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An Assessment of Ethics in a Cross-Cultural Organizational Context: A Systematic Literature Review
Abstract
Organizations face the complex challenge of establishing and upholding principles of ethics that transcend cultural boundaries in an increasingly interconnected global business landscape where ethnocentrism is no longer an option to navigate. This study tries to uncover the various research avenues that aid in understanding business ethics in a crosscultural organizational context through outlining potential directions and providing insights for practitioners and scholars that can help in both navigating the complexities of business ethics in a multicultural setting and in assisting in expanding this field of research. The research involves a systematic review of the literature (SLR) of articles gathered from the Scopus database within management or business, economics, and social sciences categories, published between 2018 and 2023, using a specific composition of keywords. The framework was established based on the papers that were evaluated to describe how business ethics are articulated in a cross-cultural and international setting through five literature clusters, namely: business ethics & behavioral economics in a cross-cultural context, international business, business ethics and CSR across cultures, ethical leadership in a multicultural context and finally unethical behaviors and virtue. Hence, this study contributes to the systematic organization of the academic literature on this subject by offering preliminary grounds to assess the key concepts of the topic through the literature review and the results found and providing future implications that might help academics in investigating in-depth the perceived themes using different variables and/or methods.
... Although there are already works synthesizing the literature (Gallagher, Savage, 2013), the dynamic changes in the field of cross-cultural management necessitate a reevaluation and update of the existing knowledge and approaches to keep pace with the evolving needs and challenges of the business environment. Moreover, most review studies focus on analyzing narrow areas related to crosscultural management such as leadership (Liangwe, 2023), conflict management (Tijow et al., 2024), and ethics (Hassani et al., 2023). The aim of this article is to identify the current state of knowledge and thematic research trends in the field of cross-cultural management of organizations. ...
Purpose: The purpose of this article is to identify the current state of knowledge and thematic research trends in the field of cross-cultural management of organizations. Design/methodology/approach: The research method used to achieve the research objective is bibliometric analysis. Data obtained from the Web of Science database were analyzed using the specialized software VOSviewer. To understand the trends in emerging topics, the collected literature was divided into blocks representing three consecutive decades of the 21st century. Findings: The analysis revealed a growing scholarly interest in cross-cultural management, addressing managerial needs and adapting to changing work environments. It also identified core themes consistent across all examined periods and highlighted emerging research topics in recent years. This provides insights into the evolution of cross-cultural management research throughout the 21st century. Research limitations/implications: The limitations of the article primarily concern the bibliometric analysis, for which data were exclusively obtained from the Web of Science database. Additionally, the analysis was narrowed down to 30 keywords, which improved the clarity of the study but limited the depth of the analysis. The research findings highlight the increasing interdisciplinarity of the cross-cultural management topic and thus suggest a direction for future research in this area. Originality/value: This paper provides novel insights into the evolving landscape of cross-cultural management research by presenting a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of trends over time. It offers a detailed examination of how researchers' focus has shifted, highlighting both enduring core themes and emerging topics within the field.
Content understanding systems leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computer Vision (CV) have revolutionized how machines interpret and analyze multimodal information across diverse applications. This article explores the technologies driving advancements in content analysis, from text embedding techniques such as BERT to image and video representation methods including CNN-based approaches and Vision Transformers. It examines the challenges of processing diverse languages and regional contexts in a multimodal framework, alongside methodologies for collecting and preparing high-quality training data. The discussion covers various fusion architectures for integrating information across modalities, training approaches for multimodal classifiers, and evaluation frameworks to ensure model effectiveness. As these technologies continue to evolve, the integration of NLP and CV promises to unlock new possibilities for intelligent content understanding in an increasingly complex digital landscape.
Recent challenges and crises have amplified concerns for ethical and sustainable practices, bearing in mind that human is the catalyst of change and implementation of sustainability, scrutiny of ethical values would be crucial for acknowledging the necessity of rapid action-taking. The concept of sustainability arises as a fundamental concept that directs human behaviour in all spheres and from which it is possible to question human choices and decisions in the context of ethical sustainability, and businesses are no exception.
In light of the rival competition in markets, the possibility that businesses adopt unethical practices and degrade their sustainability values emerges with the motive of higher profits, this might result in harming societal and environmental values and their brand image once the communicated false pieces of information and wrong actions are revealed. From this point of view, formulating ethical business policies will benefit corporations to ensure their continuity and achieve smoothly the three pillars of sustainability: economic, social, and environmental sustainability. This paper aims to emphasize the importance of ethical business policies and highlight the correlation between ethics in corporate framework and sustainability through a literature review that suggests a deep understanding of the key concepts: Ethics and sustainability, combined with the capacity of allying both concepts would be a pathway to success when it comes to tackling ethical crises, both in the present and near future.
This research contributes to clarifying the renewed emphasis on the concepts of ethics and business ethics, and in identifying the correlation between ethics and sustainability within a corporate work frame.
The primary task of the paper is to propose a definition of the existing theoretical contributions to the term of workforce diversity management (WDM) in order to systematize present knowledge, clearly understand the definition of WDM in organizations and identify the gaps for future research. In this theoretical study, the Scopus database was used for sampling. 19 studies published since 2015 were identified, and then the selected papers were analysed according to key research definitions. Recently, the idea of diversity management (DM) acquires a new meaning; swiftly expanding its field and circulating around the world. WDM becomes a frequently significant part of Human Resource Management in corporations, as it helps companies to take a sustained competitive advantage in the current globalization and innovative age (Egerova, Jiřincová, Lančarič & Savov, 2013; Manoharan & Singal, 2017). The results of the research show that DM is perceived by a moderate number of existing publications as a method that helps to encompass both: a favourable corporate culture and organizational success. By assessing present studies on DM, the paper contributes to the literature on business and management and demonstrates the potential as the scrutinised field seems to be an attractive area for future research.
Recent reviews demonstrate the usefulness of the business model concept as a level of analysis in management, whereas less attention has been devoted to the analysis of the paths of past research to guide its future development. We used bibliometric methods, specifically bibliographic coupling and algorithmic historigraphy, to trace the development of the business model literature from its origins in e-business to its current state. In addition to reviewing the literature as a whole, our study investigated the time-dependent co-evolution of research sub-streams. We examined the relative influence of publications and canonical papers (algorithmic historiography) within and between three separate time spans (bibliographic coupling). We found that business model foundations draw from three major business sub-disciplines—strategy, entrepreneurship, and innovation—whilst new frontiers (e.g., Industry 4.0, sustainability, and networks) offer an opportunity to increase the inter-connectedness of business model research. Finally, we discuss contemporary topics and future avenues for business model research.
The literature on business management recognizes the amalgamation of both the formal and informal dimensions that researchers perceived, could provide useful information to modern companies and business managers. As a result of this advancement, the paper tries to mapping the field of business management research contributed by IIMs. These research works consummated by applying bibliometric analysis. Total 7751 scientific articles published in different journals indexed in the Scopus from 1965 to 2020 retrieved from Scopus Database. Further, the data were analyzed, applying Bibliographic coupling & Co-citation analysis through VOSviewer software. The conclusions of the study facilitate to explore the most persuasive publication, author collaboration, and the most productive institution that contributed to the Business Research.
Unethical behaviours, such as blaming subordinates for their shortcomings, taking credit of others’ work, favouritism, and excessive publicising of ethical leadership failures are prominent among the leaders of the organisation. Although research has been conducted on ethical culture, particularly on the causes and effects of ethical-decision, few studies emphasised on the topics outside the business ethics research, such as employee well-being. Therefore, this study focused on the mediating effects of organisational ethical culture on the relationship between ethical leadership, work engagement, employees’ well-being, and performance. The data collection process involved the distribution of highly structured questionnaires to 697 employees working in Italian and Pakistani hospitality industry. This was followed by the analysis of cultural differences through measurement invariance tests and mediation techniques. As a result, it was found that ethical leadership and ethical culture have positive impact on employee wellbeing, work engagement and financial performance where ethical culture has relatively stronger influence on financial performance. The results also revealed that ethical leadership had a relatively stronger impact on the well-being of the Italian employees compared to Pakistani employees. However, the association between ethical leadership and work engagement was stronger among Pakistani employees. The study implications, limitations, and future research directions were presented hereunder.
Purpose
This study aims to examine the role of human resource development (HRD) in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability initiatives of multinational companies (MNCs).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors analyze contents of corporate responsibility (CR) reports disclosed by 23 MNCs from Europe, Asia and North America to examine HRD’s contribution to CSR and sustainability, with particular attention to long-term human development and organization development.
Findings
The analysis of CR reports indicates that HRD is perceived as playing a role in the following areas: diversity, equity and inclusion; community engagement; work–life balance; employee long-term growth and development; performance management; business ethics and ethical culture; and raising CSR awareness. In all areas, HRD was identified as playing a significant role in supporting companies’ CSR agendas.
Originality/value
This study extends research on the intersection of HR, CSR and sustainability and provides evidence of HRD’s important contributions to CSR and sustainability.
There are many different relatedness measures, based for instance on citation relations or textual similarity, that can be used to cluster scientific publications. We propose a principled methodology for evaluating the accuracy of clustering solutions obtained using these relatedness measures. We formally show that the proposed methodology has an important consistency property. The empirical analyses that we present are based on publications in the fields of cell biology, condensed matter physics, and economics. Using the BM25 text-based relatedness measure as evaluation criterion, we find that bibliographic coupling relations yield more accurate clustering solutions than direct citation relations and co-citation relations. The so-called extended direct citation approach performs similarly to or slightly better than bibliographic coupling in terms of the accuracy of the resulting clustering solutions. The other way around, using a citation-based relatedness measure as evaluation criterion, BM25 turns out to yield more accurate clustering solutions than other text-based relatedness measures.
We conducted a systematic review of 158 publications on Cultural
Intelligence (CQ) and related concepts, Global Mindset (GM), and Cross-cultural Competence (CC) using bibliometric methods. We apply citation analysis to highlight the most influential (in terms of citations) journals, publications, and specific researchers in the field. We apply factor and cluster analyses to analyse co-citations to identify the current knowledge structure in the research field. With content coding on the resulting groups of co-citations, we identify five research streams showing the overlap between the CQ, GM, and CC constructs, and also revealing the separations in the research on the constructs. We perform burst analyses to identify trends and emerging topics or
streams. Building on this, we outline future research opportunities.
Aims:
How often a medical article is cited is important for many people because it is used to calculate different variables such as the h-index and the journal impact factor. The aim of this analysis was to assess how the citation count varies between Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, and Google Scholar in the current literature.
Methods:
We included the top 50 cited articles of four journals ESC Heart Failure; Journal of cachexia, sarcopenia and muscle; European Journal of Preventive Cardiology; and European Journal of Heart Failure in our analysis that were published between 1 January 2016 and 10 October 2019. We recorded the number of citations of these articles according to WoS, Scopus, and Google Scholar on 10 October 2019.
Results:
The top 50 articles in ESC Heart Failure were on average cited 12 (WoS), 13 (Scopus), and 17 times (Google Scholar); in Journal of cachexia, sarcopenia and muscle 37 (WoS), 43 (Scopus), and 60 times (Google Scholar); in European Journal of Preventive Cardiology 41 (WoS), 56 (Scopus), and 67 times (Google Scholar); and in European Journal of Heart Failure 76 (WoS), 108 (Scopus), and 230 times (Google Scholar). On average, the top 50 articles in all four journals were cited 41 (WoS), 52 (Scopus, 26% higher citations count than WoS, range 8-42% in the different journals), and 93 times (Google Scholar, 116% higher citation count than WoS, range 42-203%).
Conclusion:
Scopus and Google Scholar on average have a higher citation count than WoS, whereas the difference is much larger between Google Scholar and WoS.
Based on my study of the Rhodes Must Fall movement, I develop a rejectionist perspective by identifying the understanding and mobilization of epistemic disobedience as the core premise of such a perspective. Embedded in this contextual perspective, epistemic disobedience refers to the decolonization of the self and a fight against colonial legacies. I argue that, rather than viewing a rejectionist perspective as a threat, it should be integrated into the moral learning of contemporary institutions and businesses. This approach is important in ensuring colonial legacies and biases do not create further racism or unequal situations for marginalized groups. The implication for critical management studies is that scholars from this camp should be more sensitive to issues of black consciousness and implement an authentic pragmatic ideal to promote black culture and historiographies in universities and curricula. It also highlights a need for the field of business ethics to apply more sensitive theory of marginalized stakeholders in order to prevent any escalation of violence by multinational corporations in the name of shareholder value creation and profit-maximization.
This literature review systematically synthesizes studies that link consumer research to differences and similarities in virtue ethics between the East and the West, with a focus on early Chinese and ancient Greek virtue ethics. These two major traditions provide principles that guide consumer behavior and thus serve as a background to comparatively explain and evaluate
the ethical nature of consumer behavior in the East and the West. The paper first covers Eastern and Western theoretical and normative approaches of virtue ethics in the field of consumer research. The subsequent systematic literature review then synthesizes empirical works in this field. Since only a few papers adopt a cross-cultural consumer research perspective, one of the main aims of this review is to encourage scholars to pursue both theoretical and empirical cross-cultural consumer research on virtue ethics. To this end, the paper closes by suggesting some fruitful directions for future research to stimulate this relatively under-researched area.
Confucianism is potentially relevant to business ethics and business practice in many ways. Although some scholars have seen Confucian thought as applicable to corporate social responsibility (Wang and Juslin in Journal of Business Ethics 88(3):433–451, 2009) and to corporate governance (Low and Ang in International Journal of Business and Management 8(4):30–43, 2013), only a few business ethicists (Koehn in Local insights, global ethics for business. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2001a; Business Ethics Quarterly 11(3):415–431, 2001b; Journal of Business Ethics 116(4):703–715, 2013; Romar in Journal of Business Ethics 38(1–2):119–131, 2002; Lam in The Analects, Penguin Classics, London, 2003; Chan in Journal of Business Ethics 77(3):347–360, 2008; Woods and Lamond in Journal of Business Ethics 102(4):669–683, 2011) have taken seriously the possibility that Confucius may have important insights to offer regarding virtue ethics, which has now become the most popular normative theory as evidenced by the number of recent articles published in business ethics journals (Alzola in Business Ethics Quarterly 25(3):287–318, 2017). This paper aims to help rectify this oversight. The paper focuses on several distinctive aspects of Confucian ethics, discussing both how Confucius’ approach differs from Aristotelian virtue ethics in significant ways and how these key differences suggest numerous directions for future research.
Due to the process of globalization, companies are obligated to observe corporate social responsibility and best practices from a sustainability approach towards their stakeholders and society. The explicit aim is to determine the relevance of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its relationship with sustainability, in order to establish trends and future lines of research. The evolution of global research on this subject has been studied from 2001 to 2018. For this purpose, a bibliometric analysis of 1832 articles has been applied, obtaining results of the scientific productivity of the journals, authors, institutions, and countries that contribute to this research. Evidence shows a growing interest in studying the relationship between socially responsible practices and the dimension of sustainability. The main category is Business, Management, and Accounting. The most productive journals are the Journal of Business Ethics and Sustainability. The authors with the most articles are García-Sánchez, Moneva, and Moratis, while Kolk is the most cited. The most prolific institution is the University of Salamanca. The United States is the country with the most publications and quotes. France and China are the countries with the largest number of international collaborations in their work. Global research has been on an upward trend with optimal publication rates in recent years.
Systematic literature reviews (SRs) are a way of synthesising scientific evidence to answer a particular research question in a way that is transparent and reproducible, while seeking to include all published evidence on the topic and appraising the quality of this evidence. SRs have become a major methodology in disciplines such as public policy research and health sciences. Some have advocated that design research should adopt the method. However, little guidance is available. This paper provides an overview of the SR method, based on the literature in health sciences. Then, the rationale for SRs in design research is explored, and four recent examples of SRs in design research are analysed to illustrate current practice. Foreseen challenges in taking forward the SR method in design research are highlighted, and directions for developing a SR method for design research are proposed. It is concluded that SRs hold potential for design research and could help us in addressing some important issues, but work is needed to define what review methods are appropriate for each type of research question in design research, and to adapt guidance to our own needs and specificities.
The role and influence of workplace spirituality on individual and organisational outcomes continue to draw attention among management scholars. Despite this increased attention, extant literature has yielded limited insights particularly into the impact and influence processes of workplace spirituality on performance outcomes at both the individual and unit levels of analysis. Addressing this gap in research, we proposed and tested a multilevel model, underpinned by social cognitive theory, that examines the processes linking perceptions of workplace spirituality and performance outcomes at the individual and organisational level of analysis. Data were obtained from 51 branches of a retail organisation in the United Kingdom. Results from structural equation modelling analysis revealed three salient findings. First, workplace spirituality was positively related to ethical climate, prosocial motivation, and moral judgment. Second, ethical climate partially mediated the relationship between workplace spirituality and prosocial motivation and moral judgment, respectively. Third, aggregated ethical climate significantly relates to branch-level helping behaviour and service performance.
Tax haven investment has become an increasingly important topic in business ethics. Given the considerable tax haven investments from emerging market firms, understanding how home-country institutions shape their investments in tax havens is theoretically intriguing and practically crucial. By integrating resource dependence and institutional theories, we hypothesize the existence of a negative relationship between firms’ home-country political status and tax haven investment. State-owned enterprises (SOEs) controlled by the central government dominate the political hierarchy. Compared with other types of enterprises, central SOEs receive the strongest institutional support and are the most prone to institutional oversight, thereby exhibiting the weakest tendency to invest in tax havens. This top group is followed by SOEs controlled by local governments, politically connected private firms, and private firms without political connections. These groups exhibit an increasing tendency to invest in overseas tax havens. The empirical analysis of Chinese listed firms during 2003–2013 supports our hypotheses. This research contributes to the business ethics literature by identifying institutional drivers of overseas tax haven investment by emerging market firms, thereby adding to the ethical debate on international tax avoidance.
Corporate scandals led to an increased interest in improving managers’ compliance. To this end, companies implement compliance programs including codes of conduct, compliance training, and whistle-blowing as core elements. Previous research has focused on the impact of the mere existence of one or several compliance program’s elements on compliance. Compliance programs differ substantially from company to company, for instance, in how training is organized and how the code looks like. This makes direct comparisons of the results challenging. Until now, it is poorly understood if and how the design of a compliance program’s element affects compliance. This paper investigates firstly, whether codes per se are an effective core element of compliance programs; secondly, whether the way a code is designed (e.g., by using examples) impacts on compliance; and thirdly, whether types of compliance training as well as whistle-blowing channels make a difference in terms of compliance and whistle-blowing. We conducted a factorial survey experiment with 1005 managers from a multinational European corporation. Our findings indicate that not the mere existence of a code but its design matters for compliance. There is evidence that more specific compliance training is more effective than general training. Our study contributes to the business ethics literature by providing insights on how design elements of compliance program’s elements matter. Finally, we also contribute to business practice as we draw up guidelines for those who are responsible for their compliance programs.
Globalization increasingly brings businesses and legal providers together. With the help of lawyers, savvy businesspeople can complete complicated international transactions or create multinational networks of related corporations. This isolates risk, facilitates local business transactions, and carefully tailors localized ownership structures. However, these globalization activities can also facilitate activities such as international jurisdiction shopping, tax evasion, money laundering, and even terrorist financing. The resultant challenges undermine the ability of all parties to both compete and pursue ethical behavior across national markets. This article develops a framework for analyzing international business and legal ethics. Specifically, we focus on four key topics: (1) how globalization impacts both business and legal ethics; (2) the special role played by national interests in shaping the applicable ethics and legal standards; (3) a framework to explain how the configuration of international business networks and related legal services can have dramatic ethical implications; and (4) applicable issues identified in the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers.
Cross-cultural management research is often confined to the positivist tradition, which is archetypically illustrated by the seminal work of Hofstede. However, this gives an incomplete overview of the field to which three additional research paradigms contribute: interpretivist, postmodern, and critical. Our ambition is to raise awareness of the presence of multiple paradigms in cross-cultural management research. This meta-theoretical positioning allows researchers to consider the insights and contributions from the different paradigms. We aim to achieve this by presenting a brief overview of the state of the field in each paradigm, thus, stressing areas of studies that enrich our understanding of the interaction between culture and management (at the national, organizational, interpersonal, and individual levels). We then highlight the specific contributions of these four paradigms , drawing especially upon the postmodern and critical works, as they have been repeatedly overlooked in reviews. The article concludes by mentioning how more interactions between the paradigms can be developed and can lead to further knowledge development.
This paper is a contribution to the discussion of how religious perspectives can improve business ethics. Two such perspectives are in natural law of antiquity and recent Catholic social doctrine and teaching (CSD/T). This paper develops a conceptual framework from natural law and CSD/T that business leaders can adopt to build an ethos of humanistic management. This “Human Dignity-Centered” framework fills the gap between time-tested Christian norms and contemporary firm-leaders’ concrete needs. “Human dignity” is used as a rhetorical device to convey the idea that firms are composed of dynamic social networks, with an ultimate purpose of serving human needs. Ultimately, the principles and virtues the framework employs have a logic that should inspire excellence, as ethical practices and concern for human welfare lay a foundation for long-term business prosperity. In a one-frame visual representation, this paper portrays: firm leadership challenges; a transforming ethical prism of principles and virtues; and results and feedback mechanisms. The accompanying narrative describes each element and how each affects humanistic management. Finally, illustrative company examples and questions are provided to illustrate how the framework can be used to benefit human flourishing. The framework provides an adjunct to current formulations of improving managerial excellence.
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 all necessary and reasonable organizational measures in place to prevent corruption. The regular training of employees is considered one of the most effective ways to prevent corruption. Employee training is considered helpful in efforts to minimize the risk of employees 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 undergone anti-corruption training are more likely to reject prevailing justifications of corrupt practices than are those who have not undergone such training. The empirical analysis in this paper is based on regression models using data obtained from a unique dataset that includes 200 business professionals. The findings provide evidence that training is positively linked to the likelihood of rejecting 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.
Pervasive forms of worldwide communication now connect us instantly and constantly, and yet we all too often fail to understand each other. Rather than benefiting from our globally interconnected reality, the world continues to fall back on divisiveness, a widening schism exacerbated by some of the most pronounced divisions in history along lines of wealth, culture, religion, ideology, class, gender, and race. Cross-cultural dynamics are rife within multinational organizations and among people who regularly work with people from other cultures. This article reviews what we know from our scholarship on cross-cultural interaction among expatriates, negotiators, and teams that work in international contexts. Perhaps more important, this article outlines what we need to learn—and to unlearn—to be able to see diversity as an asset in helping individuals, organizations, and society to succeed rather than continuing to understand it primarily as a source of problems.
This paper proposes a model to explain what makes organisations ethically vulnerable. Drawing upon legitimacy, institutional, agency and individual moral reasoning theories we consider three sets of explanatory factors and examine their association with organisational ethical vulnerability. The three sets comprise external institutional context, internal corporate governance mechanisms and organisational ethical infrastructure. We combine these three sets of factors and develop an analytical framework for classifying ethical issues and propose a new model of organisational ethical vulnerability. We test our model on a sample of 253 firms that were involved in ethical misconduct and compare them with a matched sample of the same number of firms from 28 different countries. The results suggest that weak regulatory environment and internal corporate governance combined with profitability warnings or losses in the preceding year increase organisational ethical vulnerability. We find counterintuitive evidence suggesting that firms' involvement in bribery and corruption prevention training programmes is positively associated with the likelihood of ethical vulnerability. By synthesising insights about individual and corporate behaviour from multiple theories, this study extends existing analytical literature on business ethics. Our findings have implications for firms' external regulatory settings, corporate governance mechanisms and organisational ethical infrastructure.
This study investigates the relationship among ethical philosophy, thinking style, and managerial ethical decision-making. Based on the premise that business ethics is a function of culture and time, we attempt to explore two important questions as to whether the national differences in managerial ethical philosophies remain over time and whether the relationship between thinking style and ethical decision-making is consistent across different national contexts. We conducted a survey on Korean managers’ ethical decision-making and thinking style and made a cross-cultural, cross-temporal comparison with the results presented by previous studies that surveyed Korean and US managers with the same questionnaire at different points in time. Our analysis revealed that Korean managers have become more reliant on rule utilitarianism for ethical decision-making over the last two decades, which is dominantly used by US managers, corroborating our convergence hypothesis built on social contracts theory. However, as opposed to previous research, we found that managers with a balanced linear and nonlinear thinking style do not necessarily make more ethical decisions compared to those with a predominantly linear or nonlinear thinking style. This study contributes to international business ethics literature by presenting a theoretical framework that may explain the convergence of ethical philosophies employed by managers in different national contexts over time, and that the relationship between thinking style and managerial ethical decision-making may not be universal, but contingent on contextual factors.
The focus of many organizations worldwide has been changing from greater productivity and profit maximization to sustainable development. Those organizations that focus on profit-only often make short-term decisions without concern for long-run sustainable benefits. The concept of organizational ethics has been widely discussed as it may provide the means to long-term business success. This paper considers the basis of organizational ethics as an integration of ethical climate and culture in organizations that has an important impact on ethical decision-making and outcomes, which in turn could lead to sustainable development. The challenge of businesses is to remain ethical to stakeholders under conditions of uncertainty. They are expected to serve sustainable development not only for the benefits of themselves, but also the interests of others in society.
Every corporation has an economic and moral responsibility to its stockholders to perform well financially. However, the number of bankruptcies in Slovakia has been growing for several years without an apparent macroeconomic cause. To prevent a rapid denigration and to prevent the outflow of foreign capital, various efforts are being zealously implemented. Robust analysis using conventional bankruptcy prediction tools revealed that the existing models are adaptable to local conditions, particularly local legislation. Furthermore, it was confirmed that most of these outdated tools have sufficient capability to warn of impending financial problems several years in advance. A novel bankruptcy prediction tool that outperforms the conventional models was developed. However, it is increasingly challenging to predict bankruptcy risk as corporations have become more global and more complex and as they have developed sophisticated schemes to hide their actual situations under the guise of “optimization” for tax authorities. Nevertheless, scepticism remains because economic engineers have established bankruptcy as a strategy to limit the liability resulting from court-imposed penalties.
Background
Leadership style adopted by nursing managers is a key element in progress and development of nursing and quality of healthcare services received by the patients. In this regard, the role of ethical leadership is of utmost importance.
Objectives
The objective of the study was to elaborate on the ethical leadership and its role in professional progress and growth of nurses in the light of work condition in health providing institutes.
Methods
The study was carried out as a qualitative study following conventional content analysis method. In total, 14 nursing faculty members and nursing managers at different levels were selected through purposive sampling method. Semi-structured interviews were used for data gathering. The data were analyzed using latent content analysis and constant comparison analysis.
Ethical considerations
This study was conducted in accordance with ethical issues in research with human participants and national rules and regulations related to informed consent and confidentiality. The study was approved by the Committee of Ethics in Research at the Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, Iran, under the code: sbmu.rec.1393.695 on 15 February 2015.
Findings
Five subcategories were obtained based on the analysis, which constituted two main categories including “all-inclusive satisfaction” and “productivity.” Nursing leaders highlighted the point that their ethical behavior creates “inner satisfaction of the leader,” “employees’ job satisfaction,” and “patients’ satisfaction.” Improvement of productivity was another outcome of ethical behavior of the leaders. This kind of behavior resulted in “providing better services” and “inspiring ethical behavior in the employees.” It has great influence on progress and growth of the nursing profession.
Conclusion
By creating an ethical climate, ethical leadership leads to positive and effective outcomes—for the patients as well as for the nurses and the leaders—and professional progress and development of the nursing profession. Therefore, an ethical work environment that supports nurses’ progress and development can be developed by paying more attention to moralities in recruitment, teaching ethical values to the leaders, and using a systematic and objective approach to assess morality in the environment.
In recent times, international comparative studies on managers’ beliefs regarding ethical/unethical leadership have increased in number. These studies focus on both Eastern and Western countries. However, although these previous studies focused on the effects of national culture, they did not pay sufficient attention to the effects of institutions. Moreover, these studies covered only a few countries. Despite Japan’s strong influence on the world economy, it has not been included in previous studies on ethical leadership. Thus, to reveal unexplored factors—particularly cultural and institutional factors—and to determine the generalizability of previous findings, this study used a qualitative research method to examine Japanese business managers’ beliefs about ethical/unethical leadership. The data revealed the convergence and divergence in beliefs regarding ethical/unethical leadership between managers in Japan and in other countries. The analysis identified mostly the same themes of ethical/unethical leadership as found in other countries albeit with different distributions. In addition, We identified new themes that may be specific to Japan or that were neglected in previous studies. Moreover, this study suggests the necessity of considering each society’s history of business ethics and current ethics-related institutional contexts in ethical/unethical leadership studies.
Ethics in business is of key importance in the existence of companies in numerous countries and regions. If a company wishes to be perceived as a reliable partner in business, it should implement the elements of this concept, or indeed this concept itself. Taking into account the aforementioned circumstances, the goal of our paper is to identify the scale and scope of the use of Business Ethics in Poland and in the Czech Republic, in three sectors of the economy, more specifically the pharmaceutical, tobacco and alcohol industries. The research subjects included a group of 200 companies operating in the aforementioned sectors. Our research has confirmed that companies from the sectors in question utilize Business Ethics in their operations, although the scale is differentiated. Most importantly, however, our research confirmed that business ethics is regarded as a significant factor which has an influence on both the success and profits of modern companies, and its role is set to increase in the future.
Adolescents have increasing discretionary income, expenditures, and purchasing power. Inventory shrinkage costs $123.4 billion globally to retail outlets. Adolescents are disproportionately responsible for theft and shoplifting. Both parents and peers significantly influence adolescents’ monetary values, materialism, and dishonesty as consumers. In this study, we develop a theoretical model involving teenagers’ social (parental and peer) attachment and their consumer ethics, treat adolescents’ money attitude in the context of youth materialism as a mediator, and simultaneously examine the direct (Social Attachment → Consumer Ethics) and indirect paths (Social Attachment → Money and Materialism → Consumer Ethics). Results of 1018 adolescents (France = 534 and China = 484; average age = 15.21) illustrate that social attachment discourages unethical beliefs directly, but encourages it indirectly through monetary values. Our multi-group analyses demonstrate a novel paradox: The correlation between parental and peer attachments is smaller in France than in China, but similar across gender. Parents contribute more than peers to social attachment in France, but both carry equal weight in China. There is a negative direct path for the Chinese sample and for girls. Indirectly, parental attachment prevents French teenagers’ unethical beliefs, whereas peer attachment promotes boys’ unethical intention, supporting the notion—bad company corrupts good morals. Across both culture and gender, monetary attitude excites dishonesty consistently for all adolescents. A negative direct path exists for Chinese boys only (the Pygmalion Effect for male little emperors). Overall, social attachment reduces unethical beliefs. Parental and peer supports shape teenagers’ monetary intelligence and ethical or unethical decision making, differently, across culture and gender. We provide theoretical, empirical, and practical implications to ethical parenting, peer attachment, monetary values, and business ethics.
This study examines the role of codes of ethics in reducing the extent to which managers act opportunistically in reporting earnings. Corporate codes of ethics, by clarifying the boundaries of ethical corporate behaviors and making relevant social norms more salient, have the potential to deter managers from engaging in opportunistic financial reporting practices. In a sample of international companies, we find that the quality of corporate codes of ethics is associated with higher earnings quality, i.e., lower discretionary accruals. Our results are confirmed for a subsample of firms more likely to be engaging in opportunistic reporting behavior, i.e., firms that just meet or beat analysts’ forecasts. Further, codes of ethics play a greater role in reducing earnings management for firms in countries with weaker investor protection mechanisms. Our results suggest that corporate codes of ethics can be a viable alternative to country-level investor protection mechanisms in curbing aggressive reporting behaviors.
This paper aims to make a methodological contribution to the systematic review method for business and social science research and to implement the proposed procedure in the field of digital transformation. In this article, we reviewed the systematic reviews found in the literature on bibliometric analysis and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines in several databases, namely Scopus, Web of Science, SpringerLink Journal, and Google Scholar, in addition to systematic literature searches on digital transformation in the fields of business and social sciences available in the Scopus database. We also combined the bibliometric analysis, PRISMA model, and software analysis to establish filters that support authors in identifying relevant literature to facilitate and improve the extraction, visualisation, and analysis of data. The developed method consisted of four stages: research design, data collection, data analysis, and visualisation. The proposed systematic review procedure and its application in the business and social science field provide an effective process. A notable contribution of this study is the inclusion of the developed PRISMA guidelines in the bibliometric standard workflow and the expansion in the use and application of analysis software.
Bibliometric analysis is a popular and rigorous method for exploring and analyzing large volumes of scientific data. It enables us to unpack the evolutionary nuances of a specific field, while shedding light on the emerging areas in that field. Yet, its application in business research is relatively new, and in many instances, underdeveloped. Accordingly, we endeavor to present an overview of the bibliometric methodology, with a particular focus on its different techniques, while offering step-by-step guidelines that can be relied upon to rigorously perform bibliometric analysis with confidence. To this end, we also shed light on when and how bibliometric analysis should be used vis-à-vis other similar techniques such as meta-analysis and systematic literature reviews. As a whole, this paper should be a useful resource for gaining insights on the available techniques and procedures for carrying out studies using bibliometric analysis.
Keywords: Bibliometric analysis; Performance analysis; Science mapping; Citation analysis; Co-citation analysis; Bibliographic coupling; Co-word analysis; Network analysis; Guidelines.
This paper reports a systematic literature review of articles published over the past 35 years on cross-cultural issues in business ethics. A screening process resulted in a final sample of 306 papers in 26 double-blind reviewed journals with an impact factor score of at least 1.0 in the field. This study uses citation analysis, systematic literature review method, and knowledge-stock analysis. This study highlights the findings from prior studies, compares and contrasts salient characteristics and provides directions for future research. This study identifies important gaps between the literature and the challenges of cross-cultural issues in business ethics. These gaps include lack of conceptual articles, multi-countries level analysis, and deficiency of comparison analysis between developed and developing countries. This article proposes to apply virtue ethics and model of cultural sense-making as some analytical frameworks in the field of cross-cultural issues in business ethics. This review of the literature could provide managers with a longitudinal perspective on how the institutional environment and national culture affect business ethics perception of employees. This paper contributes to the cross-cultural literature on ethical attitudes, helps us better understand cross-cultural differences in business ethics, and provides directions for further research.
Objectives
To describe the processes used to update the PRISMA 2009 statement for reporting systematic reviews, present results of a survey conducted to inform the update, summarise decisions made at the PRISMA update meeting, and describe and justify changes made to the guideline.
Methods
We reviewed 60 documents with reporting guidance for systematic reviews to generate suggested modifications to the PRISMA 2009 statement. We invited 220 systematic review methodologists and journal editors to complete a survey about the suggested modifications. The results of these projects were discussed at a 21-member in-person meeting. Following the meeting, we drafted the PRISMA 2020 statement and refined it based on feedback from co-authors and a convenience sample of 15 systematic reviewers.
Results
The review of 60 documents revealed that all topics addressed by the PRISMA 2009 statement could be modified. Of the 110 survey respondents, more than 66% recommended keeping six of the original checklist items as they were and modifying 15 of them using wording suggested by us. Attendees at the in-person meeting supported the revised wording for several items but suggested rewording for most to enhance clarity, and further refinements were made over six drafts of the guideline.
Conclusions
The PRISMA 2020 statement consists of updated reporting guidance for systematic reviews. We hope that providing this detailed description of the development process will enhance the acceptance and uptake of the guideline and assist those developing and updating future reporting guidelines.
In recent years, attention to sustainability and corporate ethics has grown considerably. This highlights ethical codes as tools to promote ethical and honest actions and create greater motivation among employees. Ethical codes help implement organisational control by allowing companies to represent both belief and boundary systems. Despite the global relevance of ethics, the drafting processes, and the contents of ethical codes differ considerably between countries. This circumstance makes interesting the analysis of the influence of national culture on the quality of the code of ethics, still little explored in the literature. This study aims to fill this gap by analysing the impact of Hofstede's dimensions, as an expression of national culture, on quality of the code of ethics, from an organisational control perspective. Our analysis, of 191 international companies belonging to 29 different countries and five continents, shows that the quality of the ethical codes is related to five of Hofstede's six dimensions. This study enriches the literature by extending the field of antecedents of the quality of the code of ethics, which before this research included analyses only on internal determinants.
This study analyzes real experiences of culture management to better understand how ethics permeates organizations. In addition to reviewing the literature, we used an action-research methodology and conducted semistructured interviews in Spain and in the U.S. to approach the complexity and challenges of fostering a culture in which ethical considerations are a regular part of business discussions and decision making. The consistency of findings suggests patterns of organizational conditions, cultural elements, and opportunities that influence the management of organizational cultures centered on core ethical values. The ethical competencies of leaders and of the workforce also emerged as key factors. We identify three conditions—a sense of responsibility to society, conditions for ethical deliberation, and respect for moral autonomy—coupled with a diverse set of cultural elements that cause ethics to take root in culture when the opportunity arises. Leaders can use this knowledge of the mechanisms by which organizational factors influence ethical pervasiveness to better manage organizational ethics.
This study aims to investigate the corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of international hotel chains operating in China and their effects on local Chinese employees. As CSR practices vary across countries and contexts, this study developed a scale of CSR metrics, which was based on CSR reports published by international hotel chains in China and a comprehensive literature review. Subsequently, the proposed model, which depicts the relationships between CSR practices and local employee work metrics, was tested with a PLS-SEM. Multiple phases of qualitative and quantitative investigations of 2451 local Chinese employees of international hotel chains allowed for validating a formative construct of CSR with four dimensions: environment protection, employee wellness, business ethics, and customer wellness. The PLS-SEM results confirmed the significant effects of CSR practices of international hotel chains in China on local Chinese employee engagement, commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behaviors. Theoretical and practical implications are presented.
This book brings together a wide range of topics in leadership ethics and business ethics. It approaches these topics from the perspective of the humanities as well as the social sciences. About half of the book is on leadership and the other half on topics in business ethics. Besides these general areas of research, the book explores how to teach and study ethics in both business ethics and leadership studies. Specifically, it examines issues ranging from the nature of ethical leadership, to studies of authenticity, virtue, and the public and private morality of leaders. In business ethics, the subjects covered span from moral imagination, to casuistry, meaningful work, and workplace ethics. The book includes a section on the importance of liberal arts for studying and teaching ethics in business and professional schools. It concludes with a reflection on the ethical challenges of leaders and followers in a world where some leaders have inverted moral values.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a corporate ethical policy, such as a code of ethics, on the unethical behavior of internal and vendor employees in the supply chain in India. It also aims to find whether International Standards Organization (ISO) certification of vendors affects the result and any significant relationship between management commitment and unethical behavior can be supported by the findings as well.
Design/methodology/approach
Empirical analyses were conducted on a survey consisting of 43 questions comprising 181 valid responses. Multiple regression analysis that includes four independent variables – code of ethics, management commitment, supply chain principles and personal values taking unethical behavior as dependent variable – was used to find the significance of the relationship.
Findings
The implementation of a code of ethics, management commitment, supply chain principles and personal values all have a negative association with unethical behavior. Personal values, measuring a firm’s financial aspects for non-compliance to ethical behavior, have a positive association with unethical behavior. The relationships of top management commitment, personal values with internal employees’ unethical behavior are significant. The significant relationship between management commitment and unethical behavior can be supported by the findings as well. It was also found that ISO certificates and firm size as the control variables did not have any effect on the relationship between the independent variables and unethical behavior. The analysis also shows that ISO 26000 certificate, the international standard for socially responsible operations, does not impact this relationship.
Research limitations/implications
Measuring substantial managerial effort for corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices by asking questions like, “how committed employees think top management is to social responsibility,” may not fully measure substantial managerial effort for CSR practices. To improve the results of the current study, future research can use the CSR index or disclosure as a measure to better reflect management commitment and practice for social responsibility. Second, the current study is limited to measuring how many occurrences of unethical behavior are witnessed by employees instead of what specific unethical behavior is more often witnessed. Considering India has the second largest population in the world, 181 responses may not represent the true practices in the business environment in India for generalization.
Practical implications
The findings suggest that management should put more of an emphasis on improving the commitment of upper-level managers to decrease the overall unethical practices of their employees. The study finds that employees’ personal values influence their ethical behavior. Therefore, communications and training of employees at all levels should emphasis on improving personal values.
Social implications
Businesses should influence academics to incorporate personal value building in course curricula. The Indian CSR law should incorporate the holistic view of CSR taking care of needs of all stakeholders under the provision of the regulation. In 2015, India became the first country in the world to legislate CSR practices in corporations but it misses the opportunity to sensitize the management and employees on ethical practices as it mainly identified philanthropic expenses as mandatory CSR spending and silent on ethical business practices.
Originality/value
The present study contributes to the literature by bringing supply chain context to the effect of different factors on unethical behaviors and interaction of internal and vendor firms in terms of ethical practices. There are several studies on business ethics in different countries including China, but in the case of India similar studies are not much. The present study fills the gap.
Academic and corporate interest in ethical leadership, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm performance has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. In fact, many research papers and journal special issues have been focused on these three domains. In this context, this paper conducts a systematic review on the concepts of ethical leadership and CSR, and their impact on firm performance. One hundred fourteen papers published over a period of 58 years (1958-2016) were selected and analyzed according to descriptive and content perspectives to propose a conceptual framework and define a future research agenda. In fact, the main results allow us to derive six main propositions representing possible areas of investigation to direct research on the topic. More in details, the body of literature highlights that financial factors are the main barriers affecting the adoption of CSR practices. On the contrary, internal and external environment was found to represent a critical success factor in the adoption of CSR practices. Finally, the results highlight that personal values have impact on ethical leadership that in turn has direct positive impact on CSR as well as direct and indirect impact on firm performance.
The purpose of this study is to systematically review the body of knowledge on corporate diplomacy (CD) and political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) in journals from the fields of public relations, public diplomacy, general management and business ethics. By applying an interdisciplinary approach our study aims to (1) examine what definitions of CD and PCSR exist, (2) explore what theories have been applied to CD and PCSR and, (3) find differences and commonalities between the underlying concepts of CD and PCSR. Building on the results of our review, we redefine each construct and develop a theoretical framework of CD, which integrates PCSR, international public relations and public diplomacy. Our results serve as a foundation for an operationalization of the constructs in order to conduct empirical analyses and contribute to current research on the political role of multinational corporations.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a mainstream business practice, attracting broad attention from business, consumers, academics, and policymakers, leading firms to account for the social and environmental footprints of their activities. The aim of this paper is to present recent advances on CSR, regarding its incentives and its market and societal effects. The analytical approaches surveyed highlight various ways through which CSR creates value for firms and stakeholders. The paper looks on the CSR of multinational enterprises as well and concludes with issues related to international initiatives for the inclusion of CSR in policy agendas towards sustainable development.
This paper aims to describe the development of research on corporate social responsibility in international business (IB) journals and to suggest future research directions. We conducted a bibliometric study of articles published in twelve leading international business journals over three decades in a longer time frame (1996-2015). Five research trends were found in IB journals: business ethics, integration of stakeholder management, the evolution of the CSR concept, the political and social demands of CSR, and the financial implications of CSR. Our results thus have several implications and suggest numerous opportunities for future research.
The notion of organizational control has been a constant theme in the construction and representations of euromodern1 organizations. The discourse of control has been justified in organizational theory on a variety of counts, such as the need to eliminate stubborn “soldiering” by recalcitrant employees (Taylor, 1911), the inducement of collaborative enterprise (Barnard, 1938), the curtailment of opportunist practices in organizational transactions (Williamson, 1985), the management of bounded rationality (Simon, 1957), the development of adaptive mechanisms (Hannan & Freeman, 1977), the facilitation of diverse organizational conversations (Srivastava & Cooperrider, 1990), the management of organizational knowledge (Davenport & Prusak, 1998), or even the need to create a paradigmatic consensus in organizational research (Pfeffer, 1993). On the other hand, mainstream theories of organizational control have been critiqued as being coercive (Braverman, 1974), insensitive to noncontractual trust-based control systems (Perrow, 1979), or unmindful of the fundamental causal determinants of conflict (Jermier, Knights, & Nord, 1994). Scholars have pointed to the enacted nature of organizational reality (Weick, 1979), the constructed nature of academic practices (Canella & Paetzold, 1994), and the anthropocentric biases that have dominated management research (Shrivastava, 1996), thereby seeking to destabilize the platform of positivism on which much of the mainstream discourse of organizational control stands.