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  1. Dynamics for Integrative Social Contracts Theory: Norm Evolution and Individual Mobility.Duane Windsor - 2018 - Journal of Business Ethics 149 (1):83-95.
    This article proposes a specific logic of dynamics for integrative social contracts theory that combines two empirically oriented process extensions strengthening concreteness of Donaldson and Dunfee’s conceptualization, namely international policy regime theory and Tiebout migration. While either would help “dynamize” and “concretize” ISCT, the two combined are even more insightful. Real-world policy regime processes can develop concrete action-guiding norms instantiating hypernorms to guide business decisions. Donaldson and Dunfee placed empirical reliance on expectation of converging parallel evolution of universal principles and (...)
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  • Extant Social Contracts and the Question of Business Ethics.Ben Wempe - 2009 - Journal of Business Ethics 88 (S4):741 - 750.
    ISCT arguably forms the most promising impetus to a contractarian theory of business ethics presently available. In this article, I want to pay tribute to the lasting significance of Dunfee's contribution to the field of business ethics by analyzing the vital role of the idea of extant social contracts (ESCs) in the conceptual set up of the ISCT project. The construct of ESCs can be shown to shape the problem statement from which the ISCT project proceeds – indeed it helps (...)
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  • Four Design Criteria for any Future Contractarian Theory of Business Ethics.Ben Wempe - 2008 - Journal of Business Ethics 81 (3):697-714.
    This article assesses the quality of Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) as a social contract argument. For this purpose, it embarks on a comparative analysis of the use of the social contract model as a theory of political authority and as a theory of social justice. Building on this comparison, it then develops four criteria for any future contractarian theory of business ethics (CBE). To apply the social contract model properly to the domain of business ethics, it should be: (1) (...)
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  • How do Expatriate Managers Draw the Boundaries of Moral Free Space in the Case of Guanxi?Tolga Ulusemre & Xin Fang - 2021 - Journal of Business Ethics 176 (2):311-324.
    This paper explores expatriates’ ethical evaluations of and responses to guanxi in China through the lens of integrative social contracts theory. We conducted in-depth interviews with 14 expatriate managers who had spent, on average, 6.5 years working and living in China. Based on the content analysis of these interviews, we identified two different uses of guanxi: defensive and competitive. In general, the respondents found defensive guanxi moral in the Chinese context, while they considered competitive guanxi immoral. Based on our findings, (...)
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  • Who and What Really Matters to the Firm: Moving Stakeholder Salience beyond Managerial Perceptions.Pete Tashman & Jonathan Raelin - 2013 - Business Ethics Quarterly 23 (4):591-616.
    ABSTRACT:We develop the concept of stakeholder salience to account for stakeholders who should matter to the firm, even when managers do not perceive them as important. While managers are responsible for attributing salience to stakeholders, they can overlook or ignore stakeholder importance because of market frictions that affect managerial perceptions or induce opportunism. When this happens, corporate financial and social performance can suffer. Thus, we propose that the perceptions of organizational and societal stakeholders should also codetermine the salience of the (...)
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  • The Enduring Potential of Justified Hypernorms.Markus Scholz, Gastón de los Reyes & N. Craig Smith - 2019 - Business Ethics Quarterly 29 (3):317-342.
    ABSTRACT:The profound influence of Thomas Donaldson and Thomas Dunfee’s integrative social contracts theory on the field of business ethics has been challenged by Andreas Scherer and Guido Palazzo’s Habermasian approach, which has achieved prominence of late with articles that expressly question the defensibility of ISCT’s hypernorms. This article builds on recent efforts by Donaldson and Scherer to bridge their accounts by providing discursive foundations to the hypernorms at the heart of the ISCT framework. Extending prior literature, we propose an ISCT* (...)
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  • Three Roads to P2P Systems and Their Impact on Business Practices and Ethics.Ugo Pagallo & Massimo Durante - 2009 - Journal of Business Ethics 90 (S4):551 - 564.
    This article examines some of the most relevant issues concerning P2P systems so as to take sides in today's strongly polarized debate. The idea is to integrate a context-based perspective with an ontological representation of informational norms; thanks to a procedural outlook which is presented in terms of burden of proof More particularly, we examine three ''roads." First, the topological approach to complex social networks allows us to comprehend the laws according to which information is distributed through P2P systems and (...)
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  • A Social Contract for International Business Ethics.Paul Neiman - 2013 - Journal of Business Ethics 114 (1):75-90.
    This article begins with a detailed analysis of how the choice situation of a social contract for international business ethics can be constructed and justified. A choice situation is developed by analyzing conceptions of the multinational firm and the domain of international business. The result is a hypothetical negotiation between two fictional characters, J. Duncan Grey and Elizabeth Redd, who respectively represent the interests of businesses and communities seeking to engage in international trade. The negotiators agree on ethical principles governing (...)
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  • Understanding Privacy Online: Development of a Social Contract Approach to Privacy.Kirsten Martin - 2016 - Journal of Business Ethics 137 (3):551-569.
    Recent scholarship in philosophy, law, and information systems suggests that respecting privacy entails understanding the implicit privacy norms about what, why, and to whom information is shared within specific relationships. These social contracts are important to understand if firms are to adequately manage the privacy expectations of stakeholders. This paper explores a social contract approach to developing, acknowledging, and protecting privacy norms within specific contexts. While privacy as a social contract—a mutually beneficial agreement within a community about sharing and using (...)
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  • Diminished or Just Different? A Factorial Vignette Study of Privacy as a Social Contract.Kirsten E. Martin - 2012 - Journal of Business Ethics 111 (4):519-539.
    A growing body of theory has focused on privacy as being contextually defined, where individuals have highly particularized judgments about the appropriateness of what, why, how, and to whom information flows within a specific context. Such a social contract understanding of privacy could produce more practical guidance for organizations and managers who have employees, users, and future customers all with possibly different conceptions of privacy across contexts. However, this theoretical suggestion, while intuitively appealing, has not been empirically examined. This study (...)
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  • Digital Trust and Cooperation with an Integrative Digital Social Contract.Livia Levine - 2019 - Journal of Business Ethics 160 (2):393-407.
    I argue for the role of trust and cooperation as part of the foundation of digital commerce by expanding the reach of the Integrative Social Contract Theory of Donaldson and Dunfee. I propose that a digital business community can be a community in the morally relevant ways that Donaldson and Dunfee describe, and that the basic framework of ISCT can apply to the digital business world similarly to its application in the offline business world. I then analyze the roles of (...)
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  • The Separation Thesis Weighs Heavily on Integrative Social Contracts Theory: A Comprehensive Critique.César González-Cantón - 2022 - Philosophy of Management 21 (3):391-411.
    For more than three decades, Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) has been lauded as a business ethics theory particularly well suited to the international arena, especially because of its alleged ability to reconcile respect for cultural idiosyncrasies and normative teeth. However, this theory has also faced various objections, many of which its authors have responded to with varying degrees of satisfaction. As a contribution to this debate, this article provides a unifying rationale for many of those objections by exploring their (...)
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  • The “I” in ISCT: Normative and Empirical Facets of Integration.Katherina Glac & Tae Wan Kim - 2009 - Journal of Business Ethics 88 (S4):693-705.
    Integrative social contracts theory is a novel approach to normative questions and has been widely evaluated, discussed, and applied by academics and practitioners alike. While the "I" in ISCT leads the title, it has not received the analytical attention it deserves, especially since the "integrative" component in ISCT is multifaceted and at the conceptual core of the theory. In this paper we therefore take a closer look at two facets of integration. First, we examine the normative integration that takes place (...)
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  • Advancing Integrative Social Contracts Theory: A Habermasian Perspective.Dirk Ulrich Gilbert & Michael Behnam - 2009 - Journal of Business Ethics 89 (2):215-234.
    We critically assess integrative social contracts theory (ISCT) and show that the concept particularly lacks of moral justification of substantive hypernorms. By drawing on Habermasian philosophy, in particular discourse ethics and its recent application in the theory of deliberative democracy , we further advance ISCT and show that social contracting in business ethics requires a well-justified procedural rather than a substantive focus for managing stakeholder relations. We also replace the monological concept of hypothetical thought experiments in ISCT by a concept (...)
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  • The Principle of Good Faith: Toward Substantive Stakeholder Engagement.Cedric E. Dawkins - 2014 - Journal of Business Ethics 121 (2):283-295.
    Although stakeholder theory is concerned with stakeholder engagement, substantive operational barometers of engagement are lacking in the literature. This theoretical paper attempts to strengthen the accountability aspect of normative stakeholder theory with a more robust notion of stakeholder engagement derived from the concept of good faith. Specifically, it draws from the labor relations field to argue that altered power dynamics are essential underpinnings of a viable stakeholder engagement mechanism. After describing the tenets of substantive engagement, the paper draws from the (...)
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  • Agonistic Pluralism and Stakeholder Engagement.Cedric Dawkins - 2015 - Business Ethics Quarterly 25 (1):1-28.
    ABSTRACT:This paper argues that, although stakeholder engagement occurs within the context of power, neither market-centered CSR nor the deliberative model of political CSR adequately addresses the specter of power asymmetries and the inevitability of conflict in stakeholder relations, particularly for powerless stakeholders. Noting that the objective of stakeholder engagement should not be benevolence toward stakeholders, but mechanisms that address power asymmetries such that stakeholders are able to protect their own interests, I present a framework of stakeholder engagement based on agonistic (...)
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  • Institutional Pressures and Ethical Reckoning by Business Corporations.Frances Chua & Asheq Rahman - 2011 - Journal of Business Ethics 98 (2):307 - 329.
    Prior studies have provided explanations for the presence, use and dissemination of codes of corporate ethics or codes of corporate conduct of business corporations. Most such explanations are functional in nature, and are descriptive as they are derived from the codes and their associated documents. We search for more underlying explanations using two complementary theories: first, social contract theories explaining the exogenous and endogenous reasons of organizational behavior, and then institutional theory explaining why organizations take similar measures in response to (...)
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  • Social Contracting in a Pluralist Process of Moral Sense Making: A Dialogic Twist on the ISCT.Jerry M. Calton - 2006 - Journal of Business Ethics 68 (3):329-346.
    This paper applies Wempe’s (2005, Business Ethics Quarterly 15(1), 113–135) boundary conditions that define the external and internal logics for contractarian business ethics theory, as a system of argumentation for evaluating current or prospective institutional arrangements for arriving at the “good life,” based on the principles and practices of social justice. It does so by showing that a more dynamic, process-oriented, and pluralist ‘dialogic twist’ to Donaldson and Dunfee’s (2003, ‘Social Contracts: sic et non’, in P. Heugens, H. van Oosterhout (...)
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  • Deliberative Business Ethics.Ryan Burg - 2009 - Journal of Business Ethics 88 (S4):665 - 683.
    Social norms are an important input for ethical decisions in any business context. However, the cross-cultural discovery of extant social norms presents a special challenge to international management because norms may be inscrutable to outsiders. This article considers the contribution of Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) to the analysis of social norms in business ethics. It questions the origins and dynamics of norms from a sociological perspective, and identifies a tension between prescriptive efforts to make norms obligatory and positivist accounts (...)
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  • The Deliberative Test, a New Procedural Method for Ethical Decision Making in Integrative Social Contracts Theory.Federico Ast - 2019 - Journal of Business Ethics 155 (1):207-221.
    Integrative Social Contracts Theory is a popular framework to assist managers in making decisions on international moral dilemmas. Although the theory has been praised for its comprehensiveness and sophistication, commentators have raised concerns regarding the justification and identification of substantive hypernorms, fundamental moral principles valid across cultures. This paper introduces the deliberative test, a new method for testing the cross-cultural validity of ethical norms in ISCT. The test relies on the concept of Deliberative Capacity, arising from new developments in system-level (...)
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  • On Firms and the Next Generations: Difficulties and Possibilities for Business Ethics Inquiry.Daniel Arenas & Pablo Rodrigo - 2016 - Journal of Business Ethics 133 (1):165-178.
    Despite the centrality of the topic for the debate on sustainability, future generations have largely been ignored by business ethics. This neglect is in part due to the enormous philosophical challenges posed by the concepts of future generations and intergenerational duties. This article reviews some of these difficulties and defends that much clarity would be gained from making a distinction between future generations and the next generations. It also argues that the concept of next generations offers a better starting point (...)
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