The purpose of this study was to assess the relationships among ethical context, organizational commitment, and person-organization fit using a sample of 304 young working adults. Results indicated that corporate ethical values signifying different cultural aspects of an ethical context were positively related to both organizational commitment and person-organization fit. Organizational commitment was also positively related to person-organization fit. The findings suggest that the development and promotion of an ethical context might enhance employees' workplace experiences, and companies should consider adopting (...) ethical policies that support principled conduct, punish unethical actions, and increase individual perceptions of an ethical company environment. (shrink)

There is a growing realisation that the current upward trend in levels of disclosure of social, ethical and environmental performance by corporations and other organisations is not being accompanied by simultaneous greater levels of public trust. Low levels of confidence in the information communicated in public reporting is probably undermining the impetus for this disclosure. This article suggests that this credibility gap can be narrowed through the use of third party independent assurance. However, this is not an unqualified panacea. Much (...) verification and assurance practice itself has to date been of questionable robustness, reliability and consistency, and has been framed by financial assurance models that are inadequate for the broader, qualitative dimensions of social, ethical and environmental performance. The paper argues that there is need for a universal standard for the provision of assurance of social, ethical and environmental reporting, and indeed for the credibility of the assurance providers themselves. The new AA1000S Assurance Standard, developed by the Institute of Social and Ethical AccountAbility, offers an approach and a tool for addressing these gaps. (shrink)

Spiritual values in the workplace, increasingly discussed and applied in the business ethics literature, can be viewed from an individual, organizational, or interactive perspective. The following study examined previously unexplored workplace spirituality outcomes. Using data collected from five samples consisting of full-time workers taking graduate coursework, results indicated that perceptions of organizational-level spirituality (“organizational spirituality”) appear to matter most to attitudinal and attachment-related outcomes. Specifically, organizational spirituality was found to be positively related to job involvement, organizational identification, and work rewards (...) satisfaction, and negatively related to organizational frustration. Personal spirituality was positively related to intrinsic, extrinsic, and total work rewards satisfaction. The interaction of personal spirituality and organizational spirituality was found related to total work rewards satisfaction. Future workplace spirituality research directions are discussed. (shrink)

Sustainable development (SD) – that is, “Development that meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs and aspirations” – can be pursued in many different ways. Stakeholder relations management (SRM) is one such way, through which corporations are confronted with economic, social, and environmental stakeholder claims. This paper lays the groundwork for an empirical analysis of the question of how far SD can be achieved through SRM. It describes the so-called SD–SRM (...) perspective as a distinctive research approach and shows how it relates to the wider body of stakeholder theory. Next, the concept of SD is operationalized for the microeconomic level with reference to important documents. Based on the ensuing SD framework, it is shown how SD and SRM relate to each other, and how the two concepts relate to other popular concepts such as Corporate Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility. The paper concludes that the significance of societal guiding models such as SD and of management approaches like CSR is strongly dependent on their footing in society. (shrink)

Perceptions of a firm’s stance on corporate social responsibility (CSR) are influenced by its corporate marketing efforts including branding, reputation building, and communications. The current research examines CSR from the consumer’s perspective, focusing on antecedents and consequences of perceived CSR. The findings strongly support the fact that particular cues, namely perceived financial performance and perceived quality of ethics statements, influence perceived CSR which in turn impacts perceptions of corporate reputation, consumer trust, and loyalty. Both consumer trust and loyalty were also (...) found to reduce the perceived risk that consumers experience in buying and using products. From these significant findings, we draw several conclusions and implications, including the importance of enhancing firm focus toward its ethical commitment and long-term reputation. (shrink)

Following the research of Liedtka (1989), this paper examines the impact of her values congruence model on managers'' work attitudes and perceptions of ethical practices within their firms. A nationwide cross-section of managers (N=1,059) provides the sample for the study. Consonance or clarity about both personal value systems and organizational value systems were found to be more important and, in the absence of one or the other, clarity of personal values were shown to have a more positive impact than organizational (...) value clarity. (shrink)

This paper examines a model of income and quality of life that controls the love of money, job satisfaction, gender, and marital status and treats employment status (full-time versus part-time), income level, and gender as moderators. For the whole sample, income was not significantly related to quality of life when this path was examined alone. When all variables were controlled, income was negatively related to quality of life. When (1) the love of money was negatively correlated to job satisfaction and (...) (2) job satisfaction was positively related to both income and quality of life, income was negatively related to quality of life for full-time, high-income, and male employees. When these two conditions failed to exist, income was not related to quality of life for part-time, median- or low-income, and female employees. This model provides new insights regarding the impact of the love of money and job satisfaction on the income–quality of life relationship. (shrink)

This research extends previous findings related to the positive influence of company credibility on a social Cause–Brand Alliance’s (CBA) persuasion mechanism. This study analyzes the mediating role of two dimensions of company credibility (trustworthiness and expertise) with regard to the influence of altruistic attributions and two types of brand–cause fit (functional and image fit) on corporate social responsibility image. A structural equation model tests the proposed framework with a sample of 299 consumers, and the results suggest that (1) image fit (...) and altruistic attribution are cues that consumers use to evaluate company trustworthiness when linking to a social cause; (2) functional fit significantly influences perceived company expertise but not trustworthiness; and (3) trustworthiness has more weight than expertise in judgments about corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

This paper focuses attention on the stakeholder attribute of legitimacy. Drawing upon institutional and stakeholder theories, I develop a framework of stakeholder legitimacy based on its three aspects—legitimacy of the stakeholder as an entity, legitimacy of the stakeholder’s claim, and legitimacy of the stakeholder’s behavior. I assume that stakeholder legitimacy is socially constructed by management and that each of its three aspects exists in degree in the manager’s perception. I discuss how these aspects interact and change over time, and propose (...) an agenda for future research on stakeholder legitimacy. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to extend the knowledge about why procedural justice has behavioral implications within organizations. Since prior studies show that PJ leads to legitimacy, the author suggests that, when formal regulations are unfairly implemented, they lose their validity or efficacy. This “rule deactivation,” in turn, leads to two proposed destructive work behaviors, namely, workplace deviance and decreased citizenship behaviors. The results support this mediating role of RD, thus suggesting that it forms part of the generative mechanism (...) through which unfair procedures influence ethical behavior within organizations. The author ends the article by discussing behavioral ethics and managerial implications as well as suggestions for future research. (shrink)

The term Sustainable Development has been used in many different contexts and consequently has come to represent many different ideas. The purpose of this paper was to explore the underlying meaning of the term Sustainable Development, and to assess the dominant ethic behind such meaning. Through this exploration, we uncovered a change in the semantic meaning of the term, and described what that meaning entails. The term Sustainable Development had the potential, we argue, to stimulate discursive engagement with respect to (...) the future development of society within an ethical framework based around the values of inclusivity, diversity, and integration. The importance of philosophical context within which the term is used influences the definitional process of meaning, and has been simulated into the language of the dominant scientific-economic paradigm. We go on to explore how this meaning change has come about. In doing so we looked to the Enlightenment period and the resulting philosophies to explore the foundations of meaning, and then to the work of Jürgen Habermas to explain how the scientific-economic paradigm came to dominate the meaning of Sustainable Development. (shrink)

The annual production of hazardous wastes which was less than 10 million metric tonnes in the 1940s is now in excess of 320 million metric tonnes. These wastes are, in the main, by-products of industrial processes that have contributed significantly to the economic development of many countries which, in turn, has led to lifestyles that also generate hazardous wastes. The phenomenal increase in the generation of hazardous wastes coupled with various barriers to local disposal has led to the thriving international (...) trade in these environmentally hazardous substances. This paper examines the nature of the international trade in hazardous wastes and the ethical issues associated with such business activity. (shrink)