Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Constructing a Web.Stephanie A. Welcomer, Philip L. Cochran, Gordon Rands & Mark Haggerty - 2003 - Business and Society 42 (1):43-82.
    In this single industry study, the authors examine relationships between forest products companies in Maine and their stakeholders. The research question, why do firms work with stakeholders, is examined from both instrumental and normative perspectives. Specifically, it is hypothesized that stakeholder power and corporate social responsiveness affect the degree to which firms have working relationships with stakeholders. The study found support for the impact of the firm’s perception of stakeholder power on the strength of its relationships with stakeholders. Most notably, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • The Impact of CEO Characteristics on Corporate Social Performance.Mikko H. Manner - 2010 - Journal of Business Ethics 93 (S1):53 - 72.
    While there are growing bodies of research examining both the differences between strongly and poorly socially performing firms, and the impact of firm leaders on other strategic outcomes, little has been done in examining the effect of firm leaders on corporate social performance (CSP). This study directly addresses this issue by using upper echelon theory, and the KLD Research Analytics CSP ratings, to show that observable CEO characteristics predict differences in CSP between firms, even when firm and industry characteristics are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   43 citations  
  • Moral Values: Situationally Defined Individual Differences.Elizabeth D. Scott - 2000 - Business Ethics Quarterly 10 (2):497-520.
    Abstract:This article suggests that there are individual differences in how people define important moral values, and that these differences are made manifest in differences in the situations. It identifies five dimensions along which individuals can differ in their understandings of values: 1)value category(where the value lies in the hierarchy), 2)agent(how voluntary the action is and whether it is morally required of the agent), 3)object(how close the self is to the object of the action; whether the action offends God) 4)effect(whether the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Fairness and the main management theories of the twentieth century: A historical review, 1900–1965.Harry J. Van Buren - 2008 - Journal of Business Ethics 82 (3):633-644.
    Although not always termed “organizational justice,” the fairness of organizations has been a consistent concern of management thinkers. A review of the 1900–1965 time period indicates that management theorists primarily conceptualized organizational justice in utilitarian terms, although each theory emphasized distributive and procedural justice to different degrees. There is clearly a need for contemporary scholars to consider non-economic rationales for organizational justice, but the willingness of earlier scholars to make utilitarian arguments about organizational justice and productive efficiency helped legitimize the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Morality and strategy in stakeholder identification.John Kaler - 2002 - Journal of Business Ethics 39 (1-2):91 - 99.
    Definitions of what it is to be a stakeholder are divided into "claimant" definitions requiring some sort of claim on the services of a business, "influencer" definitions requiring only a capacity to influence the workings of the business, and "combinatory" definitions allowing for either or both of these requirements. It is argued that for the purposes of business ethics, stakeholding has to be about improving the moral conduct of businesses by directing them at serving more than just the interests of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   52 citations  
  • Which Duties of Beneficence Should Agents Discharge on Behalf of Principals? A Reflection through Shareholder Primacy.Santiago Mejia - 2021 - Business Ethics Quarterly 31 (3):421-449.
    Scholars who favor shareholder primacy usually claim either that managers should not fulfill corporate duties of beneficence or that, if they are required to fulfill them, they do so by going against their obligations to shareholders. Distinguishing between structurally different types of duties of beneficence and recognizing the full force of the normative demands imposed on managers reveal that this view needs to be qualified. Although it is correct to think that managers, when acting on behalf of shareholders, are not (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Weeding Out Flawed Versions of Shareholder Primacy: A Reflection on the Moral Obligations That Carry Over from Principals to Agents.Santiago Mejia - 2019 - Business Ethics Quarterly 29 (4):519-544.
    ABSTRACT:The distinction between what I call nonelective obligations and discretionary obligations, a distinction that focuses on one particular thread of the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties, helps us to identify the obligations that carry over from principals to agents. Clarity on this issue is necessary to identify the moral obligations within “shareholder primacy”, which conceives of managers as agents of shareholders. My main claim is that the principal-agent relation requires agents to fulfill nonelective obligations, but it does not always (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Professionalism, Agency, and Market Failures.Hasko von Kriegstein - 2016 - Business Ethics Quarterly 26 (4):445-464.
    According to the Market Failures Approach to business ethics, beyond-compliance duties can be derived by employing the same rationale and arguments that justify state regulation of economic conduct. Very roughly the idea is that managers have a duty to behave as if they were complying with an ideal regulatory regime ensuring Pareto-optimal market outcomes. Proponents of the approach argue that managers have a professional duty not to undermine the institutional setting that defines their role, namely the competitive market. This answer (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Boundaryless Careers and Employability Obligations.Harry J. Van Buren Iii - 2003 - Business Ethics Quarterly 13 (2):131-149.
    Abstract:Boundaryless careers may be beneficial to people with rare and valuable skills, but might prove harmful to many others. The idea ofemployabilityas an ethical responsibility of employers to employees is introduced; it is argued that attention to employability in private practice and public policy partially resolves the ethical problems inherent to in boundaryless careers. Because employability programs are considered to be voluntary, some means of holding employers accountable for such responsibilities needs to be considered when discussing boundaryless careers. Implications for (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • If Fairness is the Problem, Is Consent the Solution? Integrating ISCT and Stakeholder Theory.Harry J. Van Buren - 2001 - Business Ethics Quarterly 11 (3):481-499.
    Abstract:Work on stakeholder theory has proceeded on a variety of fronts; as Donaldson and Preston (1995) have noted, such work can be parsed into descriptive, instrumental, and normative research streams. In a normative vein, Phillips (1997) has made an argument for a principle of fairness as a means of identifying and adjudicating among stakeholders. In this essay, I propose that a reconstructed principle of fairness can be combined with the idea of consent as outlined in integrative social contract theory (ISCT) (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   52 citations  
  • Corporate social responsibility: review and roadmap of theoretical perspectives.Jędrzej George Frynas & Camila Yamahaki - 2016 - Business Ethics: A European Review 25 (3):258-285.
    Based on a survey and content analysis of 462 peer-reviewed academic articles over the period 1990–2014, this article reviews theories related to the external drivers of corporate social responsibility and the internal drivers of CSR that have been utilized to explain CSR. The article discusses the main tenets of the principal theoretical perspectives and their application in CSR research. Going beyond previous reviews that have largely failed to investigate theory applications in CSR scholarship, this article stresses the importance of theory-driven (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   58 citations  
  • The Stakeholder Model Refined.Yves Fassin - 2009 - Journal of Business Ethics 84 (1):113-135.
    The popularity of the stakeholder model has been achieved thanks to its powerful visual scheme and its very simplicity. Stakeholder management has become an important tool to transfer ethics to management practice and strategy. Nevertheless, legitimate criticism continues to insist on clarification and emphasises on the perfectible nature of the model. Here, rather than building on the discussion from a philosophical or theoretical point of view, a different and innovative approach has been chosen: the analysis will return to the origin (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   40 citations  
  • The Business Ethics of Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata – A Forerunner in Promoting Stakeholder Welfare.N. Sivakumar - 2008 - Journal of Business Ethics 83 (2):353-361.
    This article examines the business practices of Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, the founder the Tata group of business in India in the 19th century, from the perspective of stakeholder welfare. Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata was concerned about the welfare of all major stakeholder constituents. His business practices promoted the welfare of employees, customers, society, owners, competitors, environment and other stakeholders. He implemented several measures even before law mandated them thus acting as a forerunner in promoting stakeholder welfare. His business plans became the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • An Adversarial Ethic for Business: or When Sun-Tzu Met the Stakeholder.Joseph Heath - 2007 - Journal of Business Ethics 72 (4):359-374.
    In the economic literature on the firm, especially in the transaction–cost tradition, a sharp distinction is drawn between so-called “market transactions” and “administered transactions.” This distinction is of enormous importance for business ethics, since market transactions are governed by the competitive logic of the market, whereas administered transactions are subject to the cooperative norms that govern collective action in a bureaucracy. The widespread failure to distinguish between these two types of transactions, and thus to distinguish between adversarial and non-adversarial relations, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   65 citations  
  • Stakeholder Theory Classification: A Theoretical and Empirical Evaluation of Definitions.Samantha Miles - 2017 - Journal of Business Ethics 142 (3):437-459.
    Stakeholder theory is widely accepted but elementary aspects remain indeterminate as the term ‘stakeholder’ is an essentially contested concept, being variously describable, internally complex and open in character. Such contestability is highly problematic for theory development and empirical testing. The extent of essential contestability, previously unknown, is demonstrated in this paper through a bounded systematic review of 593 different stakeholder theory definitions. As an essentially contested concept, the solution does not lie in a universal stakeholder definition, but in debating the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Corporate Governance in a Risk Society.Anselm Schneider & Andreas Georg Scherer - 2015 - Journal of Business Ethics 126 (2):1-15.
    Under conditions of growing interconnectedness of the global economy, more and more stakeholders are exposed to risks and costs resulting from business activities that are neither regulated nor compensated for by means of national governance. The changing distribution of risks poses a threat to the legitimacy of business firms that normally derive their legitimacy from operating in compliance with the legal rules of democratic nation states. However, during the process of globalization, the regulatory power of nation states has been weakened (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Stakeholder Management, Reciprocity and Stakeholder Responsibility.Yves Fassin - 2012 - Journal of Business Ethics 109 (1):83-96.
    Stakeholder theory advocates that firms bear responsibility for the implications of their actions. However, while a firm affects or can affect stakeholders, stakeholders can also affect the corporation. Previous stakeholder theorising has neglected the reciprocal nature of responsibility. The question can be asked whether—in a spirit of reciprocity, loyalty and fairness—stakeholders should treat the corporation in a fair and responsible way. This study based on different definitions of stakeholders argues that various stakeholder attributes differ for different categories of stakeholders. This (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  • If Fairness is the Problem, Is Consent the Solution? Integrating ISCT and Stakeholder Theory.Harry J. van Buren Iii - 2001 - Business Ethics Quarterly 11 (3):481-499.
    Abstract:Work on stakeholder theory has proceeded on a variety of fronts; as Donaldson and Preston (1995) have noted, such work can be parsed into descriptive, instrumental, and normative research streams. In a normative vein, Phillips (1997) has made an argument for a principle of fairness as a means of identifying and adjudicating among stakeholders. In this essay, I propose that a reconstructed principle of fairness can be combined with the idea of consent as outlined in integrative social contract theory (ISCT) (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   55 citations  
  • Stakeholder: Essentially Contested or Just Confused? [REVIEW]Samantha Miles - 2012 - Journal of Business Ethics 108 (3):285-298.
    The concept of the ‘stakeholder’ has become central to business, yet there is no common consensus as to what the concept of a stakeholder means, with hundreds of different published definitions suggested. Whilst every concept is liable to be contested, for stakeholder research, this is problematic for both theoretical and empirical analysis. This article explores whether this lack of consensus is conceptual confusion, which would benefit from further debate to try to reach a higher degree of elucidation, or whether the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • Missing the Target: Normative Stakeholder Theory and the Corporate Governance Debate.John Hendry - 2001 - Business Ethics Quarterly 11 (1):159-176.
    Abstract:After a decade of intensive debate, stakeholder ideas have come to exert a significant influence on academic management thinking, but normative stakeholder theory itself appears to be in considerable disarray. This paper attempts to untangle the confusion and to prepare the ground for a more productive approach to the normative stakeholder problem. The paper identifies three distinct kinds of normative stakeholder theory and three different levels of claim that can be made by such theories, and uses this classification to argue (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   41 citations  
  • Business Ethics Without Stakeholders.Joseph Heath - 2006 - Business Ethics Quarterly 16 (4):533-558.
    One of the most influential ideas in the field of business ethics has been the suggestion that ethical conduct in a business context should be analyzed in terms of a set of fiduciary obligations toward various “stakeholder” groups. Moral problems, according to this view, involve reconciling such obligations in cases where stakeholder groups have conflicting interests. The question posed in this paper is whether the stakeholder paradigm represents the most fruitful way of articulating the moral problems that arise in business. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   88 citations  
  • The stakeholder theory and the common good.Antonio Argandoña - 1998 - Journal of Business Ethics 17 (9-10):1093-1102.
    The theory of the social responsibility of the firm oscillates between two extremes: one that reduces the firm's responsibility to the obtainment of (the greatest possible) profit for its shareholders, and another that extends the firm's responsibility to include a wide range of actors with an interest or "stake" in the firm. The stakeholder theory of the social responsibility of business is more appealing from an ethical point of view, and yet it lacks a solid foundation that would be acceptable (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   85 citations  
  • Moving to CSR.William C. Frederick - 1998 - Business and Society 37 (1):40-59.
    The study of Social Issues in Management (SIM) has exhausted its primary analytic framework based on corporate social performance (social science), business ethics (philosophy), and stakeholder theory (organizational science), and needs to move to a new paradigmatic level based on the natural sciences. Doing so would expand research horizons to include cosmological perspectives (astrophysics), evolutionary theory (biology, genetics, ecology), and non-sectarian spirituality concepts (theological naturalism, cognitive neuroscience). Absent this shift, SIM studies risk increasing irrelevance for scholars and business practitioners.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  • Are Companies Offloading Risk onto Employees in Times of Uncertainty? Insights from Corporate Pension Plans.Douglas Cumming, Fanyu Lu, Limin Xu & Chia-Feng Yu - 2024 - Journal of Business Ethics 195 (3):579-598.
    We investigate how firms adjust corporate pension plans in response to economic policy uncertainty (EPU). Using a sample of US-listed firms, we find that firms increase pension underfunding levels when facing higher EPU. The result is robust to controlling for pension portfolio returns, discount rates, plan sizes, pension liability, numbers of employees, other macroeconomic factors, difference-in-differences and instrumental variable estimation, and additional evidence of pension risk-shifting. Further analysis reveals that financial distress and information asymmetry induced through EPU are the potential (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Why Stakeholder And Stockholder Theories Are Not Necessarily Contradictory: A Knightian Insight.S. Ramakrishna Velamuri & S. Venkataraman - 2005 - Journal of Business Ethics 61 (3):249-262.
    The normative foundations of the investor centered model of corporate governance, represented in mainstream economics by the nexus-of-contracts view of the firm, have come under attack, mainly by proponents of normative stakeholder theory. We argue that the nexusof- contracts view is static and limited due to its assumption of price-output certainty. We attempt a synthesis of the nexus-of-contracts and the Knightian views, which provides novel insights into the normative adequacy of the investor-centered firm. Implications for scholarship and management practice follow (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Differentiating stakeholder theories.John Kaler - 2003 - Journal of Business Ethics 46 (1):71 - 83.
    Following on from work on stakeholder identification, this paper constructs a typology of stakeholder theories based on the extent to which serving the interests of non-shareholders relative to those of shareholders is accepted as a responsibility of companies. A typology based on the division of stakeholder theories into normative, descriptive, and instrumental is rejected on the grounds that the latter two designations refer to second order theories rather than divisions within stakeholder theory and the first is a designation which, for (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   49 citations  
  • Stakeholder theory: A deliberative perspective.Ulf Henning Richter & Kevin E. Dow - 2017 - Business Ethics: A European Review 26 (4):428-442.
    Organizations routinely make choices when addressing conflicting stakes of their stakeholders. As stakeholder theory continues to mature, scholars continue to seek ways to make it more usable, yet proponents continue to debate its legitimacy. Various scholarly attempts to ground stakeholder theory have not narrowed down this debate. We draw from the work of Juergen Habermas to theoretically advance stakeholder theory, and to provide practical examples to illustrate our approach. Specifically, we apply Habermas’ language-pragmatic approach to extend stakeholder theory by advancing (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Do shareholders have obligations to stakeholders?Earl W. Spurgin - 2001 - Journal of Business Ethics 33 (4):287 - 297.
    The question of whether, and to what extent, business managers have obligations to stakeholders has been the principal theme in much of recent business ethics literature. The question of whether shareholders have obligations to stakeholders, however, has not been addressed sufficiently. I provide some needed attention to this matter by examining the positions of shareholders in the contemporary world of investing. Their positions are considerably different than that often envisioned by business ethicists and economists where shareholders determine the directions of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Tech Ethics Through Trust Auditing.Matthew Grellette - 2022 - Science and Engineering Ethics 28 (3):1-15.
    The public’s trust in the technology sector is waning and, in response, technology companies and state governments have started to champion “tech ethics”. That is, they have pledged to design, develop, distribute, and employ new technologies in an ethical manner. In this paper, I observe that tech ethics is already subject to a widespread pathology in that technology companies, the primary executors of tech ethics, are incentivized to pursue it half-heartedly or even disingenuously. Next, I highlight two emerging strategies which (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • International Soft Law, Human Rights and Non-state Actors: Towards the Accountability of Transnational Corporations? [REVIEW]Elena Pariotti - 2009 - Human Rights Review 10 (2):139-155.
    During this age of globalisation, the law is characterised by an ever diminishing hierarchical framework, with an increasing role played by non-state actors. Such features are also pertinent for the international enforceability of human rights. With respect to human rights, TNCs seem to be given broadening obligations, which approach the borderline between ethics and law. The impact of soft law in this context is also relevant. This paper aims to assess whether, and to what extent, this trend could be a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • A Genealogy of Business Ethics: A Nietzschean Perspective.Skip Worden - 2009 - Journal of Business Ethics 84 (3):427-456.
    This article approaches the field of business ethics from a Nietzschean vantage point, which means explaining the weakness of the field by means of providing an etiological account of the values esteemed by the decadent business ethicists therein. I argue that such business ethicists have wandered from their immanent philosophical ground to act as scientists, business persons, and preaching-moralists as a way of evading their human self-contradictions. In actuality, this fleeing exacerbates them into a sickness of self-idolatry and selfloathing. I (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Is Fair Treatment Enough? Augmenting the Fairness-Based Perspective on Stakeholder Behaviour.Sefa Hayibor - 2017 - Journal of Business Ethics 140 (1):43-64.
    Fairness and justice are core issues in stakeholder theory. Although such considerations receive more attention in the ‘normative’ branch of the stakeholder literature, they have critical implications for ‘instrumental’ stakeholder theory as well. In research in the instrumental vein, although the position has seldom been articulated in significant detail, a stakeholder’s inclination to take action against the firm or, conversely, to cooperate with it, is often taken to be a function of its perceptions concerning the fairness or unfairness of the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Vulnerability and the Basis of Business Ethics: From Fiduciary Duties to Professionalism. [REVIEW]Eric Brown - 2013 - Journal of Business Ethics 113 (3):489-504.
    This paper examines the role of vulnerability in the basis of business ethics by criticizing its role in giving a moral substantial character to fiduciary duties to shareholders. The target is Marcoux’s (Bus Ethics Q 13(1):1–24, 2003) argument for morally substantial fiduciary duties vis-à-vis the multifiduciary stakeholder theory. Rather than proceed to support the stakeholder paradigm, a conception of vulnerability is combined with Heath’s 2004) “market failure” view of the ethical obligations of managers as falling out of their roles as (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Stakeholder theory and media management: Ethical framework for news company executives.Reuben J. Stern - 2008 - Journal of Mass Media Ethics 23 (1):51 – 65.
    Contrary to stockholder theories that place the interests of profit-seeking owners above all else, stakeholder theorists argue that corporate executives have moral and ethical obligations to consider equally the interests of a wide range of stakeholders affected by the actions of a corporation. This paper argues that the stakeholder approach is particularly appropriate for the governance of news media companies and outlines an ethical framework to guide news company executives.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • A conceptual analysis of the ethicality of Web-based messaging on the COVID-19 pandemic.Rhoda C. Joseph & Mohammad Ali - 2022 - Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society 20 (4):440-460.
    Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the primary sources and methods of Web-based messaging during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. The authors use ethical lens to develop a conceptual framework to inform and reduce conflicts of Web-based messaging associated with COVID-19. Design/methodology/approach This paper provides a comprehensive review of three different ethical schools and identifies the cohesive theme of common good across them. Common good leading to a greater good serves as the overarching ethical construct (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Fairness and the Main Management Theories of the Twentieth Century: A Historical Review, 1900–1965. [REVIEW]Harry J. Van Buren Iii - 2008 - Journal of Business Ethics 82 (3):633-644.
    Although not always termed “organizational justice,” the fairness of organizations has been a consistent concern of management thinkers. A review of the 1900–1965 time period indicates that management theorists primarily conceptualized organizational justice in utilitarian terms, although each theory emphasized distributive and procedural justice to different degrees. There is clearly a need for contemporary scholars to consider non-economic rationales for organizational justice, but the willingness of earlier scholars to make utilitarian arguments about organizational justice and productive efficiency helped legitimize the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Normative stakeholder theory and Aristotle: The link between ethics and politics. [REVIEW]Nachoem M. Wijnberg - 2000 - Journal of Business Ethics 25 (4):329 - 342.
    Stakeholder theory is an important part of modern business ethics. Many scholars argue for a normative instead of an instrumental approach to stakeholder theory. Recent examples of such an approach show that problems appear with respect to the ethical foundation as well as the specification of the norms and the relation between corporate and individual responsibilities. This paper argues for the relevance of Aristotle's ideas on ethics and politics, and especially the link between them, for stakeholder theory. An Aristotelian approach (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations