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On the nexus between code of business ethics, human resource supply chain management and corporate culture: evidence from MENA countries
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze the relationships between human resource supply chain management (HRSCM), corporate culture (CC) and the code of business ethics (CBE) in the MENA region.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, the author adopted a quantitative approach through an online Google Form survey for the data-gathering process. All questionnaires were distributed to the manufacturing and service firms that are listed in the Chambers of the Industries of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Egypt in the MENA region using a simple random sampling method. About 567 usable and valid responses were retrieved out of 2,077 for analysis, representing a 27.3% response rate. The sample unit for analysis included all middle- and senior-level managers and employees within manufacturing and service firms. The conceptual model was tested using a hypothesis-testing deductive approach. The findings are based on covariance-based analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) using PLS-SEM software. The author performed convergent validity and discriminant validity tests, and bootstrapping was also applied.
Findings
The empirical results display a significant and positive association between HRSCM and the CBE. The CC and the CBE tend to be positively and significantly related. Therefore, HRSCM can play a key role in boosting and applying the CBE in firms. For achieving the firm purposes, more attention to the HR personnel should be paid to implement the CBE. The high importance of the CBE becomes necessary for both the department and the firm.
Practical implications
Such results can provide insightful information for HR personnel, managers and leaders to encourage them to develop and maintain an effective corporate code of conduct within their organizations.
Originality/value
This paper tries to explore the linkages between HRSCM, CC and CBE in the Middle East region due to the lack of research available that analyzes the relationship between them. Not only that, but it also offers great implications for Middle Eastern businesses.
... These systems can only be as unbiased as their training data, which gives rise to inefficiencies, faulty forecasts, or misallocations of resources, for example, which go against sustainability objectives. The road to better transparency and the refinement of algorithms will provide the route to greater AI reliability (AL-Shboul, 2024). ...
This paper explores how AI drives GCC sector retail towards the fulfillment of the UN SDGs. Analyzing a survey conducted on 410 retail executives, using PLS-SEM, this study underlines the role of AI in promoting operational efficiency, waste reduction, and consumer engagement with greener products. Key highlights include that AI-enabled marketing strategies improve the adoption of sustainable practices among consumers; AI-powered smart distribution channels enhance supply chain efficiency, reduce carbon emissions, and optimize logistics. For a retailer, practical applications of AI include the use of AI in demand forecasting to potentially reduce waste, personalized marketing to efficiently promote sustainable products, and deploying smart systems that reduce energy consumption. While these benefits are real, data privacy and algorithmic bias remain valid concerns, thus underlining the need for ethics and transparency in the practice of AI. The following study provides actionable insights for GCC retailers on how to align AI adoption with sustainability goals, fostering competitive advantages and environmental responsibility.
The online retail revolution is in full swing, while how to realize the innovative and sustainable development of traditional physical retail industry has attracted widespread attention. What drives people to travel long distances and queue up outside Pangdonglai's doors? Based on the theory of business ethics, this paper will deconstruct the "giant" of the retail industry, from the five aspects of employees, suppliers, customers, competitors, society and the environment. It explores how Pangdonglai adheres to business ethics to achieve long-term development, providing practical model for the transformation of Chinese enterprise management.
Unstructured and random job rotation practice has posed unprecedented challenges for many firms, and impacts on employees worldwide, particularly in Jordan Customs (JC). This paper investigates the current process of the job rotation practice that the Human Resource Supply Chain Management (HRSCM) directorate is applying at JC. Therefore, applying unstructured job rotation practice (i.e., monthly) frequently and regularly will have a significant negative impact on JC performance as a whole. Qualitative methodology was adopted through conducting some semi-structured interviews with managers from mid and top levels, internal employees, external partners, and customers. Forty-six (46) interviewees participated and shared in this study out of 203, representing a 22 percent response rate (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Additionally, it was reviewed many related previous research studies in the literature in order to collect some other qualitative data from secondary sources (i.e., statistics, annual reports, etc.). The findings of this study show that JC applies the current job rotation practice randomly, unstructured, and not in a perfect and scientific way for achieving its goals and objectives; thus, leads to low revenues and performance (Magova & Kessy, 2020).
Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS‐SEM) is an essential element of marketing researchers' methodological toolbox. During the last decade, the PLS‐SEM field has undergone massive developments, raising the question of whether the method's users are following the most recent best practice guidelines. Extending prior research in the field, this paper presents the results of a new analysis of PLS‐SEM use in marketing research, focusing on articles published between 2011 and 2020 in the top 30 marketing journals. While researchers were more aware of the when's and how's of PLS‐SEM use during the period studied, we find that there continues to be some delay in the adoption of model evaluation's best practices. Based on our review results, we provide recommendations for future PLS‐SEM use, offer guidelines for the method's application, and identify areas of further research interest.
While companies are integrating in the business environment where organizational culture is effective, they cannot predict what the impact of the organizational culture will be and how to act in an unknown and changing environment. Thus, the mediating role of environmental uncertainty in the effect of organizational culture on supply chain integration will be determined in the current study. In this connection, the research question of the study was set to be “Does organizational culture affect supply chain integration and firm performance?”. The model was tested with the structural equation model (SEM). The population of the study consists of manufacturing companies in the Free Zone and Organized Industrial Zone in the City of Mersin. A total of 238 questionnaires were applied in the current study. As a result of the analysis, the effect of organizational culture on supply chain integration and the effect of environmental uncertainty on supply chain integration were found to be statistically significant. However, the effect of organizational culture on environmental uncertainty was found to be statistically insignificant.
Over the past few years, there has been a proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) strategies, released by governments around the world, that seek to maximise the benefits of AI and minimise potential harms. This article provides a comparative analysis of the European Union (EU) and the United States’ (US) AI strategies and considers (i) the visions of a ‘Good AI Society’ that are forwarded in key policy documents and their opportunity costs, (ii) the extent to which the implementation of each vision is living up to stated aims and (iii) the consequences that these differing visions of a ‘Good AI Society’ have for transatlantic cooperation. The article concludes by comparing the ethical desirability of each vision and identifies areas where the EU, and especially the US, need to improve in order to achieve ethical outcomes and deepen cooperation.
Multinational companies face The U.S. & China trade war, disease occurrence, climate change effect, technological innovation, and COVID-19 outbreak directly impact changing customer demands and indirectly impact human resource management on any business. Human resource management (HRM) is concerned with coordinating plans and organizations with people to fulfill the priorities and job demands in the best possible way. Corporate success depends on its human resource capacity. Managers will try best management practices. Analysis alone, however, cannot guarantee the success of a transition project. Ethical change management could help managers understand problems and the relationship between HRM, business ethics, triumphant goal, and outcome. Human resource analysis includes SWOT analysis, mission-vision, strategies, and company ethical culture goal. Change management will improve the satisfaction of all participants. Therefore, ethical problems are business concerns and a review in this article.
It has become trivial to point out that algorithmic systems increasingly pervade the social sphere. Improved efficiency—the hallmark of these systems—drives their mass integration into day-to-day life. However, as a robust body of research in the area of algorithmic injustice shows, algorithmic systems, especially when used to sort and predict social outcomes, are not only inadequate but also perpetuate harm. In particular, a persistent and recurrent trend within the literature indicates that society's most vulnerable are disproportionally impacted. When algorithmic injustice and harm are brought to the fore, most of the solutions on offer (1) revolve around technical solutions and (2) do not center disproportionally impacted communities. This paper proposes a fundamental shift—from rational to relational—in thinking about personhood, data, justice, and everything in between, and places ethics as something that goes above and beyond technical solutions. Outlining the idea of ethics built on the foundations of relationality, this paper calls for a rethinking of justice and ethics as a set of broad, contingent, and fluid concepts and down-to-earth practices that are best viewed as a habit and not a mere methodology for data science. As such, this paper mainly offers critical examinations and reflection and not “solutions.”
‘Adding value to the company’, ‘improvement of workplace conditions’,
‘good citizens’, ‘voluntary commitments’ are only some of the attributes
that are associated with corporate codes of conduct and/or codes of ethics. Due
to public pressure, codes of conduct have become a crucial part in the strategy of
enterprises over the last decades in order to address the potentially abusive labour
practices by their foreign business partners. Th us, private-sector initiatives such as
codes of conduct are providing norms, values and procedures for ethical decisions
across the chain regarding social and/or environmental issues. Th erefore, working
conditions in developing countries have undoubtedly improved in general and
goods are produced according to environmentally friendly standards. While codes
of conduct demonstrate eff orts by enterprises to improve their working conditions,
for example in the supply chain, the same eff ect has not yet been achieved
in the relationship between employer and employee. From an employee’s perspective,
codes of conduct also have a dark side. What is the problem?
Even though formalization of ethical principles is a must in today’s business, research and evidence in the Slovak conditions remain scarce. Yet, creating an ethical business climate and especially the formalization of ethics through codes of ethics incorporated in corporate standards is a particularly interesting phenomenon in the conditions of transit economies due to the significant role of multinationals in this process. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine main factors influencing the extent of ethical codes in 225 subsidiaries of multinational companies operating in Slovakia. The conducted questionnaire study containing items focused on area and extent of ethical code, number of employees, economic performance, regional and industrial scope, ownership structure, and nationality of executive director was used as a tool for data collection. Factor analysis was processed to identify the interdependencies between observed variables and to find the latent variables. Further, the Kruskal–Wallis test was applied to identify the differences among the variables along with the Bonferroni correction test, which specified the items between which the significant difference occurred. The following findings emerged. First, companies with lower extent of ethical code use general phrases. When they want to specialize on any ethics problems, extent must be wider. Second, companies with a lower number of employees do not need extensive ethical code due to clear rules with which they are familiar in a direct way by owners. In multinational companies, the communication of ethical rules is realized via ethical codes with specific purposes because the direct way is impossible. Third, companies with foreign ownership used different managerial approaches, and therefore ethical codes differ in extent and content.
Rationale: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is an immense global health threat that has invoked
unheard-of containment measures in numerous countries to reduce the number of new infections.
Objective: The sequential introduction of severe measures, intentionally aiming at reducing the number of new
infections, also imposes sharp restrictions on populations with potentially unintended, detrimental effects on
public mental health.
Method: We used observational data reflecting the number of phone calls made to national crisis hotlines in
Austria and Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic (January 2020–April 2020) to investigate the impact of
government restrictions as well as their later revocations on public mental health. Importantly, both countries
have comparable health care systems, are similar in their political and socio-economic idiosyncrasies, and took
similar restrictive government measures in order to contain COVID-19—but implemented them at different
points in time.
Results: Analysis indicated that the number of crisis hotline calls increased in both countries. This increase
seemed to occur at around the same time as the implementation of restrictive governmental responses. Importantly, the revocation of these governmental restrictions (i.e., re-opening the economy, allowing more social
contact) seemed to occur at around the same time as the decrease in the number of calls.
Conclusions: The present study supports the notion that the implementation of severe measures affects public
mental health. However, the negative mental health effects of COVID-19 may be reduced if severe governmental
restrictions are kept in place as briefly as possible.
This qualitative field study is based on interviews with 20 experienced audit partners in France and documents the dialogical dimension of ethical deliberation in auditing. We ask: do audit partners consult each other when faced with an ethical dilemma at work? Who among their peers do they prefer to consult and why? Our analysis provides evidence that audit partners do not deliberate alone, contrary to what psychological experimental research on audit ethics usually postulates. When faced with an uncertain situation in terms of professional ethics, they seek reassurance by consulting colleagues. Not just any colleagues, however. Whom they consult depends on whether they wish to avoid or take measured ethical risks. Overall, we find that audit partners approach ethics as a personal and collective risk that must be managed in specific ways. This study enriches what we know about auditor ethics by helping to shed light on what is usually inaccessible to researchers: the questions that audit partners ask their peers when faced with uncomfortable ethical issues in client engagements before making a decision they find acceptable
There is a growing interest in BEs at present, because it has become an important necessity in all business functions in organizations, particularly HRM. Human resources function deals with one of the most important resources in the company to improve performance and gain competitive advantage. Therefore, HRM practices should be applied based on ethical principles such as fairness, transparency and equal opportunities. This study aimed to determine the extent of commitment to BEs within the HRM activities in the industrial companies listed on Amman Stock Exchange and its impact on the performance of those companies. The results of the study showed that there is a high degree of commitment to BEs in all HRM practices. The results of the study showed that there is a high degree of commitment to BEs in all HRM practices in terms of recruitment, selection, training, compensation, and appraisal employees’ performance. The results also showed that there is an impact of practicing BEs in all activities of HRM except compensation on the OP. At the end of the study, the researcher developed a set of recommendations that he considered they are necessary to achieve a higher level of commitment to BEs in order to improve OP.
Climate change is on the national agenda of Russia due to this country’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and the expected degree of warming and precipitation increase in its territory. A content analysis of the mission statements of the 100 biggest Russian companies shows that 18.5% of them deal with environmental issues. About half of the companies that declare pro-environmental behavior belong to the energy production and transmission industry. It also is found that more than 30% of all leading hydrocarbon, chemical, and mining companies express environmental concerns in their mission statements. The main environmental priorities declared by the top Russian companies include caring for nature, production ecologization, energy efficiency, and ecological standards. These priorities are related to climate-friendly behavior, but the latter is not stated directly. Direct consideration of climate change in the mission statements of Russian companies is recommended.
Who decides what good data science looks like? And who gets to decide what “data ethics” means? The answer is all of us. Good data science should incorporate the perspectives of people who create and work with data, people who study the interactions between science and society, and people whose lives are affected by data science. Who decides what good data science looks like? And who gets to decide what “data ethics” means? The answer is all of us. Good data science should incorporate the perspectives of people who create and work with data, people who study the interactions between science and society, and people whose lives are affected by data science.
The increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for making decisions in public affairs has sparked a lively debate on the benefits and potential harms of self-learning technologies, ranging from the hopes of fully informed and objectively taken decisions to fear for the destruction of mankind. To prevent the negative outcomes and to achieve accountable systems, many have argued that we need to open up the “black box” of AI decision-making and make it more transparent. Whereas this debate has primarily focused on how transparency can secure high-quality, fair, and reliable decisions, far less attention has been devoted to the role of transparency when it comes to how the general public come to perceive AI decision-making as legitimate and worthy of acceptance. Since relying on coercion is not only normatively problematic but also costly and highly inefficient, perceived legitimacy is fundamental to the democratic system. This paper discusses how transparency in and about AI decision-making can affect the public’s perception of the legitimacy of decisions and decision-makers and produce a framework for analyzing these questions. We argue that a limited form of transparency that focuses on providing justifications for decisions has the potential to provide sufficient ground for perceived legitimacy without producing the harms full transparency would bring.
This study defines a green mining system as a synergetic operation system composed of a mining subsystem and an environmental governance subsystem. Through conducting a case study of China's coal enterprises, this study identifies the mining subsystem as the first production stage and the environmental governance subsystem as the second production stage. To evaluate green mining efficiency, an entire green mining efficiency indicator system was constructed by analyzing the main inputs and outputs of the two subsystems. Using the 2019 data collected from Chinese coal mining enterprises based on the constructed indicator system, this study presents a two-stage combination Data Envelopment Analysis model to assess green mining efficiency in terms of mining efficiency and environmental governance efficiency. According to this empirical study's results, there were four main findings. First, coal enterprises can be divided into three categories in accordance with the efficiency value ranking generated by the two-stage model and the corresponding synergetic development levels. Second, the percentage distribution of coal enterprises based on their green mining efficiency level embodies the attributes of a spindle structure. Third, the exported parameters information from the two-stage model supports green mining efficiency improvement as quantitative evidence. Fourth, the model results form the basis for policy proposals and improvement countermeasures.
This study examines whether customer firms’ unethical behavior distorts suppliers’ investment decisions. Using litigation and restatement to measure unethical behavior, we find that suppliers with customers engaged in frauds tend to invest more during the cheating period, compared to unaffected suppliers. In cross-sectional analyses, we examine the moderating effect of suppliers’ reliance on customer information and peer information. Results show that more industry peers’ voluntary disclosures and analyst coverage, lower sales volatility, and lower relationship-specific investments mitigate the distortion effect on suppliers. Suppliers’ overinvestments caused by customers’ misreporting also lead to the suppliers’ inferior future performance and subsequent negative market reaction, and the severity of customers’ misreporting influences the magnitude of suppliers’ investment distortions. These results are robust in a dynamic difference-in-difference specification, an SEC enforcement sample, and a sample that excludes observations for suppliers and customers in the same industry. This paper contributes to the ethics literature by emphasizing the importance of creditable supply-chain information transfer to investment decisions and clarifying the nontrivial influence of principal customers in the supply-chain network.
In the last few years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has achieved a notable momentum that, if harnessed appropriately, may deliver the best of expectations over many application sectors across the field. For this to occur shortly in Machine Learning, the entire community stands in front of the barrier of explainability, an inherent problem of the latest techniques brought by sub-symbolism (e.g. ensembles or Deep Neural Networks) that were not present in the last hype of AI (namely, expert systems and rule based models). Paradigms underlying this problem fall within the so-called eXplainable AI (XAI) field, which is widely acknowledged as a crucial feature for the practical deployment of AI models. The overview presented in this article examines the existing literature and contributions already done in the field of XAI, including a prospect toward what is yet to be reached. For this purpose we summarize previous efforts made to define explainability in Machine Learning, establishing a novel definition of explainable Machine Learning that covers such prior conceptual propositions with a major focus on the audience for which the explainability is sought. Departing from this definition, we propose and discuss about a taxonomy of recent contributions related to the explainability of different Machine Learning models, including those aimed at explaining Deep Learning methods for which a second dedicated taxonomy is built and examined in detail. This critical literature analysis serves as the motivating background for a series of challenges faced by XAI, such as the interesting crossroads of data fusion and explainability. Our prospects lead toward the concept of Responsible Artificial Intelligence , namely, a methodology for the large-scale implementation of AI methods in real organizations with fairness, model explainability and accountability at its core. Our ultimate goal is to provide newcomers to the field of XAI with a thorough taxonomy that can serve as reference material in order to stimulate future research advances, but also to encourage experts and professionals from other disciplines to embrace the benefits of AI in their activity sectors, without any prior bias for its lack of interpretability.
Purpose: The present study focuses on the role of ethics in the supply chain management. In addition to that the moderating role of culture is also examined. Organizational culture has been regarded as an important determinant of ethical behaviours of managers. This paper assesses the potential of organizational culture to impact ethics in organizations. Methodology: Organizational culture is recognized as one determinant of how people behave, more or less ethically, in organizations. Results: The research outcome will enable organizations with SCM functions to understand better the role that ethics can play in steering the organization to greater heights. The research will also assist professional associations in the approach of guiding, training and counselling its members on issues related to ethics. The results of the current study are providing support to the proposed hypothesis. The results are obtained through smart PLS. In the author's knowledge this is among pioneering studies on this issue.
Previous research on China’s corruption and its continued, tolerated existence tended to focus on guanxi wang networks (informal gift-giving) and baohu san (protective “umbrellas” from enforcement). This article compares China with the United States and argues that enforcement results between the two countries are similar even though the mechanisms are distinct. Issues of system capacity and non-issue making explain the similar effects of these disparate methods (codes of conduct in the U.S. and anti-corruption crackdowns in China).
This paper presents a review of 100 empirical papers studying corporate codes of ethics (CCEs) in business organizations from the time period mid-2005 until mid-2016, following approximately an 11-year time period after the previous review of the literature. The reviewed papers are broadly categorized as content-oriented, output-oriented, or transformation-oriented. The review sheds light on empirical focus, context, questions addressed, methods, findings and theory. The findings are discussed in terms of the three categories as well as the aggregate, stock of empirical CCE studies in comparison with previous reviews, answering the question “where are we now?” Content and output studies still stand for the majority of the studies, whereas the transformation studies are fewer. Within these areas, two new trends are found to have emerged: discursive analyses and a focus on labor conditions. The review finds that (a) the content of CCEs is still predominantly self-defensive, (b) that CCEs are insufficient in themselves in terms of protecting workers’ rights, (c) that CCEs are likely to encounter tensions when implemented across national and organizational boundaries, and (d) that while perception of CCEs is generally positive, CCEs may lead to both positive and negative outcomes. Based on these findings, potential areas for further exploration in the area of CCE research are suggested.
This study investigates the joint effects of business and political ties, cognitive capital, and institutional support on product innovation performance in China and India. The hypotheses are empirically tested using bootstrap and multiple group structural equation modeling methods, and data collected from 300 Chinese and 200 Indian manufacturers. The results reveal that cognitive capital mediates business ties’ impacts on product innovation performance in both China and India and that institutional support mediates the effects of business and political ties on product innovation performance only in China. The study also finds that political ties increase institutional support in India and that the effect of cognitive capital on product innovation performance is significantly stronger in India than in China. This study clarifies the mechanisms through which business and political ties enhance product innovation performance and generalizes the results in two emerging markets. The cross-country comparison sheds light on the influences of cultural and institutional environments on such mechanisms and provides insights into how to utilize managers’ business and political ties for product innovation in China and India.
Purpose
This paper provides a comprehensive, yet concise, overview of the considerations and metrics required for PLS-SEM analysis and result reporting. Preliminary considerations are summarized first, including reasons for choosing PLS-SEM, recommended sample size in selected contexts, distributional assumptions, use of secondary data, statistical power, and the need for goodness-of-fit testing. Next, the metrics, as well as the rules of thumb, that should be applied to assess the PLS-SEM results are covered. Besides covering established PLS-SEM evaluation criteria, the overview includes new guidelines for applying (1) PLSpredict, a novel approach for assessing a model’s out-of-sample prediction, (2) metrics for model comparisons, and (3) several complementary methods for checking the results’ robustness.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper provides an overview of previously and recently proposed metrics, as well as rules of thumb, for evaluating the results of research, based on the application of PLS-SEM.
Findings
Most of the previously applied metrics for evaluating PLS-SEM results are still relevant, but scholars need to be knowledgeable about recently proposed metrics (e.g., model comparison criteria) and methods (e.g., endogeneity assessment, latent class analyses, PLSpredict) and when and how to apply them.
Research limitations/implications
Methodological developments associated with PLS-SEM are rapidly emerging. The metrics reported in this paper are useful for current applications, but scholars need to continuously seek the latest developments in the PLS-SEM method.
Originality/value
In light of more recent research and methodological developments in the PLS-SEM domain, guidelines for the method’s use need to be continuously extended and updated. This paper is the most current and comprehensive summary of the PLS-SEM method and the metrics applied to assess its solutions.
Corporate scandals have raised concerns about the quality and value of the audit profession with demands for improving auditors’ evaluation of management integrity. The literature lacks evidence with regards to methods of assessing management integrity and the audit standards do not provide any guidance on this either. This raises questions about how external auditors comply with the audit standards in this area and whether best practices, or even deficiencies, exist in the assessment of management integrity. This study examines methods of assessing management integrity by providing insights from the Big 4 auditors in Egypt. The findings of this study will benefit audit firms in their professional audit training programs as well as auditors conducting fraud risk assessments.
This study focuses on examining the thematic landscape of the history of scholarly publication in business ethics. We analyze the titles, abstracts, full texts, and citation information of all research papers published in the field’s leading journal, the Journal of Business Ethics, from its inaugural issue in February 1982 until December 2016—a dataset that comprises 6308 articles and 42 million words. Our key method is a computational algorithm known as probabilistic topic modeling, which we use to examine objectively the field’s latent thematic landscape based on the vast volume of scholarly texts. This “big-data” approach allows us not only to provide time-specific snapshots of various research topics, but also to track the dynamic evolution of each topic over time. We further examine the pattern of individual papers’ topic diversity and the influence of individual papers’ topic diversity on their impact over time. We conclude this study with our recommendation for future studies in business ethics research.
Purpose
The main purpose of this study is to examine the role of delivery dependability and time to market, on the relation between the infrastructure framework and supply chain agility. Furthermore, the impacts of supply chain agility on firm performance are examined.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from 113 respondents, senior executives and managers, in purchasing, operations, supplying, planning and other supply chain functions in large manufacturing firms in the MENA region, which includes 12 countries (Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Morocco, Tunis and Algeria). A large-scale survey questionnaire was used for data collection process. The research framework was tested by using hypothesis-testing deductive approach. The results are based on covariance-based analysis and structural equation modelling using analysis of moment structures software.
Findings
The results show that infrastructure framework elements do not contribute significantly to support supply chain agility. It is also found that delivery dependability and time to market partially mediate the relationship between infrastructure framework elements and supply chain agility. Additionally, it is found that supply chain agility is associated with enhanced firm performance.
Originality/value
This paper provides an overview and empirically shows that delivery dependability and time to market are appropriate logistics practices for mediating the impact of infrastructure framework and supply chain agility. These relationships indicate a contribution to theory that explains how infrastructure framework elements can procreate supply chain agility, through the synchronising of appropriately matched logistics practices.
This study compares the different emphases on virtuous characters presented in their values, across global firms considering country and industry of origin. It presents a content analysis of the 122 codes of conduct statements from Fortune Global 500 firms, drawn from four sectors and using correspondence analysis. American firms tend to emphasize courage, while European firms emphasize integrity and empathy, surprisingly with Asian firms being closer to European ones. Retailers and pharmaceutical firms emphasize empathy, while banks and petroleum emphasize courage. This study extends the newly emerging strategic paradigm of organizational virtue, by introducing an empirical study of ethical values. Implications for multinational companies are then discussed.
Sharing economy is flourishing and increasingly customers are shifting towards "using instead of owning" products and services. The objective of our research is to empirically prove that low organizational trust can trigger strict organizational practices such as ethics training and audits but excessive use of both of these practices can negatively impact the relationship quality in sharing economy. In doing so, it has detrimental effects on co-creation and co-innovation particularly when the goals are related to emotional cognitive, material support and relationship building. This study, therefore, targets to scrutinize the dark side of B2B sharing economy platforms using the ethical theory of organizing. The unique contribution of this study is first, showcasing the relationships between ethical climate, ethical practices and consequences. Second, it highlights that B2B alliances that perceive strictness in ethics audits have a low level of willingness to enhance relationship quality. However, the effect of strictness in ethics training does not lead to the development of a low level of willingness to enhance relationship quality. This is an interesting finding and generates a theoretical debate. The findings of the study will promote the development of an ethical model that addresses the negative aspects of the B2B sharing economy.
Using a sample of U.S. firms from 2003 to 2018, we examine the effect of an audit client’s code of ethics quality on audit fees. We find that clients with a lower code of ethics quality pay significantly higher audit fees, suggesting that auditors perceive such clients as riskier and charge greater risk premiums. We also find that such clients have higher litigation risk and auditors spend greater effort when auditing such clients. Our study is among the first to demonstrate the role of a client’s code of ethics quality in audit pricing. Overall, our findings are consistent with codes of ethics being useful to auditors in assessing managers’ financial representations and providing value to firms.
We investigated conceptual shifts around vulnerability and ethical issues arising in research using a case study embedded within an HIV intervention project targeting adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in a rural district, South Africa.
We recruited 77 participants. Sixty-five people participated in focus group discussions (FGDs); nine in in-depth interviews (IDIs) and three in key informant interviews (KIIs). Data were analysed iteratively using thematic framework analysis. Themes were determined by the study aims and an inductive development of codes emerging from the data. We investigated ethical issues arising at the intersection between the vulnerabilities and agency experienced by research participants. Our findings show that AGYW’s ability to exercise agency is dependent on the social, economic and political context. Understanding the social structures is crucial for interventions seeking to improve the health and social well-being of AGYW.
Corporate codes of conduct help to communicate various aspects of company policy to the staff, as well as to prescribe the desirable behavior. Gold-mining activity leaves significant environmental imprint, and, thus, pro-environmental business ethics is expected from the companies of this industry. Consideration of environment in the codes of conduct of 15 world-leading gold-mining companies is examined with two approaches, namely general assessment via scoring by three criteria and theme analysis. It is established that 93% of the analyzed codes of conduct deal with environment, and 47% of them demonstrate significant degree of 'greening'. The codes reflect 30 environment-related topics that can be grouped into five principal themes, namely environment as higher priority, industrial ecologization, environmental management, environmental law and regulation, and climate change. The first four themes are found each in the majority of the codes, whereas attention to climate change seems to be insufficient. The geological heritage issues are missed, although they seem to be linked directly to the corporate behavior in the discussed industry. Despite the moderate-to-high degree of the business ethics 'greening', many codes of conduct of the leading gold-mining companies need further improvement.
This research studies the political and identity dynamics involved in the formation of a dominant mode of business ethics control. Through analysis of the ethical tool design process at five French multinationals, this empirical study reveals how business ethics is becoming legalized. This legalization is explained by a structure of domination that favours a legalistic approach, the diffusion of tools prepared by the legalistic designers, and a socio-cognitive identity strategy applied by the dominated group, the moralist designers. The individualization of responsibility is identified as a major risk associated with excessive legalization in business ethics.
This special issue of Industrial Marketing Management aims to develop useful knowledge and generate new insights into and applications of digital marketing in B2B markets. This special edition features 11 articles that cover topics related to digital marketing in a B2B context. This introductory paper briefly summarizes the themes of the special issue, introduces each of the eleven articles on innovative digital marketing management in B2B, and provides a rationale for the inclusion of each article.
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.
The ethics code of the American Medical Association (AMA, 2017) includes nine principles. The organization was initiated over 150 years ago, and the ethics code has gone through multiple revisions since it first was written in the 1950s. The list of principles could be improved in its content and organization. The present work suggests how a proposed universal mental health ethics code (Young, 2017) can be adapted as a superordinate structure to the nine principles in the AMA Ethics code to give it a theoretical base, to organize better its principles, and to suggest principles that should be added to it. In addition, Young (2017) had proposed that the AMA ethics code's list of patient rights could be adapted for the universal mental health ethics code that he had proposed. This work elaborates that recommendation, and constructs a universal patient rights document while writing it in a way general enough to apply to any professional-contact relationship, patient or otherwise. The work also focuses on the opinions (which are standards) in the AMA code, suggesting ways they can be re-organized according to the general structure of domains that Young (2017) had created for the groups of standards in the American Psychological Association (APA) ethics code. In short, the present work suggests new principles and opinions (standards) for the AMA ethics code, and a new patient/contactee list of rights for it, while suggesting a new structure for them.
In an era of increased stakeholder pressure for sustainable environmental management practices at workplace, organization should adopt and implement environmental ethics for seamless synergy amongst the needs of the business, the society, and the planet. Our study used resource-based view (RBV) and dynamic capabilities (DC) theoretical lenses to examine hypotheses derived from extant literature on the linkages amongst environmental ethics, environmental training, environmental performance and competitive advantage. Using survey questionnaire, we employed structural equation modeling (SEM) on 364 valid responses from managers to examine the hypotheses. The findings of our study will stir up researcher's curiosity to unravel the human side of environmental management and that will surely steer future researches in significant directions. Results suggest that environmental ethics influences environmental training, environmental performance and competitive advantage. We also found that environmental training to employees mediates the influence of environmental ethics on firm's environmental performance and competitive advantage. The findings of the study implies that organizational approach towards environmental ethical practices at workplace should be not be reactive but proactive with intentions to create and sustain synergy amongst the triads namely, profits, the society, and the environment. Environmental training should not be one-off event but a continuous process to beat competitions and improve environmental performance in the organization.
In addition to the recent proliferation of approaches, programs, and research centers devoted to ethical data and Artifiical Intelligence, it is becoming increasingly clear that we need to directly address the political question. Ethics, while crucial, comprise only an indirect response to recent concerns about the political uses and misuses of data mining, AI, and automated processes. If we are concerned about the impact of digital media on democracy, it will be important to consider what it might mean to foster democratic arrangements for the collection and use of data, and for the institutions that perform these tasks. This essay considers what it might mean to supplement ethical concerns with political ones. It argues for the importance of considering the tensions between civic life and the wholesale commercialization of news, information, and entertainment platforms—and how these are exacerbated by the dominant economic model of data-driven hyper-customization.
Drawing on resource-based view and social exchange theories, this study examines the relationships between corporate environmental ethics, green innovation and firm economic performance. It also explores the moderating effects of two different types of personal ties on these relationships. The analysis of a sample of 416 Chinese firms indicates that green innovation partially mediates the relationship between corporate environmental ethics and firm economic performance. Business ties amplify the positive effect of corporate environmental ethics on green innovation, whereas political ties mitigate the effect. These results contribute to the clean production literature by explaining firms’ green practices from the internal organisational culture perspective and by recognising the contingent roles of social factors.
The European Commission recently published the policy recommendations of its “High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence”: a heavily anticipated document, particularly in the context of the stated ambition of the new Commission President to regulate in that area. This article argues that these recommendations have significant deficits in a range of areas. It analyses a selection of the Group’s proposals in context of the governance of artificial intelligence more broadly, focusing on issues of framing, representation and expertise, and on the lack of acknowledgement of key issues of power and infrastructure underpinning modern information economies and practices of optimisation.
This article develops a mapping tool for how corporations can approach the ethical aspects of climate change based on a literature survey. Literature on this topic tends to focus on the instrumental drivers for businesses, leaving the ethical issues aside. We seek to compensate for this lacuna by suggesting a spectrum of approaches that business corporations adopt in response to climate change, making the ethical orientations explicit. The critical issue of the climate agenda is whether business communities can sufficiently contribute to absolute targets for climate mitigation. In order to avoid charges of greenwashing, business corporations need to be engaged with absolute targets, such as the 1.5 °C target of the Paris Agreement. Moreover, they need to be politically engaged as corporate citizens in order to mitigate climate change in partnership with state and civil society organisations. To provide a test of the proposed mapping tool, we present a case study based on interviews and a survey of sustainability reports (2007–2017) conducted at three Danish energy firms. We conclude that the case study confirms a wide range of corporate responses to climate change, spanning instrumental approaches like the natural-resource-based view, to also include more normative aspirational approaches such as corporate citizenship and political CSR. Furthermore, the mapping tool suggests also including green conservatism and systemic-critical views. Finally, the article discusses how sustainability managers handle the ethical dilemmas of responding to climate change, as well as the limits of the research design, and future prospects and issues raised by the study.
Personhood is a cross-disciplinary concept that can inform health work, mental health practice, mental health ethics codes, and human development. The predominant view across disciplines of personhood is that it is a category in ethics specifying fundamental human right that involves dignity, respect, and so on, while developing, for example, in relational parenting and in caring for the ill. The paper reviews recent approaches to personhood in philosophy, psychology, law, medicine, and anthropology, as well as the United Nations Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It integrates the views and consider their applications to mental health ethics. In particular, it understands personhood as a meta- or organizing principle of the core principles in mental health ethics codes. Specifically, the concept helps cohere five proposed ethical principles that can be used to revise mental health ethics codes (life preservation; caring beneficence/non-maleficence; relational integrity; respect for the dignity and rights of persons and peoples; and promoting and acting from justice in society). The developmental model that it helps cohere is a Neo-Maslovian one in which the five levels in hierarchical needs are seen to develop toward personhood. The paper concludes with an analysis of personhood in terms of ethical theory, showing that the cross-disciplinary understanding of ethics highlighted in the paper speaks to multiple ethical theoretical approaches.
Purpose
This study aims to compare the content of the codes of ethics of the top 50 corporations in the UK and Australia.
Design/methodology/approach
The code of each of the 50 top companies listed on the London Stock Exchange and the 50 top companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange based on market capitalization was read against an updated version of a previous code content classification system.
Findings
This research provides valuable insights into the similarities and differences that exist between the expected ethical standards in corporations based in two historically linked and culturally related countries: corporate approaches that are worthy of comment.
Research limitations/implications
This paper does provide a sound basis for further investigation and cross-country comparisons of corporate codes of ethics.
Practical implications
The instrument used for classifying code content gives an insight into the top companies operating in the UK and Australia and what they consider important to cover within a code of ethics.
Social implications
In light of increasing societal expectations of corporate ethical standards, this research study offers improved understanding of/insight into the development of codes of ethics as a means to guide organizational behaviours/conduct.
Originality/value
This study proposes a contemporary instrument for the analysis of codes of ethics that has built upon the work of others over the past 30 years.
Executive Summary Leadership cannot exist without followership. The phenomenon of direction and guidance, coaching and mentoring, has at least three components: the leader, leadership, and followers. With each component, the composition of purpose and goals, ethics and morals, rights and duties, and skills and talents is critically important. While the leader is the central and the most important part of the leadership phenomenon, followers are important and necessary factors in the leadership equation. Leaders and followers are engaged in a common enterprise: they are dependent upon each other; their fortunes rise and fall together. Relational qualities define the leadership–followership phenomenon. A major component of such a relationship is how the leaders create and communicate new meaning to followers, perceive themselves relative to followers, and how the followers, in turn, perceive their leader. This mutual perception has serious ethical and moral implications – how leader uses or abuses power, and how followers are augmented or diminished. This chapter features the essentials of ethical and moral, corporate executive leadership in two parts: (1) the Theory of Ethical and Moral Leadership and (2) the Art of Ethical and Moral Leadership. Several contemporary cases such as inspirational leadership of JRD Tata, Crisis of Leadership at Infosys, and Headhunting for CEOs will illustrate our discussions on the ethics and morals of corporate executive leadership.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is on the top 500 companies in South Africa (as per the TopCo, 2014 list) that have a code of ethics, to see the current state of development in this area after 20 years of focus by the government and business on making corporate South Africa a more ethical environment, in which to conduct business.
Design/methodology/approach
A structured questionnaire survey method was used to gather the data and it was directed to the company secretaries of these top 500 companies.
Findings
Many companies in South Africa have a well-established set of protocols to enact the ethos of their code of ethics, indicating that they are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits to them of having a code. South African companies are, therefore, implementing both a code of ethics and strategies that contribute to creating an ethical corporate culture.
Research limitations/implications
This study provides an opportunity to further research assessing and comparing other companies in non-Western and emerging economies.
Practical implications
After 20 years of endeavours by business people and lawmakers to improve the ethical framework of South African business, there is still plenty of work to be done, as so many top companies do not appear to have a code of ethics.
Originality/value
There have been limited studies in the area of business ethics in South African companies. This study is the first of its kind in the South African context and establishes the current practice 20 years after the King I report.
Using a sample of public firm FCPA violations, we investigate how auditors respond to FCPA risk. We find that audit fees are higher for FCPA violators beginning in the violation period with an additional increase during the period in which regulatory investigations occur. Fees exhibit a greater sensitivity to payables and SG&A expenses for FCPA violators than for non-violators, suggesting that auditors adapt their procedures for accounts that have the highest likely FCPA risk. We also find evidence of a contagion effect with respect to FCPA risk and audit fees among non-violating peers of FCPA violators. Finally, we show that many of the relationships we document for FCPA violators exist among non-violating firms with elevated foreign bribery risk as well, but in magnitudes that are smaller than those of confirmed FCPA violators.
Entrepreneurship is the focus of great interest not only in business practice, but in academic instruction and science as well. Embedded in the dynamic context of today’s global environment, entrepreneurship raises an array of ethical questions. Over the course of addressing these, the study of the intersection between ethics and entrepreneurship has developed in diverse directions, which now represent a broad array of topics that are widely spread across different research areas. In order to identify major research streams, this paper uses bibliometric techniques to analyze 719 contributions to research, and presents a comprehensive picture of the current state of ethics in entrepreneurship research. A subsequent content analysis of the 50 most relevant academic contributions was carried out to augment these findings. These are based on whether individual, organizational or market-related factors relating to ethics and entrepreneurship are researched. This paper concludes by outlining possible avenues for future investigations.
Hospitality research lacks an understanding of customer-driven innovation and the effects of customers’ psychological characteristics on the success of co-innovation. This paper aimed to examine the role of social exchange ideology in customers’ disposition to social exchange in hospitality co-innovation. The research employed a 2 (co-innovation initiation: customer vs. company) x 2 (disposition to social exchange: strong vs. weak) between-subjects design. Bridging relational aspects of service-dominant logic and social exchange theory, co-innovation contributed to relationship development between a hospitality company and customers through mutually beneficial relational outcomes, operationalized as satisfaction, loyalty and trust. As one of the first studies to examine customers’ disposition to social exchange, it established two dimensions: tangible and intangible. Disposition to exchange moderated the effects of co-innovation initiation on satisfaction and partially moderated paths to loyalty and trust. Hospitality providers should focus on customers with strong intangible social exchange disposition and, in most cases, initiate co-innovation to achieve strong relational outcomes of loyalty and trust.
Data science is a new field that integrates aspects of computer science, statistics and information management. As a new field, ethical issues a data scientist may encounter have received little attention to date, and ethics training within a data science curriculum has received even less attention. To address this gap, this article explores the different codes of conduct and ethics frameworks related to data science. We compare this analysis with the results of a systematic literature review focusing on ethics in data science. Our analysis identified twelve key ethics areas that should be included within a data science ethics curriculum. Our research notes that none of the existing codes or frameworks covers all of the identified themes. Data science educators and program coordinators can use our results as a way to identify key ethical concepts that can be introduced within a data science program.
Seeking more common ground between data scientists and their critics.
The statistical tests used in the analysis of structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error are examined. A drawback of the commonly applied chi square test, in addition to the known problems related to sample size and power, is that it may indicate an increasing correspondence between the hypothesized model and the observed data as both the measurement properties and the relationship between constructs decline. Further, and contrary to common assertion, the risk of making a Type II error can be substantial even when the sample size is large. Moreover, the present testing methods are unable to assess a model's explanatory power. To overcome these problems, the authors develop and apply a testing system based on measures of shared variance within the structural model, measurement model, and overall model.