While business ethics has generated a great deal of research internationally over the last few decades, academic reviews of the business ethics literature remain limited. Moreover, there has been little attempt to date to analyze this literature specifically in the Greater China region, which has been experiencing rapid socioeconomic growth and dynamic evolution of business ethics in recent decades. This paper addresses this research gap by undertaking a comprehensive and critical appraisal of the business ethics literature on Greater China. In (...) particular, it maps out the existing research findings, identifies limitations in methodology, and suggests future directions for business ethics research in this region. The findings indicate that the scholarly interests cover 24 research themes, including corporate social responsibility and social performance; ethical beliefs, judgment, values, decision-making, and culture; workplace ethics and behavior; marketing ethics and consumer behavior; and sustainability. This review reveals a growing imbalance between empirical and conceptual/theoretical studies on business ethics. In addition, the published works covered in this review heavily rely on survey method and convenience sampling, with a predominant focus on a single individual level of analysis. Importantly, this study identifies four directions for future research: contextualized theoretical development, addressing multilevel research, developing research design tailored to the Chinese context, and ensuring more diversified and rigorous data collection. (shrink)

Morality, in the context of luxury counterfeit goods, has been widely discussed in existing literature as having a strong association with decreased purchase intention. However, drawing on moral disengagement theory, we argue that individuals are motivated to justify their immoral behaviors through guilt avoidance, thus increasing counterfeit purchase intention. This research demonstrates that consumers’ desire to purchase counterfeit luxuries hinges on two types of moral reasoning strategies: moral rationalization and moral decoupling. The empirical results show that each strategy increases purchase (...) intention, but respectively through moral judgment and perceived benefit. Implications for researchers and managers are discussed. (shrink)

In recent years, counterfeiting has grown exponentially and has now become a grave economic problem. The acquisition of counterfeits poses an ethical dilemma as it benefits the buyer and illegal seller at the cost of the legitimate producer and with fewer taxes being paid throughout the supply chain. Previous research reveals inconsistent and sometimes inconclusive findings regarding whether materialism is associated, positively or negatively, with intentions to purchase counterfeits. The current research seeks to resolve these inconsistencies by investigating previously ignored (...) interactions between three variables: risk of embarrassment, counterfeit detectability and product conspicuousness. First, risk of embarrassment mediates the relationship between materialism and counterfeit purchase intentions. Specifically, materialism negatively predicts counterfeit purchase intentions as mediated by risk of embarrassment. Second, this relationship only holds when the counterfeit can be easily detected. When it is not easily detected, materialism instead leads to positive purchase intentions. Third, these positive effects can be offset when the product is not highly visible. This research has important implications for marketers, manufacturers and academics and contributes to better understanding the antecedents of counterfeit purchases. (shrink)