We theorize that victim anonymity is an important factor in ethical decision making, such that actors engage in more self-interested and unethical behaviors toward anonymous victims than they do toward identifiable victims. Three experiments provided empirical support for this argument. In Study 1, participants withheld more life-saving products from anonymous than from identifiable victims. In Study 2, participants allocated a sum of payment more unfairly when interacting with an anonymous than with an identifiable partner. Finally, in Study 3, participants cheated (...) more from an anonymous than from an identifiable person. Anticipated guilt fully mediated these effects in all three studies. Taken together, our research suggests that anonymous victims may be more likely to incur unethical treatment, which could explain many unethical business behaviors. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

In spite of the considerable development of research in the fields of business ethics and family business, a comprehensive review and integration of the area where both disciplines intersect has not been undertaken so far. This paper aims at contributing to the call for more research on family business ethics by answering the following research questions: What is the status of the current research at the intersection of business ethics and family business? Why and how do family firms differ from (...) non-family firms regarding business ethics? And, what are the key directions for further research? To answer these questions, this study combines a systematic approach for the selection of articles, resulting in a sample of 31 articles over 35 years, with a narrative review to analyze the literature. This paper finds that research on family business ethics is scarce but increasing and that family firms are considerably different from non-family firms regarding ethical issues. Particular stakeholders, goals, relationships, and practices are found to be the forces behind the peculiarity of family business ethics. Ultimately, research development on family business ethics is encouraged and future research directions flowing from the key findings and reflections of this review are provided. (shrink)

This article analyzes a panel of 550 international firms, for the period 2004 to 2010, to compare the role of female directors in family and non-family firms in promoting responsible practices. Many studies have associated the presence of women on the board with a higher degree of socially responsible commitment. However, we found that this is much less so in family firms than in non-family firms. In family firms, corporate social responsibility commitment does not vary significantly with the presence of (...) female directors, as the latter tend to behave in accordance with the family orientation toward CSR. This orientation depends on the stakeholders being addressed, with greater social responsibility shown toward external stakeholders than internal ones. (shrink)

This paper enquires into the possibility of establishing a causal link between social performance (SP) and financial performance (FP) in corporate social responsibility (CSR). It shows that this endeavour is limited by several biasing factors (such as time horizons, sample choices and the tools chosen to measure SP and FP) and faces the logical fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this), which indicates that a sequence of events does not necessarily establish a causal link. The (...) paper contributes to the methodological literature in CSR currently focused on empirical tests aiming to discern the linkages between SP and FP, both by emphasising the interest in interpreting and justifying SP and by suggesting a redirection of empirical efforts towards the understanding of entrepreneurial preference for a specific type of SP. (shrink)

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)

Promoting ethical decisions and behaviors is challenging for any organization. Yet managers are still required to make ethical decisions under conditions which deplete their self-control resources, such as high stress and long hours. This study examines the relationships among symbolic and internal moral identity, self-control, and ethical behavior, and investigates whether self-control acts as the mechanism through which moral identity leads to ethical behavior. Findings indicate that internal moral identity overrides symbolic moral identity in the relationship with self-control and that (...) self-control fully mediates the relationship between internal moral identity and ethical behavior. The implications for organizations is that while rules, procedures, and ethics training are useful, managers with a strong moral compass will be more likely to practice self-control leading to more ethical behaviors. (shrink)

This study focuses on examining the thematic landscape of the history of scholarly publication in business ethics. We analyze the titles, abstracts, full texts, and citation information of all research papers published in the field’s leading journal, the Journal of Business Ethics, from its inaugural issue in February 1982 until December 2016—a dataset that comprises 6308 articles and 42 million words. Our key method is a computational algorithm known as probabilistic topic modeling, which we use to examine objectively the field’s (...) latent thematic landscape based on the vast volume of scholarly texts. This “big-data” approach allows us not only to provide time-specific snapshots of various research topics, but also to track the dynamic evolution of each topic over time. We further examine the pattern of individual papers’ topic diversity and the influence of individual papers’ topic diversity on their impact over time. We conclude this study with our recommendation for future studies in business ethics research. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is generally recognized as one of the three major schools of ethics, but is often waylaid by utilitarianism and deontology in business and management literature. EBSCO and ABI databases were used to look for articles in the Journal of Citation Reports publications between 1980 and 2011 containing the keywords ‘virtue ethics’, ‘virtue theory’, or ‘virtuousness’ in the abstract and ‘business’ or ‘management’ in the text. The search was refined to draw lists of the most prolific authors, the most (...) cited authors, the most cited articles, and the journals with the most virtue ethics publications. This information allows one to chart how virtue ethics articles have evolved through the decades and to establish ‘schools’ or clusters of authors as well as clusters of themes. The results of this quantitative analysis of authors, ‘schools’, themes, and publications provide a foundation for the future study of virtue ethics in business and management, identifying its achievements and potentials. (shrink)

This article considers the relationship between business ethics and philosophy, specifically in relation to the field and persons working in it. The starting point is a grammatical one: business ethics by the rules of grammar belongs to ethics. In terms of academic disciplines, it belongs to applied ethics, which belongs to ethics, which belongs to practical philosophy, which belongs to philosophy. However, in the field of business ethics today one will seldom meet colleagues from philosophy; instead, they will come from (...) business, applying business studies perspectives, approaches, and increasingly quantitative methods. This article provides empirical evidence that today the three top journals with “business ethics” in their titles are mostly run by business scholars with PhDs in business. The article compares the three journals today with their inaugural issues and finds that at their inception all three were run by a majority of philosophers. The article discusses six possible explanations for this shift and provides suggestions for how to bring business ethics back to philosophers. (shrink)

This article investigates the meaning of doing good and doing well in positive business. It examines the relationship between the two expressions and discusses their relevance, shedding new light on the significance of ‘positive’ in positive business and positive organizational scholarship. Thus, this article illuminates the ultimate end of positive states and practices. ‘Positive’ primarily represents values and assumptions. These lead to the creation of beneficial situations and marked improvements, which put individuals and organizations on an upward trajectory toward achieving (...) excellent functioning, assuring profitability in addition to sustainability and social well-being. Doing well, with reference to economic performance and profits, is partly constitutive of doing good. This presents a new approach regarding the role of economic outcomes in positive business and POS. It means that financial criteria do not have priority. Profits are considered vital and necessary, but the final ‘raison d'être’ of positive states and practices is the overall well-being of the stakeholders. (shrink)

Researchers in several academic fields have indicated an increase in academic authorship disputes and the utilization of unethical authorship practices over the past few decades. This trend has been attributed to a variety of factors such as vague authorship guidelines, power disparities between researchers, dissimilar disciplinary and/or journal practices, and a lack of guidance for emerging scholars. As a rapidly emerging academic field, sport management (and its connected sub-fields) maintains the propensity for unclear procedures due to the various departments, schools, (...) and colleges the field calls home (e.g., kinesiology, sport science, education, business), as well as the wide variety of journals that the field’s scholarship resides in. This situation is similar to many emerging or expanding fields as they navigate the university landscape of more established disciplines and fields. Utilizing a three-round Delphi survey method, the current research examined expert opinion on authorship practices in sport management scholarship. Through a combination of open-ended, response, and Likert-type questions, the expert survey attempted to identify areas of consensus and non-consensus in an effort to determine the current status of publication practices in the field, as well as ascertain areas of need for future study and improvement. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to discuss quantitative content analysis as established in communication sciences as a method for research in business ethics. We argue that communication sciences and business ethics are neighboring disciplines, which allow the transfer of quantitative content analysis from communication sciences to business ethics. Technically, quantitative content analysis can be applied through human as well as software coding. Examples for both applications are provided and discussed. We make reference to the software solutions ‘Leximancer’, ‘Crawdad’, and (...) ‘Wordle’, and examine their suitability and limitations with regard to ethical questions for researching business ethics. We recommend a mixed‐method approach, combining human and software coding. Furthermore, we propose a three‐step process that discusses quantitative content analysis as a method for business ethics, including an ethical research objective, and most importantly, concluding with ethical reasoning and interpretation of the quantitative results. (shrink)

The present article conceptualizes morally controversial innovations as a category of innovations that raise ethical issues due to their potentially undesirable long-term consequences on society or the natural environment. Then, it analyzes the case of biofuel crops by applying an extended version of the theory of planned behavior, which includes moral norm and ethical self-identity. The obtained results show that attitude and subjective norms are positively related to farmers' intention to grow biofuel crops. Yet the intention of those farmers with (...) a higher ethical self-identity is also influenced by perceived behavioral control and moral norm. In particular, moral norm negatively affects their intention to grow biofuel crops, thus restraining the adoption of this innovation. Implications for theory, as well as for policymakers interested in promoting the diffusion of morally controversial innovations, are discussed. (shrink)

Grounded in institutional theory, this study provides an overview of the corporate social responsibility initiatives of Turkey's 30 largest corporations through a thematic content analysis. The study focuses on the G-20 member Turkey and investigates the influence of isomorphism mechanisms on the adoption of CSR initiatives in a developing country context. The aim of this study is to integrate Carroll's CSR dimensions, the type of CSR engagement and coercive, mimetic and normative isomorphism mechanisms proposed by institutional theory. Through this integration (...) the study makes a unique contribution to the literature by providing a different perspective. Findings reveal industry characteristics do not influence the selection of CSR initiatives. While business-to-business companies focus on CSR activities linked to their core business functions, business-to-consumer companies focus on CSR initiatives that are more discretionary, varied and philanthropic. In addition, findings show that multinational corporations implement CSR initiatives at the global level rather than focusing on local needs. (shrink)

The paper develops a critique of the prevailing essentialist and homogenizing approach to business ethics that dominates the field with regard to Islam and proposes a constructivist perspective to the study of religion. It demonstrates the possibilities of this approach with the study of hizmet, a community business network from Turkey that has established itself in over 130 countries over the last 20 years. The implications for business ethics from the study of this movement is that the notion of corporate (...) social responsibility needs to be adjusted in order to accommodate the hizmet approach but that there are limits to this adjustment due to gender and labor rights considerations. The paper sees itself as a contribution to an alternative approach for Islamic business ethics very much in need of further development and encourages further research along these lines. (shrink)