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1 – 10 of over 18000Tariq Hameed Alvi, Samia Tariq, Mian Muhammad Atif, Ilknur Ozturk and Munazza Saeed
Limited research has investigated how spirit at work, functioning as a “good barrel,” fosters ethical decision-making (EDM) even in the presence of unethical managerial behavior…
Abstract
Purpose
Limited research has investigated how spirit at work, functioning as a “good barrel,” fosters ethical decision-making (EDM) even in the presence of unethical managerial behavior (“bad apples”). Therefore, this study aims to investigate the spirit at work, a situational variable, as a moderating variable in the relationship between the love of money (LoM), an individual-level factor, and EDM.
Design/methodology/approach
A time-lagged survey of the members of the Marketing Association of Pakistan was conducted. The data were analyzed using partial least square structural equation modeling.
Findings
Adding to much of the existing research, which finds that LoM can influence ethical intention directly, this research finds that LoM influences ethical intention only through ethical judgment. Moreover, the spirit at work tempers the negative relationship between LoM and ethical judgment, thereby mitigating LoM’s detrimental effects not only on ethical judgment but also its downstream effects on ethical intention.
Practical implications
Organizations, by planting the seeds of spirit at work, can institutionalize good barrels, which can alleviate the negative effects of the marketing managers’ LoM, the root cause of unethical behavior. This way, this study establishes a business case for spirit at work.
Originality/value
The novelty of this study is the development and investigation of a holistic conceptual framework for EDM of marketing professionals that incorporates LoM as an antecedent, ethical judgment as an underlying mechanism, ethical intention as an outcome variable and spirit at work as a boundary condition.
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Gary M. Fleischman, Sean Valentine and Don W. Finn
Ethical issues and moral reasoning are important in the tax policy context because shared moral values create good societies (Paul et al., 2006). This study of the equitable…
Abstract
Ethical issues and moral reasoning are important in the tax policy context because shared moral values create good societies (Paul et al., 2006). This study of the equitable relief subset of the innocent spouse rules is a good example of Congressional and IRS policy that has been substantially reformed twice (and continues to be reassessed) to create tax law that effectively treats innocent spouses equitably (Fleischman & Shen, 1999). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the degree to which subjects' moral reasoning, using the first two steps of Rest's (1986) ethical reasoning model, is related to perceived moral intensity (Jones, 1991) in several tax-based equitable relief situations. Integrative social contracts theory provides the study's theoretical lens.
Subjects evaluated a mailed-questionnaire containing two separate equitable relief scenarios about a spouse who was unaware of her husband's tax evasion – one scenario included verbal abuse and the other scenario contained no such abuse. The survey also contained a variety of ethics and attitudinal measures used to measure the study's focal variables. The results support the a priori hypotheses that moral intensity is positively related to recognition of an ethical issue, judgment that the ethical scenario is unethical, and judgment to grant equitable relief. In addition, the scenario containing emotional abuse was associated with increased levels of moral intensity as compared to the scenario that did not contain abuse. The paper concludes with a discussion of both professional and public policy implications.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of ethical ideologies on ethical judgments of future Malaysian accountants in general situations and based on the legality…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of ethical ideologies on ethical judgments of future Malaysian accountants in general situations and based on the legality of the situations. The examination covers the relationships of both the specific ethical dimension (i.e. idealism and relativism) and the specific categories of ideology (i.e. absolutist and subjectivist) on ethical judgments.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a questionnaire survey that comprises Ethical Position Questionnaire and ethical dilemma vignettes, 396 usable responses were received. In achieving the objectives, multivariate analysis of variance, correlations and univariate analysis of variance were performed.
Findings
The study discovered a significant impact of ethical ideology on judgments regardless of the legality of the cases. In addition, the study found a significant positive and negative impact of idealism and relativism, respectively, on ethical judgment. Moreover, the study reported that absolutists are stricter whilst situationists are more lenient in making ethical judgments compared to other ideologies.
Originality/value
The present study investigated the effect of ethical ideologies on ethical judgment, in general, as well as the effect on ethical judgment based on the legality of the ethical dilemma. This study also considered the effect of the two dimensions of ethical ideology – idealism and relativism – on ethical judgment and captured the four categories of ideology based on the taxonomy of ethical ideologies.
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Robert L. Cardy and T.T. Selvarajan
The objective of this empirical study is to apply the methodology commonly used to performance appraisal and examine if outcomes achieved by ratees bias rater's judgment of ratee…
Abstract
Purpose
The objective of this empirical study is to apply the methodology commonly used to performance appraisal and examine if outcomes achieved by ratees bias rater's judgment of ratee ethical behavior.
Design/methodology/approach
Two studies were conducted: in study 1 the participants were undergraduate business students and in study 2, the participants were MBA students but who were also full time employees. In both these studies, participants read the vignettes and rated the ratee performance using behavior observation scale.
Findings
Both the studies found support for the main hypothesis that outcomes achieved by the ratees influenced judgment of ethical behavior. The hypothesis that ethical beliefs of raters will moderate the biasing influence of outcomes on ethical judgment bias was not supported.
Research limitations/implications
If outcomes achieved by employees influence judgment of ethical behavior, future research has to examine how the biasing influence of outcomes on ethical judgments can be mitigated or eliminated.
Practical implications
If managers are influence by outcomes achieved by their employees in judging the ethical behavior, it can lead to “success breeds acceptance” culture. If organizations place undue emphasis on outcomes at the cost of ethical standards, unethical behavior of individuals could be condoned or justified which would lead to worsening of ethical climate in these organizations.
Originality/value
This study demonstrated that outcomes achieved by employees biases judgment of their ethical behavior and this finding has important implications for designing effective appraisal systems for assessing ethical behavior of employees.
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Byoung-Chun Ha and Hyunjeong Nam
The purpose of this study is to empirically analyze managers’ ethical judgments in supply chain management. It investigated the influence of those judgments on trust and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to empirically analyze managers’ ethical judgments in supply chain management. It investigated the influence of those judgments on trust and collaboration in relationships with suppliers.
Design/methodology/approach
A scenario-based method was applied to measure managers’ ethical judgments using a sample of 341 data sets collected via survey. Structural equation modeling was utilized to test the proposed hypotheses associating ethical judgments with trust and collaboration in supply chains.
Findings
This study illustrates that managers’ ethical judgments in bidding/contracting, information management and inventory management significantly increase trust, which in turn increases supply chain collaboration.
Originality/value
The study extends our understanding of ethical judgments in the supply chain management context. Its findings on the causality among ethical judgment, trust and supply chain collaboration provide an effective approach to the management of supplier relationships.
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Suhaiza Ismail and Zuhudha Rasheed
This paper aims to identify the influence of personal factors on the ethical judgement of future accountants in Malaysia. In particular, there are two research objectives for this…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to identify the influence of personal factors on the ethical judgement of future accountants in Malaysia. In particular, there are two research objectives for this study: first, to investigate the influence of ethical ideology on the ethical judgement of accounting students and second, to investigate the influence of emotional intelligence (EI) on ethical judgement.
Design/methodology/approach
The respondents of the study were final year undergraduate accounting students from three public universities in Malaysia. A survey questionnaire comprising instruments about ethical ideology, EI and ethical judgement was distributed. A total of 205 responses were received and were deemed as useable. To achieve the research objectives, multiple regression was performed.
Findings
The findings indicate that idealism and EI have a positive influence on the ethical judgement. In contrast, the study discovered that relativism influences ethical judgement negatively.
Originality/value
This study fills the research gap as research on personal factors on the ethical judgement of future accountants is very limited and scarce. It gives insights to the various parties concerning how to enhance ethical judgement among future accountants, which ultimately will improve the credibility of the accounting profession.
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Nazli A. Mohd Ghazali and Suhaiza Ismail
The objective of this paper is to examine the influence of personal attributes, organizational ethics position and other factors which are rules conformance, active participation…
Abstract
Purpose
The objective of this paper is to examine the influence of personal attributes, organizational ethics position and other factors which are rules conformance, active participation in profession activities, ethics instructions received and understanding of the professional code of conduct on the Malaysian accountants' judgment on questionable ethical scenarios.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey questionnaire is carried out to elicit opinions of Malaysian accountants on factors influencing ethical judgments.
Findings
Adopting 15 vignettes used in Emerson et al. to assess ethical judgments, the main findings revealed from the analysis are that older accountants, accountants attached to corporations with higher ethics scale and accountants who understand the professional code of conduct are expected to be stricter in judging questionable ethical situations.
Practical implications
The findings imply that perhaps one way to promote and preserve ethical organizational decisions is by employing older and experienced individuals and perhaps retaining older staff. The finding on age appears to suggest that wisdom comes with maturity.
Originality/value
This paper is one of the few studies which investigate factors influencing ethical judgments of accountants in Malaysia. The research is timely given the growing importance of women in decision‐making levels, the expected rise in employment and the requirement to include the business ethics course in the accounting programs in Malaysia.
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The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of Chinese auditors' personal values (guanxi and ethical orientations) on their ethical reasoning (ethical judgments and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of Chinese auditors' personal values (guanxi and ethical orientations) on their ethical reasoning (ethical judgments and behavioral intentions). In addition, this study aims to explore the joint effect of guanxi and ethical orientation on auditors' ethical reasoning.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is based on a field survey of 191 auditors working in Certified Public Accounting (CPA) firms that operate in the People's Republic of China (China).
Findings
The main findings indicate that guanxi and relativism orientations negatively associate with, while idealism orientation positively associates with, auditors' ethical judgments and behavioral intentions. However, when decomposing the overall ethical judgment into three judgment groups, the main effects of guanxi and ethical orientations on auditors' ethical judgments become marginal and those effects fully hold only when using acceptability as criteria to judge questionable behavior in the vignettes. In addition, the results of the joint effect of guanxi and ethical orientations indicate that guanxi orientation weakens both the positive effect of idealism and the negative effect of relativism orientations on auditors' ethical reasoning.
Originality/value
This study contributes the literature by investigating the ethical reasoning of auditors in a country with a relatively weak legal system that relies on guanxi (literally, interpersonal relationships and connections) culture to operate business. Furthermore, this study extends the literature by documenting the moderating effect of guanxi orientation on the relation between auditors' ethical orientation and their ethical reasoning.
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William E. Shafer and Richard S. Simmons
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of organizational ethical culture on the ethical decisions of tax practitioners in mainland China.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of organizational ethical culture on the ethical decisions of tax practitioners in mainland China.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on a field survey of practicing public accountants.
Findings
As hypothesized, certain dimensions of ethical culture had highly significant effects on intentions to engage in aggressive tax minimization strategies. Cultures characterized by strong ethical norms and incentives for ethical behavior significantly reduced the reported likelihood of engaging in unethical behavior in a high moral intensity case. In a low moral intensity case, intentions to engage in questionable behavior were significantly higher when participants felt that top managers in their firm were unethical and rewarded unethical behavior. Relativism judgments (judgments of what is traditionally or culturally acceptable or acceptable to one's family) emerged as the strongest determinant of behavioral intentions across both cases. Participants also appeared highly sensitive to questions regarding what is traditionally or culturally acceptable in Chinese tax practice.
Originality/value
This is the first study of ethical decision making among tax practitioners in mainland China, and the findings add to a growing body of literature documenting the significant effects of organizational ethical context on public accountants' decision making processes. This has important implications for CPA firms, suggesting that proactive steps should be taken to promote supportive ethical contexts. The findings for the effects of relativism judgments raise concerns regarding the ethical decisions of Chinese tax practitioners, implying they are likely to engage in unethical behavior if they feel such behavior is common in their cultural environment.
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Anna M. Cianci and James Lloyd Bierstaker
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of performance feedback and client importance on auditors' self‐ and public‐focused ethical judgments.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of performance feedback and client importance on auditors' self‐ and public‐focused ethical judgments.
Design/methodology/approach
An experiment is conducted in which 71 auditors are assigned to one of four conditions created by fully crossing performance feedback (positive and negative) and client importance (high and low).
Findings
Consistent with expectations, auditors who receive positive (negative) feedback make more (less) ethical judgments in a self‐focused task (a judgment that produces consequences that are relevant for the auditor). Auditors also make more (less) ethical judgments in a public‐focused task (a judgment that has consequences for both the auditor and the public) when auditing a less (more) important client. Finally, auditors who receive positive feedback and audit a less important client make more ethical judgments in both tasks than all other auditors.
Practical implications
These findings suggest that auditors are susceptible to pressures from negative feedback and client importance, even in situations where their decisions will have public consequences, despite regulatory changes intended to enhance audit quality.
Originality/value
This is the first paper that provides evidence that different sources of pressure (performance feedback and client importance) differentially affect ethical tasks differing in decision consequences (self‐ and public‐focused). Such evidence suggests the importance of matching pressure source to ethical task type.
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