satisfaction as many important issues are addressed. Finally, the paper highlights the importance of ethical considerations when designing and implementing sustainability standards at enterprises and the need for regulatory guidance in this regard.

The paper addresses the need for studies on how sustainability and ethics are being discussed by both the literature and companies. The paper presents some elements that can be used as possible corporate indicators for a wider implementation of sustainability and ethics objectives in enterprises.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on and introduce the ethics of earnings management (EM) to researchers and students in the academic community in light of Kohlberg’s theory.

The paper contextualises and analyses the relevant literature to provide insights around the key concepts of the issue of ethics of EM. Therefore, theoretical approach has been adopted by reviewing the literature using a descriptive method. The study suggests relevance of the theory of moral development and reasoning by Kohlberg (1969) as an approach in the process of exploring the background and the reasons behind ethics of managers regarding EM. This theory helps to explain how individuals demonstrate and justify a sense of right or wrong. Thus, the paper is a literature review concluded with a proposed conceptual framework.

The paper provides conceptual insights about the ethics of EM, and it proposes a link between manager’s ethics regarding the phenomenon of EM and the framework of moral reasoning theory by Kohlberg (1969).

The importance and implications of Kohlberg’s theory, in terms of EM, resides within the fact that the theory is concerned with questions about how one ought to act – being as it acknowledges the well-known ethical theories. The work of Kohlberg can be classified as a descriptive analysis to the extent that it attempts to describe individuals’ moral development. This integration of normative and descriptive ethics, in turn, enables the theory to be used to explore managers’ moral reasoning in a more helpful way.

Data economy is a recent phenomenon, raised by digital transformation and platformisation, which has enabled the concentration of data that can be used in economic purposes. However, there is a lack of clear procedures and ethical rules on how data economy ecosystems are governed. As a response to the current situation, there has been criticism and demands for the governance of data use to prevent unethical consequences that have already manifested. Thus, ethical governance of the data economy ecosystems is needed. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new ethical governance model for data economy ecosystems. The proposed model offers a more balanced solution for the current situation where a few global large-scale enterprises dominate the data market and may use oligopolistic power over other stakeholders.

This is a conceptual article that covers theory-based discourse ethical reflection of data economy ecosystems governance. The study is based on the premise of the discourse ethics where inclusion of all stakeholders is needed for creating a transparent and ethical data economy.

This article offers self-regulation tool for data economy ecosystems by discourse ethical approach which is designed in the governance model. The model aims to balance data “markets” by offering more transparent, democratic and equal system than currently.

By offering a new ethically justified governance model, we may create a trust structure where rules are visible and all stakeholders are treated fairly.

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.

Cybersecurity vulnerabilities are often due to human users acting according to their own ethical priorities. With the goal of providing tailored training to cybersecurity professionals, the authors conducted a study to uncover profiles of human factors that influence which ethical principles are valued highest following exposure to ethical dilemmas presented in a cybersecurity game.

The authors’ game first sensitises players (cybersecurity trainees) to five cybersecurity ethical principles (beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, autonomy and explicability) and then allows the player to explore their application in multiple cybersecurity scenarios. After playing the game, players rank the five ethical principles in terms of importance. A total of 250 first-year cybersecurity students played the game. To develop profiles, the authors collected players' demographics, knowledge about ethics, personality, moral stance and values.

The authors built models to predict the importance of each of the five ethical principles. The analyses show that, generally, the main driver influencing the priority given to specific ethical principles is cultural background, followed by the personality traits of extraversion and conscientiousness. The importance of the ingroup was also a prominent factor.

Cybersecurity professionals need to understand the impact of users' ethical choices. To provide ethics training, the profiles uncovered will be used to build artificially intelligent (AI) non-player characters (NPCs) to expose the player to multiple viewpoints. The NPCs will adapt their training according to the predicted players’ viewpoint.

Many organizations struggle to achieve their desired levels of business process flexibility and support. However, these two capabilities conflict with each other and different tradeoffs have to be made. In this paper, the authors analyze different process conceptualizations and discuss their implications. The authors argue that the conceptualizations people adopt to think (conceptualize) about business processes affect the way they model them, which in turn result in different flexibility-support tradeoffs.

A set of properties is proposed to compare process conceptualizations: dominant concept, contract, and existential and representational properties. Using these properties, several process conceptualizations are analyzed and integrated in a comparison chart, which highlights different flexibility-support tradeoffs. The storytelling method is adopted to support the analytic process.

The authors show how different process conceptualizations result in different flexibility-support tradeoffs. The authors suggest that we need to intervene on a set of properties of process conceptualizations to achieve different flexibility-support tradeoffs.

This research contributes to understanding the relationships between process conceptualizations, process modeling, and the flexibility-support tradeoff. A comparison chart helps organizations analyze their desired levels of flexibility and support using a set of properties.

The extent of covered viewpoints makes this study unique in the process management field. Such effort provides a contribution towards a more multidisciplinary discussion of process models, which integrates different process conceptualizations.

Using interview data from cadets (program participants) in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corp (ROTC), I examined the beliefs cadets have about obedience. I scrutinize their ideas about followership and leadership, adding to the discussion on romance of and ethical followership and demonstrating how many cadets fall somewhere in the middle with their beliefs about the role of their leaders and whether they should question, obey, and/ or disobey unethical or illegal orders.

Much of recent research on leadership education focuses on the application of a particular assignment or project to develop an individual’s leadership. Other research has examined leadership development from different educational levels such as graduate, undergraduate, and even K-12. The following paper is an idea brief surrounding a newly created and recently implemented, organizational leadership graduate degree program. This brief further discusses and explores the creation and on-going development of the graduate program in leadership education as a whole through the pedagogical lens of Cultural-Historical Activity theory. The paper also describes the use of embedded assessments within the core classes that potentially provide the student with the knowledge and skills to successfully complete their applied research capstone project.

In the wake of the extraordinary financial scandals that both preceded and followed the September–October Financial Crises of 2008, discussions about the executive virtues of honesty and integrity are no longer academic or esoteric, but critically urgent and challenging. As representatives of the corporation, its products and services, corporate executives in general, and production, accounting, finance, and marketing executives in particular, must be the frontline public relations and goodwill ambassadors for their firms, products, and services. As academicians of business education, we must also analyze these corporate wrongdoings as objectively and ethically as possible. What is wrong must be declared and condemned as wrong, what is right must be affirmed and acknowledged as right. We owe it to our students, our profession, our stakeholders, and to the business world. Contemporary American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (1981) proposes the issue of morality in a threefold question: Who am I? Who ought I to become? How ought I to get there? The answer to every question refers to the virtues, especially to corporate executive virtues. This chapter explores corporate executive virtues, especially the classical cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice as defining and enhancing corporate executive life.

Computing ethics represents a long established, yet rapidly evolving, discipline that grows in complexity and scope on a near-daily basis. Therefore, to help understand some of that scope it is essential to incorporate a range of perspectives, from a range of stakeholders, on current and emerging ethical challenges associated with computer technology. This study aims to achieve this by using, a three-pronged, stakeholder analysis of Computer Science academics, ICT industry professionals, and citizen groups was undertaken to explore what they consider to be crucial computing ethics concerns. The overlap between these stakeholder groups are explored, as well as whether their concerns are reflected in the existing literature.

Data collection was performed using focus groups, and the data was analysed using a thematic analysis. The data was also analysed to determine if there were overlaps between the literature and the stakeholders’ concerns and attitudes towards computing ethics.

The results of the focus group analysis show a mixture of overlapping concerns between the different groups, as well as some concerns that are unique to each of the specific groups. All groups stressed the importance of data as a key topic in computing ethics. This includes concerns around the accuracy, completeness and representativeness of data sets used to develop computing applications. Academics were concerned with the best ways to teach computing ethics to university students. Industry professionals believed that a lack of diversity in software teams resulted in important questions not being asked during design and development. Citizens discussed at length the negative and unexpected impacts of social media applications. These are all topics that have gained broad coverage in the literature.

In recent years, the impact of ICT on society and the environment at large has grown tremendously. From this fast-paced growth, a myriad of ethical concerns have arisen. The analysis aims to shed light on what a diverse group of stakeholders consider the most important social impacts of technology and whether these concerns are reflected in the literature on computing ethics. The outcomes of this analysis will form the basis for new teaching content that will be developed in future to help illuminate and address these concerns.

The multi-stakeholder analysis provides individual and differing perspectives on the issues related to the rapidly evolving discipline of computing ethics.