Depositors have perceived banks as acting unethically during the most recent recession. One area of consternation is the ambiguity of the legal obligations entailed by the deposit contract when it is backed with only fractional reserves. In this article, we apply an existing analysis of the legitimacy and ethicality of banking practices to a wider range of financial transactions, including insurance policies, securities lending, perpetual bonds, and callable loans. Securities lending in particular creates rights violations analogous to those in fractional-reserve (...) banking. Both callable loans and perpetual bonds have clear legal obligations which are not inherently problematic, though we herein clarify what these obligations are. Finally, we apply our ethical framework to demonstrate that insurance products are distinct from banking deposit contracts, and that perceived parallels between the two products underestimate these differences. (shrink)

Despite the prevailing discourses on the importance of top management ethical leadership, related theoretical and empirical developments are lacking. Drawing on institutional theory, we propose that top management ethical leadership contributes to organizational outcomes by promoting firm-level ethical and procedural justice climates. This theoretical framework was empirically tested using multi-source data obtained from 4,468 employees of 147 Korean companies from various industries. The firm-level analysis shows that top management ethical leadership significantly predicts ethical climate, which then results in procedural justice (...) climate that fully mediates the effects of top management ethical leadership on two organizational outcomes, namely, firm-level organizational citizenship behavior and firm financial performance. The present study provides a plausible theoretical account and empirical validation of a mechanism through which top management ethical leadership enhances organizational performance. (shrink)

This article recommends the film Inside Job as an effective teaching tool for illustrating the ethical issues that surrounded the global financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent economic downturn. The study discusses issues such as the revolving door, conflicts of interest, fiduciary duty, executive compensation, and financial regulation. The presentation of each ethical issue comprises suggested questions, background information, and guides to specific sections of the film. An overview of the film is provided as well.

In 1999, the Journal of Business Ethics published its 1 500th article. This article commemorates the journal's quest "to improve the human condition" (Michalos, 1988, p. 1) with a summary and assessment of the first eighteen volumes. The first part provides an overview of JBE, highlighting the journal's growth, types of methodologies published, and the breadth of the field. The second part provides a detailed account of the quantitative research findings. Major research topics include (1) prevalence of ethical behavior, (2) (...) ethical sensitivities, (3) ethics codes and programs, (4) corporate social performance and policies, (5) human resource practices and policies, and (6) professions – accounting, marketing/sales, and finance/strategy. Much remains to be done. (shrink)

Using data collected at two phases, this study examines why and how ethical leadership behavior influences employees’ evaluations of organization-focused justice, i.e., procedural justice and distributive justice. By proposing ethical leaders as moral agents of the organization, we build up the linkage between ethical leadership behavior and the above two types of organization-focused justice. We further suggest trust in organization as a key mediating mechanism in the linkage. Our findings indicate that ethical leadership behavior engenders employees’ trust in their employing (...) organization, which in turn promotes their justice perceptions toward the organization. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed, and some directions for future research are suggested. (shrink)

This article studies the differences between traditional financial intermediaries (commercial banks, savings banks and cooperative banks) and ethical banks based on property rights, in which the owner decides the ideology, principles, standards and objectives of the organisation. In ethical banking, affinity centres on positive social and ethical values. The article consequendy focuses on an index proposed both to differentiate ethical banks from other types of banks, and also to pinpoint the differences between the various ethical banks themselves.This is the Radical (...) Affinity Index (RAI), which groups banks together in terms of their stance on ethical commitment, concentrating on ethical ideology and principles (information transparency, placement of assets, guarantees and participation) and using a sample of 114 European banks. The evidence shows that transparency of information and placement of assets are factors that differentiate ethical banks from other financial intermediaries.Guarantees and participation are characteristics specific to ethical banks; these variables, however, do not offer clear evidence to our analysis. (shrink)

There are major concerns about the level of personal borrowing, particularly sourced from credit cards. This paper charts the progress of an initiative to create a Responsible Lending Index (RLI) for the credit industry. The RLI proposed to voluntarily benchmark lending standards and promote best practice within the credit industry by involving suppliers of credit, customer representatives and regulators. However, despite initial support from some banks, consumer bodies and the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, it failed to gain sufficient (...) support from financial institutions in its original format. The primary reasons for this were related to the complexity of building such a robust index and the banks trade body’s fear of exposing its members to public scrutiny. A revised alternative, the Responsible Lending Initiative, was proposed which took into account these concerns. However, the Association of Payment Clearing Service (APACS), the trade body of the credit industry, then effectively destroyed the proposal. This article describes an attempt to address the challenges in the credit card industry with the initiation of the RLI, reflected in stakeholder discourse and in the context of a wider concern expressed by the involved stakeholders in terms of the need for greater responsibility in the banking industry’s lending practices. (shrink)

We propose a construct, the Trust Triangle, that highlights three primary mechanisms that provide ex post accountability for opportunistic behavior and motivate ex ante trust in economic relationships. The mechanisms are a society’s legal and regulatory framework, market-based discipline and reputational capital, and culture, including individual ethics and social norms. The Trust Triangle provides a framework to conceptualize the relationships between trust, corporate accountability, legal liability, reputation, and culture. We use the Trust Triangle to summarize recent developments in the empirical (...) finance literature that examine how trust is formed and how trust, or its absence, affects financial markets, firm performance, and the incidence of financial fraud. To date, most studies examine only one leg of the Trust Triangle in isolation. The evidence, however, indicates that all three legs of the Trust Triangle have first-order effects on a wide range of financial outcomes and that they are interrelated. Attempts to model trust and trustworthiness that do not incorporate all three aspects of the Trust Triangle will therefore miss essential aspects of the basic economic problem of how counterparties overcome the risks of moral hazard, asymmetric information, and opportunism to engage in mutually beneficial exchange and production activities. We focus especially on culture-related mechanisms, a recently developed area in empirical finance research that has potential to influence the more established research on laws and reputation. (shrink)

Social banks are financial intermediaries paying attention to non-economic (i.e., social, ethical, and environmental) criteria. To investigate the behavior of social banks on the credit market, this paper proposes both theory and empirics. Our theoretical model rationalizes the idea that reciprocity can generate better repayment performances. Based on a unique hand-collected dataset released by a French social bank, our empirical results are twofold. First, we show that the bank charges below-market interest rates for social projects. Second, regardless of their creditworthiness, (...) motivated borrowers respond to advantageous credit terms by significantly lowering their probability of default. We interpret this outcome as the first evidence of reciprocity in the credit market. (shrink)

Securitization is considered to be one of the biggest financial innovations of the last century. It is also regarded as both a catalyst and a solution to the 2008 financial crisis. Once a popular method of financing the mortgage and consumer credit markets, aspects of the global securitization market are now struggling to revive. In this paper, I discuss the role that ethics played in securitization prior to the 2008 financial crisis and find that it is not an obvious story (...) of moral failures, but rather that it lies in more subtle elements of the financial system. The ethics uncertainty role in the securitization story is one of flawed incentives and the shifting of responsibility for handling risk. The role of securitization and the ethics of risk transfer have rarely been discussed explicitly in the literature. The historical origins of securitization and lessons learned from previous flawed uses of the process are also provided. I also detail the various global institutional reform proposals that have taken place. Moving forward, it is crucial to understand the causes, consequences, and ethical implications of securitization in the financial crisis so as to help individuals and managers better assess risk, align incentives, and design appropriate policy responses. (shrink)

Banks have a central role and importance in all commerce and hence in all societies. This thesis investigates the ethical basis of banking practice with the aim of developing an account of the virtues appropriate to bankers and banking. One central issue concerns a conflict between the interests of banks and their customers, and how this conflict plays out in relation to the lending policies and fee structure of banks. Such lending policies can have a significant effect on banks, their (...) customers and a range of stakeholders. This research project investigated empirical evidence through qualitative interviews with senior bankers in two locations, Australia and Hong Kong, to elicit their thoughts on banking areas that involve customer interaction, namely, deposit-taking, credit cards, home mortgage loans, corporate finance, and foreign exchange. The institutions selected hold a substantial segment of banking business in their respective countries and are thus representative of bankers’ perspectives. The dissertation also entailed a case study of the causes and consequences of the American sub-prime crisis that was precipitated by the financial sector. The interviews revealed an assertion of good ethical conduct based on adherence to peer-determined codes of conduct and compliance with regulations. There was also a common predisposition to claims of corporate social responsibility and reputation preservation but these have tended to mask the powerful underlying sales thrust. A key finding of the study points to a lapse in ethical values in banks due to excessive reliance on self-interest. Although self-interest is not in itself wrong, there has been a lack of moderation vis-à-vis the interests of less powerful customers. A related finding is a prevailing resistance to regulation that is necessary to curtail selfish and irresponsible behaviour by banks. The interview subjects prefer industry self-regulation to government supervision. However, the banks in Australia and Hong Kong, which have been subjected to tighter regulation, have survived the global financial crisis better than their American counterparts despite complaints about the severity of their regulatory climate. There is a strong case to ascribe ethical failure to American practices that triggered the sub-prime calamities, which have devastated homeowners and the global economy. American banks and regulators both operated on the erroneous supposition that the quest after extreme profits would be restrained by free market forces. The conclusions allude to virtues that are necessary for banks to espouse moral conduct. These virtues can be embedded through leadership and cultural change. (shrink)