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This paper aims to examine how firms respond to societal moral degradation in a transition economy from the corporate social responsibility (CSR) perspective.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how firms respond to societal moral degradation in a transition economy from the corporate social responsibility (CSR) perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a survey of 302 firms operating in China and using hierarchical regression, this study explores the effect of societal moral degradation on firm CSR implementation.
Findings
The study finds that the amount of CSR performed by firms in a transition market will reduce when they face increased moral degradation in the business field. The authors also find that CSR philanthropy is more significantly deterred by societal moral degradation than CSR sustainability.
Practical implications
These findings reveal that firms conducting CSR initiatives need to strategically consider the great influence of environment. Meanwhile, strategic CSR decisions should be fully aware of the different characters of different CSR forms.
Originality/value
This paper draws on the strategic choice theory and contributes to understanding of the influence of specific environmental factors in transition economies on CSR implementation. Based on two main categories of CSR, this study develops a framework that explores how firms choose different CSR forms when they encounter severe moral degradation in business sector.
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Madison Portie-Williamson, David R. Marshall, Milorad M. Novicevic, Albert J. Mills and Caleb W. Lugar
This study aims to analyze the exemplary historic case of Ms Viola Turner – an African-American insurance executive in the early 1900s to gain insights into how individuals…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to analyze the exemplary historic case of Ms Viola Turner – an African-American insurance executive in the early 1900s to gain insights into how individuals negotiate the tension between intersecting identities and moral foundational values over time.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a mixed research design and a genealogical-pragmatic approach to analyze this exemplary case. This study uses computer-aided textual analysis software to analyze interviews conducted with Ms Turner, generating quantitative insights. This study qualitatively codes the interviews to aid in establishing the behavioral patterns across Ms Turner’s lifespan.
Findings
This study found that Ms Turner altered her underlying configurations of moral foundations to better align with her intersecting identities. This study also revealed cross-level interactions of intersecting identities, life stages and social contexts. Individuals manage and cope with power imbalances through these identity-value alignments.
Originality/value
The findings shed light on how intersectional history contributes to understanding the ways in which individuals deal with power relationships embedded in intersecting identities over time.
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Hendi Yogi Prabowo and Kathie Cooper
Based on the authors’ study, the purpose of this paper is to better understand why corruption in the Indonesian public sector is so resilient from three behavioral perspectives…
Abstract
Purpose
Based on the authors’ study, the purpose of this paper is to better understand why corruption in the Indonesian public sector is so resilient from three behavioral perspectives: the Schemata Theory, the Corruption Normalization Theory and the Moral Development Theory.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper examines corruption trends and patterns in the Indonesian public sector in the past decade through examination of reports from various institutions as well as other relevant documents regarding corruption-related issues to gain a better understanding of the behavioral mechanisms underlying the adoption of corruption into organizational and individual schemata. This paper also uses expert interviews and focus group discussions with relevant experts in Indonesia and Australia on various corruption-related issues.
Findings
The authors establish that the rampaging corruption in the Indonesian public sector is an outcome of cumulative decision-making processes by the participants. Such a process is influenced by individual and organizational schemata to interpret problems and situations based on past knowledge and experience. The discussion in this paper highlights the mechanisms of corruption normalization used to sustain corruption networks especially in the Indonesian public sector which will be very difficult to break with conventional means such as detection and prosecution. Essentially, the entire process of normalization will cause moral degradation among public servants to the point where their actions are driven solely by the fear of punishment and expectation of personal benefits. The three pillars of institutionalization, rationalization and socialization strengthen one another to make the entire normalization structure so trivially resilient that short-term-oriented anti-corruption measures may not even put a dent in it. The normalization structure can be brought down only when it is continuously struck with sufficient force on its pillars. Corruption will truly perish from Indonesia only when the societal, organizational and individual schemata have been re-engineered to interpret it as an aberration and not as a norm.
Research limitations/implications
Due to the limited time and resources, the discussion on the normalization of corruption in Indonesia is focused on corruption within the Indonesian public institutions by interviewing anti-fraud professionals and scholars. A more complete picture of corruption normalization in Indonesia can be drawn from interviews with incarcerated corruption offenders from Indonesian public institutions.
Practical implications
This paper contributes to the development of corruption eradication strategy by deconstructing corruption normalization processes so that the existing resources can be allocated effectively and efficiently into areas that will result in long-term benefits.
Originality/value
This paper demonstrates how the seemingly small and insignificant behavioral factors may constitute “regenerative healing factor” for corruption in Indonesia.
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Through the lens afforded by two theories drawn from the discipline of social psychology, the purpose of this paper is to explain the evident continuing abuse of adults at risk…
Abstract
Purpose
Through the lens afforded by two theories drawn from the discipline of social psychology, the purpose of this paper is to explain the evident continuing abuse of adults at risk living in care homes by the staff who should be looking after them.
Design/methodology/approach
By considering existing theories and research into the reasons why vulnerable adults are abused the paper proposes the relevance of other extant theories on the degradation of moral restraint and dehumanisation of victims, and on the social psychology of intergroup relations, to the perpetration of abuse.
Findings
The paper demonstrates how theories that explain the psychology of human behaviour in certain circumstances may be usefully applied to the inveterate social problem of the abuse of vulnerable adults living in care homes.
Practical implications
The paper offers the opportunity for the reader to consider how these theories of social psychology may be applied to explain and guide remedies to the persistent levels of abuse in English care homes, abuse that continues despite government oversight of care provided to adults who may be at risk by virtue of the activities of the statutory regulator and health and social care commissioners, and the interventions of safeguarding personnel.
Originality/value
This is a conceptual paper from which future research and theorising may arise to better understand the most fundamental causes of the abuse of older people in care homes in order to develop feasible and effective measures to overcome it.
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Sonia Pedro Sebastiao and Isabel Soares
The concept of environmental diplomacy appears associated with events (conventions) promoted between states and transnational organisations to discuss aspects related to…
Abstract
Purpose
The concept of environmental diplomacy appears associated with events (conventions) promoted between states and transnational organisations to discuss aspects related to regulating the use of natural resources and regulating pollution. In this study, the authors intend to highlight the contribution brought to environmental diplomacy by leading television figure David Attenborough and his focus on the destruction of biodiversity by humans (the problem). It is intended to analyse the frames of his public interventions, comparing them with the prevailing frames in the UNFCCC policies.
Design/methodology/approach
A predominantly inductive method of qualitative and interpretative nature is used. In epistemological terms, the framing analysis stems from a social constructivist perspective. A theoretical model for frame analysis was defined by combining the frameworks proposed by Entman (1993) and Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) and considering previous studies (Anholt, 2015; Seelig, 2019). Analysis scrutinised a two-fold corpus comprising articles regarding actions and statements by David Attenborough published in The Guardian between 2018 and 2020, and the UN's legal framework for climate change.
Findings
The most prominent frames regarding climate crisis in transnational policies are responsibilities. Attenborough's calls for action highlight the frames of “morality”, “responsibilities” and “problems”. However, it is necessary to make a distinction between the discourse used in transnational treaties and that by Attenborough. In the former, discourse is more technical and impersonal, presented in a structure of legal diplomas and barely accessible to the public. In contrast, Attenborough's speech is more emotional, appealing and sometimes dramatic. His message is transmitted straightforwardly to the public in a pedagogical, personal tone.
Social implications
The choice of high-profile personalities like David Attenborough as ambassadors has implications in the visibility of the environmental cause, and in the multiplication of initiatives that denounce environmental degradation.
Originality/value
This study explores and analyses the narrative construct regarding climate change as carried out by a trusted and respected media voice. The authors intend to contribute to understanding the amplification role of public figures in controversial issues and diplomatic matters. The main contribution of this study is to highlight the strategic nature of the choice of SDA by political powers to voice the drama of climate emergency.
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In previous efforts I have dated the birth of (modern) Social Catholicism (alias: Roman‐Catholic Social Economycs) with the publication of the closely associated works of Charles…
Abstract
In previous efforts I have dated the birth of (modern) Social Catholicism (alias: Roman‐Catholic Social Economycs) with the publication of the closely associated works of Charles de Coux (1832) and Alban de Villeneuve‐Bargemont (1834/37). If indeed (and without going all the way back to Jesus of Nazareth, via Thomas Aquinas, Jerome and Ambrose et al.) that be the case, and the implication of the present assignment be correct, then we should have to date the “birth of solidarism” in the Social‐Catholic vein identically. Undaunted by Gide's virtual declaration that “they were all solidarists then”, this is what we set out to show, viz. that our Solidarism did have its birth therewith.
Is liberalism premised on an unrealistically individualist anthropology? In one regularly told story about modernity, the earliest liberals grounded their arguments for political…
Abstract
Is liberalism premised on an unrealistically individualist anthropology? In one regularly told story about modernity, the earliest liberals grounded their arguments for political liberty in a picture of human nature that centered on our moral autonomy, perhaps epitomized best in Kantian thought. However, a range of critics have now compellingly argued that such accounts of our agency are descriptively inaccurate, and that normative social projects beginning from such flawed foundations are thus unstable. While this paper accepts this criticism of individualist anthropologies, it proposes that this need not identify a problem with liberalism overall. To make this case, this paper turns to Adam Smith, who grounded his early advocacy of liberalism in an anthropology grounded in natural theology that depicts us as morally interconnected, rather than as autonomous, and as always morally impressionable. As it will explain, Smith presumed an account of character as integrally related to and influenced by the agent’s social context, for both better and worse. Furthermore, he wove his attentiveness to this complex interaction between the agent and their context into both his economic analyses and political proposals. Smith’s social vision thus illustrates how a strong regard for individual liberty is fully compatible with a sophisticated anthropology that recognizes our malleability as moral agents – and even with political proposals that capitalize upon this malleability. Smith’s thought thus offers useful resources for contemporary proponents of liberalism who wish to value the dignity of individuals without basing that valuation in unrealistic abstractions, or ignoring the responsibilities engendered by the fact of our ongoing moral formation by our social contexts.
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Michal J Carrington, Ben Neville and Robin Canniford
This study aims to explore: consumer experiences of intense moral dilemma arising from identity multiplicity conflict, expressed in the marketplace, which demand stark moral…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore: consumer experiences of intense moral dilemma arising from identity multiplicity conflict, expressed in the marketplace, which demand stark moral choices and consumer response to intensely felt moral tension where their sense of coherent moral self is at stake.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors gathered ethnographic data from amongst ethical consumers, and theorised the data through theory of life projects and life themes to explain how multiplicity can become an unmanageable problem in the midst of moral dilemma.
Findings
The authors reveal that in contrast to notions of liberating or manageable multiplicity conflict, some consumers experience intense moral anxiety that is unmanageable. The authors find that this unmanageable moral tension can provoke consumers to transform self and consumption choices to construct a coherent moral self. The authors identify this transformation as the meta life project.
Research limitations/implications
This work contributes to knowledge of multiplicity, consumer life themes and life projects, moral dilemma and ethical consumption by showing that some experiences of moral anxiety arising from multiplicity conflict are unmanageable, and these consumers seek moral self re-unification through the meta life project.
Practical implications
This study provides practical guidance to companies, marketers, public organisations and activist groups seeking to understand and harness consumers’ moral codes to promote ethical consumption practices.
Originality/value
The authors extend current theory of multiplicity into the moral domain to illustrate limitations of framing consumer experiences of multiplicity conflict as being either liberating or manageable when consumers’ sense of moral self is at stake. This article is of interest to academic, marketing practitioner and public policy audiences.
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Does using smart devices change people's moral standards? The objective of this paper is to investigate how people's moral behavioral intentions while employing smart devices are…
Abstract
Purpose
Does using smart devices change people's moral standards? The objective of this paper is to investigate how people's moral behavioral intentions while employing smart devices are modulated by their socioeconomic status (SES; as measured by educational level and income).
Design/methodology/approach
Participants were randomly assigned to either the smart devices condition or the non-smart devices condition, and their moral standards was measured by the adapted Moral Foundations Questionnaire. Data were collected from both China and the UK.
Findings
Individuals' SES moderated people's moral standards when using smart devices. Specifically, when employing smart devices (vs non-smart devices), moral standards declined for low-SES individuals. However, the effect of employing smart devices was not significant for high-SES individuals. This suggests that certain demographics may be more inclined to harm others with smart devices.
Practical implications
In emerging markets, the widespread of smart devices in workplace may lower consumers' and employees' moral standards for certain demographics. Managers and marketers need to be aware of this erosion of morality and employ some preventive measures in advance.
Originality/value
This paper examined morality in the era of smart devices. Even though the use of smart devices has become a norm in developed markets, smart devices usage is still on the rise in emerging markets. The authors findings enhance the understanding of moral behaviors and contribute to the knowledge of how smart devices are changing human behaviors.
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I. Introduction On January 1, 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), who has been described by Andrei Gromyko as a man who…
Abstract
I. Introduction On January 1, 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), who has been described by Andrei Gromyko as a man who “has a nice smile, but he has iron teeth,” (Goldman, 1) gave an address to the people of the United States in which he informed them that the “Soviet people are dedicated to peace — that supreme value equal to the gift of life.” (Gorbachev, 1986(a),5). Gorbachev appealed to all that is good in the American people when he said: