Despite its prevalence in emerging economies, everyday-life business deviance and its antecedents have received surprisingly little research attention. Drawing on strain theory and the business-ethics literature, we develop a socio-psychological explanation for this deviance. Our analysis of 741 owners of Chinese small- and medium-sized enterprises suggests that materialism and trust in institutional justice affect EBD both directly and indirectly in a relationship mediated by the ethical standards of SME owners. These findings have important implications for researching deviant business behavior within (...) SMEs. (shrink)

The paper offers a wide-angle view of ethics and welfare through the lens of ‘moral economy’. It examines economic activities in relation to a view of welfare as well-being, and to ethics in terms of economic justice. Rather than draw upon abstract ideal theories such as Rawlsian or Capabilities approaches, it calls for an evaluation of actually existing sources of harm and benefit in neoliberal capitalism. It argues that we need to look behind economic outcomes in terms of how much (...) money different people have, examine their economic relations to others, and evaluate the justifications of these relations and their associated rights and practices. It distinguishes three sources of income – earned income, transfers, and unearned income, and argues that the last of these has no functional or ethical justification but has major implications for welfare. It then comments on the policy implications of the argument, including brief comments on asset-based welfare and universal basic income policies, and concludes. (shrink)