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The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of the fraud triangle, Machiavellianism, academic misconduct and corporate social responsibility (CSR) proclivity of students.

The present study surveyed 471 university students. The study was cross-sectional and employed structural equation modelling in statistical modelling.

The study provides evidence that perceived opportunity to cheat in examinations is the single most important factor accounting for significant variations in rationalization and academic misconduct. Similarly, low Machiavellians significantly get inclined to CSR ideals. The fraud triangle alone accounts for 36 per cent of the variations in academic misconduct, hence the error variance is 64 per cent of academic misconduct itself. This error variance increases to 78 per cent when a combination of perceived opportunity, rationalization, Machiavellianism is considered. Moreover, both Machiavellianism and academic misconduct account for 17 per cent of variations in students’ proclivity to CSR ideals.

Results imply that creating a setting that significantly increases a student's anticipated negative affect from academic misconduct, or effectively impedes rationalization ex ante, might prevent some students from academic misconduct in the first place and then they will become good African corporate citizens. Nevertheless, although the unit of analysis was students, these were from a single university – something akin to a case study. The quantitative results should therefore be interpreted with this shortcoming in mind.

This paper contributes to the search for predictors of academic misconduct in the African setting and as a corollary, for a theory explaining academic misconduct. Those students perceiving opportunity to cheat in examinations are also able to rationalize and hence engage in academic misconduct. This rationalization is enhanced or reduced through Machiavellianism.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between the contemporary forms of manufacturing rationalization and the reproduction of communities of practice (CoPs) centred on tasks and craft. Building on critical literature highlighting the tensions between CoPs and rationalization, this paper aims to develop a nuanced account of how CoPs are reproduced in the context of rationalization.

A qualitative case study of a CoP involved in the production of automotive components was conducted. Following a change in ownership, the company was instructed to rationalize production according to the principles of lean production. Data were collected through participant observation and semi-structured interviews.

The CoP of the case study reinterpreted, resisted and redefined the lean production practices according to the established norms and values. In collusion with local management, workers protected the integrity of the community by engaging in hypocritical reporting. While lower-level managers buffered the rationalization pressures, workers would “get the work done” without further interference.

The critical research approach may be applied to a wide range of cases in which informal or professional work organization collides with change programmes driven by management. Future research is encouraged to investigate more closely how CoPs gain access to formal and informal power by enrolling lower-level managers in their joint enterprise and world view.

Managers should be aware that attempts to rationalize community-based work forms may lead to dysfunctional patterns of organizational decoupling.

This study is one of the first to empirically examine the relationship between CoPs and manufacturing rationalization.

This article suggests the use of portfolio models to facilitate the production rationalization process in multinational firms. The degree to which portfolio planning is adopted will ultimately be determined by the perception of potential benefits within the individual firms. Adopting an ongoing production rationalization policy will enable decision makers to regularly and systematically raise questions about their firms' global outlook. In today's highly competitive multinational markets, this approach can greatly facilitate the MNC and should replace intuitive approaches.

The purpose of this paper is to study how contact centre employees rationalize the perceived problems of an open plan contact centre environment.

The paper applies a framework of four different orientations towards the working environment: the object orientation, system orientation, people orientation and territory orientation. Interviews in three contact centre environments with 28 interviewees were carried out, in order to test whether the framework could be used to analyse the ways the contact centre employees rationalize their working environment. The data were analysed with a qualitative content analysis.

It was possible to find four ways to rationalize the working environment from the speech of the contact centre employees: object‐oriented, system‐oriented, people‐oriented and territory‐oriented rationalization. Persons with the same dominant way of rationalization had internally coherent ways of constructing the reality of their workplace and a common way to justify the existing spatial solutions.

This research is limited to the insights of 28 contact centre workers. Their experiences of their working environment were studied without an attempt to objectively assess whether the problems they named were real or not. The results are not generalizable in the traditional statistical sense.

The research on workplace‐related issues in a contact centre context is limited. Contact centre work is demanding but the physical working environment can be used to minimize the negative consequences of these demands. Thus, it is important to raise understanding of the workplace‐related issues in a contact centre context.

This paper aims to reveal the empirical facts of pressure, rationalization, effect on opportunity and fraud prevention and accountability to fraud prevention in Rumah Sakit Umum Daerah (RSUD; local public hospitals in English) in West Sulawesi Province.

This research is explanatory in nature, with a time horizon from January to July 2016. The research objects were selected from local public hospitals (RSUD) in West Sulawesi Province. The population in this study is employees working at regional general hospitals in West Sulawesi Province. While sample is determined based on cluster sampling technique, the analysis tool used is structural equation modeling.

The variables of pressure and rationalization are found to have a positive and significant effect on opportunity, so improvements in the variables pressure and rationalization will create improvements in the variable opportunity. Pressure, rationalization and opportunity variables have a positive and significant effect on fraud prevention, so improvements in pressure, rationalization and opportunity variables will create improvements in variable fraud prevention. Accountability variables have a negative and significant effect on fraud prevention, so a high value of accountability will decrease the value of fraud prevention.

Originality of this paper shows built developing fraud prevention model in regional public hospital in West Sulawesi Province with five variables, namely, pressure, rationalization, opportunity, accountability and fraud prevention.

For Weberian Marxists, the social theories of Max Weber and Karl Marx are complementary contributions to the analysis of modern capitalist society. Combining Weber's theory of rationalization with Marx's critique of commodity fetishism to develop his own critique of reification, Georg Lukács contended that the combination of Marx's and Weber's social theories is essential to envisioning socially transformative modes of praxis in advanced capitalist society. By comparing Lukács's theory of reification with Habermas's theory of communicative action as two theories in the tradition of Weberian Marxism, I show how the prevailing mode of “doing theory” has shifted from Marx's critique of economic determinism to Weber's idea of the inner logic of social value spheres. Today, Weberian Marxism can make an important contribution to theoretical sociology by reconstituting itself as a framework for critically examining prevailing societal definitions of the rationalization imperatives specific to purposive-rational social value spheres (the economy, the administrative state, etc.). In a second step, Weberian Marxists would explore how these value spheres relate to each other and to value spheres that are open to the type of communicative rationalization characteristic of the lifeworld level of social organization.

Widespread forces of cultural rationalization have combined with parallel expansions in the legitimated actorhood of human persons. The result has been an explosion of formalized organization. Empowered organizations, filled with empowered actors, rise and expand in every social sector and every society. The expanded cultural principles involved lead many actors to play roles as “others,” helping individual and organizational actors to fill their often implausibly expanded roles. The chapters of this volume reflect the processes involved.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the use of data envelopment analysis (DEA) to benchmark store performance for the purpose of rationalising retail distribution network.

As an illustration of the approach, DEA is applied to a sample of front stores of a major retailer in Australia to compare their relative efficiency in distribution. Together with other techniques such as customer segmentation and spatial distribution of demand, this paper shows that DEA can provide an objective basis for distribution network rationalisation and be a suitable analytical tool to facilitate continuous improvement.

Based on the DEA results, it is concluded that overall distribution efficiency of the part of the retail network under study can be improved by either closing the less efficient stores or merging them with the others in the same service areas to streamline the network. Such rationalisation will help aggregate demand and improve vehicle utilisation for distribution with minor impact on current level of customer service.

This study lends insight into the use of DEA, together with other analyses, for distribution network rationalisation. This approach is less data hungry and relatively easy to implement than full‐fledged optimisation through integer programming. To serve mainly as a proof of concept and an illustration of the approach, the scope of the study is limited to six stores in the retail network with relative performance in distribution evaluated on a single input and a single output variables.

Managers can use DEA to benchmark the distribution performance of their stores against the best performers in the retail network so as to identify areas for improvement. The approach can also assist in the adoption of best practice and facilitate more effective allocation of resources across the entire retail network.

Retail network rationalisation through benchmarking with DEA can facilitate continuous improvement in distribution efficiency. This will help reduce fuel consumption, carbon emission, as well as other pollutions such as noise and traffic congestion.

Research in retail network performance using DEA to date is mainly on comparative performance of supermarkets within or between chains. The focus is mainly placed on the relationship between floor area, workforce, and sales. This paper fills the gap in the literature by applying DEA in distribution network rationalisation instead of mere performance comparison of individual stores. It focuses on distribution costs rather than store attributes and supplements DEA with other techniques to obtain a fuller picture of the overall network efficiency in terms of distribution. It also contributes to a better understanding of how demand management can affect distribution efficiency of the retail network.

The purpose of this paper is to use Kierkegaard’s life-views (aesthetical, ethicist and religious life-views) for better understanding the way fraudsters are dealing with their ontic-existentiell guilt, while developing rationalization tactics.

Rationalization tactics make possible to neutralize moral discomfort about fraudulent practices. Endorsing Kierkegaard life-views actually unveils three basic patterns fraudsters could agree with (consciously or not): the focus for individualization processes, the ontic-existentiell quest and the attitude towards guilt. Each Kierkegaardian life-view has deepened this threefold pattern in a very different way.

The aesthetician life-view is so emphasizing immediacy and pleasure that it strengthens an amoral perspective. Fraudsters could easily adopt such life-view. The ethicist is so basically concerned with morality (distinction between good and evil) that he/she cannot consciously favour fraudulent practices. At best, fraudsters may be “would-be ethicists”. As long as they are unable to feel repentance, fraudsters will not be able to fully embrace the religious life-view. At best, they may be “would-be religious”.

The way Kierkegaard’s life-views could put light on fraudsters’ rationalization tactics has not been empirically assessed. Empirical studies that would be focussed on such topics should deepen the relevance and meaning of fraudsters’ psychological, sociological, cultural and religious/spiritual traits.

The paper analyzes to what extent fraudsters could feel psychological guilt, as well as ontic-existentiell guilt, as it is grounded on ontological-existential guilt (guilt as an ontological category). Taking Kierkegaard’s life-views as reference pattern, it presents the implications of being oriented towards immediacy/pleasure (avoiding guilt, at any cost), towards freedom (being aware of one’s guilt) or towards the infinite (being fully aware of one’s guilt).

This study aims to test the causality of fraud diamond factors (pressure, rationalization, opportunity and capability) and Machiavellian personality on fraud intention.

This study used a 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 web-based laboratory experiment. Our subjects are accounting students from various Indonesian universities as surrogates of an accountant of a firm. We analyzed the data using the independent t-test.

This study provides empirical evidence that the four aspects of fraud diamond, namely pressure, opportunity, rationalization and capability cause fraud intention. Besides, high Machiavellian attitude also causes high fraud intention.

This study is a Web-based one that is subject to the instability of internet access. Specifically, some subjects had to redo the completion of their experimental modules because of the unstable internet connection.

The results of this study suggest organizations to pay attention to their members’ behavioral aspects that can be the symptoms of fraud and to design whistleblowing systems to prevent fraud intention as an opportunity factor within organizations.

Social implications are to develop the appropriate whistleblowing system to mitigate the fraud.

The novelty of this study lies in combining the experimental test of fraud diamond (internal and external factors) and Machiavellianism as a personality factor as the determinants of fraud intention. Further, another novelty lies in the use of the antifraud system as a proxy of opportunity that has not yet extensively investigated by previous studies.