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This chapter applies an “integrative” model to examine the impact and interaction of economic and moral/social factors in the corporate tax compliance context. More specifically, it examines whether social norms moderate the effect of economic factors in this context.

Fifty-five MBA students assumed corporate CFO roles and analyzed a proposed aggressive corporate tax shelter transaction (“tax shelter”). Participants indicated whether they would recommend the tax shelter and answered questions regarding the transaction and their corporate tax compliance views.

Hierarchical Regression results indicate that, in the corporate tax compliance context, decision makers’ norms (moral/social factors) moderate the effect of perceived expected value of aggressive tax transactions (economic factors). More specifically, results indicate that (1) perceived legality of aggressive corporate tax transactions significantly impacts willingness of corporate decision makers to recommend them, even when controlling for perceived economic effect of the transaction, and (2) due to moral/social factors, corporate decision makers often may not support aggressive tax treatments with material positive expected values.

Accordingly, (1) custom and social factors should be integrated into the corporate tax compliance decision-making framework, and (2) campaigns to strengthen corporate tax compliance should focus on the law’s text and intent as well as upon sanctions for noncompliance.

Researchers and practitioners recognize whistleblowers and the media as disparate control agents to uncover fraud and corruption in and by organizations. However, whistleblowing is mainly studied in relation to individual and organizational antecedents. Social norms and in particular the media as a form of social norm influence or norm conveyer on whistleblowing are largely unexplored. In this paper, I study the influence of perceived critical media coverage (i.e., whether media are perceived as criticizing fraud and corruption) on whistleblowing intentions (WBI) on fraud and corruption. I draw on norm activation theory to develop a moderation-mediation model of whistleblowing to highlight how the media can convey social norms influencing WBI. Using a cross-national survey of employees from China, Germany, and Russia (n = 1,159), I hypothesize and find that media directly influence employee attitudes toward fraud and corruption as well as the likelihood to whistle blow. Critical media coverage also reduces the influence of descriptive norms by co-worker misconduct on attitudes and the negative influence of fear of retaliation on WBI. This paper is the first to highlight the importance of critical mass media on whistleblowing decisions. My findings suggest that the media influence potential whistleblowers in a way that can be described along the lines of “I report if they report.”

Purpose – To demonstrate where and how transport planners could benefit from insights gained by psychological theory and research.

Methodology – Theory-driven narrative review.

Findings – An extended version of Ajzen's (1991) Theory of Planned Behaviour is proposed which could be used for empirically analysing how environmental and psychological factors influence the individual decision to cycle.

Research implications – The review indicates that taking into account psychological insights could considerably increase the understanding of individual bicycle use. Currently research systematically analysing how psychological processes mediate the relation between environmental features and individual cycling is rare.

Practical implications – The review indicates that current interventions for increasing cycling are not very effective. It is assumed that taking into account insight from psychological research may help to develop new and more effective interventions for promoting cycling. Furthermore, studies evaluating the effects of these interventions in a methodological acceptable way are urgently needed.

We examine the effect of peer honesty on focal manager honesty in a budget reporting setting. We disclose peer honesty to the focal manager at three levels: no, partial, and full disclosure of the reporting behavior of the other managers in the focal managers’ cohort. In partial disclosure, only the reports of the least honest peers are disclosed to the focal manager. In full disclosure, all managers’ reports in the cohort are disclosed to the focal manager. We predict and find that disclosure of other managers’ reports leads to less honesty compared to the absence of disclosure. We show that disclosure changes the focal manager’s perceptions of what constitutes acceptable reporting behavior, such that reporting more dishonestly becomes more acceptable. Our results have implications for understanding fraud dynamics and have practical implications for the design of control systems, as they suggest that managers will use peer dishonesty to justify their own dishonesty, even when they know that only some of their peers report dishonestly.

This study relies on the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985) to examine the antecedents of regular exercise in the audit profession; in addition, the research model tested herein includes two key consequences of exercise: physical healthiness and subjective vitality (one dimension of psychological healthiness). A total of 490 auditors (154 from a large regional CPA firm and 336 from a Big-4 CPA firm) participated in the survey. The results indicate that the antecedents of exercise, as articulated by the theory of planned behavior (attitudes, social norms, and perceived behavioral control), are significantly and positively related to actual exercise behavior. As a consequence of exercising, the auditors indicated improved physical and psychological healthiness. From a theoretical perspective, this is the first study to our knowledge to test both antecedents and consequences of exercise in a single model. Practically, the results suggest that CPA firms should create a culture where engaging in regular exercise is expected, accepted, and encouraged; additionally, firms should ensure that auditors have the opportunity and means to exercise on a regular basis, particularly when they are on the road working at client sites. Rising health care costs are a concern for all employers and employees. A greater understanding of how to improve the physical and psychological healthiness of employees will benefit individuals, organizations, and societies.

Although employee helping behaviors have been widely examined by organizational and human resource management scholars, relatively little is known about the antecedents and consequences of help-seeking in the workplace. Seeking to fill this gap, I draw from the social and counseling psychology literatures, as well as from research in epidemiology and health sociology to first conceptualize the notion of employee help-seeking and then to identify the variables and mechanisms potentially driving such behavior in work organizations. My critical review of this literature suggests that the application of existing models of help-seeking may offer limited predictive utility when applied to the workplace unless help-seeking is conceived as the outcome of a multi-level process. That in mind, I propose a model of employee help-seeking that takes into account the potential direct and cross-level moderating effects of a variety of situational factors (e.g., the nature of the particular problem, organizational norms, support climate) that might have differential influences on help-seeking behavior depending on the particular phase of the help-seeking process examined. Following this, I focus on two sets of help-seeking outcomes, namely, the implications of employee help-seeking on individual and group performance, and the impact of help-seeking on employee well-being. The chapter concludes with a brief examination of some of the more critical issues in employee help-seeking that remain to be explored (e.g., the timing of help solicitation) as well as the methodological challenges likely to be faced by those seeking to engage in such exploration.

When reporting wrongdoing internally, whistleblowers are confronted with the dilemma of weighing up their loyalty toward the organization (e.g., ethical standards) and their co-workers (e.g., the social norm of not snitching on peers). However, the role played by peers in the whistleblowing decision process and in the aftermath has rarely been addressed in existing reviews. We therefore perform a systematic review that identifies seven thematic clusters of peer factors, offering researchers an informative overview of (a) the peer factors that have been examined to influence the whistleblowing decision, and (b) the extent to which the whistleblower experiences adverse consequences from peers in the aftermath of whistleblowing. As peer factors seem to be important to explain and predict internal whistleblowing, researchers are encouraged to address in future works the research gaps our review unraveled.