While support for corporate political activity (CPA) is well echoed in the literature, little has been done to empirically examine its ethicality. Moreover, existing ethical CPA frameworks assume normative and rational leanings that are insufficient to provide a comprehensive account of CPA ethicality. Utilizing the Ghanaian context, adopting a multiple case study design involving 28 Directors from 22 firms, and employing a grounded theory approach, I explore how the ethicality of CPA is determined in weak institutional environments. The findings reveal (...) that business executives evaluate ethics at three levels (i.e. context, organizational and strategy) using three principles (i.e. utilitarianism, justice and institutions). Leveraging this knowledge, I present an eclectic framework that bridges the long-standing gap between normative ethical prescriptions and lived ethical realities. In doing so, I move away from abstraction to give “voice” to the actors involved in CPA. I also present a model that shows how the ethical judgement process is influenced by managerial intuition and interactive personal and organizational experiences. This article has important theoretical and practical implications for ethical business-government relations in developing countries. (shrink)

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)

“Responsible lobbying” is an increasingly salient topic within business and management. We make a contribution to the literature on “responsible lobbying” in three ways. First, we provide novel definitions and, thereby, make a clear distinction between lobbying and corporate political activity. We then define responsible lobbying with respect to its content, process, organization, and environment, resulting in a typology of responsible lobbying, a conceptual model that informs the rest of the paper. Second, the paper provides a thematic overview of the (...) current literature underpinning lobbying and the responsible firm, and the underlying paradigms informing this literature. Third, the paper makes specific suggestions for a future research agenda, ending with a consideration of methodological implications of such research. (shrink)

We investigate what determines a multinational enterprise’s propensity to engage in lobbying and bribing in host countries where the overall institutional development for market exchanges is insufficient, and thus, their governance systems are relatively weak. We extend the current literature on institutional strategies by theorizing and showing the persistent and significant impacts of home country institutions on an MNE’s choice of influencing activities to address institutional constraints overseas. More specifically, our results demonstrate that the MNEs from a home country with (...) a stronger governance system are less involved in bribery, but have a higher tendency to lobby in transition economy countries, which have been characterized by relatively weaker institutional development, particularly in the area of governance. This tendency still holds even when these MNEs rely more on the local market for sales. We draw theoretical and practical implications from these observations. (shrink)

Since the 16th National Congress of Communist Party of China (16th NCCPC) in 2002, more and more private entrepreneurs have appeared on the political arena in China. The article first describes the state of the phenomenon, and analyzes the reasons and the related ethical issues of private entrepreneurs participating in politics. For this purpose, the article begins by suggesting a framework of analyzing the ethical analysis of corporate political actions, then applies it to a case study of the phenomenon, and (...) finally, makes some policy suggestions to the government for regulating the practice of private entrepreneurs' involvement in politics. (shrink)

This article explains the rationale for study of the governance challenges of corporate political activity. The topic is important, especially in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, but understudied to date. The authors review the literature bearing on this topic. The authors separate consideration of the topic into macro-level and micro-level issues. The macro level concerns the societal perspective. At this level, key research questions concern whether corporate political activity be allowed, and how it should be (...) regulated. The micro level covers managerial and shareholder control over corporate political activity. At this level, key research questions include concern whether the firm should practice political activity and how to regulate practice through professional self-regulation, ethical guidelines, and corporate governance systems control. The remainder of this article contains focused summaries of the articles selected for this Special Issue. Each article is introduced and evaluated against the key research questions at the macro or micro levels of analysis. (shrink)

The existence of a plurality of communities, a diversity of norms, and the ultimate contingency of all decisions in modern societies complicates the task of academics and practitioners who wish to be ethical. In this paper, we envisage and articulate a dialogical, communitarian approach to embedding business ethics that requires business ethicists to more reflexively engage with practitioners in working on and representing the normative criteria that people in organisations use to deal with moral dilemmas in business. We promote the (...) idea that business ethicists should not only cross the divide between normative ethics and empirical research, but also take a step beyond the empirical to become more active change agents. As potential exemplars of this approach in practice, we explore how self-critique and cross-disciplinary collaboration in education and teaching might be used by academics to engage current and future business ethicists, as well as managers, in dialogic partnership. In an organisational context, we also propose a three-part approach to embedding reflexive ethics in practice, through dialogic research, debate, and re-presentation of ideas. We contend that our approach has more efficacy than the traditional grand theories of ethics or more focused theories of business ethics, such as Integrated Social Contract Theory; it has the potential to provide more grounded, and therefore more practical, advice to academics, current and future business ethicists, and business practitioners. (shrink)

Conversely to the United States, lobbying consulting in France is a relatively recent activity and is perceived negatively by a majority of the population. Influencing public decision-making is certainly a sensitive occupation at both managerial and societal levels. This is why ethics applied to business can play a central role while establishing the practice of lobbying in France. This paper examines the issues and the practices of ethics in lobbying consulting. The field for this exploratory study is a lobbying consultancy (...) firm based in France. Our research is developed through a 3-month participant observation and complemented with secondary data on the lobbying profession in France. The results of this research are developed along two lines: The practice of ethics in lobbying consultancy firms reveals its limits as well as a framework worth developing. The players and the represented client topics are potential dangers for ethical lobbying firms. This intervention research has nevertheless allowed us to observe the emergence of an effective regulation approach: the ethics of exemplarity as potentially illustrated by a representative actor of the French lobbying consulting profession. The stakes of ethics are both internal and external to lobbying consulting professionals in France. Internally, ethics act as a structuring element enabling this profession to establish itself with practices and deontological codes; externally, it clarifies the relationship between lobbying consultants and their major stakeholders including customers, government, and the civil society. (shrink)

Responding to calls for more substantive studies into ethical and responsible lobbying, we analyze data collected over a 5-year period in Brussels to explore how individual lobbyists understand the ethical dimensions of their work. Mobilizing insights from the sociology of the professions, we expose an emerging lobbying professionalism and unpack practitioners’ understandings of what being a professional lobbyist entails, focusing in particular on their espoused values of transparency and honesty. While expectations to lobby more transparently and honestly stem from political (...) institutions, we find individual lobbyists—acting as conduits—attempt to disseminate these expectations by setting limits that incite their clients to embrace what policymakers consider professional lobbying practice. Our study contributes to corporate political activity (CPA) scholarship by providing a professions-based understanding of ethical and responsible approaches to lobbying. We provide new insights into contextual and individual-level factors behind the emergence of such approaches, and elucidate implications of lobbying professionalism for business and European Union (EU) governance. (shrink)

Political contestability is an important issue in the ethical analysis of corporate political activity (hereafter CPA). Though previous studies have proposed analytical frameworks for creating contestable political systems, these studies conceive firm-level factors such as size and wealth as the main (and perhaps, only) determinants of contestability. This relegates the influences of informal managerial-level attributes such as tribalism, especially in ethnically diverse contexts where politics and tribe are inseparable. In this article, I explore the linkages between managers’ tribal identity and (...) political contestability among firms in Ghana. I found that contestability is affected by _tribal consonance_ (similarity) and _tribal dissonance_ (difference) between corporate executives and policymakers. I also found that dissonance creates _liability of tribe_, which causes contestability problems in all four stages of the CPA process—i.e., _political planning_, _political access, political voice_, and _political influence_. Overall, this article extends the micro–macro link of political connections from performance to the ethics of political competition and contestability. It offers important contributions to the literature, advances insightful implications for practice, and outlines useful future research directions. (shrink)

There is a lack of research about the political strategies used by firms in emerging countries, mainly because the literature often assumes that Western-oriented corporate political activity has universal application. Drawing on resource-dependency logics, we explore why and how firms orchestrate CPA in the institutionally challenging context of Nigeria. Our findings show that firms deploy four context-fitting but ethically suspect political strategies: affective, financial, pseudo-attribution and kinship strategies. We leverage this understanding to contribute to CPA in emerging countries by arguing (...) that corporate political strategies are shaped by the reciprocity and duality of dependency relationships between firms and politicians, and also by advancing that these strategies reflect institutional weaknesses and unique industry-level opportunities. Importantly, we shed light on the muttered dark side of CPA. We develop a CPA framework and discuss the research, practical and policy implications of our findings. (shrink)

Participation in the political process by the United States public accounting profession often blurs the role of the profession as advocates for the public interest with its role as advocates for its own private interests. In this study, we draw from prior theoretical and empirical work to investigate recent federal political activities of the public accounting profession to shed light on these sometimes contradictory roles. In particular, we investigate ten contemporary regulatory issues of interest to the AICPA. We analyze 36 (...) AICPA legislative advocacy letters related to these issues that were provided to federal policy makers. In addition, we analyze the public accounting profession’s federal lobbying reports that were submitted during this same time period. The analysis allows us to assess the public interest discourse present in the AICPA legislative letters as well as the extent of political action taken by the profession related to these issues based on the profession’s lobbying efforts. Our analyses demonstrate that the profession’s discourse and actions often reflect both public and private interest motivations, allow us to categorize the profession’s advocacy efforts as arising from specific motivations, and show that the profession’s public interest arguments used to advocate for their policy positions change depending upon the specific legislative issue being considered. (shrink)

Members of licensed occupations benefit from legal standards that limit entry into their professions. Is it ethical for these professionals to give political support to these standards? I examined the case of real estate brokers and found that their educational requirements raise average commissions by one quarter of a percentage point, costing consumers $5.4 billion per year without improving the quality of brokerage services. The case raises interesting ethical issues which are difficult to resolve.