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Philosophy of Management and Sustainability: Rethinking Business Ethics and Social Responsibility in Sustainable Development
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-453-9

Open Access
Book part
Publication date: 30 April 2019

S. J. Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas

In the wake of the extraordinary financial scandals that both preceded and followed the September–October Financial Crises of 2008, discussions about the executive virtues of…

Abstract

Executive Summary

In the wake of the extraordinary financial scandals that both preceded and followed the September–October Financial Crises of 2008, discussions about the executive virtues of honesty and integrity are no longer academic or esoteric, but critically urgent and challenging. As representatives of the corporation, its products and services, corporate executives in general, and production, accounting, finance, and marketing executives in particular, must be the frontline public relations and goodwill ambassadors for their firms, products, and services. As academicians of business education, we must also analyze these corporate wrongdoings as objectively and ethically as possible. What is wrong must be declared and condemned as wrong, what is right must be affirmed and acknowledged as right. We owe it to our students, our profession, our stakeholders, and to the business world. Contemporary American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (1981) proposes the issue of morality in a threefold question: Who am I? Who ought I to become? How ought I to get there? The answer to every question refers to the virtues, especially to corporate executive virtues. This chapter explores corporate executive virtues, especially the classical cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice as defining and enhancing corporate executive life.

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Corporate Ethics for Turbulent Markets
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-192-2

Book part
Publication date: 28 March 2015

David Chandler

This paper investigates the substance of institutions in the context of business ethics. In particular, I test a theory of stakeholder attention to resource commitments by firms…

Abstract

This paper investigates the substance of institutions in the context of business ethics. In particular, I test a theory of stakeholder attention to resource commitments by firms that implement the Ethics and Compliance Officer (ECO) position, from 1990 to 2008. Results support the hypothesized curvilinear relationship between resource commitments and stakeholder attention – while both high and low levels of ECO implementation generate low levels of reported ethics transgressions (the former due to good firm behavior and the latter due to stakeholder disengagement), moderate ECO implementation produces elevated transgression reports (due to raised expectations and increased engagement). Contrary to extant theory, results are consistent across both internal and external firm stakeholder groups.

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Institutions and Ideals: Philip Selznick’s Legacy for Organizational Studies
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78441-726-0

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 30 October 2018

FR. Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas, S.J.

This chapter covers basic concepts, ethical theories, and moral paradigms of corporate ethics for identifying, understanding, and responding to the turbulent market challenges of…

Abstract

Executive Summary

This chapter covers basic concepts, ethical theories, and moral paradigms of corporate ethics for identifying, understanding, and responding to the turbulent market challenges of today. The concept, nature, and domain of ethics, business ethics, managerial ethics, and corporate executive ethics are defined and differentiated for their significance. The domain, scope, and nature of related concepts such as legality, ethicality, morality, and executive spirituality are distinguished and developed. Among normative and descriptive ethical theories that we briefly review and critique here are teleology or utilitarianism, deontology or existentialism, distributive justice, corrective justice, and ethics of malfeasance and beneficence. Other moral theories of ethics such as ethics of human dignity, ethics of cardinal virtues, ethics of trusting relations, ethics of stakeholder rights and duties, ethics of moral reasoning and judgment calls, ethics of executive and moral leadership, and ethics of social and moral responsibility will be treated in a later book. The thrust of this book is positive: despite our not very commendable track record in managing this planet and its resources, our basic questions are: Where are we now? What are we now? Where should we as corporations go, and why? What are the specific positive mandates and metrics to corporate executives to reach that desired destiny? This chapter explores responses to these strategic corporate questions.

Details

Corporate Ethics for Turbulent Markets
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-187-8

Book part
Publication date: 7 June 2019

Matthew Caulfield

This chapter focuses on the normative importance of what attitudes our actions express to others. Business is not conducted in a vacuum – rather, it is conducted against a…

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the normative importance of what attitudes our actions express to others. Business is not conducted in a vacuum – rather, it is conducted against a background schema of social meaning. This chapter argues that the public meaning of our actions, what our actions express, is normatively important. The piece imports familiar norms regarding expressions from interpersonal morality to business ethics, such as those surrounding insult, blame, and gratitude. It argues that many of ethicists’ gripes across a range of business ethics topics – from disproportionate compensation to immoral investing – can fruitfully be analyzed from an expressive perspective.

Book part
Publication date: 28 May 2013

Eneli Kindsiko

Purpose — (Dis)honesty as a quality of our actions can be assessed at different levels. Often these levels have not been differentiated. Semantically we cannot talk about a…

Abstract

Purpose — (Dis)honesty as a quality of our actions can be assessed at different levels. Often these levels have not been differentiated. Semantically we cannot talk about a dishonest society or dishonest organizations — dishonesty can only be attributed to individual actions. We can approach a dishonest act through its essence (deontology), consequences (utilitarianism), and also through the person committing the act (virtue ethics), but most often organizational spheres are too complex objects of study to face ethical dilemmas without the influences that their context can bring. Therefore, the purpose of the chapter is to look at dishonesty as an unethical act through the lenses of behavioral ethics, since behavioral ethics is able to grasp the framing effects of ethical situations while combining the main elements of the previously mentioned traditional ethical theories.Design/methodology/approach — In the current chapter it will be differentiated between traditional ethical theories and acknowledged that depending on the level of analysis (individual, organization, or the society level) with their distinctly different ontological backgrounds, we will have different groundings for making any kind of axiological statements about the dishonesty of an action.Findings — In order to give ethical statements about (dis)honesty in organizations, we cannot neglect the influences brought by context. Organizations with endless social interactions both locally and globally usually have no universal basis for making axiological statements.Originality/value — The originality of this chapter is twofold: firstly to cover the importance of making sense of what ethical approaches we take as a grounding when we make ethical judgments in organizational context, and secondly to analyze whether and how the question of dishonesty differs when we switch between the most traditional ethical approaches. The chapter proposes a new framework how ethical decision-making should be assessed depending on the level of social interactions and how dishonesty is associated with gaining social approval.

Details

(Dis)Honesty in Management
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-602-6

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 11 October 2021

Tara J. Shawver and William F. Miller

This chapter assesses the impact of values change on the likelihood of reporting concerns for a situation of fraudulent financial reporting after a Giving Voice to Values (GVV…

Abstract

This chapter assesses the impact of values change on the likelihood of reporting concerns for a situation of fraudulent financial reporting after a Giving Voice to Values (GVV) ethics intervention. The GVV curriculum shifts focus away from why actions are unethical to how one may effectively voice their values to resolve ethical conflict. After implementing this program in advanced accounting courses and empirically assessing the impact of the ethics intervention, the authors find that students have a stronger sense of the importance of values prescribed in professional codes of conduct and are more likely to speak up and confront unethical actions by voicing their values. GVV has the potential to increase the number of accounting professionals who are willing to speak up and confront unethical practices. The authors’ study appears to be the first to empirically test how a change in the perception of the importance of values impacts the likelihood to report concerns to members of the management hierarchy, filling an important gap in the literature.

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Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-229-2

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 23 March 2010

Lyse Langlois and Claire Lapointe

In response to the growing need for educational leaders who possess ethical, critical and reflective qualities, a training program was developed based on ethics as a reflective…

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Abstract

Purpose

In response to the growing need for educational leaders who possess ethical, critical and reflective qualities, a training program was developed based on ethics as a reflective critical capacity and on Starratt's three‐dimensional model. This paper aims to describe the impact of the program on ethical decision making and on educational leaders’ ethical competencies.

Design/methodology/approach

A three‐year action‐research study was conducted with three groups of educational administrators, totalling 30 participants. Mixed methods were used for data collection: a pre‐ and post‐training questionnaire, individual semi‐structured interviews and group interviews. The questionnaire data were analyzed using SPSS software and interview data were analyzed using thematic analysis.

Findings

Results from the pre‐test indicate that, prior to the training program, participants rarely possessed all three ethical dimensions. Post‐test results show how participants experience a significant readjustment process characterized by three different stages which have been called the transformative cycle. Qualitative results show the impact of the training program on improved ethical awareness, judgement structuring, a sense of responsibility, and overall professional conduct. No significant difference is observed between male and female participants but statistically significant differences are found according to number of years of experience and to work situation.

Practical implications

Developing sound ethical expertise appears to be promising in training future educational administrators and in improving their leadership skills.

Originality/value

This study is original in many aspects. Theoretically, it is based on a self‐regulated rather than hetero‐regulated approach to ethics and calls for descriptive rather then normative foundations to ethical leadership. With regard to its methodology, it used mixed methods adapted to action research as well as original data collection instruments.

Details

Journal of Educational Administration, vol. 48 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0957-8234

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 6 September 2016

Jane Cote and Claire Kamm Latham

We present a peer-to-peer teaching approach designed to prepare introductory accounting students to address ethical challenges they will face in the workplace. We describe the…

Abstract

Purpose

We present a peer-to-peer teaching approach designed to prepare introductory accounting students to address ethical challenges they will face in the workplace. We describe the motivation, processes, and resources used, introduce an effectiveness measure and discuss refinements so that other universities may adopt the innovation.

Design/methodology/approach

Upper division Beta Alpha Psi (BAP) accounting honor society members, with faculty guidance, create and deliver workshops in the 200-level introductory accounting sequence using the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum. GVV provides tools to move from recognition to action when confronted with a values conflict. The BAP members had completed the GVV exercises and casework in their upper division accounting courses. Now as peer coaches, they guide sophomore-level business students through the GVV curriculum to prepare them to act on their values when challenged.

Findings

Post-training perceptions express consistent beliefs that the introductory accounting students’ skills and abilities had improved with the training. Additionally, introductory accounting students’ descriptions of how they would address values conflicts based on what they learned in the training reflects development of personalized specific approaches.

Social implications

GVV provides students with an action-based ethics toolkit to build upon as they move forward academically and professionally. The peer-to-peer innovation builds stronger mentor and mentee ties and introduces the business program’s ethical culture to sophomore-level business students.

Originality/value

The innovation won the 2014 Beta Alpha Psi Ethics Award sponsored by Grant Thornton and reflects the first use of a peer-to-peer approach with GVV in a university setting.

Details

Advances in Accounting Education: Teaching and Curriculum Innovations
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-969-5

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 3 March 2016

Dina Al Raffie and Matthias P. Huehn

The chapter tries to highlight the critical importance of values to leadership, and argues that the research design of the ‘social scientific’ mainstream is incommensurable with…

Abstract

The chapter tries to highlight the critical importance of values to leadership, and argues that the research design of the ‘social scientific’ mainstream is incommensurable with the language of the scientific discipline that studies values: moral philosophy. The chapter shows that (a) through goals and actions, ethics is a central aspect of leadership and (b) that ethics cannot be reinterpreted as being ‘value-neutral’. Therefore, ‘effective’ leadership must always be connected to a specific value set. After arguing that leadership cannot be meaningfully looked at without reference to virtue ethics, two case studies are used to demonstrate the relationship between the two. By looking at two prominent terrorist leaders, the chapter shows how values are at the heart of their visions and actions. There are at least two practical implications: the study of leadership, and leadership education, must be reconnected with moral philosophy. The chapter connects three hitherto unconnected topics: leadership, (virtue) ethics and terrorism, presenting new insights into especially leadership.

Details

Leadership Lessons from Compelling Contexts
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-942-8

Keywords

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