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The continued rise of the multinational and debate as to what constitutes global business values is predicated on the UN Declaration and Global Business Compact. This research suggests both documents explicitly exclude the existence of a foundational ethereal power creating morals thereby nullifying two thirds of the general population’s belief system. The authors argue against humanism as a global value beginning and suggest theism as a better origin and use the scientific method to introduce mathematical axioms supporting theism and complimenting humanism. Ontologically, the theist becomes a stronger base for the scientific inquiry into morals, values and business ethics. A comparison of major religious morals revealed eight factors: assurance; candor, fairness and honesty; character, integrity, truthfulness and exacting in truth; charity and compassion; environment; perseverance and tolerance; sacrifice; and seriousness. The research suggests that the UN documents do not adequately reflect these morals suggesting a change for businesses especially in Islamic regions.

A comprehensive review of religious materials emphasizing morals rather than customs, eternal entity description or negative behaviors yielded 1,243 morals and associated synonyms via six religions (Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism) representing 4.5 billion people. All positive morals were cross-referenced and only common items across all six religions were included. With the 29 common morals, the authors completed a word meaning search and did a second comparison that yielded 8 moral factors or constructs.

Eight moral factors were found to be common in all major religions (assurance, fairness/honesty, character/integrity, charity/compassion, environment, tolerance, sacrifice and seriousness). By using the scientific method (Axioms), the authors argue that theism is a better beginning to researching morals and values within business and marketing.

Multinationals should be made aware of the disconnect between the underlying problems of the Global Business Compacts’ values and the global morals identified. The results suggest adopting a codification system based on the pertinent morals as related to economic theories: capitalism, socialism and theism. The use of theism as a base to business and marketing ethics includes billions of customers and employees and their belief systems that should increase the validity and reliability of actions associated with corporate social responsibility, the environment and best practices.

The UN Declaration and subsequent Global Business Compact are argued to be flawed by its exclusion of religious morals and the historical period in which it was created. By using the scientific method and creating two axioms, the base to all business and marketing ethics must shift to the common moral factors identified.

There is an antinomy in the history of the world: i.e. at the same time as social progress there is moral degeneracy. Some people think that the degeneracy is a necessary price paid for the reform of China. It is argued that the contradiction could have been avoided or reduced to the minimum if we paid enough attention to morals. The criteria of productive force and of morals are not in opposition, and the latter cannot be replaced by the former in judging actions. In the moral field, the former plays the role of “the criterion of criteria”; it can be used as a criterion only through certain established moral judgements.

The purpose of this paper is to address the established dilemma of action versus intent as explanations of the basis of ethical behaviour. In essence it aims to pose the question “If one had a choice between an executive who acted from cold calculated intent, and behaved ethically as it was profitable – compared to someone with excellent intent who consistently got it ethically wrong – who would you choose – the psychopathic ethicist or the well‐intentioned bumbler?”. The intended contribution of this paper is to add some further considerations to that debate.

This paper notes the basic dilemma of moral choice, action or intent: it also adds to the debate by a consideration of several lesser points, including different meanings of “outcome” and the awareness that morals refer to an underpinning value choice. Its analytic path touches short‐term versus long‐term perspectives, commonsense, the theoretical debate, idealism and utilitarianism, equitability, morals and the law, morality and genes, unintended consequences and paradox of compliance.

The paper acknowledges that moral values are values that may be derived from wider elements, and that moral choices are such that they should be expressed in principles that transcend special times, place, or special pleading. There is an expressed need for consistency of approach.

The debate, still alive and well, needs to extend to include contemporary issues. The present writers are inclined to the view that a raised awareness of the issue, and its application to real life situations, is critical. The discussed issues would certainly benefit from further speculation.

Morals must operate in a real world, and that clearly implies desirable outcomes: good intent is recognised as powerful – but does not do as much to foster moral behaviour as does an orientation to outcome. It is such qualifications that need to be borne in mind when considering the complementary roles of moral decision making in any context, including that of business and of crime. It is hoped that directorial and managerial decisions will be invested with this understanding.

The major contributions that this paper seeks to make is that the distinction between intent and consequences may be a false dichotomy; that the notion of outcome has more than one meaning; and that so often our intentions have paradoxical outcomes.

This study aims to identify the archetypes, moral foundations and plots associated with veganism through the stories told by vegan bloggers and the effect on mainstreaming of this ideology.

Narrative data was collected from 15 publicly available vegan blogs. Underlying archetypes, morals and story plots were identified and presented as a “story re-told,” highlighting the context and content of what was being said by the protagonists and associated meanings.

The analysis revealed three moral foundations on which vegan ideology is built: sanctity of life, enacting the authentic self and freedom. A universal hero archetype was also unearthed; however, the moral orientation of the storyteller (agency vs communal) dictated how these morals and archetypes were expressed.

Through the use of common story archetypes, master plots and moral foundations, a deeper understanding of vegans and the choices they make is facilitated, thus making vegan ideology appear less threatening. Storytelling plays an important role in establishing connections through commonality.

This study applies cultivation theory, storytelling analysis and archetype theory to reveal how vegan bloggers counteract mass media cultivation of vegan stereotypes through the stories they tell. We offer a more robust description of vegans, moving beyond stereotypes, and the morals driving behavior. Moreover, a unique mechanism of mainstreaming is exposed that shows vegans connect with people by tapping into universal archetypes and morals that anyone can relate to and relive.

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.

At the 2009 Devos economic forum on the global financial crisis, David Cameron, then leader of the British Conservative Party and now Britain's Prime Minister, called for embracing a “moral capitalism.” The purpose of this paper is to consider the insights into a moral framework for the modern economic order that might be drawn from natural religions perceived by Adam Smith and Thorstein Veblen.

A review of the two perceptions of natural religions provide the basis for assessing their compatibilities with the type of competitive market economy that Smith observed in the eighteenth century, and with a modern market economy of large corporate enterprises and global financial markets. Particular attention is given to reforms that curb the practices that led to the global financial crisis.

Smith's “pure and rational” natural religion has been interpreted as being compatible with the type of competitive market economy that he analyzed in Wealth of Nations. Veblen's natural religion of “Christian morals” had a natural rights analogue in the ethics of a competitive market economy in which market relationships were heavily influenced by production resting heavily on personal skills of craftsmen and trade relying on the honesty of small merchants.

The primary focus is on reforms in those aspects of the financial sector of the modern market system that have been associated with the current global financial crisis. What the two natural religions might suggest in the nature of broader socio‐economic reforms, e.g. corporate governance issues, would require a much larger study.

While debates over a “moral capitalism” will be influenced doctrinal stances of institutional religions, sectarian differences may be bridged by considering natural religions that are rational and rest on the principle of fair play and mutual service.

Because of the attention that has been given to Smith's and Veblen's critical commentaries on institutional religions, the paper shows that their perceptions of natural religions and how those religions might relate to the economic order are easily overlooked.

The purpose of this paper was to critically evaluate the existing conception of normative commitment (NC; Meyer and Parfyonova, 2010) as having “two faces”, indebted obligation and moral duty. This paper proposes that NC should be unidimensional, and based on moral content.

Review and reevaluation of empirical research into NC and its fit with Meyer and Parfyonova's theory were conducted.

First, existing empirical research is inconsistent with Meyer/Parfyonova's theory of NC, as is their proposed motivational bases for NC having two dimensions.

An important limitation is that NC is likely a culture-specific concept, so cross-cultural research will be essential to fully develop a universally valid concept of morals-based work commitment. A key implication is that despite the lack of construct validity of the currently used NC construct, morals-based commitment is surely a workplace phenomenon; meaning that steps should be taken to rehabilitate the construct, so it can be investigated in substantive research. Therefore, proposals for developing a unidimensional concept of NC that comports with morals-based forms of organizational attachment are developed.

Because of the lack of validity of the currently used NC concept, managers are advised to not rely on research using this concept to manage their employee's commitment, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) or withdrawal behavior.

Organizational members often invest their actions at work with moral meaning. Explicating that meaning via a valid concept of NC could help management researchers understand employee support or lack of support for social responsibility initiatives.

NC is a key construct in the work commitment literature. This paper shows that the currently utilized construct is largely invalid, and develops steps to be taken to develop a valid concept of morals-based work commitment.

Our paper discusses the need for continued focus on ethical leadership and the importance and benefits of ethical leadership development. We propose integrating ethical leadership development, that uses cognitive development theory, into the Center for Creative Leadership’s Assess, Challenge, and Support (ACS) leader development model to help address the continued failures of ethical leader development. Our extended framework includes values and morals as a component of the model, and ethical organizational culture as its backdrop, thereby incorporating an examination of ethical leadership into each component of the ACS model. We conclude with practical implications and suggestions for future research.

To engage a critical discussion on the challenges raised for employees as corporate brands increasingly address moral issues.

The paper links theories on corporate branding informed by marketing with theories on employee identification informed by critical sociology.

While the move towards corporate branding with a strong emphasis on moral issues provides opportunities for improved employee identification, it may also lead to unintended implications in the sense of uniformity and centralisation of morals and employee demotivation.

While this paper provides theoretical analysis of the potential direness of corporate moral brands in relation to employees, no empirical investigations have been carried out to illustrate and analyse such implications. It is of theoretical as well as managerial interest to provide more research to understand this relation better.

Rather than imposing a corporate brand with moral and ethical visionary statements, managers engage employees in the corporate moral brand exercise.

The paper questions the immediate tendency towards integrating moral issues to the corporate brand based on an untested idea of that this will motivate external and internal stakeholders. Rather the paper suggests that the corporate moral brand may also serve counter‐productive purposes.

It is unattainable that entrepreneurs engage equivalent resources in public and private morality because of the limitation of resources. This study aims to conduct experiments to test how entrepreneurial deviation in morality affects legitimacy perception of consumers to entrepreneurs.

This study conducted secondary data analysis and experiment to test how entrepreneurial deviation in morality affects legitimacy perception of consumers to entrepreneurs.

The experimental results show that entrepreneurial deviation in morality negatively affects legitimacy perceptions of consumers to entrepreneurs. Specifically, when public moral is higher than private moral, consumers have negative perceptions of pragmatic legitimacy to entrepreneurs, because consumers perceive deviation behaviors disobey the norm “Li”. However, entrepreneurial private morality excels public morality, consumers have negative perceptions of social legitimacy to entrepreneurs because consumers perceive deviation behaviors disobey the norm “Qing”. Moreover, the authors examined entrepreneurial values moderate the effects of moral deviation and legitimacy perceptions.

This study expands the ethical marketing of entrepreneurs from the perspective of the deviation between public morality and private morality.