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To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that aims to present a comprehensive view of the auditing ethics literature by unboxing 40 years of efforts in the field.

This study combined bibliometric, social network and content analysis by analyzing 114 articles published in accounting and top business ethics journals on the Web of Science database from 1980 to 2021.

The results show a rising interest in this topic and reveal auditors’ ethical decision-making and moral reasoning as the most discussed topics in the literature. The work also clusters the literature according to keywords and scopes, identifying literature gaps and suggesting new avenues for future research.

The research results assist provide an overarching image of the auditing ethics field. In addition, these results draw possible future avenues to bridge the void in the current auditing ethics literature by presenting indispensable directions for potential research. For example, future research could pay more attention to whistleblowing, fraud, personal auditor characteristics, auditor ethical sensitivity, auditor ethical conflict, ethical climate and underreporting of time. Moreover, the rapidly changing business environment necessitates the auditing ethics research to move to more practical implications to mitigate previous mistakes and avoid any future risks.

All crises are an ideal breeding ground to motivate fraud and audit failures. In fact, auditing ethics research has been subordinated to the different economic crises. However, despite increasing awareness of the topic’s relevance, no comprehensive study focuses on auditing ethics literature. Now, the devastating effects of the COVID-19 crisis are producing a new wave of financial distresses and avoiding former mistakes is timelier than ever. With this novel and integrated approach, this work goes one step forward, developing a comprehensive picture of the auditing ethics literature.

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.

With the growth and profound influence of technology on our life, it is important to address the ethical issues inherent to the development and deployment of technology. Researchers and practitioners submit the need to inspect: how technology and ethics interact, how ethical principles regulate technology and what could be the probable future course of action to execute techno-ethical practices in a socio-technical discourse effectively. To address the thoughts related to techno-ethics, the authors of the present study conducted exploratory research to understand the trend and relevance of technology ethics since its inception.

The study collected over 679 documents for the period 1990–2022 from the Scopus database. A quantitative approach of bibliometric analysis was conducted to study the pattern of authorship, publications, citations, prominent journals and contributors in the subject area. VOS viewer software was utilized to visualize and map academic performance in techno-ethics.

The findings revealed that the concept of techno-ethics is an emerging field and requires more investigation to harness its relevance with everchanging technology development. The data revealed substantial growth in the field of techno-ethics in humanities, social science and management domain in the last two decades. Also, most of the prominent cited references and documents in the database tend to cover the theme of Artificial Intelligence, Big data, computer ethics, morality, decision-making, IT ethics, human rights, responsibility and privacy.

The article provides a comprehensive overview of scientific production and main research trends in techno-ethics until 2022. The study is a pioneer in expanding the academic productivity and performance of embedding ethics in technology.

However, while the benefits of adopting virtual work structures have been extensively discussed, ethical considerations have been largely ignored in the existing literature. To fill this gap, this study aims to investigate the key ethical issues associated with virtual workplaces. It also aimed to examine the various preventive measures that could be considered for effectively managing such challenges.

The study adopted an inductive research approach using qualitative methodology. Data was collected by executing the technique of dual moderator focus group discussion. By using the purposive sampling technique, the sample comprised 24 software professionals from emerging economies such as India. All sessions were transcribed, and the data were analysed using the content analysis method.

The study reports some interesting results related to various ethical issues and the preventive measures to handle such issues in virtual workplaces. The themes that emerged related to ethical issues have been categorised into three broad categories, i.e. People, Technology and Culture. In contrast, preventive measures have been reported in both contexts, i.e. pre-preventive and post-preventive measures. Furthermore, few recommendations have been made to improve virtual work experiences for remote work professionals. The identified themes and categories were classified and arranged in “Network View”, a feature embedded in Atlas.ti7 software, to analyse the conceptual relationships.

The findings may help managers regarding various ethical issues in virtual work settings. It may also provide an insight to the managers about the benefits of adopting preventive measures for handling ethical dilemmas in virtual workplaces in an emerging economy like India.

The study may be seen as one of the earliest attempts to consider the lingering debate on ethics in virtual workplaces. The findings of the study have implications for further theoretical research on the topic.

Fully autonomous self-driving cars not only hold the potential for significant economic and environmental advantages but also introduce complex ethical dilemmas. One of the highly debated issues, known as the “trolley problems,” revolves around determining the appropriate actions for a self-driving car when faced with an unavoidable crash. Currently, the discourse on autonomous vehicle (AV) crash algorithms is primarily shaped by Western ethical traditions, resulting in a Eurocentric bias due to the dominant economic and political influence of the West. However, considering that AV technology will be deployed across diverse cultural and religious contexts, this paper aims to contribute to the discourse by providing an Islamic perspective on programming the response of AVs in the event of an imminent crash.

This study proposes a novel methodology based on the Islamic concept of maṣlaḥa for the normative assessment of ethical decisions related to AV programming.

Drawing upon the works of classic Islamic jurists, this study highlights two distinct normative visions within Islamic traditions (akin to deontology and consequentialism) concerning the preservation of human lives in the context of AVs. This study explores the shared and divergent elements between Islamic and Western ethical approaches proposed for AVs.

This pioneering work examines AV crash algorithms from an Islamic perspective, filling a void in the global ethical discourse. This work will also serve an important role to bridge the gap between the theoretical Islamic ethical principles and their practical application in the realm of AVs.

Post-millennial youths are well equipped with internet technology and computers since birth and find it easier to operate computers and technologies than their previous generations. With the advancement of technology, the ethical dilemma associated with its use has evolved. This paper aims to develop and validate a measurement scale for the ethical orientation of post-millennial technology usage by capturing the key factors that best describe the behavior adopted by students.

A systematic scale development procedure was used, involving both reviews of the literature and focus group discussions to generate the items that specify the domain of this study. After generating items, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were applied to identify latent constructs of techno-ethical orientation. Lastly, the scale was subjected to reliability and validity testing.

The study found that the techno-ethical orientation scale has five dimensions: privacy concerns, classroom behavior, accessibility dilemma, social media usage and assignment ethics. Overall, a scale comprising 17 statements was derived.

The findings of our study attempt to augment the growing efforts to explore all facets of techno-ethics. It is probably the first attempt to develop a valid and reliable scale for the techno-ethical orientation of post-millennial.

This scale could be used by academicians and practitioners to assess the techno-ethical orientation of post-millennial for positive interventions.

This study derives a new reliable and valid scale for measuring the techno-ethical orientation of post-millennial toward technology usage.

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.

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.

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that affect managers’ ethical decision-making in export-oriented readymade garments in Bangladesh.

This is an empirical study based on the quantitative approach undertaking a cross-sectional survey method where a convenience sampling technique was applied. The analysis was done using partial least square structural equation model applying Smart-PLS version 3.0.

This study confirmed that all the components of cognitive appraisal processes, including perceived severity, perceived vulnerability, response efficacy and self-efficacy, have a significant influence on attitude. Attitude, in turn, mediates the relationship between these variables and the behavioural intention of ethical practice, except for perceived vulnerability. Besides, moral obligation is found to mediate the relationship between attitude, self-efficacy and the behavioural intention of ethical decision-making. The study also found that ethical climate and subjective norms have a direct influence on behavioural intention. Furthermore, behavioural intention, ethical climate and self-efficacy are positively related to actual decision-making behaviour. However, this study did not find any direct effect of subjective norms on moral obligation.

The organization should include an emphasis on building ethical culture and setting an ethical code of conduct within the organization to sustain ethical practice within employees. However, the practitioner should work on enhancing self-efficacy to curb unethical practices by individuals.

This research contributes to the management of garments manufacturers by a practical and theoretical understanding of what influences the ethical behavioural decision-making process. Valuable guidelines are provided on the ethical decision-making process in the garments manufacturing companies for future researchers.