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This study aims to investigate how unethical corporate behavior of pharmaceutical companies affects consumer behavior of German consumers, especially boycotts of over‐the‐counter drugs.

Borrowing from psychological theory as well as consumer behavior theory, the study develops a conceptual model that considers affective and cognitive determinants of boycotting behavior. Within the scope of the German pharmaceutical sector, the researchers conducted a survey to validate the research hypotheses using moderated regression analysis.

Individuals' inclination to join boycotts and engage in boycott communication results from anger about animal testing, perceived immorality of pharmaceutical companies' corporate behavior and negative corporate image of pharmaceutical companies. An empirical analysis reveals significant moderation effects.

This research focuses on the pharmaceutical sector and the boycott of over‐the‐counter drugs.

The study results may help pharmaceutical companies develop communication responses to accusations of unethical corporate behavior.

The paper offers new insights on the effects of unethical corporate behavior on consumers, which may be useful to the crisis‐prone pharmaceutical sector.

While international corporate unethical behaviors seem to permeate uncontrollably, it is nevertheless, not an incurable dilemma. The paper aims to address the key steps in achieving such governance: chief ethics officer, tone‐at‐the‐top, and whistle‐blower hotlines. With that said, this paper will also address the value of unethical behavior, both from a macro and a micro perspective.

The paper uses an archival literature review to date on international corporate governance, and its challenges to achieve international corporate ethics compliance governance are analysed.

One of the greatest challenges for international corporations is establishing a setup that involves more than the board of directors and senior management, but every employee within the corporation. A key compliance challenge is creating an international corporate culture that tolerates and encourages employees to come forward and report improper conduct.

International corporate unethical behaviors are not myths, should not remain taboo, and should be addressed immediately, for it is not an incurable dilemma. Those who do not learn from one's corporate unethical behaviors are deemed to repeat it. Those who do not learn from others' corporate unethical behaviors are deemed to commit it. Reputation takes time to establish but takes less time to ruin.

Posits that although behaving “ethically” should be important for its own sake, whether a firm behaves ethically or unethically may also have a significant influence on consumers’ purchase decisions. Examines the issue of unethical corporate behavior from the perspective of consumers. Addresses several questions. First, what are consumers’ expectations regarding the ethicality of corporate behavior? Second, is whether a firm acts ethically or unethically an important consumer concern, and if so, will information regarding a firm’s behavior influence their purchase decision? Demonstrates that consumers say they do care about a firm’s ethics and will adjust their purchase behaviors accordingly.

The purpose of this study was to determine the professional competency levels acquired by internal auditors in detecting unethical behaviour, to evaluate the position of internal auditors on objectivity and integrity in dealing with unethical behaviour and to examine the extent of their awareness on ethical issues in government-linked companies (GLCs).

Data were collected via questionnaires that were randomly distributed to the internal auditors of the selected GLS in Malaysia. These questionnaires were constructed from the Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) Examination Paper and The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) Competency Framework.

This study found that internal auditors of the GLCs had a high level of competency in performing audit engagements and were able to detect unethical practices in the companies. The majority of the internal auditors also had a high level of objectivity and integrity when faced with unethical behaviour during audit engagements.

This study provided strong evidence that the internal auditors of Malaysian GLCs strongly complied with IIA Code of Ethics. Besides, they were also aware of the unethical behaviour which occurred within their organizations. However, this study is limited to the internal auditors in GLCs, while the questions of the survey instrument are restricted to the elements of integrity, objectivity and professional competencies of internal auditors.

This study highlights the level of internal-auditor competency and adherence to the IIA’s International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing (ISPPIA) and IIA’s Practice Guide to identify unethical behaviour within the Malaysian GLCs.

This study is original as it focusses on GLCs which did not get much attention from previous researchers, particularly the GLCs that operate in a developing country such as Malaysia.

Although a number of studies have researched food firms’ unethical practices, the mechanisms used to prevent these practices remain underexplored from the perspective of corporate governance. As independent directors (IDs) have been viewed as a mechanism to deter corporate misconducts, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the influences of the ratio of IDs on the board, IDs’ industrial experience and their participation in corporate governance training courses on food firms’ unethical production practices.

This study is based on a sample of 239 firm-year observations in Taiwanese food industries. The Poisson model with fixed effects was used to test the research hypotheses.

The results show that board independence and IDs with food industry expertise were not effective in deterring food firms from unethical production practices. The expected monitoring function of IDs would only realize when they complete a sufficient number of corporate governance training courses. These courses can make IDs aware of their responsibilities and roles in governing firms.

This study is the first to identify the effects of corporate governance practices on food firms’ unethical production practices. The value of this study may provide food firms practical solutions that enable corporate executives to behave ethically.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and review the available literature on ethical/unethical behaviour of pharmaceutical companies and to determine the ethical issues, unethical behaviour by analysing, summarising and categorising the factors related to these issues and unethical behaviour as were studied during the period 2008-2017. Essentially, this paper presents a critical analysis of the available literature on the subject and avenues for future research.

This paper adopted the systematic review approach to achieve the purpose of this study and examines the most relevant literature from online existing database sources, available between 2008-2017 by using the keyword search method. Then studies are categorised and summarised, using previously developed theories and frameworks, which have provided evidence to the universal consensus that ethical behavioural outcomes are dependent on the interplay of individual, organisational and environmental factors and have reordered to fulfil the purpose.

The findings identify that ethical issues related to pharmaceutical companies as were studied during the period 2008-2017 are drug pricing, drug safety and gift-giving. The organisational variables appeared to be the dominant cause of these ethical issues and unethical practices along with other determinants such as environmental and stakeholders. A large number of studies were in the western country context. Theoretical research has studied more comparatively empirical studies.

This review provides insights for understanding the ethical issues, unethical behaviour and determinants related to these issues of pharmaceutical companies and provides insights where the literature is standing. This review only includes studies between 2008-2017, which are related to the ethical issue of pharmaceutical companies, therefore, the view is only of the past 10 years papers. This review provides gaps and insight into the source of ideas for future research and will help the researchers in guiding ethics-related information in the context of pharmaceutical companies.

This study will help the practitioners and policymakers in informing about the issues that required the urgent need to solve and will shed some light to focus and formulate strategies for successful competitive advantage. This study will help researchers who are seeking information related to ethics and ethical behaviour in pharmaceutical companies.

To the best of my knowledge, this review of understanding ethical/unethical behaviour in pharmaceutical companies of the past 10 years between 2008-2017 has not been done to date. This study is filling the gap by bringing all the information about ethics in pharmaceutical companies at one place, which works as an index of ethics-related study in this specific pharmaceutical company context.

With the aim of developing a better understanding of why some consumers still excuse corporate brands that engage in transgressions, this study tests whether extrinsically religious people tolerate corporate brands more than intrinsically religious individuals at different transgression levels (severe and mild) and punish them less than the latter.

This study adopts a 2 × 2 experimental design to manipulate corporate brand transgression levels (mild vs severe) and religiosity orientations (intrinsically religious vs extrinsically religious) on a convenience sample of 134 subjects who live in Turkey, a country where Islam shapes religious context. It uses a scenario technique and projective approach.

While the main effect of corporate brand transgression on punishing behaviour does not appear in the analysis, religiosity’s main effect on the latter does. Unexpectedly, extrinsically religious consumers punish corporate brand transgressors more than their intrinsically religious counterparts regardless of the transgression severity levels.

Although the study does not refer to any religion in particular, countries predominated by religions other than Islam may yield different consumer reactions. Future studies should focus on transgressions in such different settings.

Corporate brand transgressors should immediately take up good causes to attract the attention of intrinsically religious consumers. Otherwise, for the sake of showing off, extrinsically religious people may punish the transgressor for its intentional mistakes, which may harm corporate brand associations.

This study examines the link between religiosity and corporate branding. Unique in this way, it introduces religiosity as a valid contributor that can explain why some consumers do not punish corporate brand transgressors, especially in countries like Turkey where religiosity is intertwined with the developments in the liberal economy which led to the emergence of a new middle class.

Prior research suggests that consumers can engage in moral decoupling by separating their judgments of morality from their judgments of performance. Hence, they might rationalize the benefits of unethical behavior without condoning the behavior itself. This paper aims to study how a discrete positive emotion, such as authentic pride, can mitigate moral decoupling.

Using three experimental studies, this research investigates and tests the underlying mechanism driving authentic pride, its effects and its key moderator. The results are analyzed using ANOVAs, regression-based serial mediation and moderated mediation analyses.

The results show that authentic pride decreases consumer acceptance of unethical behavior across different contexts, including purchase intentions for unethically manufactured products (Study 1), evaluations of the corporate social responsibility activities of a tobacco company (Study 2) and acceptance of questionable consumer behavior in daily situations (Study 3).

This research explores attitudes and behavioral intentions as dependent variables. It would thus be of interest for future research to examine a behavioral measure.

Given the potential problems of moral decoupling among consumers, marketers can devise effective strategies to reduce this problem using authentic pride appeals.

This research demonstrates how authentic pride can decrease consumer acceptance of unethical behavior. More importantly, this research enriches our understanding of the underlying mechanism driving the influence of authentic pride such that it increases the belief in a just world, which in turn lowers moral decoupling (a serial mediation).

This study examines the salesperson-driven unethical behavior toward consumers in the retail banking context.

Consumer posts on an online social platform were analyzed using content analysis. Cluster analysis and word association analyses were conducted to analyze the posts across ethics dimensions, customer intentions and banking services.

Complaints about salesperson-driven unethical behavior were classified into three clusters: disrespect, fee deception and other deception. Four themes of consumer intentions emerged from data: expecting an action regarding the staff, fixing the problem, exiting the bank, or just expressing the problem on the social platform. There was a significant difference among clusters in terms of intentions. The deception clusters had a stronger association with fixing the problem, while the disrespect cluster had a stronger association with consumers’ willingness to express their complaints and requests regarding corrective actions for the salespeople.

Banks must differentiate their service recovery approach depending on the problem. While a refund can be more appropriate for recovering deception, a corrective action regarding misbehaving sales staff is expected by the customers for the disrespect problem.

This study contributed to the need for current research on personal selling practices and salesperson ethics in banking services. The unethical sales practices were linked to customer intentions, and several associations were found. An unethical sales behavior framework that can be used in future research was represented.

Recent high-profile bankruptcies have renewed attention to earnings management practices. This study investigates whether high publicity of corporate bankruptcies makes a difference in the ethical perception of these practices. A survey depicting actual earnings management scenarios was administered to business students before and after these bankruptcies. The results showed a significant increase in the negative perception of earnings management actions after high publicity of unethical corporate behavior. In addition, many demographic factors such as age, experience and college major played a role in business students’ perception of the ethics of earnings management. The study suggests that business students are influenced by actual unethical examples of earnings management. These results, along with demographic differences, have implications for accounting education and the accounting profession.