Business Ethics

Research on turnover intention has primarily focused on its antecedents and how it translates into actual turnover behavior. We shift the focus away from these antecedents and instead examine the unethical consequences that turnover intention generates for organizations. Drawing on social cognitive theory, we propose that turnover intentions lead to employees’ moral disengagement, which in turn influences their time theft behaviors. Furthermore, we argue that trait gratitude and a caring ethical climate moderate the relationship between turnover intentions and moral disengagement, (...) such that this relationship weakens when either trait gratitude or a caring ethical climate is high. A three-wave survey of 304 employee-coworker dyads from a state-owned communication technology company provided empirical support for our theoretical model. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications are discussed. (shrink)

Moral injury is a unique form of psychosocial trauma caused by the violation of deeply held values. Predominantly studied in military and clinical psychology, recent calls for expansion to other fields have led to increased interest in organizational science. However, the general dearth of research and theory on moral injury in these disciplines has created space for prior literature to be misunderstood or misrepresented in a way that could unintentionally dilute the construct and thereby future research. Such is the case, (...) in my view, of a recent qualitative study by Nielsen and colleagues (Journal of Business Ethics 194:233–249). In this commentary, I articulate what I see as several critical misalignments between this study and established moral injury theory and research. In doing so, I aim to provide conceptual clarity on what moral injury is versus what it is not, focused on construct validity and the appropriateness of measurement. I engage with these issues to add additional context and consistency to this growing literature. I conclude my comments noting several positive and additive contributions of this work, as well as my view of future directions for moral injury research in organizational science. (shrink)

The ethical evaluation of high-frequency trading strategies is a controversial subject. On the one hand, for some authors the strategies are fraudulent in nature, or at least may lead to an unfair advantage over other traders. On the other hand, there are claims that such behaviours are beneficial for the market as a whole and should be accepted. An analysis of the arguments leads to the conclusion that the authors make different assumptions concerning the way fairness in capital markets is (...) understood, and in consequence, the criteria that should be taken into account when assessing the ethics of a given behaviour. This observation leads to the conclusion that an essential step should be to justify the criteria for the ethical evaluation of high-frequency trading strategies. The criteria currently dominating the debate are utilitarian in nature. I present critical arguments regarding them and propose to evaluate them from the perspective of ethical values whose infringement justifies the criminalisation of insider trading in selected legislation. In this article, I focus on the ethical evaluation of those high-frequency trading strategies which are designated as a new category of front running (front running 2.0). The strategies are made possible by the specific features of the current market design, especially the commercialisation of privileged access to market data and co-location. (shrink)

In our increasingly polarizing world, inclusive leadership practices that aim to foster belongingness and uniqueness for all organizational members become essential to individual and organizational thriving. However, according to optimal distinctiveness theory, inclusive efforts may involve managing the tension between meeting the needs for belongingness and uniqueness, which can be compounded in contexts with diverse representations of subgroups. This tension has received limited attention in the conceptualization of inclusive leadership, which constrains further theory development. To better understand this issue, we (...) interviewed 39 exemplary inclusive leaders to identify how they experience and manage potential tensions underlying inclusive leadership practices. Our findings reveal three tensions underlying the pull toward diversification and that toward integration, as experienced by these exemplars of inclusive leadership: (1) seeking divergence vs. seeking similarities, (2) providing differential support vs. providing equal support; and (3) encouraging subgroups vs. encouraging connections across subgroups. This research provides a new lens that views inclusive leadership practices as the management of tension-filled practices that celebrate diverse people and perspectives while seeking similarities to rally members, that correct disparities among subgroups while ensuring support for everyone, and that provide comfortable enclaves for similar people while connecting dissimilar people across subgroups. Based on our findings, we provide theoretical implications for future theoretical extensions, refinement, and measurement of inclusive leadership, as well as practical implications on how to develop inclusive leaders. (shrink)

This study builds new theory on how historically marginalized actors reconstruct Indigenous ways of organizing to pursue community resurgence, based on a longitudinal study of Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation in British Columbia, Canada. We found that Tla-o-qui-aht (“people of the Tla-o-qui”) developed an ethical process of Indigenous resurgence through the establishment of Tribal Parks (vs. National Parks). Specifically, Tla-o-qui-aht enacted a peoplehood model (an Indigenous concept) to pursue Indigenous resurgence. Two processes were involved: reviving peoplehood and reclaiming a responsibility-based ethic. Reviving (...) peoplehood (relearning sacred oral history and participating in ceremonies) motivated marginalized individual actors to reconnect with the land, rediscover their Indigenous identity, and seek alternatives. This process seeded community actions. Establishing ethical protocols, empowering through _himwitsa_ (“storytelling”), and envisioning a land use plan empowered the community to reclaim a responsibility-based ethic. This responsibility-based ethic includes responsibility to the land (e.g., reconciling with the earth) and responsibility to peoples (e.g., reconciling with non-Indigenous peoples). The above two processes lay the foundation for ongoing enactment of resurgence practices within and across communities. Tla-o-qui-aht inspired other Indigenous communities to adopt similar processes in their own territories to pursue an ethical form of Indigenous resurgence. This study foregrounds the role of the peoplehood model as an ethical resource and an agentic mechanism for Indigenous resurgence. We discuss the implications of Indigenous scholarly frameworks for advancing the literature on Indigenous resurgence, for decolonizing management theory in general, and for policy and practices of resurgent reconciliation on the ground. (shrink)

Political advertising ethics has long been dominated by an adherence to the norms of democratic idealism or the highly situational ethics of act utilitarianism. This article proposes an alternative system of political advertising ethics grounded in Brandt’s ideal moral code theory, a form of rules-based utilitarianism. To illustrate the relative advantage of rule utilitarianism, the author investigates the ethics of advertising campaigns aimed at intervening in an opposing party’s primary. The past decade has seen a dramatic resurgence in Democratic and (...) Republican candidates in the United States meddling in the opposing party’s primary through advertising campaigns designed to exploit tensions between electability and viability within the political outgroup. The author critiques the common act-utilitarian defenses of interparty–intraparty intervention and proposes a rule-utilitarian alternative that prioritizes the preservation of democratic norms over individual election outcomes. (shrink)

Capital markets depend on truthful corporate financial reporting. To assure financial statement integrity, auditors serve a critical gatekeeper role between corporations and investors. While public corporations pay audit fees, auditors ultimately serve the public interest and must uphold the highest standards of ethical conduct. To fulfill this public trust, auditors must remain independent of clients and be skeptical of potentially biased reporting. However, despite recent safeguards, research indicates that threats to professional skepticism persist. Drawing from social psychology, we argue that (...) auditors’ antagonistic narcissism contributes to compromised skepticism, as this trait is associated with unethical behavior and diminished concern for others. In a laboratory experiment engaging 154 CPAs, we show that trait antagonistic narcissism undermines auditor skepticism. Specifically, auditors high (low) in antagonistic narcissism are less (more) skeptical of questionable client reporting. We also examine how client-related cues influence judgment. On average, recent poor financial performance increases skepticism, while strong ESG performance decreases it. Additionally, we find auditors high in antagonistic narcissism are least skeptical in the absence of recent poor financial performance and, concurrently, in the presence of strong ESG performance. Auditors low in antagonistic narcissism are most skeptical in the opposite cue combination. Our findings reveal a troubling level of variance in ethics-related skepticism based on personality and contextual cues. This work contributes to research on audit quality and professional ethics by showing how dispositional traits may weaken auditors’ ability to identify and respond to others’ unethical reporting, ultimately compromising their gatekeeping role. (shrink)

The escalating global water crisis has driven increased academic attention on corporate water responsibility management (WRM). However, research into corporate WRM remains limited and fragmented, and a holistic understanding of WRM is lacking. Hence, to increase the awareness on WRM, we systematically reviewed 105 research articles from the Scopus and Web of Science databases, spanning years 2004–2024. Through this review, we identified key determinants, interests, potential risks, and opportunities for future research from the existing literature. Moreover, we constructed an integrated (...) framework offering a holistic perspective. Essentially, while WRM is emerging as a critical area of study, there is an urgent need for both deeper academic exploration and greater corporate engagement. This review provides a complete picture of existing WRM research and outlines clear directions for future quantitative and qualitative studies. (shrink)

Gender biases in the representation of family businesses (FBs) within the business media are subtle, yet pervasive. While previous research emphasised the media’s pivotal role in shaping gender identities, roles, and norms, scant attention has been paid to gendered representations of FBs in the press. Yet FBs are not only the most common form of business organisation, but also a unique workplace context where narratives about women are intertwined with narratives about men, the family, the organisation itself, and the conduct (...) of business; media narratives about FBs thus have far-reaching consequences for society at large. To address this gap, we build on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and dissect a selected corpus of 453 articles on FB succession published by the French business newspaper _Les Echos_, covering an extensive period of 32 years (1991 to 2023). Our results reveal the prevalence and permanence of four metaphors that, while culturally iconic, perpetuate patriarchal views: the family business is (1) a Conquering Kingdom, (2) an Erected Building, (3) a Devouring Giant, or (4) a Racing Machine. Our findings point out that business publications may embrace programmes promoting gender equality while perpetuating a patriarchal system of thought. Bridging gendered representations and business ethics, they underscore the imperative for a critical re-evaluation of gender narratives in business journalism and call for a transformative dialogue that would reshape the narrative landscape, thereby fostering a more inclusive representation of FBs. (shrink)

This article assesses the potential of artificial colleagues to help us realise the goods of collegial relationships and discusses its practical implications. In speaking of artificial colleagues, it refers to AI-based agential systems in the workplace. The article proceeds in three steps. First, it develops a comprehensive account of the goods of collegial relationships. It argues that, in addition to goods at the individual level, collegial relationships can provide valuable goods at the social level. Second, it argues that artificial colleagues (...) are limited in their capacity to realise the goods of collegial relationships: at the individual level, they can at best realise some such goods, and at the social level, they can at best support their realisation. This contradicts Nyholm and Smids’ (2020) claim that robots can be good colleagues. The article traces these limitations to particular features of artificial colleagues and discusses to what extent they would hold for radically advanced systems. Third, the article examines the policy implications of these findings. It highlights how the introduction of artificial colleagues, in addition to potentially crowding out human colleagues, will likely impact relations among human colleagues. And it proposes a governance principle that gives strict priority to human collegial relationships. (shrink)

Understanding ethics -- Defining business ethics -- Organizational ethics -- Corporate social responsibility -- Corporate governance -- The role of government -- Blowing the whistle -- Ethics and technology -- Ethics and globalization -- Making it stick : doing what's right in a competitive market.

We are constantly faced with ethical decisions, no matter what organizations we join. The ethical choices we make determine the health of our businesses, schools, government agencies, religious congregations, charities, and other institutions. Our ethical decisions also determine our career success or failure. Bestselling author, Craig E. Johnson, shows how we can develop our ethical competence, just as we develop our abilities to manage or oversee operations. Every chapter of Organizational Ethics: A Practical Approach, Third Edition provides readers with opportunities (...) to apply ethical principles and practices in a variety of settings through self-reflection, analyses, projects, and discussion. Written in a reader-friendly style, each part of the book is layered around organizational behavior. The parts introduce moral theories used in ethical problem-silving; examine individual motivations; look at the ethical dilemmas of groups, teams, and leaders as well as offer strategies for creating ethical cultures and promoting social responsibility. This book shows how readers can develop their ethical expertise and provides opportunities to practice problem-solving to defend their decisions--Book jacket. (shrink)

Play at work has received burgeoning interest in recent years. This research has largely focused on its positive outcomes despite fragmented evidence that play at work can produce behaviors such as clowning, teasing, pranking, and telling jokes at others’ expense. This manuscript constructs theory highlighting the evolving nature of disclosures in explaining how social play can produce harassment norms. This theory is distilled into four broad stages. In the first stage, employees participating in social play develop greater personal comfort with (...) their co-workers through reduced work/non-work boundaries, greater psychological safety, and increased psychosocial resources. In the second stage, employees who develop personal comfort “open up” as they loosen self-control and engage in mutual self-disclosures, particularly with those who are perceived to share similarities. In the third stage, employees who have high implicit bias make more risky disclosures by expressing biased views as jokes during play. In the fourth stage, contagion processes occur when co-workers react in perceivably supportive ways, such as laughing and repeating jokes. This model illustrates how social play can lead employees to morally disengage by using the context of play to morally justify the expression of their implicit biases, which enables harassment to go unchecked and become reinforced. (shrink)

Moral disengagement among salespeople is a psychological mechanism that enables individuals to rationalize unethical behavior, often in response to competitive pressures and organizational demands. This study examines how salespeople's moral disengagement affects their sense of duty orientation while also analyzing the role of social context in shaping moral disengagement. Drawing upon social cognitive theory, we propose a model wherein peers' unethical behavior induces moral disengagement among salespeople, subsequently influencing their duty orientation. Additionally, we suggest that customer incivility moderates the relationship (...) between the peers' unethical behavior and moral disengagement. We tested our hypotheses using data gathered across three waves from salespeople employed in the business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) firms. The findings indicate that peers' unethical behavior positively impacts the moral disengagement of salespeople and that moral disengagement negatively influences their duty orientation. The results also suggest that moral disengagement acts as a mediator connecting peers' unethical behavior and duty orientation. Furthermore, the impact of peers' unethical behavior on moral disengagement is moderated by customer incivility, with a more substantial effect observed when the levels of customer incivility are high. Our study provides deeper understanding of the factors contributing to moral disengagement among salespeople, highlighting the role of peers' unethical behavior and customer incivility. These findings offer practical guidance for organizations seeking to mitigate the detrimental impact of negative workplace behaviors and emphasize the importance of managing both internal and external social influences to promote ethical conduct among sales teams. (shrink)

While leaders’ high performance expectations (LHPEs) are often considered and proposed as an effective performance management tool, this viewpoint may be insufficient because it solely considers the performance gains without addressing potential ethical costs. This study deviates from previous beliefs by demonstrating how leaders’ high performance expectations are divergently related to employee performance as well as prescriptive immorality (e.g., performance-improving noncompliant behavior, PINB) and prescriptive morality (e.g., organizational citizenship behavior, OCB). Drawing on goal-shielding theory, we propose an integrated model in (...) which LHPE improves employee work performance by prompting them to prioritize performance goals. This same mechanism, however, elevates PINB and reduces OCB, with these effects being more pronounced in highly competitive team climates. The multilevel path analyses of a three-wave, time-lagged survey dataset containing 232 employees and their leaders from 59 teams supported our hypotheses. These findings highlight both the performance benefits and ethical costs associated with LHPE, underscoring the importance of managers balancing performance demands with ethical considerations when employing LHPE as a performance management strategy. (shrink)

Business ethics as a discipline has been evolving rapidly, and indeed needs to evolve constantly. This evolution is mandated more urgently than ever before as we plunge headlong, and with increasing velocity, into the era of automation, artificial intelligence and digitization. Ethical codes and guidelines are needed for educators, scientists, industries, law and policy makers, as well as for the general public engaged with emerging technologies not only to ensure a smooth transition into the autonomous and digital age, but also (...) to ensure that in the process, we do not unknowingly disengage from basic human rights, values and responsibilities. Traditional, time tested and universally accepted principles of (business) ethics, including principles of integrity, responsibility and sustainability must, therefore, not be abandoned, but rather permitted to evolve to address the unique issues that emerging technologies present to humankind. The envisaged volume brings together contributions in the field of business ethics from a diversity of perspectives and disciplines."--Cover page 4. (shrink)

Fr. Gerald F. Cavanagh, S.J. has been widely recognized as one of the founders of the field of business ethics, as well as a leader in bringing Catholic Social Teaching to bear on this academic discipline. One of his principal insights has been that business, as the most powerful agency in society, can and should be a force for positive societal change, rather than deferring that responsibility to government. This volume collects his most significant contributions to the discipline, from the (...) mid-1960s to the early 2020s, into a single, convenient reference work. To show the development of his thought on various issues pertaining to the broad subject of business ethics, the chapters are organized into five major themes: diversity, equity, and inclusion; the dignity of work, personal values and spirituality in the workplace; ethical norms and organizational values; corporate social responsibility; and business ethics in the college curriculum. (shrink)

On the business ethics of Sasak people in Nusa Tenggara Barat Province, Indonesia, according to their traditional knowledge and the Islamic perspective.

Companies play an important role in sustainable development. While many companies have incorporated ESG initiatives into their strategies, the specific impact of these efforts on the SDGs remains unclear, especially regarding how these initiatives are prioritized or aligned within corporate strategies. Despite the common relationship between ESG practices and sustainability, limited research has investigated how ESG strategies contribute to the SDGs. This paper aims to assess the ethical commitment of organizational practices, analysing how the combination of five ESG-related variables (ecological (...) impacts, access and affordability, labour practices, product design and lifecycle management, and business ethics) leads to a positive contribution to the SDGs among 137 companies belonging to EUROSTOXX and S&P500 indexes. A fsQCA analysis has been conducted, distinguishing between ESG variables with internal, external, human and non-human connotations. The findings highlight that the combination of all these variables rather than isolated ESG practices is essential to achieve the SDGs. Although differences are shown between the companies belonging to the two indexes, ethical governance, environmental issues and labour practices have emerged as the most relevant ESG variables for achieving sustainable goals. This study provides a better understanding of what and how ESG initiatives can contribute to the SDGs, helping companies and policy makers identify the ethical approaches to consider when designing strategies to advance towards sustainable performance. (shrink)

Job crafting has been identified as an important mechanism through which employees can proactively reshape job demands and resources to enhance personal and work goals. This study examines how promotion-focused and prevention-focused job crafting influence meaningful work and ethical behaviors among salespeople. Results from two studies, a preliminary quasi-experiment and a survey of business-to-business salespeople, show that promotion-focused job crafting enhances meaningful work and ethical behaviors, whereas prevention-focused job crafting has the opposite effect and reduces meaningful work and ethical behaviors. (...) Further, empowering leadership and organizational support strengthen the positive impact of promotion-focused job crafting on meaningful work, whereas empowering leadership weakens the negative impact of prevention-focused job crafting on meaningful work. Overall, these findings demonstrate that not all job crafting behaviors by salespeople yield beneficial outcomes and, specifically, organizational interventions play an important role in calibrating the countervailing effects of job crafting. Based on these findings, several theoretical and practical implications are identified. (shrink)

A distinctive question about corporate sincerity arises in two kinds of contexts. In accommodation contexts, a corporate agent expresses the sort of reasonable, conscience-constituting normative commitments that generate a claim to be exempt from a general obligation that applies to it. For this claim to be justified, it must be sincere in expressing these commitments. In moral credit contexts, a corporate agent expressly acts in a morally right (or justified) manner, but there is reason to leave open the question of (...) whether it deserves moral credit for this. Such a question is raised when, e.g., companies are accused of reputation washing. Deserving moral credit requires companies to have been sincere in their rightful expressive actions. I argue that there is a single substrate of corporate sincerity in both contexts: A corporate agent is sincere when (i) it says or does something that is meant to be understood as expressing certain valuing attitudes and (ii) its statement or action is guided by the practical functioning of those valuing attitudes. In addition to helping us evaluate corporate agents in accommodation or moral credit contexts, this account promises to shed light on the broader relational import of corporate sincerity appraisals. (shrink)

How significant is membership in the Chinese government and party organizations, such as the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), in shaping the wealth of private sector elites? Analyzing China Rich List data (1999–2015) with Ordinary Least Squares regression, Propensity Score Matching, and the Cox Hazard model, this study finds that NPC and CPPCC affiliation significantly boosts initial wealth accumulation, while Chinese Communist Party membership alone has minimal impact. However, political connections alone do not (...) ensure long-term financial security, as industry positioning and inherited wealth play growing roles. Entrepreneurs in state-backed strategic industries gain wealth quickly but face volatility, while traditional sectors provide stability. Second-generation elites benefit from inherited wealth but experience higher early exit risks. A generational shift indicates a move toward market-driven success, though political influence remains crucial. The study underscores the ethical concerns of crony capitalism, where political ties distort competition and corporate accountability, offering insights into China’s evolving state-business relations. (shrink)

In this chapter, we analyse the debate around the implementation of responsible research and innovation (RRI) in Higher Education, Funding and Research Centres (HEFRCs). We will illustrate some proposals about how to implement RRI in HERFCs in a good way. Open and inclusive governance is key to fruitful implementation of RRI in these organizations. Governance in this context refers to ways of steering processes in a desirable direction, in this case in the direction of responsible research and innovation that is (...) ethically acceptable and socially desirable. We will present and assess different models of governance and aim to provide ethical governance of research and innovation (R&I) inspired by the most convincing ideas emerged in the current debate. (shrink)

This paper examines the reactions of stakeholders to firms’ ESG information and how these reactions impact firms’ financial performance. We further explore how firms’ ESG performance and public attention moderate these relationships. Using a longitudinal dataset of Chinese listed firms from 2014 to 2023, we find that firms with vague ESG information are associated with increased financing constraints, diminished brand value, and reduced government environmental subsidies. Interestingly, these negative consequences are milder in firms with unusually poor ESG performance. Our findings (...) also reveal that stakeholders’ adverse responses deteriorate these firms’ future performance. Moreover, public attention as an information intermediary is a double-edged sword: heightened public scrutiny alleviates stakeholders’ negative reactions to vague ESG information but intensifies them when a firm’s ESG performance is extremely poor. These results remain robust across alternative measures, models, and sample selection treatments. Overall, our study demonstrates that vague ESG information elicits adverse responses from stakeholders and weakens firm performance. These effects, however, are contingent upon a firm’s ESG performance and the level of public attention it receives. (shrink)

Gender bias in leadership and decision-making is a well-documented and pervasive topic that continues to garner significant attention in academic research and business literature. In this paper, by exploiting a unique proprietary dataset of 550 mid-corporate loan applications managed by a major European bank, we explore how the use of soft information influences lending decisions of female loan officers as compared to their male counterparts. We find that use of soft information reduces information asymmetry which helps female officers in making (...) diligent lending decisions resulting in increased granted credit with a lower default probability. We also investigate gender affinity within the banking organisation and find that female loan approvers are more likely to be supportive of their subordinate female loan officers by approving more credit to the loan applications handled by female loan officers. Finally, we examine the possible mechanisms that can explain these results, and find that female loan officers are able to better collect and use soft information as they cultivate and maintain deeper firm-bank relationships with their clients due to higher threat of losing or being penalized in their jobs for any possible errors. We also rule out any other possible explanations such as differences in workload, work experience, loan officers’ optimism, managerial ability, and screening capabilities between female and male loan officers. Our findings carry important policy implications, reflected in the optimal allocation of capital in the economy and the reduction of gender-related exclusion, which is vital in creating an equitable society and fostering a more ethical and inclusive workplace. (shrink)

We examine the impact of family firms’ historical ownership on corporate fraud. Our results show that restructured family firms from state-owned enterprises are more likely to violate and commit more fraud than entrepreneurial family firms. This finding is robust to the difference-in-difference-in-differences estimation, an instrument variables regression, fixed effects research design, and propensity score matching (PSM) approach analysis. Mechanism analysis shows that restructured family firms result in lower financial performance, high labor redundancy, inefficient investments, and cash volatility. Therefore, restructured family (...) firms have a stronger incentive to conceal these problems through corporate fraud. Furthermore, the effects of family firms’ historical ownership on corporate fraud are weakened for a more extended period after SOE ownership reform and the restructuring approach adopted by equity takeover. (shrink)

The Russia–Ukraine war has challenged our understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Whereas CSR is traditionally associated with business self-regulation that benefits business and society, the conflict has revealed new forms of what we call “partisan CSR.” Based on comprehensive data from Fortune Global 500 firms, this study discovers that in particular Western, but also some non-Western, corporations have engaged in partisan CSR activities, ranging from (1) strengthening Ukraine’s economy, to (2) enhancing security and protection for Ukrainian citizens, (3) providing (...) military support, (4) weakening Russia’s economy, and (5) supporting Ukraine in symbolic ways. By comparison, several mostly non-Western firms, e.g. from Asian countries, have chosen to be “neutral”, while, in some cases, exploiting economic opportunities arising from the conflict. This study also discusses major drivers of these CSR responses, including political climate, resource availability and economic dependency, isomorphism, and regulatory requirements. Our findings suggest a shift from political CSR to partisan CSR, which we expect to become more important with growing geopolitical divides and territorial conflicts. (shrink)

Entrepreneurship has been highlighted as one of the major forces in addressing significant economic, social, and environmental challenges. These challenges have raised new ethical questions, leading to an explosive growth of research at the intersection of ethics and entrepreneurship. This study provides an overview of the evolution of the scientific literature on the interplay between ethics and entrepreneurship to propose a research proposition with standardized protocols and a broad time limit. Specifically, in a hybrid literature review, 516 articles from peer-reviewed (...) journals indexed in Scopus were analyzed. The review revealed that the field mainly comprises six themes. Through the analysis of each theme, gaps are identified and structured and used to build theoretical proposals for future research agendas applied to current societal challenges. Understanding the link between entrepreneurship and ethics guides practices improves decisions, addresses challenges, promotes sustainability, enhances academia, and builds trust, fostering a responsible, beneficial entrepreneurial environment for society and the economy. (shrink)

Based on a qualitative study of Copenhagen 2021 WorldPride, this article explores collaboration between the local organiser and its corporate partners, focusing on the tensions involved in this collaboration, which emerge from and uphold relations between the extremes of unethical pinkwashing, on the one hand, and ethical purity, on the other. Here, pinkwashing is understood as a looming risk, and purity as an unrealizable ideal. As such, corporate sponsorships of Pride are conceptualized as inherently impure—and productive because of their very (...) impurity rather than despite it. Analytically, we identify and explore three productive tensions where the first involves emergent normativities for what constitutes good, right, or proper corporate engagement in Pride, the second revolves around queer(ed) practices and products that open normativities, and the third centres on the role of internal LGBTI+ employee-driven networks whose activism pushes organisations to become further involved in Pride, developing aspirational solidarity. Reading across literatures on corporate activism and queer organisation, we introduce Alexis Shotwell’s notion of constitutive impurity to suggest that the potential for ethical corporate Pride partnerships arises when accepting the risk of pinkwashing rather than seeking to overcome it. (shrink)

This paper puts forth a critical perspective on remedy for business-related human rights abuses. It reflects on the purpose of remedy in Business and Human Rights and argues that effective remedy should address the multiple root causes of abuses to prevent reoccurrences rather than focus on surface issues and isolated cases. To develop a theoretical framework to conceptualize preventative remedy that addresses multiple root causes, this research draws on Fraser’s radical democratic conception of justice and participatory parity. According to the (...) principle, justice is achieved through social arrangements that enable all actors to engage with one another as peers. To conceptualize effective remedy as participatory parity, the paper examines three dimensions—cultural, economic, and political—where injustices or root causes of abuses must be addressed to realize participatory parity. The paper analyzes the illustrative case of the Fair Food Program through the lens of Fraser’s framework. Analysis reveals effective enforcement as necessary to realize participatory parity and address the three dimensions of justice in the context of severe power asymmetries. In the theorized framework, remedy aims to address the multiple root causes of business-related human rights abuses toward prevention and empower rightsholders to engage meaningfully in remedial processes. (shrink)

Possessing slack resources enables businesses to invest in innovative and stakeholder-focused initiatives. Therefore, we posit that higher slack resources encourage businesses to allocate these resources to improve their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Moreover, as a central sustainability governance mechanism, we hypothesize that the corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee supports investing slack resources in ESG initiatives. Using data from Nasdaq-100 firms, we find initial support for a positive effect of slack resources for ESG. However, further analyses reveal that slack (...) resources become detrimental to ESG after an economically relevant threshold, indicating an inverted U-shaped effect of slack resources. Additionally, despite their generally positive effect, we uncover that CSR committees cannot effectively enhance the benefits of low or moderate slack levels for ESG nor prevent the detriments of elevated slack levels for ESG. Therefore, our study significantly contributes to the ongoing discourse surrounding slack resources, ESG, and the usefulness of CSR committees. These findings hold significant implications for ethical resource allocation, urging firms and their decision-makers to reconsider the dual-edged role of slack resources in the unique ESG context and support the CSR committee in realizing its potential for promoting sustainability and ethical practices within the organization. (shrink)

We take an ethics theory perspective to examine rule violations and workarounds in the UK construction industry in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The UK construction sector remained largely operational during lockdowns in the UK, providing an opportunity to explore the ways in which construction workers made ethical decisions in situ, related to health and safety at work, and COVID-19 rules. We conducted 22 semi-structured interviews with participants from 11 organisations (3 major construction companies and 8 subcontractors) during November (...) 2021 to January 2022. Our qualitative analysis focused on coding responses based on the use of moral disengagement tactics, and the dimensions of moral intensity (magnitude of consequences, social consensus, probability of effect, temporal immediacy, proximity and, concentration of effect). We found instances of ethical dilemmas, including conflicts between compliance with organisational health and safety rules, and following COVID-19 rules. Our analysis showed that rule violations were often justified based on moral disengagement tactics, particularly cognitive reconstrual, obscuring personal agency, disregarding consequences and vilification of the victims. Furthermore, moral intensity played a significant role in making ethical decisions about violating rules. Moral intensity was most influential (across dimensions) for moral disengagement based on cognitive reconstrual (e.g., justifications for choosing to follow one set of rules over another). Social context was highly influential in workers’ ethical decisions, including organisational and group social norms, but wider societal attitudes towards the COVID-19 pandemic, also played a significant role. We discuss the implications for business ethics theory, policy and practice, including recommendations for businesses and policymakers. (shrink)