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This paper aims to investigate the effects of company corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives on two consumers’ pro-social behaviors closely related to the social cause promoted by the company, such as consumers donating money and volunteering time. In addition, the role of moral elevation as a mediating variable in such relationships is tested.

After an exploratory study, the authors tested the role of moral elevation as a mediator that facilitates the effects of company CSR activities in social domains on two specific types of pro-social behavior displayed by consumers: donating money and volunteering time for the same cause sponsored by the company. The authors conducted two quantitative studies to test their hypotheses. In Study 1, they considered the two pro-social behaviors as intentions; in Study 2, they analyzed them as actual behaviors. In both studies, the authors conducted controlled experiments administered in the field. By using experimental and control conditions, they were able to manipulate corporate responsible actions in social contexts, and a mediational analysis was conducted.

The authors results show that moral elevation mediates the positive relationship between the CSR activity and consumer intention to donate (actual consumer donating behavior) to social causes, and the CSR activity and volunteering intention (actual volunteering behavior).

This paper contributes to furthering CSR theory by showing the positive effects of company CSR initiatives on two pro-social “secondary” outcomes and the mediating role played by moral elevation. Important implications for the role of CSR are derived for companies and society in general.

The current research aims to investigate the role of ethical leadership in improving business processes and the impact of ethical leadership on employee engagement with mediating role of relational identification and ethical climate. Although ethical leadership displays and promotes morality in their followers, current literature is silent about the inclusion of relational identification and ethical climate. The present study intends to develop and test a model with the chain of mediation in the relationship between ethical leadership and employee engagement.

A total of237 responses were collected from the banking sector using quantitative research techniques, and data were gathered through a self-administrated questionnaire. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used through SEM- MPLUS to generate the results and test hypotheses.

The results suggested a significant impact of ethical leadership on employee engagement through relational identification and ethical climate (moral obligations, moral convictions and elevation). By using the results, practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Besides all the proposed hypotheses that have been accepted, there are some limitations associated with this study. One limitation is usage of single source information, as the data were collected only from the banking sector employees. Moreover, only three variables are taken in the context of ethical climate (moral obligations, moral convictions and elevation). However, some other variables could also be included under the umbrella of ethical climate, e.g. moral virtue. Future researchers should also add different employee attitudes, such as job involvement, job satisfaction and organizational commitment, other than employee engagement.

An abundance of research is conducted on ethical leadership; however, with the development of knowledge and new thoughts related to identification and ethical climate, there is a strong need to conduct the research by including other overlooked possible paths.

In the final quarter of the twentieth century, organizational management had been rocked by a theory more powerful than anything since the days of Taylor's theory of scientific management. The new theory was called Total Quality Management (TQM). TQM has largely been eclipsed by other management fads since such as Sigma 6 but none had such an explosive effect on business, schools, and government agencies as TQM (Juran, 1995). The gurus of TQM included J. M. Juran (2003), P. B. Crosby (1995), and even the sage of organizational theory, Peter Drucker (2008). No one, however, stood as tall among this class of gurus as did the notable W. E. Deming (1982). TQM has often been criticized over the years for failing in practice. Deming and his followers retort that it is because organizations seldom incorporated the entire 13 point program. The part so often left out were points that implicitly reflected moral commitments Deming thought organizations ought to have. What Deming relegated to matters of team spirit and other psychological commitments are accommodated in the most scientific sense by recent developments in biology and economics showing that there is an instinct driving evolution among herd animals such as humans to cooperate. This focus on instinct is captured in the most practical sense for organizational analysis in the present author's work on moral architecture. The concept of moral architecture will be sketched as a means for understanding and strengthening, schools, law enforcement agencies and prisons, and other correctional facilities.

This paper aims to analyze some of the epistemically pernicious effects of the use of the internet and social media. In light of this analysis, it introduces the concept of epistemic pornography and argues that epistemic agents both can and should avoid consuming and sharing epistemic pornography.

The paper draws on research on epistemic virtue, cognitive biases, social media use and its epistemic consequences, fake news, paternalistic nudging, pornography, moral philosophy, moral elevation and moral exemplar theory to analyze the epistemically pernicious effects of the internet and social media.

There is a growing consensus that the internet and social media activate and enable human cognitive biases leading to what are here called “failures of epistemic virtue.” Common formulations of this problem involve the concept of “fake news,” and strategies for responding to the problem often have much in common with paternalistic “nudging.” While fake news is a problem and the nudging approach holds out promise, the paper concludes that both place insufficient emphasis on the agency and responsibility of users on the internet and social media, and that nudging represents a necessary but not sufficient response.

The essay offers the concept of epistemic pornography as a concept distinct from but related to “fake news” – distinct precisely because it places greater emphasis on personal agency and responsibility, and following recent literature on moral elevation and moral exemplars, as a heuristic that agents might use to economize their efforts at resisting irrational cognitive biases and attempting to live up to their epistemic duties.

This study investigates how and when employees' perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) encourages their workplace pro-environmental behavior (WPB).

Survey data were collected from 189 employees of different industries in southern China. Data were analyzed using PROCESS macro.

This study found that intrinsic motivation mediated the relationship between perceived CSR and WPB. Furthermore, self-concern strengthened the indirect perceived CSR–WPB link.

This study contributes to the existing literature of micro-CSR by highlighting intrinsic motivation as a mediating mechanism explaining how employees' perceived CSR encourages WPB. In addition, studying the moderating effects of other-orientation and self-concern enriches the understanding of when perceived CSR may or may not stimulate employees' WPB.

Public relations practitioners worldwide are attempting to enhance the overall organization–stakeholder relationships by applying strategic communication techniques and skills to corporate social responsibility (CSR) management and communications. In this light, drawing on the prosocial motivation literature, this paper aims to investigate consumers’ implicit and explicit motivations for prosocial behavior, and how these two motivations interact to affect consumers’ willingness to contribute to CSR activities. Second, through the lens of sensemaking theory, this study evaluates the influence of successful prosocial behavior engagement on consumers’ perceptions of both self and companies’ prosocial identities, CSR authenticity and company evaluations.

This study adopts a dictator game experiment with 2 × 2 factorial design to gauge consumers’ prosocial behavioral response toward companies’ CSR communication with implicit and explicit motivations and to examine its effect on company evaluation.

In all, the results of this study suggest that implicit motivation, i.e. self-affirmation intervention, in CSR communication will cause consumers to donate more money to CSR programs; whereas explicit motivation does not exert an effect on consumers’ prosocial behavior. In addition, such donation will trigger consumers’ prosocial sensemaking process and lead to strong identification with the company, positive attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the company.

This study aims to build a consumer- and social cause-oriented CSR communication model, which maximizes the impact of CSR investments on consumer relationship building, business bottom line and social causes.

This paperaims to investigate a novel expectation by examining how framing a company as its constituent members (members frame) versus an organization (organization frame) can influence consumer evaluations of a product or service from this company.

Four studies were conducted examining the effectiveness of an organization (vs members) frame in a between-subjects experimental design (a pilot study, Studies 1a, 1b and 2). Study 2 also tested the moderating role of donation strategies (amount-focused vs frequency-focused).

Results show a members (vs organization) frame leads to a higher purchase likelihood of a product from a company engaging in corporate donations. Further, this framing effect is mediated by increased levels of consumers’ perceptions about how committed the company is to the cause and the emotion of moral elevation in response to the company’s corporate donations. Moreover, this effect is moderated when the company uses a frequency-based (vs amount-based) donation strategy.

This research contributes to the literature on message framing by demonstrating how the same information about a company may lead to differential effects on consumer evaluations, depending on whether the company is framed as its constituent members versus an organization.

This paper presents significant managerial implications for small companies, in which the owner is the company, about how they can effectively communicate corporate donations to the consumers.

This research provides a novel perspective on how the same information about a company may lead to differential effects on consumer evaluations, particularly in the context of corporate donations.

This commentary extends our 2020 11th SERVSIG Panel The moral limits of service markets: Just because we can, should we?, inspired by Michael J. Sandel’s book What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. In Sandel’s (2012) book, the pursuit of “the good life” is a common motivation for pushing the moral boundaries of markets and “the good life” is dominated by service consumption.

Like Sandel (2012), this commentary begins with a provocation regarding the need for moral development in services marketing. Next, we present three real-life case studies about a modern slavery survivor service, aged care services and health-care services as examples of moral limits, failings and tensions.

The commentary proposes four guidelines and a research agenda. As service marketers, we must reignite conversations about ethics and morality. Taking charge of our professional moral development, exercising moral reflexivity, promoting an ethics of care and taking a bird’s-eye perspective of moral ecologies are our recommended guidelines. Morality is an essential condition – a sine qua non – for service marketers. Hence, our proposed research agenda focuses first on the service marketer and embeds a moral gaze as a universal professional protocol to engender collective moral elevation.

This commentary highlights the need for a moral refresh in services marketing and proposes ways to achieve this end.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of exposure to prosocial media content (PMC) on the subsequent intention to donate to a prosocial cause of a rejected group versus a prosocial cause of a neutral group. The hypothesis, supported in two experimental studies, is that for the individual exposed to a PMC, the difference in the donations for social causes of a rejected group and a neutral group is smaller than for the individual exposed to a non-PMC.

Two between-subjects experimental studies were performed. In both studies, the individual’s emotional responses were manipulated through PMC (conditions: prosocial versus non-prosocial). Then, respondents were asked to split a fixed amount of money between two social actions whose beneficiaries were members of a rejected group versus members of a neutral group.

It was found that the difference in donation between the two actions associated with different types of beneficiaries (i.e. rejected group vs neutral group) was smaller for the individuals exposed to PMC than for individuals exposed to non-PMC.

In this research, the donating behavior was operationalized by a simulated donation and not by a real donation.

Results suggest that PMC on the internet could be effective in reducing rejection for stigmatized dissociation groups for which it is difficult to get help.

The results suggest that exposure to PMC on the internet can increase donations for rejected groups. The confirmation of the PMC effect on reducing negative outcomes opens the possibility to diminish negativity toward stigmatized groups.

Theoretically, the explanations are based on the social comparison theory.