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This research uses identity theory to examine the individual variability in moral behavior for acts of commission (committing a bad act) and omission (failing to do a good act). Most research using identity theory has examined behavior in the active sense as in doing something while neglecting behavior in the passive sense as in not doing something. Doing something may carry more information as to who one is than not doing something. Thus, behavior in the active sense may be more likely to implicate the self and thus activate the identity process than behavior in the passive sense. I investigate this by placing individuals in the moral dilemma of a testing situation in which they have the opportunity to cheat (an act of commission) (Condition 1) or not report that they were over-scored on a test (an act of omission) (Condition 2). Participants' moral identities and emotions are obtained. The results reveal that the identity process helps explain moral behavior and emotions for an act of commission but not an act of omission. The results suggest that compared to an omitted act, a committed act generates more cognitive processing as to who one is thereby activating the identity process. Furthermore, in omission, individuals may not see themselves as responsible for an outcome, thus failing to frame the situation in moral terms – as having done a bad thing.

People consider food wasting behavior to be immoral. However, it is not clear whether people who consider food wasting behavior immoral waste less food. Building on previous qualitative studies, we conducted a large-sample quantitative study. We examined whether people who consider food wasting behavior immoral display food wasting behaviors less frequently and whether they waste less food in general. Furthermore, we explored the reasons that make people consider food wasting behavior immoral and whether they affected food wasting.

Participants voluntarily (n = 562) completed a set of questionnaires that measured the frequency of their food wasting behavior, the amount of food wasted in the preceding week, and food wasting moral judgments, including scales, which explored the reasons for judging this behavior as immoral.

We found that people who regard food wasting behavior as immoral displayed food wasting behavior less frequently, but did not waste less food than people who did not consider food wasting behavior immoral. Furthermore, we found that there are two categories of reasons for moral disapproval of food wasting behavior: externally oriented (concern for the environment, social issues, and for future generations) and internally oriented (concern for ones’ financial situation, social approval, and going by traditional norms). However, only people whose moral judgments were motivated by externally oriented reasons wasted food less frequently.

Our findings provide evidence that moral judgments influence food wasting behavior and highlight the importance of the content of moral beliefs for predicting behaviors.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible alternatives. We need the vision and the courage to aim for the highest level of technology attainable for the widest possible use in both industry and services. We need financial arrangements that will encourage people to invent themselves out of work. Our goal, the article argues, must be the reduction of human labour to the greatest extent possible, to free people for more enjoyable, creative, human activities.

This commentary questions commonly held assumptions about corporate social responsibility (CSR). It discusses the morality of altruistic CSR – philanthropic CSR activities that are not necessarily beneficial to the firm’s financial position. Evaluating altruistic CSR from all major ethical perspectives – utilitarianism, rights, justice and care – leads to the conclusion that, for publicly held corporations, such activity is immoral. This is because altruistic CSR violates shareholder property rights, unjustly seizing stockholder wealth, and it bestows benefits for the general welfare at the expense of those for whom the firm should care in close relationships. The paper also determines that what are often considered mandatory ethical and social corporate duties are actually optional activities that should only be undertaken when it appears that they can enhance the value of the firm, i.e. when they are used as strategic CSR. However, using ideas taken from secular and Judaeo‐Christian authors on the meaning of work, the article also concludes that altruistic activities are appropriate and commendable for private firms and individuals. It offers suggestions for practitioners of CSR and for future academic research.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of psychological contract breach on destructive by developing a moderated mediation model. The model focuses on the mediating role of moral identity and moral disengagement and the moderating role of moral belief.

This study conducted a three-wave questionnaire survey and used 377 matched-sample data to test the hypotheses. PROCESS bootstrapping program in SPSS and confirmatory factor analysis in AMOS software were adopted in this study.

Results reveal that psychological contract breach has a positive effect on destructive leadership behavior, and the relationship is mediated by moral identity and moral disengagement; moral belief not only moderates the relationship between psychological contract breach and destructive leadership behavior, but also moderates the mediation effect of moral identity and moral disengagement.

First, this study enriches the destructive leadership behavior literature by verifying psychological contract breach as an antecedent. Second, this study discusses the role of morality in the formation mechanism of destructive leadership behavior by testing the mediating effect of moral identity and moral disengagement and the moderating effect of moral belief.

This paper aims to examine how social and moral salience influences the activation/deactivation of consumer motives and how this in turn affects costly pro-environmental consumer behavior.

In two experiments involving real purchases, it was tested whether social salience (private vs public choice) and moral salience (recall of neutral vs immoral action) lead to the activation of normative motives, and/or the deactivation of economic motives, and whether this facilitated the purchase of a costlier green product.

Participants were motivated by both economic and normative motives, and they actively made trade-offs between these motives as the choice environment changed. Green consumption was positively influenced by social and moral salience but only when both salience conditions were present simultaneously. However, salience did not lead to the activation of normative motives, as was expected, but to a deactivation of the motive to save money. This may suggest that while the importance of norms was not altered by salience, the perceived value of the green option likely changed in such a way that participants became more inclined to choose the costlier green option.

The present research sheds light on how and why social and moral salience influences green consumption. It was demonstrated that social and moral salience influences the tendency to purchase costlier green products, however, only when both are combined. Also, the effects of social and moral salience may not rely on the activation of facilitating social and moral motives but rather on the deactivation of conflicting economic motives.

This paper seeks to focus on CSR manifested regarding two points, namely CSR insincerity and authenticity from the point of view of pragmatist and care ethics principles. Its purpose is to evaluate critically the genuineness of the early stages in acquiring CSR practices, and to advance the notion of authenticity in its mature development stage. The analyses seek to show an imbalance between the so‐called feminine and masculine principles in the professional business arena, which prevents an authentic CSR business approach taking place.

The authors approach the topic from various concepts and criteria of moral correctness regarding CSR, and crucial change points in the transient process from insincere to authentic CSR.

The paper identifies some elements of insincere CSR in every company in its early stages of acquiring CSR practices, especially in the early stages of the development of the business culture, and also during the maturing process.

The paper demonstrates the excessive significance of the rapid development of CSR sensibility in society and in the business community because, in such situations, knowledge of all affected parties prevents business subjects from misdirection and forces them to choose between lying and telling the truth.

The paper demonstrates a business‐based rationale for the adoption of mature, non‐deceptive CSR practices, since the overall situation in the business community and in society becomes clearer regarding criteria.

An authentic approach to business by companies as legal persons in the light of pragmatist and care ethics principles for CSR enables them to identify themselves very precisely and transparently.

Because information technology (IT) can change the way we look at the world, some benefits for human communities, such as trust, care, friendship and commitment can be clearly noticed as contributors to society. Providing an innovative way to help human society, enabling the achievement of good lives by evaluating information related to the concept of wisdom, this paper aims to propose technical guidelines as a reference model, specifically for empowering both professional and ethical bases associated with the instructional application strategy for adopting technology.

This study attempts to investigate the professional and ethical engagements that can underlie technology adoption. To achieve this, a literature review of peer-reviewed journals, conferences and books was conducted to propose the framework model for strengthening moral engagement in the digital era. By using keywords derived from the professional and ethical skills involved with technology adoption, multiple research findings can be achieved using meta-synthesis alongside an integrating, evaluating and interpreting process. As a result, phenomenological and grounded theories and ideas, extracted to identify their common features, elements and functionalities, can be integrated and used to propose a theoretical guideline.

The findings reveal that to engage the professional and ethical bases associated with the instructional strategy and application in technology adoption demonstrates how humans, with all their potency, can contribute significantly to society at large by enhancing their abilities and improving their capacities for the wise and appropriate utilization of technological tools.

With regard to experiences in the digital era, across differing cultures and age groups, based on emerging technology, it is necessary to use technological tools properly and wisely. An effort to foster positive outcomes as a result of increased digital media use, and address potential issues raised by empowering applications and strategies associated with professionalism and ethics, plays a significant role in contouring the main foundations for how to use technological tools in all the comprehensive coverage concerning the theory and applications addressed by this work.

What is significant and essential about the technological bases examined is their core element of enabling humans to enhance any benefits garnered for social and personal development. This paper intends to expand upon how professional and ethical aspects of technology adoption should involve a wide exchange of particular elements that underlie the wise and appropriate fostering of technological implementation.

Emerging technology with its distinct facilities could enhance individual performance by improving abilities and capacities for wise and appropriate operation of technological tools. By critically exploring the professional and ethical balance involved with technology-based tools in society and how they might underpin their users’ social and personal awareness, this paper gives feedback that provides insights about emerging technological trends. This is done with reference to particular guidelines, enabling a clearer understanding of the importance of the impact of technology on the human condition.