Following corporate accounting scandals there has been an increasing concern with understanding the factors that undermine the occupational values of accounting professionals, which emphasize self-transcendence in the pursuit of public good and openness to change in the pursuit of autonomy and creativity. Prior studies have demonstrated that these values are undermined in economically rationalized organizational environments. Our study advances this research by examining how accounting professionals’ occupational values are influenced by the economic rationalization of countries where they are employed. While (...) economic rationalization of countries is recognized as a key macrostructural, social-level influence on individual values, the theory is divided regarding its normative effects. While economic rationalization may decrease the priority of occupational values by transforming professional action in accordance with the calculative logic of economic rationality, it can also increase the priority of these values by providing resources necessary for freeing professionals from the material constraints of survival. We test these divergent insights using the European Social Survey data for 28 countries. Our results indicate that economic rationalization decrease accountants’ occupational values beyond the effects of cultural values and work-related characteristics. (shrink)

This paper is a contribution to the discussion of how religious perspectives can improve business ethics. Two such perspectives are in natural law of antiquity and recent Catholic social doctrine and teaching. This paper develops a conceptual framework from natural law and CSD/T that business leaders can adopt to build an ethos of humanistic management. This “Human Dignity-Centered” framework fills the gap between time-tested Christian norms and contemporary firm-leaders’ concrete needs. “Human dignity” is used as a rhetorical device to convey (...) the idea that firms are composed of dynamic social networks, with an ultimate purpose of serving human needs. Ultimately, the principles and virtues the framework employs have a logic that should inspire excellence, as ethical practices and concern for human welfare lay a foundation for long-term business prosperity. In a one-frame visual representation, this paper portrays: firm leadership challenges; a transforming ethical prism of principles and virtues; and results and feedback mechanisms. The accompanying narrative describes each element and how each affects humanistic management. Finally, illustrative company examples and questions are provided to illustrate how the framework can be used to benefit human flourishing. The framework provides an adjunct to current formulations of improving managerial excellence. (shrink)

Management practices prevailing in business organizations receive considerable criticism for often treating the employee as one of many resources or an instrument to achieve the organization’s goals. As employee reification has so far been largely investigated in the scientific literature from the perspective of neo-Marxist approach, this article seeks to broaden the discussion by showing how social teaching of the Catholic Church can serve to solve the problem of reification. Although there is no doubt that universal norms of business ethics (...) can serve as protection of the employee dignity from the individual’s reification tendencies, moral relativism operating in postmodern life tends to call into question any universal moral norms. Therefore, this article discusses how responses to challenges posed by moral relativism can be obtained by applying methodological approaches proposed by the neo-Marxist classics Lukács, Honneth, and Catholic Social Teaching. The similarities and differences of these approaches are identified, and attention is also drawn to the possibilities and limitations of their application in business ethics practice. It is also demonstrated how understanding of human dignity and the attitude to a virtue, offered by social teaching of the Catholic Church, broadens the discussion on addressing the dangers posed by the person’s reification in organizations. (shrink)

Based on case studies of religious Muslim and Christian family firms operating in a religiously diverse country, we explain the multiplicity of family, business, religion, and community logics in the family firm. In particular, we give attention to the religion logic and how it interacts with other logics when family firms are considering ethical issues. We show that religion has a rule-based approach in Muslim family firms and a principle-based approach in Christian family firms. We also draw attention to the (...) fluidity characteristic of the religion logic, through which family firms interpret the role of religion among other logics in influencing ethical decisions. Our study advances institutional logics literature in highlighting the plurality between and within logics in family firms, and contributes to the growing recognition of the influence of religious beliefs on the ethical behaviors of family firms. (shrink)

Family values are argued to enable ethical family business conduct. However, how these arise, evolve, and how family leaders articulate them is less understood. Using an ‘identity work’ approach, this paper finds that the values underpinning identity work: arise from multiple sources, evolve in tandem with the context; and, that their articulation is relational and aspirational, rather than merely historical. Prior research mostly understood family values as rooted in the past and relatively stable, but our rhetorical analysis unlocks a more (...) dynamic and promising research direction advancing family business ethics. (shrink)

Faced with the disenchantment and disengagement expressed by their employees, business leaders are considering ways of incorporating more benevolence into managerial practices. Nevertheless, ‘benevolence’—care and concern for the well-being of others—has not yet been studied in an organizational profit-focused context. In this paper, we seek to investigate the emergence and practice of benevolence with an eye on profit and performance. We begin by investigating the main ethical approaches to benevolence—virtue ethical, utilitarian, and deontological. Then, based on an empirical study, we (...) identify two distinct types of benevolence. On the one hand, formal benevolence is defined and monitored by the organizational processes and actions of leaders; it is understood by all concerned to be bounded by organizational performance. On the other hand, informal benevolence exists at the margin of these processes, in interpersonal and discretionary relationships. We set out to analyze these two types of benevolence and the complementarity between them. We also discuss to what extent they can be managed, teasing out some implications for managers and some potential avenues for further research. (shrink)

This paper proposes a teaching alternative that can encourage the ethical reflective sensibility among students of social entrepreneurship. It does so by exploring the possibility of using religious parables as narratives that can be analysed from Ricoeur’s hermeneutics to provoke and encourage ethical discussions in social entrepreneurship courses. To illustrate this argument, the paper makes use of a parable from the New Testament as an example of a religious narrative that can be used to prompt discussions about social entrepreneurs’ ethical (...) dilemmas. The paper adds to the limited works that consider the teaching of ethics within social entrepreneurship education. It also advances studies that seek alternative strategies to teaching ethics in business contexts, making these strategies discernible for discussion within the broader business and management literature. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to the growing discussion about leadership in the contemporary Church of England with a particular interest in the complex interaction between social context and leadership practices. Implicit leadership theory is used to explore mutual expectations around distributed models of lay and ordained leadership as well as ‘ordinary’ members’ of congregation. Applying a qualitative research method, we conducted 32 semi-structured interviews in 6 Church of England parishes. Through the systematic analysis of relevant contextual factors at multiple (...) levels, we identify limited congruence between ideal leadership attributes and actual behavior. We contribute to the ILT literature by identifying ethical attributes, such as the ability to help others flourish, as particularly pertinent to the religious setting. We also identify the malleability of some leadership attributes. We further contribute to the literature on organizational studies in faith-based organizations by offering novel insights into the relationship between leadership, followership and contextual factors at local parish level which have significant practical implications for recruiting and training church leaders and followers. (shrink)

This article examines whether the degree of religiosity in an institutional environment can stimulate the emergence of a robust corporate governance system. This study utilizes the Nigerian business environment as its context and embraces a qualitative interpretivist research approach. This approach permitted the engagement of a qualitative content analysis (QCA) methodology to generate insights from interviewees. Findings from the study indicate that despite the high religiosity among Nigerians, religion has not stimulated the desired corporate governance system in Nigeria. The primary (...) explanation for this outcome is the presence of rational ordering over religious preferences thus highlighting the fact that religion, as presently understood and practiced by stakeholders, is inconsistent with the principles underpinning good corporate governance. (shrink)

This article aims to underscore the progression of Old Testament hospitality as reciprocity for moral guidance and, specifically, business ethics in contemporary society. The study follows a comparative analysis of Old Testament hospitality and reciprocity in the work of Adam Smith that emphasises the role of mutual relations and voluntary exchange. It will be argued that reciprocity associated with hospitality in the Old Testament is an important principle that further developed in classic economics and provides ethical principles for contemporary large-scale, (...) multi-cultural and multi-faith societies, although different from the small-scale societies of the Old Testament world. The interface of mutual relations and voluntary exchange in Old Testament hospitality and reciprocity in Smith unveils important ethical principles for contemporary business ethics regarding responsibility and accountability. Contribution: The comparative analysis of Old Testament hospitality and reciprocity in Adam Smith’s work provides ethical principles based on mutual relations and voluntary exchange for contemporary, multi-cultural and multi-faith society, specifically in business ethics. (shrink)