Human capital, the knowledge, skills, and abilities of employees, can be a powerful driver of firm performance, yet the mobility of human capital raises questions over how to protect it. Employee non-compete agreements, which limit an employee’s ability to start or join a rival firm, have received recent attention. While past research considers whether non-competes are effective tools at limiting employee mobility, few have considered if non-competes should be used. Filling this gap, I propose a normative schema for when employee (...) non-competes can be considered ethical. A review of the limited existing literature on the ethics of employee non-competes finds that prior research has mostly focused on questions of property rights, which I propose as being nested within other ethical constructs. Analysis of two real-world illustrative examples of employee non-competes leads to a three-prong approach to evaluating non-competes based on ethical dimensions of power, autonomy, and fairness. I end by proposing—although further research is warranted—a measure of employee-level absorptive capacity, which is closely coupled with an employee’s pre-employment human capital, as an employee-level attribute independent of, although likely coincidental with, the tripartite requirements of power/autonomy/fairness for ethical employee non-compete agreements. (shrink)

The aim of our research is to analyze how different religions influence business ethics. We develop an index of practices in the field of business ethics, made up of 19 items containing practices related to workers, consumers, products, human rights, management of ethical conflicts, and crime prevention. Also, we consider a wide range of religion affiliations. To undertake this research, we use a panel data sample composed of 11,956 firm‐year observations from 18 countries. Drawing on stakeholder theory, we posit some (...) hypotheses based on the religions considered. The results obtained show that a higher percentage of religious adherents in the country where a company does business usually involve the implementation of more ethical practices in the corporate field. These findings are obtained for Christian, Islamic, Jewish, and Hindu religions. In contrast, this does not stand for Buddhist and folk religions. Also, countries where there is no predominant religion do not show a confluence between religion and ethical corporate practices. (shrink)

The convergence of India’s rich cultural and religious heritage with its rapidly transforming economy provides a unique opportunity to understand how senior executives navigate the demands of the business environment within the context of their religious convictions. Forty senior executives with varying religious backgrounds and global responsibilities within Indian multinational corporations participated in this study. Drawing from virtue ethics theory and using systematic content analysis, several themes emerged for ethical virtues. The analysis illustrates how these deeply seated ethical virtues helped (...) to form and refine these executives’ ethical mindsets via guiding principles such as an ethical culture, environment, molding, education, commitment and leadership. In turn, these ethical mindsets influenced the executives’ ethical decision-making processes. We find that these executives’ ethical virtues and mindsets are inspired by their religious backgrounds. In summary, a very complex mental tug-of-war appears to take place as these executives rationalize and negotiate unethical circumstances while being cognizant of personal religious beliefs. We contend that in a pluralistic multi-faith society such as India, it is critical for corporations to align the virtues of its senior executives with those of the corporation so that virtues are applied consistently when dealing with various stakeholders. The findings present several theoretical and practical implications, which are discussed. (shrink)

In November 2014, Pope Francis addressed the World Congress of Accountants in Rome and called on the profession to go beyond accomplishing its duty with competence and wisdom. This study draws insights from Francis’s speech on how spirituality can expand the scope of accounting ethics from mere integrity, honesty, and professionalism to grander aims such as creativity, human development, and social solidarity. Recent studies show that workers and companies with a spiritual orientation perform better than peers and that spirituality fosters (...) creativity. We also discuss how lessons from Francis’s speech can take place in a classroom setting and some real-world applications of those lessons. (shrink)

AbstractDeveloped from meaningful work and business ethics, we investigate the motivational effect of meaningful work on paid staff (not volunteers) with a “shortage” of ethical employment practices situated in the Not-for-Profit sector. We tested the traditional notion of meaningful work by nature and by line manager support (under its business-like practices) to compensate for the “sacrifice” (low pay and job stress caused by poor employment terms) of front line staff working alongside professional managers paid the market rate. Using a mixed-method (...) case study, we employed SEM modelling to analyse a staff survey of 125 valid responses and administrative records of staff resignation, alongside interviews. The results show that meaningful work by nature and by line manager support are positively and significantly associated with job satisfaction but neither has a significant effect on staff resignation action. There is no empirical evidence to support the compensating effect of meaningful work by nature; meaningful work by line manager support has a stronger effect only through reduced job stress, rather than compensating for the low pay, in preventing resignation. The qualitative analysis reveals that continued low pay and using precarious employment contracts have evoked the questioning of ethics of employment practices in this sector. We discuss the implications and suggest further areas of research. (shrink)