This study aims to examine how service employees’ perceptions of corporate social responsibility affect their creativity at work and its mediated link through compassion at work and their intrinsic motivation. Working with a sample of 250 hotel employees in South Korea, structural equation modeling is employed to test research hypotheses. The results of this research suggest that employees’ perceptions of CSR are positively related to employee creativity. Second, compassion at work mediated the positive relationship between employees’ perceptions of CSR and (...) creativity. Third, employees’ intrinsic motivation also mediated the positive relationship between employees’ perceptions of CSR and employee creativity. Finally, the relationship between employees’ perceptions of CSR and employee creativity is sequentially and fully mediated by compassion at work and their intrinsic motivation. The theoretical and managerial implications of the results and limitations of the study are discussed, and future research directions are suggested. (shrink)

The Sadanch’iljŏng nonbyŏn 四端七情論辨, or Sach’il nonbyŏn 四七論辨, for short, primarily refers to a debate that began in the form of a correspondence between Yi Hwang and Ki Tae-sŭng in sixteenth-century Korea.1 It is generally agreed that the Four-Seven Debate “was a great theoretical achievement” and “also set an excellent example in the pursuit of philosophical discussions” in Korea.2 It was the most famous and influential debate in the history of Korean Neo-Confucianism, bringing about vigorous scholarly discussion and resulting in (...) the formation of two major competing schools, the T’oegye School and the Yulgok School.... (shrink)

ABSTRACT:We argue that Confucianism makes a fundamental contribution to understanding why civility is necessary for a morally decent workplace. We begin by reviewing some limits that traditional moral theories face in analyzing issues of civility. We then seek to establish a Confucian alternative. We develop the Confucian idea that even in business, humans may be sacred when they observe rituals culturally determined to express particular ceremonial significance. We conclude that managers and workers should understand that there is a broad range (...) of morally important rituals in organizational life and that managers should preserve and develop the intelligibility and integrity of many of these rituals. (shrink)

We offer a precautionary account of why business managers should proactively rethink about what kinds of automation firms ought to implement, by exploring two challenges that automation will potentially pose. We engage the current debate concerning whether life without work opportunities will incur a meaning crisis, offering an argument in favor of the position that if technological unemployment occurs, the machine age may be a structurally limited condition for many without work opportunities to have or add meaning to their lives. (...) We term this the axiological challenge. This challenge, if it turns out to be persuasive, leads to a second challenge, to which managers should pay special attention: the teleological challenge, a topic especially relevant to the broad literature about corporate purpose and governance. We argue that both the shareholder profit-maximization model and its major alternative, stakeholder theory, are insufficient to address the meaning crisis. Unless rebutted, the two challenges compel business leaders to proactively rethink the purpose of business for future society. Otherwise, businesses will be contributors to a major ethical crisis and societal externality in the coming society. (shrink)

Plato's penchant for mythmaking sits uneasily beside his reputation as the inventor of rationalist philosophy. Hegel's solution was to ignore the myths. Popper thought them disqualifying. Tae-Yeoun Keum responds by carving out a place for myth in the context of rationalism and shows how Plato's tales inspired history's great political thinkers.

Businesses increasingly rely on algorithms that are data-trained sets of decision rules (i.e., the output of the processes often called “machine learning”) and implement decisions with little or no human intermediation. In this article, we provide a philosophical foundation for the claim that algorithmic decision-making gives rise to a “right to explanation.” It is often said that, in the digital era, informed consent is dead. This negative view originates from a rigid understanding that presumes informed consent is a static and (...) complete transaction. Such a view is insufficient, especially when data are used in a secondary, noncontextual, and unpredictable manner—which is the inescapable nature of advanced artificial intelligence systems. We submit that an alternative view of informed consent—as an assurance of trust for incomplete transactions—allows for an understanding of why the rationale of informed consent already entails a right to ex post explanation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:We argue that Confucianism makes a fundamental contribution to understanding why civility is necessary for a morally decent workplace. We begin by reviewing some limits that traditional moral theories face in analyzing issues of civility. We then seek to establish a Confucian alternative. We develop the Confucian idea that even in business, humans may be sacred when they observe rituals culturally determined to express particular ceremonial significance. We conclude that managers and workers should understand that there is a broad range (...) of morally important rituals in organizational life and that managers should preserve and develop the intelligibility and integrity of many of these rituals. (shrink)

Most management researchers pause at the threshold of objective right and wrong. Their hesitation is understandable. Values imply a “subjective,” personal dimension, one that can invite religious and moral interference in research. The dominant epistemological camps of positivism and subjectivism in management stumble over the notion of moral objectivity. Empirical research can study values in human behavior, but hard-headed scientists should not assume that one value can be objectively better than another. In this article, we invite management researchers to rethink (...) this presumption. We show how accepting at least a limited form of moral objectivity, namely, an epistemic orientation that seeks objective moral reasons, can benefit management research by 1. guiding research practice; 2. using patterns of moral objectivity as clues for formulating empirical hypotheses for psychological explanations; and 3. adding prescriptive power to empirical theories. (shrink)

Recently, business organizations have increasingly turned to a novel form of non-monetary incentives—that is, “gamification,” which refers to a motivation technique using video game elements, such as digital points, badges, and friendly competition in non-game contexts like workplaces. The introduction of gamification to the context of human resource management has immediately become embroiled in serious moral debates. Most notable is the accusation that using gamification as a motivation tool, employers exploit workers. This article offers an in-depth analysis of the moral (...) charge of exploitation. This article maintains that there are no clear grounds for believing that gamification of labor is exploitative and that if gamification of labor involves a wrong or vice, it must be something other than exploitation. (shrink)

Previous studies have shown that the perception of neutral emotion stimuli can be negative rather than absolutely neutral. In the current study, we examined the negative bias of both neutral faces...

The massive introduction of artificial intelligence has triggered significant societal concerns, ranging from “technological unemployment” and the dominance of algorithms in the work place and in everyday life, among others. While AI is made by humans and is, therefore, dependent on the latter for its purpose, the increasing capabilities of AI to carry out productive activities for humans can lead the latter to unwitting slavish existence. This has become evident, for example, in the area of social media use, where AI (...) programmers tie psychology and persuasion to the human social need for approval and validation in ways that few users can resist. We argue that AI should serve humans with humans as masters and not the other way around. Moreover, we propose that virtue ethics might play a role to solidify the human as master of AI and guard against the alternative of AI as the master. (shrink)

Why did Plato conclude the Republic, arguably his most celebrated work of political theory, with the Myth of Er, an obscure story of indeterminate political-theoretical significance? This paper advances a novel reading of the Myth of Er that attends to the common plot that it shares with two earlier narrative interludes in the Republic. It suggests that Plato constructed the myth as an account of a search, akin to the sorting of potential philosopher-kings that underwrites the kallipolis’ educational curriculum, for (...) natures that have successfully absorbed the cumulative effects of their philosophical upbringing. The model of nature presented in the myth, in turn, helps us approach the category of nature as a working concept: we can recognize contexts in which it is useful to assume in otherwise complex and fluid individuals a fixed, indelible nature, while granting that our sense of what that consists in is subject to revision. (shrink)

People are often involuntarily laid off from their jobs through no fault of their own. Employees who are dismissed in this manner cannot always legitimately hold employers accountable for these miserable situations because the decision to implement layoffs is often the best possible outcome given the context—that is, layoffs in and of themselves may be “necessary evils.” Yet, even in circumstances in which layoffs qualify as “necessary evils,” morality demands that employers respect the dignity of those whose employment is involuntarily (...) terminated. In this paper I argue that to preserve the dignity of employees who are involuntarily terminated, in most cases employers have a substantial reason to offer a special kind of unemployment benefit, “severance pay.” To support my claim I draw and expand upon Bernard Williams’s analysis of “agent-regret,” which I believe greatly helps to address and articulate employers’ obligations in the context of involuntary termination. (shrink)

This paper argues that yu 欲 (desire), in Xunzi’s view, cannot by itself motivate action. Such a clarification will also bear on our understanding of the relation between xin 心 (the heart/mind) and yu in the Xunzi. This paper is divided into three main sections. The first section seeks to explicate the common assumption that yu can be an independent source of motivation. In the second section, I will conduct textual analysis that challenges such an assumption and argues that only (...) xin can by itself motivate action. In the third section, I explain that the issue of whether yu can conflict with xin is not applicable in Xunzi’s thought and extrapolate the implications that xin is always activated and that xin has natural inclination to pursue the objects of yu. For these reasons, the source of moral failure lies in xin being active in certain problematic ways. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this article I inquire into Confucian ethics from a non-ideal stance investigating the complex interaction between Confucian ideals and the reality of the modern workplace. I contend that even Confucian workers who regularly engage in social rites at the workplace have an internal, Confucian reason to appreciate the value of rights at the workplace. I explain, from a Confucian non-ideal perspective, why I disagree with the presumptuous idea that labor (or workplace) rights are necessarily incompatible with Confucian ideals and (...) values. Specifically, I argue that if managers were “sages,” the highest moral exemplars and authorities in the Confucian tradition, they would perceive that social rituals alone are often not a contextually intelligent and valued response for the development of intimate communities in the modern workplace. The sage perspective will lead Confucian managers to realize, from their own moral perspective, that they have good reason to balance rites with rights, so long as the adoption is extrinsically valuable and consistent with the Confucian ideal. This article contributes to the debates about Confucianism's compatibility with rights, helps Western human rights scholars better contextualize their arguments in Confucianism-influenced cultures, and contributes to the development of a Confucian or Chinese approach to business ethics. (shrink)

The sociology of symbolic power, as put forth by Pierre Bourdieu, treats the relations between behavior and socio-cultural structure. Bourdieu comprehends culture as a form of capital that follows certain laws of accumulation, exchange, and operation, and emphasizes that its symbolic form plays an important role in establishing and maintaining power structures.1 Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital comprises a variety of resources such as language capabilities, general cultural consciousness, aesthetic symbols, educational information, and level of education.2 His analysis of cultural (...) capital reveals three different processes of its formation.3 First, education fosters its formation, internalizing it through the.. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this article we investigate a philosophical problem for normative business ethics theory suggested by a phenomenon that contemporary psychologists call “bounded ethicality,” which can be identified with the putative fact that well-intentioned people, constrained by psychological limitations, make ethical choices inconsistent with their own ethical beliefs and commitments. When one combines the idea that bounded ethicality is pervasive with the idea that a person morally ought to do something only if she can, it raises a doubt about the practical (...) relevance of the moral principles that business ethics theory prescribes. We call this doubt the Radical Behavioral Challenge. It consists in the idea that people cannot generally conform to the normative ethical principles that business ethics theorists prescribe, and that these principles are therefore practically irrelevant. We answer the Radical Behavioral Challenge and explore normative implications of our answer. (shrink)

This study aims to contribute to the understanding of business news coverage of corporate social responsibility within a comparative international context by investigating two business newspapers, The Wall Street Journal from the United States and The Financial Times from the United Kingdom. Drawing on the news framing research and the implicit and explicit CSR framework of Matten and Moon, this content analysis shows that business news coverage of CSR in the United States and in the United Kingdom differs in terms (...) of news framing, motive attributions of CSR as a concept, motive attributions of referenced companies in relation to CSR, general tone toward the concept of CSR, and the general tone toward referenced companies in relation to CSR. Most significantly, findings suggest that business news plays different roles in constructing and legitimizing CSR in the two countries. In the United States, CSR’s legitimacy and its conceptual positivity may be more implied through the coverage of singular events or actors, whereas in the United Kingdom, CSR’s illegitimacy and its conceptual negativity may be more exposed for further discussion through the coverage of larger societal contexts. Other theoretical as well as practical implications are also discussed. (shrink)

The present study aims to deconstruct the myth of origin, a quest after essential identity, in the context of Japan's colonization of Korea (1910-1945). First, I will contextualize the myth of origin as a particular historical construction of Japanese colonization, which stems from Romantic nationalism in the second half of the 19 th century. Then, I will critique the structuralism, monologism, and colonialism standing behind the myth of origin through the lens of deconstruction, dialogism, and hybridity: (1) Jacques Derrida's deconstruction (...) and différance will show the self-implosion of the totalizing, centering vision of structuralism; (2) Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogism will analyze colonial discourse as a double-voiced discourse constituting both dominant discourse and counter-dominant discourse; (3) Homi Bhabha will demonstrate that colonial identity is ambivalent and hybrid through partial mimicry. (shrink)

A variety of stakeholders including investors, corporate managers, customers, suppliers, employees, researchers, and government policy makers have long been interested in the relationship between the financial performance of a corporation and its commitment to business ethics. As a subject of research, the relations between business ethics and corporate valuation has yet to be thoroughly quantified and investigated. This article is an effort to amend this inadequacy by demonstrating a statistically significant association between ethical commitment and corporate valuation measures. Consistent with (...) anecdotal evidence, we have found a significant association between the ethical commitment of Korean companies and their valuation on the Korean stock market. However, the result reveals that the association between ethical commitment and financial performance is not significantly supported. (shrink)