CSR NEWS | csr-literature.net - the online bibliography in business ethics http://csr-news.net/literature/ (c) Wietse Balkema, Arthur van Bunningen, Hendri Hondorp, Dennis Reidsma Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) has grown considerably over the past three decades. One form of SRI, engagement-SRI, is today by far the most practiced form of SRI (in assets managed) and has the potential to mainstream SRI even further. However, lack of formalized engagement procedures and evaluation tools leave the engagement practice too opaque for such a mainstreaming. This article can be considered as a first step in the development of a standard for the engagement practice. By developing an engagement heuristic, this article offers a more transparent engagement dialog. Drawing on Stevenson's and Austin's speech-act theories, this article develops a classification of management's responses to the signaling of allegations and controversies on two dimensions: a factual dimension concerning (dis)agreements on factual claims and an attitudinal dimension concerning (dis)agreements on responsibilities, values, and norms. On the basis of the distinctions this article develops, the authors provide for a synoptic table and offer a next-step heuristic for the engagement process that started with signaling a concern to management. The article uses an engagement logic that, while keeping the exit option for the investor open, allows management to address signaled concerns without having to let down or to opt out at the first setback in the dialog process between investor and investee corporation. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13636 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST This paper explores the possible impact of the recent legal developments on organizational whistleblowing on the autonomy and responsibility of whistleblowers. In the past thirty years numerous pieces of legislation have been passed to offer protection to whistleblowers from retaliation for disclosing organisational wrongdoing. An area that remains uncertain in relation to whistleblowing and its related policies in organisations, is whether these policies actually increase the individualisation of work, allowing employees to behave in accordance with their conscience and in line with societal expectations or whether they are another management tool to control employees and protect organisations from them. The assumptions of whistleblower protection with regard to moral autonomy are examined in order to clarify the purpose of whistleblower protection at work. The two extreme positions in the discourse of whistleblowing are that whistleblowing legislation and policies either aim to enable individual responsibility and moral autonomy at work, or they aim to protect organisations by allowing them to control employees and make them liable for ethics at work. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13635 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST This research investigates the efficacy of business ethics intervention, tests a theoretical model that the love of money is directly or indirectly related to propensity to engage in unethical behavior (PUB), and treats college major (business vs. psychology) and gender (male vs. female) as moderators in multi-group analyses. Results suggested that business students who received business ethics intervention significantly changed their conceptions of unethical behavior and reduced their propensity to engage in theft; while psychology students without intervention had no such changes. Therefore, ethics training had some impacts on business students’ learning and education (intelligence). For our theoretical model, results of the whole sample ( N = 298) revealed that Machiavellianism (measured at Time 1) was a mediator of the relationship between the love of money (measured at Time 1) and unethical behavior (measured at Time 2) (the Love of Money - Machiavellianism - Unethical Behavior). Further, this mediating effect existed for business students ( n = 198) but not for psychology students ( n = 100), for male students ( n = 165) but not for female students ( n = 133), and for male business students ( n = 128) but not for female business students ( n = 70). Moreover, when examined alone, the direct effect (the Love of Money - Unethical Behavior) existed for business students but not for psychology students. We concluded that a short business ethics intervention may have no impact on the issue of virtue (wisdom). +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13634 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST From an analysis of the role of companies in multi-stakeholder networks and a critical review of stakeholder theory, it is argued that companies practise two different types of stakeholder management: they focus on their organization's welfare (organization- focussed stakeholder management) or on an issue that affects their relationship with other societal groups and organizations (issue-focussed stakeholder management). These two approaches supplement each other. It is demonstrated that issue-focussed stakeholder management dominates in multi-stakeholder networks, because it enables corporations to address complex problems and challenges in cooperation with stakeholders. Since deliberation is the key to issue-focussed stakeholder management, it helps to cope with numerous and at times contradictory stakeholder demands and enhances the legitimacy of corporate activities. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13633 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST This article describes a survey among Finnish business students to find answers to the following questions: How do business students define a well-run company? What are their attitudes on the responsibilities of business in society? Do the attitudes of women students differ from those of men? What is the influence of business education on these attitudes? Our sample comprised 217 students pursuing a master’s degree in business studies at two Finnish universities. The results show that, as a whole, students valued the stakeholder model of the company more than the shareholder model. However, attitudes differed according to gender: women students were more in favor of the stakeholder model and placed more weight on corporate ethical, environmental, and societal responsibilities than their men counterparts - both at the beginning and at the end of their studies. Thus, no gender socialization effect of business school education could be observed in this sense. Business school education was found to shape women and men students' attitudes in two ways. Firstly, valuation of the shareholder model increased and, secondly, the importance of equal-opportunity employment decreased in the course of education. This raises the question whether the educational context is creating an undesirable tendency among future business professionals. The results further suggest that the sociocultural context can make a difference in how corporate social responsibility is perceived. The article also discusses possible ways to influence the attitudes of business students. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13632 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST Stakeholder theory has gained currency in the business and society literature in recent years in light of its practicality from the perspective of managers and scholars. In accounting for the recent ascendancy of stakeholder theory, this article presents an overview of two traditional conceptualizations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Carroll: 1979, 'A Three-Dimensional Conceptual Model of Corporate Performance', The Academy of Management Review 4(4), 497-505 and Wood: 1991, 'Corporate Social Performance Revisited', The Academy of Management Review 16(4), 691-717), highlighting their predominant inclination toward providing static taxonomic CSR descriptions. The article then makes the case for a stakeholder approach to CSR, reviewing its rationale and outlining how it has been integrated into recent empirical studies. In light of this review, the article adopts a stakeholder framework - the Ethical Performance Scorecard (EPS) proposed by Spiller (2000, 'Ethical Business and Investment: A Model For Business and Society', Journal of Business Ethics 27, 149-160) - to examine the CSR approach of a sample of Lebanese and Syrian firms with an interest in CSR and test relevant hypotheses derived from the CSR/stakeholder literature. The findings are analyzed and implications drawn regarding the usefulness of a stakeholder approach to CSR. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13631 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST This study explored the influence of personal values on destructive leader behavior. Student participants completed a managerial assessment center that presented them with ambiguous leadership decisions and problems. Destructive behavior was defined as harming organizational members or striving for short-term gains over long-term organizational goals. Results revealed that individuals with self-enhancement values were more destructive than individuals with self-transcendence values were, with the core values of power (self-enhancement) and universalism (self-transcendence) being most influential. Results also showed that individuals defined and structured leadership problems in a manner that reflected their value systems, which in turn affected the problem solutions they generated. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13630 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST As moral decision making in financial markets incorporates moral considerations into investment decisions, some rational decision theorists argue that moral considerations would introduce inefficiency to investment decisions. However, market demand for socially responsible investment is increasing, suggesting that investment decisions are influenced by both financial and moral considerations. Several models can be applied to explain moral behavior. We test the suitability of (a) multiple attribute utility theory (MAUT), (b) theory of planned behavior, and (c) issue-contingent model of ethical decision making in organizations. In an experimental setting, 141 participants traded company shares in a computerized asset market. Over 12 periods, companies varied in morality (i.e., treatment of employees) and in profitability (i.e., expected dividends per share). Participants' bids and asks for shares were recorded. Results indicate that moral considerations influence investment decisions, controlling for profit. Differences between the three models are discussed. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13629 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST Using Hofstede's culture theory (1980, , Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviours, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nation. Sage, NewYork), the current study incorporates the moral development (e.g. Thorne, ; Thorne and Magnan, 2000; Thorne et al., ) and multidimensional ethics scale (e.g. Cohen et al., ; Cohen et al., 1996b; Cohen et al., ; Flory et al., ) approaches to compare the ethical reasoning and decisions of Canadian and Mainland Chinese final year undergraduate accounting students. The results indicate that Canadian accounting students' formulation of an intention to act on a particular ethical dilemma (deliberative reasoning) as measured by the moral development approach (Thorne, ) was higher than Mainland Chinese accounting students. The current study proposes that the five factors identified by the multidimensional ethics scale (MES), as being relevant to ethical decision making can be placed into the three levels of ethical reasoning identified by Kohlberg's (, The Development of Modes of Moral Thinking and Choice in the Years Ten to Sixteen. University of Chicago, Doctoral dissertation) theory of cognitive moral development. Canadian accounting students used post-conventional MES factors (moral equity, contractualism, and utilitarianism) more frequently and made more ethical audit decisions than Chinese accounting students. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13628 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST This article explores the normative assumptions about the self that are implicitly and explicitly embedded in critiques of organisational control. Two problematic aspects of control are examined - the capacity of some organisations to produce unquestioning commitment, and the elicitation of 'false' selves. Drawing on the work of Rom Harry, and some examples of organisational-self processes gone awry, I investigate the dynamics involved and how they violate the normative expectations that we hold regarding the self, particularly its moral autonomy and authenticity. The article concludes by arguing that, despite post-structuralist challenges, some notion of a 'core' or 'real' self still holds salience for employees negotiating their identities within regimes of control. The assumptions and expectations surrounding this aspect of self are also a pivotal element in the western intellectual tradition that promotes and enables critique. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13627 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST This article analyses the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility in relation to Human Resources (HR) management. Five potential tools are defined and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Finally, the implementation of the most advanced and powerful tool in this area is studied: the SA8000 standard. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13626 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST Lorenzo Sacconi's recent re-statement of his social contract account of business ethics is a major contribution to our understanding of the normative nature of CSR as the expression of a fair multi-party agreement supported by the economic rationality of each participant. However, at one crucial point in his theory, Sacconi introduces the concept of stakeholders' conformist preferences - their disposition to punish the firm if it defects from the agreement, refusing to abide by its own explicit CSR policies and norms. We take issue with him over this concept: we show that the assumption of conformist preferences is a moral premise, and it arguably weakens the normativity of the theory as a whole. As an alternative, we propose an evolutionary game theoretic approach. We draw upon recent applications of evolutionary game theory to moral philosophy (Skyrms, Danielson), and we use a computer simulation of the trust game. According to this approach, the failure of the logic of reputation, which is the problem conformist preferences were introduced to solve, is overcome through the dynamics of interaction. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13625 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST Forsyth's (1980) Ethics Position Questionnaire and Hunt et al.'s (1989) Corporate Ethical Value Questionnaire are used to examine the ethical ideologies of senior managers from organizations listed in the Australian Stock Exchange. The results indicate how corporate ethical values, religion, gender, and age are related to the idealism and relativism of senior Australian managers. After discussing the results, limitations of the study are offered. Finally, managerial implications are provided and recommendations for future research are given. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13624 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST This study examines the relation between firms' corporate philanthropic giving and their performance in three other social domains – employee relations, environmental issues, and product safety. Based on a sample of 384 U.S. companies and using data pooled from 1998 through 2000, we find that worse performers in the other social areas are both more likely to make charitable contributions and that the extent of their giving is larger than for better performers. Analyses of each separate area of social performance, however, indicate that the relation between giving and negative social performance (cited concerns) only holds for the environmental issues and product safety areas. We find no significant association between corporate philanthropy and employee relations concerns. In general, these findings suggest that corporate philanthropy may be more a tool of legitimization than a measure of corporate social responsibility. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13623 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST This study compares the level of ethics research published in 25 business-ethics journals and the Top-40 journals for the accounting, finance, and marketing disciplines. This research documents an increasing level of ethics research in the accounting and marketing disciplines starting in 1992. While the level of finance doctorates reported by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) has increased at a higher rate (40.4%) than accounting (18.4%) and marketing (32.2%) since 1995, this increase has not been reflected in the level of ethics scholarship in finance. The level of ethics scholarship in finance remained relatively constant between 1987 and 2005 at an average of seven coauthor-adjusted articles per year. However, both the accounting and marketing disciplines now regularly publish approximately 50 coauthor-adjusted articles each year. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13622 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST Shareholder activism has been largely neglected in the few available studies on corporate governance in sub Saharan Africa. Following the recent challenges posed by the Cadbury Nigeria Plc, this paper examines shareholder activism in an evolving corporate governance institutional context and identifies strategic opportunities associated with shareholders' empowerment through changes in code of corporate governance and recent developments in information and communications technologies in Nigeria; especially in relation to corporate social responsibility in Nigeria. It is expected that the paper would contribute to the scarce literature on corporate governance and accountability in Africa. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13621 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST Theory and research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) have been concerned primarily with identifying stakeholders, categorizing types of CSR initiatives, and linking corporate social performance to firm performance. In this conceptual article, the authors assess strategic CSR initiatives, inquiring into the conditions that might give rise to a sustainable competitive advantage in social performance. In what circumstances does a firm's CSR initiative create a first-mover advantage, and when should a firm prefer an early- or late-adopter position? Using the resource-based view and the asymmetries approach of first-mover advantages, the authors propose that for a CSR initiative to lead to a sustainable first-mover advantage, it must be central to the firm's mission, provide firm-specific benefits, and be made visible to external audiences. These strategic attributes generate internal sustainability and must be complemented to ensure external defensibility by a firm's ability to assess its environment, manage its stakeholders, and deal with social issues. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13620 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST Although it is widely accepted that corporate reputation influences organization-stakeholder interactions, there is no theoretical framework that conceptualizes this aspect in stakeholders' decision-making processes for establishing various forms of relationships with a firm. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this article provides a theoretical model that explains the role corporate reputation has in the process through which stakeholders decide to establish relationships with a firm. It is argued that the stakeholder decision-making process for exchange with a company is based on several exchange rules: corporate reputation, social legitimacy, pragmatic legitimacy, and exchange benefits. The article concludes with a case study of James Hardie Industries in Australia, which illustrates the function of the proposed conceptual model. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13619 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST This article researches factors that influence price fairness judgments. The empirical literature suggests several factors: reference prices, the costs of the seller, a self-interest bias, and the perceived motive of sellers. Using a Dutch sample, we find empirical evidence that these factors significantly affect perceptions of fair prices. In addition, we find that the perceived fairness of prices is also influenced by other distributional concerns that are independent of the transaction. In particular, price increases are judged to be fairer if they benefit poor people or small organizations rather than rich people or big organizations. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13618 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST According to Arrighi and Silver, the United States faces a crisis of declining hegemony historically characterized by stagnating wages, hypertrophy of the financial sector, and the shifting of production overseas. Previous cycles suggest that the fate of workers within the hegemonic core depends in part on their political and organizational response. For a generation, organized labor in the United States has sought ways to exercise influence over private and public pension funds. As a result, union staffers have become sophisticated shareholder activists. Recent financial scandals have created a new opening for these activists, who have responded by forming coalitions to reform executive pay. The recent dismissal of a California Personnel Employees Retirement System official implies limits to this investor "pluralism," but the situation is hardly settled. Another economic downturn might move the interests of investors and workers closer together, and shareholder activists could play a role settling the resulting conflicts over the distribution of income. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13617 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one by Petya Puncheva on the role of corporate reputation in the stakeholder decision-making process and another by Kelly D. Martin and Beverly Kracher on the online business protest. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13616 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST This doctoral thesis examines the influence of relative performance and managerial incentives on corporate financial misrepresentation, and then tests the relationship between misrepresentation and subsequent operating performance, including the moderating effects of change in board composition and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) turnover. Using a hand-collected data set from several archival sources of company records, the study includes a combination of estimation techniques, including categorical dependent variable and fixed-effect methods, all conducted using a matched sample of misrepresenting and nonmisrepresenting firms. The author draws several important conclusions from the empirical analyses. First, CEO incentive pay and poor relative performance increase the likelihood of misrepresentation. Second, misrepresentation impairs subsequent operating performance, although this negative effect can be partially offset by CEO replacement and increased board independence. The study advances our academic understanding of corporate misconduct and contributes to academic theory across research literatures, including strategic management, organization theory, and business ethics. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13615 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST The article announces the changes in the "Business & Society" journal. From this point forward, all communications concerning this journal should go only to the current editor, professor Duane Windsor. Future issues will begin to combine acceptanes from professors John F. Mahon and Windsor without specific identification of who handled the submission. The journal welcomes submissions that will make strong theoretical and/or empirical contributions to the various fields falling within or overlapping with the broad rubric of business and society studies. It also willing to consider commentary material and research notes addressing important topics within that rubric. Further, the journal will also consider book reviews and dissertation abstracts. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13614 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST In this article, the authors lay the foundation for the emerging area of research on online protest tactics mobilized against business. The authors offer a definition of online business protest tactics and distinguish them from related activities such as electronic civil disobedience and cybercrime. They also appeal to the interest-group literature as one theoretical foundation for this area of research. Based on the degree to which each tactic involves intrusion, disruption, or damage, the authors categorize the array of online business protest tactics into a typology, providing definitions and illustrative examples from the business press for each. They advance a dualistic framework to evaluate the intermediate and ultimate effectiveness of the various online business protest tactics using a set of criteria relevant to both online and off-line environments, and conclude by suggesting avenues for future research. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13613 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST Whistle-blowing is generally considered from the viewpoint of professional morality. Morality rejects the idea of choice and the interests of the professional as immoral. Yet the dreadful retaliations against the messengers of the truth make it necessary for morality to leave a way out of whistle-blowing. This is why it forges rights (sometimes called duties) to trump the duty to the public prescribed by professional codes. This serves to hide the obvious fact that whether to blow the whistle is indeed a choice, not a matter of objective duty. One should also notice that if it fails to achieve anything then blowing the whistle was the wrong decision (or maybe the right decision that nobody would want to make). There is nevertheless a tendency to judge it based on the motivation of the whistle blower. In a way, whistle blowers should strive to act like saints. Yet, it is logically impossible to hold both whistle-blowing as mandatory and whistle-blowers as heroes or saints. Moreover, this tends to value the great deeds of a few over the lives of the many, which is incompatible with the basic assumptions of morality. But consistency is not a main feature of professional morality. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13612 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST Vocational ethics and vocational moral socialization are important for the business ethical climate in a given country and in a given industry, but have not received attention in the literature. Our article suggests vocational ethics as a legitimate sub-specialty for business ethics research and development. The article addresses the exposure of vocational students to a combination of vocational school-based and workplace-based socialization, and outlines an agenda for teaching-oriented research and research-based teaching. More specifically, we first draft a conceptual frame of reference and then report results and experiences from a scenario-based pilot study at one of the biggest vocational schools in the country. As a third step such a preliminary situation analysis inspires a number of suggestions for how one could start with developing this field, practically, empirically and theoretically. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13611 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST This article attempts to understand and develop the morality of everyday activities in organizations. Aristotle's concept of phronesis, practical wisdom, is utilized to describe the morality of the everyday work activities at two call centres of an Australian insurance company. The ethnographic data suggests that ethical judgements at the lower level of the organization are practical rather than theoretical; emergent rather than static; ambiguous rather than clear-cut; and particular rather than universal. Ethical codes are of limited value here and it is argued that by developing phronesis members of the organization can improve their capacity to deal with this ethical complexity. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13610 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST This study proposed a novel construct - green core competence - to explore its positive effects on green innovation and green images of firms. The results showed that green core competences of firms were positively correlated to their green innovation performance and green images. In addition, this research also verified two types of green innovation performance had partial mediation effects between green core competences and green images of firms. Therefore, investment in the development of green core competence was helpful to businesses for the enhancement of their green innovation and green images. Furthermore, this study found that green core competence, two types of green innovation performance, and green images of medium & small enterprises (SMEs) were all significantly less than those of large enterprises in the information and electronics industry in Taiwan. Therefore, there was the advantage of firm size for the green core competence in this industry, and it was imperative for SMEs to develop and create their green core competences to strengthen their green innovation performance, and green images. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13609 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST There are major concerns about the level of personal borrowing, particularly sourced from credit cards. This paper charts the progress of an initiative to create a Responsible Lending Index (RLI) for the credit industry. The RLI proposed to voluntarily benchmark lending standards and promote best practice within the credit industry by involving suppliers of credit, customer representatives and regulators. However, despite initial support from some banks, consumer bodies and the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, it failed to gain sufficient support from financial institutions in its original format. The primary reasons for this were related to the complexity of building such a robust index and the banks trade body's fear of exposing its members to public scrutiny. A revised alternative, the Responsible Lending Initiative, was proposed which took into account these concerns. However, the Association of Payment Clearing Service (APACS), the trade body of the credit industry, then effectively destroyed the proposal. This article describes an attempt to address the challenges in the credit card industry with the initiation of the RLI, reflected in stakeholder discourse and in the context of a wider concern expressed by the involved stakeholders in terms of the need for greater responsibility in the banking industry's lending practices. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13608 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST This study examines the social impacts of labor-related corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies or corporate codes of conduct on upholding labor standards through a case study of CSR discourses and codes implementation of Reebok - a leading branded company enjoying a high-profiled image for its human rights achievement - in a large Taiwanese-invested athletic footwear factory located in South China. I find although implementation of Reebok labor-related codes has resulted in a 'race to ethical and legal minimum' labor standards when notoriously inhumane and seriously illegal labor rights abuses were curbed, Chinese workers were forced to work harder and faster but, earned less payment and the employee-elected trade union installed through codes implementation operated more like a 'company union' rather than an autonomous workers' organization representing worker' interests. In order to explain the paradoxical effects of Reebok labor-related codes on labor standards, I argue the result is determined by both structural forces and agency-related factors embedded in industrial, national and local contexts. To put it shortly, I find the effectiveness of Reebok labor-related codes is constrained not only by unsolved tension between Reebok's impetus for profit maximization and commitment to workers' human rights, but also by hard-nosed competition realities at marketplace, and Chinese government's insufficient protection of labor rights. Despite drawing merely from a single case study, these findings illuminate key determinants inhibiting the effectiveness of labor-related CSR policies or codes in upholding labor standards, and hence two possible way-outs of the deadlock: (1) sharing cost for improving labor standards among key players in global supply chain; and (2) combining regulatory power of voluntary codes and compulsory state legislations. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13607 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST Ex parte communications can become an administrative quagmire for anyone trying to deal with tribunals that regulate business matters. These communications involve contact between a decision maker and one party outside the presence of another, interested party. At a time when codes of ethics are enacted to make corporate financial officers and boards of directors more accountable to their stockholders, and thus, to restore the confidence of the investing public, it appears most important that administrative judges and hearing officers adhere strictly to their own Codes of Conduct. This article defines and explains ex parte contacts and consequent problems that might arise during administrative appeals. It is not the author's intent to present the law of any specific jurisdiction, but to present a general overview of typical state law in the United States, a market of interest to many entrepreneurs and exporters worldwide. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13606 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST 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) self-disciplined, i.e., not aspire results beyond what the contract model can realistically establish; (2) argumentative, i.e., it should seek to provide principles that are demonstrative results of the contractarian method; (3) task-directed, i.e., it should be clear what the social contract thought-experiment is intended to model; and (4) domain-specific, i.e., the contractarian choice situation should be tailored to the defining problems of business ethics. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13605 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST The article reports findings of a study conducted to explore the cognitive moral logics used for considering software piracy as ethical or unethical. Since the objective was to elicit the moral logics from the respondents, semi-structured in-depth interviews of 38 software professionals of India were conducted. The content of the interviews was analyzed using the grounded theory framework which does not begin with constructs and their interlinkages and then seek proof instead it begins with an area of study and allows them to emerge from that area of study. Given the objective of exploring moral logics, grounded theory seemed an appropriate choice. Results revealed that 21 respondents considered software piracy unethical whereas 17 did not. Though economic reasons formed the most fundamental logic in both the cases, an overall analysis revealed that the respondents mostly used moral justification (neutralization) for not considering software piracy unethical whereas those considering it unethical used normative (principled) logics. The interconnections among logics are analyzed and results are discussed along with the limitations of the study. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13604 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST The purpose of this research was to investigate, for the first time, tertiary education students' ethical judgements in the Republic of Cyprus academic environment. The authors developed and administered a quantitative questionnaire to a sample of 1,000 individuals currently pursuing accredited degrees at two tertiary institutions. Statistical analysis revealed four factors, named violation of school regulations, selfishness, cheating, and computer ethics that describe students' ethical judgements in the academic environment. The results indicate that students exhibit the lowest tolerance with ethical issues relevant with selfishness and highest with issues relevant with computer ethics. In addition, a number of differences were revealed when the authors investigated the relationship between the four retained factors and variables such as gender, year of study, type of academic discipline, and religion. Finally, reflecting on the research findings, a number of practical recommendations are made mainly to educational institutions that wish to redefine their policies and procedures regarding ethics within their academic environment. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13603 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST Due process is the means by which ethical constraints are placed on administrative decision-making. I have developed a model of variation in due process and use this model to explore the implementation of 'due process' norms by three standard-setting bodies that are created, funded, and overseen by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants - the Accounting Standards Board, the Auditing and Assurance Standards Board, and the Public Sector Accounting Standards Board. I conducted two analyses: a comparative analysis of the implementation of due process norms based on differences among the three cases; and, a critique of the due process norms followed by these boards based on their internal logic and a set of best practices identified in other contexts for due process by standard setters. I have presented evidence that due process norms are more fully developed, where standards are enforced by the state and the heterogeneity of users is greatest. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13602 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST This study investigates the market reaction to corporate press releases announcing donations to the relief effort following the December, 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia. Based on a sample of 79 U.S. companies, results indicate a statistically significant positive 5-day cumulative abnormal return. While differences in the timing of the press releases do not appear to have influenced market reactions, the amount of the donations did. Overall, the results appear to support Godfrey's ( Academy of Management Review 30, 777-798; ) assertion that philanthropic giving must be perceived as being a genuine manifestation of the firm’s underlying social responsiveness in order to increase firm value. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13601 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST It is a supreme irony that given the requirement for rebellious creativity, organizations discourage individuality. Accordingly, these cases of creative rebellion contain the seeds of a more informed criticism of the dominant management paradigm. The conventional notion of efficiency is questioned. The concept of moral efficiency is explained. The cases examined describe and analyze: (1) Refusal to concur with the findings of an aircraft accident report that covers up senior officer management weakness. (2) Falsification of data in order to overcome the dysfunctional impact of a management information system. A deconstruction of these stories suggests theoretical as well as practical tension between the dominant normative management paradigm and the manner in which an innovative perspective of individual ethics pushes toward adaptive solutions to problems that cannot be solved by orthodoxy. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13600 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST In this article I will look into Corporate Legal Responsibility taking into account Levinas's notion of infinite responsibility, as well as his understanding of ethical language. My account of Levinas's philosophy will show that it challenges - breaking down - deeply entrenched distinctions in the dominant strands of moral philosophy, within which the theory of individual responsibility is embedded, such as between:(1) duty to others on the one hand and supererogation on the other; (2) perfect duty to others on the one hand and imperfect duties to others on the other; (3) insiders and outsiders; kith and kin on the one hand and strangers on the other; Levina's moral vision is an inclusive one which embraces all of humanity (at least of those present today) irrespective of historical, linguistic, cultural differences and diversities. In other words, each has responsibilities for and duties towards all others. Of course, one might say that there is nothing new about a universalising ethics - after all Kantianism, liberalism as well as utilitarianism are well known instances. However, more crucially, all these traditional moral philosophies uphold the theory of individual responsibility, which is rooted in the philosophy of individualism. Such a philosophy can make sense only of the concept of individual moral/legal agency but not corporate agency. Therefore, in this article I will attempt to show that the Levinasian vision is able to help us change our view with respect to corporate responsibility. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13599 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST The mainstream literature on corporate governance is based on the premise of conflicts of interest in a competitive game played by variously defined stakeholders and thus builds explicitly and/or implicitly on masculinist ethical theories. This article argues that insights from feminist ethics, and in particular ethics of care, can provide a different, yet relevant, lens through which to study corporate governance. Based on feminist ethical theories, the article conceptualises a governance model that is different from the current normative orthodoxy. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13598 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST Given that citizenship challenges the basis and workings of the basic institutions market, state, and civil society, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) become an important moral tenet found in some codes of ethical principles. This study explores service-oriented OCBs and their determinants. Three dimensions of service-oriented OCBs (loyalty, service delivery, and participation) are hypothetically influenced by distributive justice, procedural justice, personal cooperativeness, and the need for social approval through the mediation of organizational commitment. The three dimensions of OCBs are hypothetically influenced by personal cooperativeness, need for social approval, task interdependence, and outcome interdependence through the mediation of social network ties. The model is tested using data from contact employees at several financial holding companies in Taiwan. Test results reveal that the relationships between need for social approval and organizational commitment and those between task interdependence and social network ties are insignificant, whereas all other paths are significant. This study also provides managerial implications and limitations. ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR Copyright of Journal of Business Ethics is the property of Springer Science & Business Media B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts) +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13597 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST The article focuses on ethical and social issues considering the private equity-leveraged buyout style of financial institution (PE-LBO). It states that PE-LBO has suffered from several financial and liquidity crises since its emergence in the late 1970s. It explains how the PE-LBO operates as a form of finance capitalism, and compares it with capitalism types such as managerial capitalism, family business capitalism, and shareholder value capitalism. It analyzes social and ethical issues that are structurally related to the PE-LBO, and considers several potential solutions and/or reforms. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13596 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST The article focuses on the ethics of price gouging. It describes price gouging as an increase of prices by sellers beyond the level needed to cover cost increases in the wake of an emergency. It states that most states consider price gouging to be a civil or criminal offense, and the majority of people consider it immoral. It suggests that laws prohibiting the practice of price gouging are not morally justified and that legislation that outlaws price gouging is not morally justified. It suggests that great benefit can be provided to those in desperate need with standard cases of price gouging and that attempts to ban the practice further harm individuals who are already vulnerable. It states the paper's argument is an exercise in non-ideal theory. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13595 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST The article focuses on the implied ethical obligations that result from the fiduciary responsibility managers have to shareholders of a firm. It states that managers are required to work at protecting the interests of a shareholder if this decision doesn't affect other stakeholders, and mentions that literature has established this ethical imperative. It suggests that a company's board of directors has an ethical obligation to shareholders in situations where there's a conflict of interest between shareholders and management. It states that poison pills and classified board elections are two managerial actions that are considered unethical. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13594 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST The article focuses on French philosopher Michel Foucault's contributions to the subject of organizational ethics. It analyzes Foucault's work on control and discipline and also examines later works on ethics. It suggests that Foucault's later works give an important contribution to theories on business ethics, ethical practices, and pedagogy. It claims that Foucault's work offers alternative approaches to the traditional normative ethical theories. It states that by demonstrating the conditions where freedom can be exercised in organizations and by situating ethics as self-practices, Foucault's ethics tries to connect a personal project of self with an understanding and a critique of power. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13593 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST The authors respond to comments on their article "Corporate and Stakeholder Responsibility: Making Business Ethics a Two-Way Conversation" which was published in a previous issue. They state that criticism concerning the responsibilities that stakeholders owe each other failed to take into consideration the broader focus of the paper on stakeholder responsibility. They suggest that stakeholder responsibility is not a barrier to employee rights but rather allows for the discussion of the responsibilities and rights of stakeholders that include the employees in relation to the other stakeholders and to the company itself. They state that the worked to acknowledge the rights of employees and emphasize the importance of mutual responsibilities. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13592 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST The author comments on the paper "Corporate and Stakeholder Responsibility: Making Business Ethics a Two-Way Conversation," by Goodstein and Wicks. He states that while the claim that effective stakeholder management requires mutual sharing of responsibility cannot be disputed, the authors did not provide a full and realistic treatment of employees. He claims the article did not take into account the large amount of literature on the economic conditions of workers and of their rights. He suggests that individual companies and courts have not abandoned the central elements of employment-at-will, and that employees only have legal recourse in extreme cases of wrongful discharge. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13591 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST The article introduces a section for letters and responses for article authors and readers. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13590 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST The article focuses on ethical criticism concerning hedge funds. It comments on the opacity of hedge funds and explains that the lack of transparency is strategic, with information withheld from governments and investors to protect the fund's competitive advantage. It states that the opacity of hedge funds creates an intractable conflict that government regulation cannot resolve. It uses the argument of regulatory recalcitrance to explain why hedge funds cannot be made transparent. It suggests that the solution to the opacity of hedge funds is ethical, and that a voluntary moral coordination instituted as an industrial standard would work better than government regulation. +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13589 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST The article announces that Thomas Carson, Joseph DesJardins, Ronald Duska, et al., have completed their terms on the editorial board for the "Business Ethics Quarterly." +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13588 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST The article reviews the book "Corporate Bodies and Guilty Minds: The Failure of Corporate Criminal Liability," by William S. Laufer +++ Further information are available at csr-literature.net http://csr-news.net/literature/index.php?page=publication&kind=single&ID=13587 Wed, 05 Apr 2007 08:00:00 EST