Recent cases in retailing reflect that ethics have a major impact on brands and performance, in turn, demonstrating that brand owners, employees, and consumers focus on ethical values. In this study, we analyze how various sources of social power affect corporate ethical values, retailer’s commitment to the retail organization, and ultimately sales and service quality. Multi-source data based on a sample of 225 retailers indicated a strong link between power, ethics, and commitment and that these affected output performance.

Recent cases in retailing reflect that ethics have a major impact on brands and performance, in turn, demonstrating that brand owners, employees, and consumers focus on ethical values. In this study, we analyze how various sources of social power affect corporate ethical values, retailer’s commitment to the retail organization, and ultimately sales and service quality. Multi-source data based on a sample of 225 retailers indicated a strong link between power, ethics, and commitment and that these affected output performance.

We develop a theoretical model, explore the relationship between temptation (both reflective and formative) and unethical intentions by treating monetary intelligence (MI) as a mediator, and examine the direct (temptation to unethical intentions) and indirect (temptation to MI to unethical intentions) paths simultaneously based on multiple-wave panel data collected from 340 part-time employees and university (business) students. The positive indirect path suggested that yielding to temptation (e.g., high cognitive impairment and lack of self-control) led to poor MI (low stewardship behavior, (...) but high cognitive meaning) that, in turn, led to high unethical intentions (theft, corruption, and deception). Our counterintuitive negative direct path revealed that those who controlled their temptation had high unethical intentions. Due to the multiple faces of temptation (the suppression effect), maliciously controlled temptation (low cognitive impairment and high self control) led to deviant intentions. Subsequent multi-group analysis across gender (a moderator) reformulated the mystery of temptation: a negative direct path for males, but a positive indirect path for females. For males, the negative direct path generated a dark impact on unethical intentions; for females, the positive indirect path did not, but offered great implications for consumer behavior. Both falling “and” not falling into temptation led to unethical intentions which varied across gender. Our counterintuitive, novel, and original theoretical, empirical, and practical contributions may spark curiosity and add new vocabulary to the conversation regarding temptation, money attitudes, consumer psychology, and business ethics. (shrink)

The protection of European consumers from the false or misleading scientific and nutritional claims of food manufacturers took a step forward with the recent opinions of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). As a risk assessment agency, the EFSA recently assessed and rejected a vast number of food claim forcing the withdrawal of many claims from leading manufacturers. Focusing on the functional food sector, consumer protection issues, and market impacts, this article looks into the role of the EFSA and examines (...) the rejection of claims based on bad and misleading science and outlines how the EFSA map claims and distinguishes between the good and bad scientific methods. (shrink)