Abstracts

40^th Anniversary Conference

Baraldi / Amadei |  Boatright  |  Bowie  |  Brenkert  |  Daly  |  De George  |  Diez / Ruiz-Palomino / Banon-Gomis  |  Ferrero / Sison / Guitian  |  Fontrodona / Sanz  |  Goodpaster  |  Guillen Parra / Lleo de Nalda / Pastor  |  Hamilton  | Hauser |  Hicks  |  Jacome / Guillen Parra / Gomis  | Kay  | Krusche | Lara  |  O'Mara Shimek  |  Painter-Morland  |  Panchi V.  |  Pezoa  |  Robles  |  Shacklock  |  Steckler / Clark  |  Szocs / Miska / Schiffinger  |  Testa / D'Amato  |  Vargas  |  Waddock  |  Werhane  |  White  |  Yang / Ming / Wang / Adams  |    

Education and Technology: Innovative Levers Between Business and Environment

Monica Baraldi, School of Management, Alma Mater Studiorum-University of Bologna, Italy and Carlo Alberto Amadei, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences  

Many scholars, policy makers, entrepreneurs and the civil society are asking fundamental questions about the future of capitalism in our global economy.  In the past hundred years the world population and economy have grown exponentially, together with the pressure on the physical environment. The Millennium eco-system assessment denounces that 60 percent of the world’s ecosystems are being used unsustainably. This trend is growing, being fed by higher energy use, materials exploitation and more impacting environmental pollution.

What role can business play in finding environmental crisis solutions? In the last decade, the interactions between business and environment have been revisited with new perspectives. In particular, positive change can arise from new collaborative opportunities between business and the environment, in order to embrace environmental challenges and pursue reciprocal benefits. We evaluate this synergetic activity using a systemic approach: a powerful tool to analyze and quantify the feedback loops that are created when changes occur to the elements of the analyzed system. It is paramount to individuate pivotal centers which have the power to originate connections and regulate system behavior. In this regard, we believe education and technology are among the most important. These elements play a major role in determining and weighting the interactions between environment and business. Two scenarios are presented here: 1) The status quo system and 2) A system in which technology and education are empowered and serve as leverage points to empower the interaction between business and environment. The reader will note that we preferred to center our model on the environment rather than on business. We truly believe that when discussing ethical priorities in the interplay between business and environment, the latter must be prioritized. Back to Top          

The Corporate Objective after eBay v. Newmark

John R. Boatright, Loyola University Chicago

The Delaware court’s decision in eBay v. Newmark has been viewed by many commentators as a decisive affirmation of shareholder wealth maximization as the only legally permitted objective of a for-profit corporation. The implications of this court case are of particular concern for the emerging field of social enterprise, in which some organizations, such as, in this case, Craigslist, choose to pursue a socially beneficial mission in the for-profit corporate form. The eBay v. Newmark decision may also threaten all companies that seek to be socially responsible by serving other constituencies, in addition to shareholders. This examination of the court decision concludes that a mandatory legal requirement to maximize shareholder value may not preclude a concern for non-shareholder interests and may even permit the preservation of the kind of culture and way of doing business adopted by Craigslist. In particular, the court’s decision in eBay v. Newmark reflects unique features of the case that could have been avoided by Craigslist and by any other similar company. Back to Top 

International Business as a Civilizing Force in a Cosmopolitan World

Norman Bowie, Emeritus at the University of Minnesota

The effect of capitalism on the quality of life has been much debated. Albert O Hirschman has classified the views of the impact of capitalism on the quality of life as civilizing, destructive, or feeble. I believe that multinational business corporations can be a civilizing force in today’s cosmopolitan but turbulent world. A number of initiatives will be discussed with special emphasis on business contributions to human rights and to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. As multinationals undertake these initiatives they will do well by doing good. Back to Top 

Mind the Gap: The Challenges and Limits of Global Business Ethics

George G. Brenkert, Emeritus of Business Ethics at the McDonough School of Business of Georgetown University

This paper considers challenges and limits of global business ethics.   It maintains that the central challenges of business ethics are not identifying (further or additional) ethical principles, norms or virtues by which it should operate.  Instead, the main issues have to do with implementation of ethical norms and principles. This gap between principles and implementation has been noted in different ways by different commentators.   How this gap might be reduced (if not closed) is given less attention by normative business ethics and more by management and legal scholars.  Normative business ethicists need to considerate this gap more closely. Still a wide variety of views regarding fostering and implementing business ethics internationally have been offered.  I review some of these proposals and offer additional observations as the direction normative business ethics must now go.  My survey leads to the view that business ethics needs greater connection with economic, social and political theories.  It also suggests that there are important limits to fostering the ethics of global business. Back to Top 

Virtue Ethics in the Workplace

Frank Daly, Kallman Executive Fellow

Frequently, new theories or ideas for management improvement directly or indirectly include a profile of the "ideal" employee.  I will endeavor to explore how such a profile coordinates with insights about excellence from practical or virtue ethics.  Are there points of harmony and is that desirable? How might that influence recruiting, promoting and otherwise recognizing such employees?  Is there a metric for this and if so: does it have value?  Is the  "ideal" actually identifiable on paper outside the context of management engagement and the organizational culture?  We are faced with three options: such an ideal may be incompatible with business success, we might get lucky and find such an employee from time to time or there may, in fact, be many who are capable of achieving it. 

Rethinking Global Business Ethics:  The North-South Paradigm

Richard T. De George, University of Kansas

The World has changed a great deal since 1985 when Bentley’s National Conference on Business Ethics focused on “Ethics and Multinational Enterprises.”  Yet much of the writing, at least in the West, on international and global business ethics issues continues to operate within the same paradigm as it did then.  The empirical changes, I shall argue, call into question a key assumption of many of the writings on international business ethics concerning the relation of the industrially advanced and the less industrially advanced nations.  This in turn calls for a basic rethinking of the proper approach to poverty, globalization, and corporate social responsibility.

In 1985 the generally accepted way in the West to think of the world was in Cold War terms of First, Second and Third World countries.  After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the generally adopted liberal democratic view of the world was that of the Developed Nations and Less Developed Nations.  That view is now giving way to a division of the world between the North, roughly equivalent to the industrially developed nations (including such nations as Australia in the geographical South), and the South, the so-called industrially developing or less developed nations, including (China and India).  The changing terminology aims to reflect a change in the world especially with respect to what have been called the developing nations.  The new view can be seen as taking place within the broad liberal democratic world view, but instead of concentrating on Western guilt, the dire effects of colonialism, and the need to remedy the ravages of economic exploitation, it focuses on liberal notions of equal worth and respect for persons not only on the individual level, but on the level of states as well.  The change in emphasis exemplifies and implicitly calls for a rethinking of the moral obligations and relations of the so-called developed and developing nations.

The new view is a paradigm shift from what I shall call the presently dominant Dependency-victim model to a new (but already partially and implicitly used) Respect-cooperation model.  The change in models results in turn in a change on three major dimensions:  first, the dominant approach by the North to poverty reduction has to be reevaluated; second, the notion of globalization has to be rethought, and enlarged; and third the moral and social responsibility of multinational corporations has to be reframed and reoriented.  Rawls’ Law of Peoples, which was roundly criticized by many liberal commentators, foreshadowed the Respect-cooperation model, and Sen’s capabilities approach provides some of the foundation for the larger rethinking.  The UN Human Development Report 2013, The Rise of the South:  Human Progress in a Diverse World documents the changed global conditions of the North and South and implicitly adopts the new paradigm.  The paper is a detailed discussion of the change and of the ethical implications for global business ethics. Back to Top 

Determining Job Satisfaction through the Personal Growth Experience: The Positive Influence of Internal Work Motivation and the Detrimental Effects of Supervisors who Un-dignify the Workplace

David Diez, National University of Colombia, Pablo Ruiz-Palomino, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain, and Alexis Bañón-Gomis

In today’s competitive labor market, it is increasingly important to retain the best human capital by offering employees the highest general satisfaction experiences with their job. It is important, therefore, to foster personal growth satisfaction. However, few studies focus on the idea that personal growth satisfaction experiences with one's job could be seriously harmed by the presence of unethical factors in the workplace environment. If, for example, employees feels that their supervisors are treating them in a disrespectful manner, the experience of harm to the employee's expectation of personal growth could cause knock-on effects on other aspects of their general job satisfaction. This study aims to examine the importance of personal growth experience to achieve general job satisfaction, and more importantly, the way un-dignifying supervisors might lower employees’ personal growth experiences in a job, and in so doing, lower employees’ experiences of general job satisfaction. The results based on structural equation modeling extracted from a sample of 151 employees of a diverse set of Spanish industries revealed that personal growth satisfaction partially mediated both the positive influence of internal work motivation and the negative impact of supervisors’ disrespectful behavior on general job satisfaction. This research demonstrates how supervisors’ disrespectful behavior was observed to negatively impact the internal work motivation on personal growth satisfaction.  The study provides fresh evidence on the critical elements needed for spreading general job satisfaction within the organization.
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Characterizing Virtues in Finance

Ignacio Ferrero, Alejo José G. Sison, and Gregorio Guitián, University of Navarra, Spain

In this article we shall attempt to lay down the parameters within which the practice of the virtues may be enabled in the field of finance. We shall be drawing from three main sources, Aristotle, Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and MacIntyre. The question is what ought to be done for financial activities to truly contribute to eudaimonia or human flourishing (Aristotle), to the achievement of three distinct kinds of goods as required of virtue, those internal to practices, those which are the goods of an individual life and those which are the goods of the community (MacIntyre), and to “help man on the path of salvation” in the midst of the complex network of relationships in modern societies (CST). Back to Top 

The Role of Moderation in Business: Fostering Temperance to Achieve High Performance and Long-Term Sustainability

Joan Fontrodona and Pablo Sanz, IESE Business School, Barcelona, Spain

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the virtue of Temperance plays a crucial role in the development of professional competences, in the strengthening of leadership and in the improvement of organizational performance. In the first place, a broad definition of Temperance is given based on a threefold foundation: the virtue ethics tradition from philosophy, the positive psychology framework, and the competences literature. From this initial definition, the paper summarizes what type of individual and collective workplace behaviors the virtue of Temperance aims to regulate. Organizations and business leaders can do much to foster the practice of balance and moderation at all corporate levels, from the strengthening of corporate values and the exemplarity of management, to the creation of mechanism to reward good practices and to avoid harmful habits. Finally, the paper summarizes how bringing the virtue of Temperance to the organization has superior outcomes around five different business domains: organizational commitment, leadership influence, professional development, teamwork capacity and corporate global performance. Back to Top

In Search of the Common Good

Kenneth E. Goodpaster, University of St. Thomas  

In this paper, I explore – but do not offer a definitive analysis of – an idea that I believe is critical to the progress of business ethics (indeed to the progress of applied ethics generally).  The idea is “the common good” -- used as a criterion for normative decision making.  In several previous papers (Goodpaster 1991, 2010, and 2016), I have alluded to the importance of this idea, but in the present context I hope to defend it as a successor criterion that goes beyond both (i) fiduciary duty to shareholders, and (ii) obligations to stakeholders.  Indeed, it may be that the frequently-observed tension between the latter two normative paradigms can be resolved only by appreciating their limitations in relation to the common good. Back to Top 

The Role of Ethical Integrity and Benevolence of Managerial Teams in Developing Employees' Organizational Commitment. The Case of Primary and Secondary Schools of Spain.

Manuel Guillén Parra, University of Valencia, Spain,
Álvaro Lleó de Nalda, University of Navarra, Spain,  and
Enrique Marrades Pastor, IECO-Institute for Ethics in Communication and Organizations, Spain

For decades, there has been a clear interest in delving into the concept of organizational commitment and its relationship with other variables such as reduced turnover and absenteeism (Mathieu and Zajac, 1990; Wong et al., 2002); organizational citizenship behavior (Tremblay et al., 2010); or organizational performance (Dayan, 2010). These studies show the value of having committed workers with organizational purposes.
One factor that directly predicts the employees' commitment is the level of trust generated by their managers (Dirks and Ferrin, 2002; Nyhan, 1999; Song et al., 2009). On the other hand, several authors identify trustworthy behaviors having an impact on organizational commitment (Ferres et al., 2004; Nyhan, 2000; Yang and Mossholder, 2010)

From these findings, it seems reasonable to analyze whether there is a direct relationship between managerial behaviors and the level of commitment declared by their employees or if, on the contrary, this relationship is mediated inexorably by employees' trust. The response to this question could show whether there are any managerial behaviors that directly influence the commitment of workers and, if they exist, determine specific guidelines that directly affect their commitment.

To answer this question, the contribution of Mayer et al. (1995) is basic. These authors distinguish the concepts of trust and trustworthiness, and define the last one including three elements: ability (the judgment about the knowledge and technical skills of a person), benevolence (the judgement about the intentions pursued in their acts), and finally, integrity (the set of principles governing their actions). In the last decades, various empirical studies have validated the scales with which to evaluate these three elements (Davis et al., 2000; Mayer and Davis, 1999; Mayer and Gavin, 2005) and thus to assess the perceived trustworthiness of the trustor, and to analyze how it influences other behavioral variables.

The purpose of this work is to analyze the relationship between the three elements of trustworthiness, set by Mayer et al. (1995) -ability, benevolence, and integrity-, to the level of commitment of the subordinate. To achieve this goal, we structure our work as follows: first, the concept of organizational commitment proposed by Allen and Meyer (1990) will be discussed together with the relevant research on trust as antecedent of commitment. 
Secondly, studies that relate trust and managerial trustworthiness with the level of commitment declared by the employees are analyzed. Here we will highlight the work by Colquitt et al. (2007) who, after conducting a meta-analysis of 132 papers in task-focused environments, regarding the relationship between trust and trustworthiness with other behavioral variables, come to the conclusion that the affective commitment of employees could be predicted by managerial trustworthiness. 

Thirdly, and following this line of research, we study the relationship between managerial trustworthiness and affective commitment, but this time in relationship-oriented environments, and particularly in the education sector. We defend that it is possible to give a fuller explanation of the affective commitment of the teachers by analyzing the ability, benevolence and perceived integrity of the managerial team of the school.
Finally, the hypothesis of this paper will be defined and analyzed through an empirical study to 1026 teachers from primary and secondary schools in Spain. The results of the study  point out the relevance of ethical quality (integrity) of the managerial team in order to promote the trust and commitment of teachers. It therefore seems appropriate to emphasize and make explicit the ethical dimension in understanding human phenomena such as trust and commitment, in which, ethical behavior is above acquisition of techniques and skills. 
The study also shows the importance of motives and right intentions (benevolence) of the managerial team to develop its function. In the study, teachers link their decisions of trust and commitment to the school with the perception that the managerial team seeks the interests of all, and not just theirs. After describing and discussing the results, the work will conclude with some reflections on the value of the findings of this research and its practical implications. 
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Increasing the Impact of Ethics in Small and Medium Sized Organizations as part of the Global Future of Practical Ethics

J. Brooke Hamilton, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Since the Federal Sentencing Guidelines of 1991, large multinational enterprises (MNEs) and academics have developed significant resources for improving compliance and ethics in MNEs.  An equally important but not widely recognized opportunity exists for academics to develop ethics resources for small and medium sized enterprises (“SMEs”).  SMEs have fewer financial and personnel resources, fewer ties to organizations offering ethics services and intellectual capital, and face less regulatory pressure.  They still appear in the court of public opinion, however, and unlike MNE top management their moral sentiments are aroused by direct contact with customers, employees, and suppliers.  Like MNEs, they face the challenges of reconciling self-interest with the common good, and efficiency and effectiveness with ethical constraints.  Academic researchers also face different advantages and barriers when engaging SMEs.

My central thesis is that successful MNE programs based on rational discourse may not easily transfer to SMEs.  Using an experience-focused model of the cognitive processes involved in ethical judgment and action, I argue that SME managers rely mostly on immediate intuitions that are self-evident to them.  Aided by behavioral research to confirm and explore this contention, academic ethicists could develop program elements appropriate for SMEs.  The roles of ethical reasoning and discussion with others may best be introduced, initially at least, as ways to verify and improve the accuracy of intuition.

SMEs could benefit from guidance on these subjects, right-sized for their budgets and personnel, and directed to specific challenges they face.  Academics and their students would benefit from interacting with these organizations which are easily accessible across the globe.  Society in general would benefit from an increased emphasis on ethical conduct in SMEs and the transfer of these ethics skills into private and public life. Back to Top 

Fighting against corruption: Does anti-corruption training make any difference?

Christian Hauser, University of Applied Sciences HTW Chur, Switzerland

Corruption continues to represent a tenacious challenge to internationally active companies. According to prevailing international anti-corruption standards, a company can be held criminally liable if it does not put in place all necessary and reasonable organizational measures to prevent corruption. Regular training of employees is considered one of the most effective ways to prevent corruption. Well-trained employees are seen as a help in efforts to minimize their risk of becoming involved in corrupt behavior. With this idea in mind and building on the fraud triangle model and neutralization theory, this paper examines whether business professionals who have attended anti-corruption training are more likely to refuse to accept prevailing justifications of corrupt practices than are those who have not attended such training. The empirical analysis in this paper is based on regression models using data obtained from a unique dataset that covers 200 business professionals. The findings provide evidence that training is positively linked to the likelihood of refusing to accept justifications of corruption. However, the research also suggests that methods of training must become more specific in order to tackle challenging questions regarding the gray areas of ethics and compliance. Back to Top

Leading with Dignity

Donna Hicks, Harvard University

“Leading with Dignity” will explore the role dignity plays in effective leadership.  While the literature is abound with books and articles on effective leadership, there is little mention of the important role that dignity understanding plays for leaders who want to create a culture of trust and well-being in their organizations.  The paper will describe three basic building blocks of a dignified approach to leadership:  Ten ways to honor dignity, ten ways that our evolutionary legacy has set us up to violate our own and other’s dignity, and the policies and procedures that must be in place in order to create a culture where everyone feels seen, heard, and valued.  The paper will explore other challenges to leading with dignity as well as the many benefits that a culture of dignity creates for any organization. Back to Top 

Corporate Reputation as a Consequence of Personal Reputation

Rita Jácome López, IECO. Institute for Ethics in Communication and Organizations, Spain, 
Manuel Guillén Parra, University of Valencia, Spain and
Alexis Jacobo Ba–ón Gomis, Politecnic University of Valencia Lourdes Canós Darós Politecnic University of Valencia, Spain

Numerous scientific studies have shown the importance and benefits of possessing a positive reputation at both the personal as well as organizational level (Fombrun et al., 2000; Highhouse, Brooks, et al., 2009; Hochwarter et al., 2007; Zinko, Ferris, et al., 2012; Zinko & Rubin, 2015). Despite the importance of this fact and the need of organizations to develop a favorable reputation, to date there is no existing empirical evidence of the potential impact that personal reputation (PR) may have on the reputation of the organization as a whole.

Thus, the identity is associated with the dimension of character and those constitutive elements that define ‘who the company is’. The desired identity is associated with the dimension of technical efficacy, related to the organization’s capabilities for trying to be perceived, and value refers to stakeholders’ temporal impressions affected by expectations and perceptions that have influence in the communication process (Feldman et al. 2014; Love and Kraatz 2009).

FIGURE 9. Constitutive dimensions of corporate reputation

 

Ethical Leadership Coaching

Francisco J. Lara, Universidad Católica de Valencia, Spain

The purpose of this article is to review literature that is relevant to the study of ethics and leadership, as well as to propose a new theoretical framework, that we call ELC (Ethical Leadership Coaching). Many scholars (Treviño, Brown and Hartman, 2003; among others) talk about Ethical Leadership. Other scholars (Peterson, 1996, Kilburg, 1996, 2000; Sherman and Freas, 2004 among others) also talked about Executive Coaching in a different way. But no one has tried to link both theoretical constructs in a new framework. After more than 15 years of research we consider an alternative and integral model that could combine both constructs of knowledge that is the “Ethical Leadership Coaching”. In this paper we present the logical evolution from Ethics to Knowledge, from Knowledge to Management, and finally from Management to Leadership, with particular emphasis the use of the philosophy of Coaching. 
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Levels of Ethical Quality in Metaphor Production in Financial News Media Organizations: A Rubric towards Effectiveness and Efficiency

Michael O’Mara Shimek, Boston University

This paper identifies and explores levels of ethical quality in metaphor production by financial news media organizations as a step towards improving their global ethical performance.  High levels of ethical quality, or trustworthiness in metaphor, is the result of achieving high levels of communicative accuracy. Communicative accuracy is the product of metaphorical efficiency, or the lowest ratio of cognitive force (input-output) needed by financial news consumers to process metaphor in order to stimulate predictable entailments (limited creative and exploratory thought) resulting in high cognitive efficiency. Low ratios of cognitive force is achieved by using metaphors that reduce domain disparity in semantic fields employing domain concepts that are as familiar or as similar as possible. To help news media organizations put into practice journalistic practices that produce more trustworthy financial news metaphors, this paper provides a step by step rubric for journalists and editors to be followed in both the production and editing phases. Back to Top 

A Shared Vocabulary for Values-Driven Business: A Global Perspective

Mollie Painter-Morland, Nottingham Business School, UK

Organizations institutionalize their efforts towards responsible and sustainable business in different ways, i.e. by employing ethics and compliance professionals, CSR officers, sustainability officers, or risk managers. In some cases these initiatives become part of their company’s secretariat or public relations functions. Unfortunately, these different functions often operate as silos with little or no cooperation and/ or integration of efforts (Painter-Morland, 2006). This project will attempt to map out the various functional areas that can contribute to promoting responsible and sustainable business and suggest ways to align various activities by articulating common goals and vocabularies.

Though much has been done to develop relevant vocabularies in the fields of CSR (Frederick, 2007; Visser, 2015) and Sustainability (Visser, 2016), it is not always easy to integrate the work of the ethics and compliance functions into these vocabularies. One exception is the King II Report on Corporate Governance in South Africa, which uses the term ‘integrated sustainability’ to align governance, ethics and compliance with the organisation’s social and environmental responsibility. It does so by connecting ethical leadership, ethics management and corporate citizenship, and by insisting on integrated sustainability reporting (PwC, 2009).

The goal of the research is therefore twofold: 1) to bring various parts of the ethics community (business ethicists, CSR and sustainability experts, etc.) together to drive values-driven business; 2) to inform integrative organizational functions through shared vocabularies, business strategies and integrative reporting. Back to Top 

Dilemmatic Analysis in the Ethical Economics

Luis Augusto Panchi V., Pontificia Universidad Católica, Ecuador 

The Ethical economics is based on orientation of the economic efficiency to the common benefit, through regulatory institutions for the particular benefit. Such institutions are legitimated by consensus. Dilemmatic analysis allows us to recognize the role of institutions and mold them so that they relativize individual interests in favor of social benefit. Back to Top 

The Ethics of Excellence: Spirit of Service and Work Well Done in Business

Álvaro E. Pezoa, ESE Business School, Universidad de los Andes, Chile

The ultimate goal of ethics seems to be the good life and happiness--meaning it would be a state associated with human fulfillment. Seen from this angle, business ethics should not only be closely related to the effort to prevent and avoid corrupt behaviors and promoting of so-called "good practices", but should be linked strongly with the greatest good that the company can achieve and its members can aspire to obtain through their professional work in it.

This paper seeks to show how ethics in its broadest and most positive dimension is present in the very heart of an accomplished business activity. At the same time, it shows that to reach such state is necessary that such activity itself be understood as a service, and for that it is absolutely essential to realize a well-done job inside of the companies. In this sense this article draws attention on how the practice of business could really become (better both in its human and strictly economic aspects) if we are able to uncover all potential wealth that lies in the business activity and is waiting to be developed. Back to Top 

The Challenge of Collaborative Actions for the Common Good on New Software Technologies

Marco Robles, ESIC Business & Marketing School, Madrid, Spain and Nuria Villagra, School of Communication, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain

Open source calls for a new business logic and perspective that contributes to the common good. Dramatic productivity increases and efficiencies are made through the collaboration of people on open source software oftentimes in spontaneous ways via our increasing networked society. Collaboration between the public and private sectors contribute to these advances and open source helps to overcome the technological gap among countries and social groups while accelerating the growth of less privileged nations.

Our study reveals how open source is developing a rather more cooperative and fair form of production in the software market as a global public good. Back to Top 

Australia's Anti-Corruption Mechanisms: A Patchwork Quilt

Arthur Shacklock, Griffith University, Australia

Ever since comparisons of corruption risk began, Australia has been widely regarded as a relatively "clean" country in which to operate or with which to do business.  While this is still the case, Australia has sometimes struggled to hold its high place as regards corruption risk.  This is in part due to some high profile corruption cases over the years, but also arguably because its mechanisms: anti-corruption agencies, laws and commitments to enforcement are something of an uncoordinated patchwork quilt.  The three levels of government: federal, state and local add complexity and differ widely in this regard.  While some of the 6 states, such as New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and Victoria, have quite active anti-corruption agencies, these vary in their modus-operandi and effectiveness.  Other states and the 2 territories have less focus and, more importantly, there has always been and still is a strong resistance to setting up a federal anti-corruption agency.  This paper traces and discusses the development of Australia's anti-corruption mechanisms, resulting in this anti-corruption patchwork quilt.  Some commentary is also made on what is now needed to add greater strength and coordination. Back to Top 

Multi-level Views of Authenticity in Corporate Governance

Erica Steckler, Visiting Research Scholar, Center for Business Ethics, Bentley University and Cynthia Clark, Bentley University

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of authenticity in corporate governance at individual, board, and organizational levels.  We propose a preliminary framework that demarcates spheres of authentic governance and specifies stages in which authenticity may be fostered in governance processes in terms of the capacity to make ethical decisions in line with the rights and responsibilities of firm stakeholders. Back to Top 

The Role of Culture in Influencing Corporate Sustainability: Insights on Global Practices

Ilona Szocs, Christof Miska and Michael Schiffinger, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria

Sustainability – an approach that is equally mindful of economic, social, and environmental implications – is increasingly a matter of concern in the corporate world. Variations in sustainable business practices have been explained with reference to cultural differences. Scholarly literature, however, offers no consensus on the effects of culture on corporate sustainability. The mixed results are due to inconsistent conceptualizations of these theoretical constructs, measured frequently on an aggregated level or focusing on partial aspects. Our study aims to shed light on the relationship between culture and sustainability by investigating the effects on the disaggregated level. Specifically, we regard culture as a complex, multidimensional variable and sustainability as a three-dimensional concept, reflecting the triple-bottom line of economic, social, and environmental sustainability. In this sense, we aim to outline (1) which aspects of culture matter in view of sustainability, and (2) how they matter as to different sustainability domains. Using economic, social, and environmental performance data from a global sample of 2165 firms and data provided by the GLOBE cultural study, we employ multilevel modeling to test the above-mentioned relationship.

Our results suggest that culture does affect sustainability. However, not all cultural dimensions are equally relevant: most (such as power distance, future orientation, uncertainty avoidance, and gender egalitarianism) have a positive effect, others (such as performance orientation, humane orientation, and in-group collectivism) influence sustainability negatively, while some (institutional collectivism, assertiveness) reveal mixed effects. In terms of the sustainability dimensions, culture has the strongest effect on environmental, followed by social aspects, and relatively less on economic aspects. Interestingly, we find higher variance explained in relationships on the cultural-cluster level rather than on the country level of analysis. Cultural clusters thus may predict firms’ sustainability much better than single countries do.

Our intended theoretical contribution is threefold. First, we suggest that examining culture and sustainability as multi-dimensional concepts provide a more comprehensive and fine-grained understanding of these phenomena in respect to each other. Second, we show that the relationship between culture and sustainability is not straightforward. Certain cultural dimensions may foster, while other may impede the adoption of sustainable business practices. Third, we contrast the effects of both individual countries and cultural clusters on sustainability and thereby contribute to the so far scarce research on the role of clusters in sustainability research. Back to Top 

Social Image or Ethical Issues: An Experimental Analysis of Ultimatum Game

Mario Testa and Antonio D’Amato, University of Salerno, Italy

Conventional economics assigns to self-interest the primary role of all economic behaviors. Nevertheless over the last decades, several studies using ultimatum and dictator game experiments have been addressed to exploring the interaction of different motivations in economic decision-making. However results systematically deviate from economic predictions. These findings have inspired a broader conception of self-interest that incorporates concerns for fairness, but yet no framework can describe these results. Implementing some variations in these experiments, the aim of our work is to explore whether philanthropic issues affect individual economic decisions. In collaboration with economics students of the University of Salerno (Italy), we investigated how people respond if part of the payoff destined for the responder goes to charity. According to current literature on the topic and starting from the idea that fairness is not a concept unassociated from the context, we analyse whether and how different kinds of social and ethical conditioning (altruistic punishment, charitable sentiment, reputation safeguarding) influence economic decisions. We believe that this study can contribute to better defining the decision-making process of several economic players such as companies, consumers, investors, etc. who are often faced with complex situations in which the ethical content can assume an even greater weight than the economic one. Back to Top 

Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance: GIC’s Share Prices Value Impact - Event Study

Lucely Vargas, Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria 

Through globalization, businesses are gaining more power, since stakeholder demands to behave ethically and socially responsible (CSR) are increasing dramatically.  Acting ethically from a sense of social responsibility is a competitive advantage that improves economically an organization’s financial performance in the long term.  This paper analyzes the relationship between an organization’s focus on ethical/corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviors and financial performance based on share price analysis proceeding from a public announcement of ethical/CSR commitment.  The methodology used in this study is based on both the event study method in efficient markets and the market model. The calculation of unexpected returns and the analysis of the impact of public announcements on the share price value of the Generali Insurance Company, (GIC) case study are presented (historical data taken from S&Pmib).

The results show that there is a tendency toward share value increasing and decreasing, but these changes are not significant in the light of public information related to CSR. Back to Top 

Shaping the Shift: Shamanic Leadership, Memes, and Transformation

Sandra Waddock, Boston College

This paper argues that leaders in all types of organizations today could usefully assume the mantle of the shaman to help their organizations and the societies in which they are embedded better cope with the numerous crises facing them today, not just in their competitive environments, but more broadly in the socio-political-ecological environment. The leader as shaman has three central roles: healer, connector, and sensemaker. The role of sensemaker is particularly important in helping to shape the shift towards greater  sustainability and equity, which may well be the central ethical project of our era, particularly by creating new memes, core cultural artifacts, on which values, business strategies, and belief systems (among other things) are built. Back to Top 

The Intersection of U.N. Principles, Corporate Responsibility and Economic Value-Added

Patricia H. Werhane, DePaul University and Laura Pincus Hartman, Boston University

Often, it seems to be the mandate of a traditional CSR approach that global corporations should structure their CSR strategies primarily around voluntary directives, such as the U.N. Global Compact, the Caux Principles, and/or the recently announced U.N. Sustainability Development Goals for 2030. Yet, to the contrary, we will argue that the paramount significance of these directives should not lead to that conclusion.  This is in parallel with the opposite argument that would be made by most business ethicists who would argue that a singular preoccupation on profitability without taking into account the context in which a company operates, its stakeholders, or thinking in broad terms of social and environmental value-added will lead, in the long run, to disvalue for communities and often (but sadly not always) for the company.

Rather, we argue, merely following any of these sets of principles would be unsustainable, especially if corporations begin with that objective as their sole mission or intent.  Indeed, without economic largesse as well, they may fail. What we shall illustrate through case examples is that what is realistic, practical, pragmatic, sustainable and profitable for corporations, and what also serves the interests of multiple stakeholders including those in blighted communities, is a true balance of the UN voluntary principles and economic value-added. Back to Top 

Cetaceans, Captivity and the Entertainment Industry: Or, Why SeaWorld Can't Float

Thomas White, Loyola Marymount University

Most discussions about the captivity of cetaceans by the entertainment industry have major weaknesses that make the ethical issues at stake appear to be more debatable than they actually are. For example, SeaWorld’s defense of captivity ignores certain scientific data, cherry picks the research it points to, and makes claims that are likely false.  Discussions of the controversy in the popular media typically report only extreme positions that are at the fringes of rational debate.  Many, if not most, marine mammal scientists are reluctant to tackle the issue of captivity, so an important voice is lacking. And among those scientists who do comment on the issue, many lack the technical expertise in the study of consciousness, cognitive ethology and interspecies ethics to be able to discuss the issue at a professional level.

This talk explores these weaknesses and explains what all interested parties need to do to raise the level of discourse to an appropriately sophisticated level. Back to Top 

Are Gender Effects on Ethical Decision-Making Fake or Real? A Meta-Analysis on the Contaminating Role of Social Desirability Response Bias

Jianfeng Yang and Xiaodong Ming, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang, Jiangxi, China, Zhen Wang, Central University of Finance and Economics, Haidian, Beijing, China and Susan M. Adams, Bentley University

Based on data from 143 primary studies, a meta-analysis was conducted to explore how social desirability response bias contaminates the gender effects on ethical decision-making. Results present an interesting picture. Women were significantly more ethical than men in ethical decision-making; however, gender effects in ethical decision-making decreases to be insignificant when social desirability response bias is controlled. Specifically, the effectiveness of indirect questioning and dedicated scales approaches on controlling social desirability response bias are compared, and the indirect questioning approach is found to be more effective. This study suggests that researchers who study gender effects on sensitive topics (e.g., business ethics), should apply formal and effective methods to control for social desirability response bias. Back to Top