The evidence from the recent financial crisis in the USA indicates the importance of ethical decision making in the banking and finance industry. This study surveyed 90 banking and finance professionals and students in Vietnam to examine the differences in their ethical decision making. The questionnaire consisted of eight vignettes describing practical ethical dilemmas which banking and finance professionals may face in their daily work. We found significant differences in ethical decision making between these two groups in their overall ethical (...) scores and in four out of eight vignettes. We also conducted a 3-h ethics training programme for these professionals and students and found that teaching ethics was more effective for students than working adults in the banking and finance industry. These findings are important as they show how banking and financial institutions can make workplace environments more conducive to ethical decision-making by enhancing ethics education for both newcomers and existing professionals. (shrink)

This work describes the perceptions that Industrial Engineering students have regarding Colombian firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. It also explores the incidence of gender, academic level, work experience and entrepreneurial intention on students’ vision. A survey with 70 CSR practices was designed based on previous research. Practices were grouped in ten dimensions: shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers, stakeholders, ethics, environment, legal, human rights and society. A representative sample of 142 students was used. Results show that students perceive a higher commitment (...) of Colombian companies with the shareholders dimension, while a lower with the society, ethics and environmental CSR practices. Work experience and entrepreneurial intention are the only variables affecting the identified perceptions. Thus, as they gain experience, their perceptions become more favorable. On the other hand, potential entrepreneurs have a more critical view on the companies’ commitment. Additionally, the fact that the academic level does not impact students’ perceptions constitutes a challenge for the academic program, since it is expected that this will affect the vision of future engineers. This is the first study that evaluates perceptions of Industrial Engineering students, who, given their object of study, will be responsible for designing and managing production processes in organizations of the future. Results respond to a specific context (students at a Colombian public university), therefore further research to explore the subject is recommended. (shrink)

The company at the service of today's society is reinventing itself to satisfy people's needs in a more efficient and adapted way. Globalization and digitization promote increasing interaction and new forms of economic organization such as collaborative economy. However, can it be understood that this new business model, more than others, has as its raison d'être in the search for the “common good”? A first approach suggests the presence of values related to collaboration between equals aiming at a common good. (...) However, the possible existence of a profit motive and the labor relations framework in which certain activities are carried out have created a debate on their ethical qualification. In this context, considering 278 companies in the collaborative economy sector, the relationship between the concept of “common good” and the collaborative economy is analyzed, while examining whether these new realities have an explicit ethical intention (of search for goods for people). According to the results, it is not possible to assert that these platforms have an ethical concern, but it is observed that they are in line with the common good and implicitly contribute to the service of society. (shrink)

The company at the service of today's society is reinventing itself to satisfy people's needs in a more efficient and adapted way. Globalization and digitization promote increasing interaction and new forms of economic organization such as collaborative economy. However, can it be understood that this new business model, more than others, has as its raison d'être in the search for the “common good”? A first approach suggests the presence of values related to collaboration between equals aiming at a common good. (...) However, the possible existence of a profit motive and the labor relations framework in which certain activities are carried out have created a debate on their ethical qualification. In this context, considering 278 companies in the collaborative economy sector, the relationship between the concept of “common good” and the collaborative economy is analyzed, while examining whether these new realities have an explicit ethical intention (of search for goods for people). According to the results, it is not possible to assert that these platforms have an ethical concern, but it is observed that they are in line with the common good and implicitly contribute to the service of society. (shrink)

Matten and Moon studied cross-national variations in corporate social responsibility (CSR) forms using an explicit-implicit framework. This article proposes a development and refinement of the explicit-implicit framework to account for, first, intranational variations of CSR, and, second, the role of individual managers in the actual process of developing CSR constructs within a given country. The specific national, institutional context, such as Norway, within which managers construct personal meaning for CSR, is ambiguous and possesses both different and potentially conflicting institutional logics (...) of the role and responsibility of business in a given society. The author suggests that explicit and implicit models of CSR differ in two key respects. One difference concerns whether corporate or collective responsibility mechanisms should be used to address social issues. The other difference concerns whether the scope of issues to which the corporate entity is expected to attend should be broad or narrow. The author proposes four institutional models of CSR that combine the explicit-implicit distinction with these two differences: Explicit Expansionist CSR, Implicit Contractive CSR, Implicit Expansionist CSR, and Explicit Contractive CSR. Focus group interviews with Norwegian managers empirically illuminate these models and the micro-level individual construction of variable meanings for CSR within a national, institutional context. (shrink)