Journal of Business Ethics

Li, Haiyan; Hu, Chengli

doi: 10.1007/s10551-026-06373-xpmid: N/A

Drawing on Conservation of Resources (COR) theory and Broaden-and-Build Theory (BBT), this study examines social skills training as a relational capability-building intervention for women entrepreneurs. We define social skills as entrepreneurs’ interpersonal communication, relationship-building, and networking capabilities, which enable them to interpret social cues, adapt to interactional contexts, and influence others effectively. In collaboration with a women entrepreneurs’ association in China, we conducted a randomized controlled experiment embedded in an ongoing social skills training program. Women entrepreneurs with at least one year of business experience were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups, and we collected data across three waves: before training, three months after training, and one year after training. The results show that the intervention significantly improved participants’ social skills and well-being, and that well-being was positively associated with perceived venture-level societal impact over time. This study contributes to entrepreneurship training and business ethics research by showing that training programs are not merely vehicles for business knowledge transfer; they can also function as interventions that build relational capabilities and support women entrepreneurs’ well-being. These findings offer practical implications for developing more inclusive and effective support systems for women entrepreneurs.

Lombardi, Sara; Gervasi, Deborah; Faldetta, Guglielmo; Zollo, Lamberto

doi: 10.1007/s10551-026-06363-zpmid: N/A

How do organizations achieve identity recognition from their surrounding communities in a semi-abandoned area? Using recognition theory, we delve into this question using a case study of an independent cultural center in Southern Italy, which faces challenges in establishing its identity within a marginal context. Our abductive analysis examines how an organization acts as a transformative change agent that revitalizes a neglected area into an internationally recognized artistic and socio-cultural center, while simultaneously facing challenges in gaining legitimacy and acceptance. We merge philosophical insights and empirical organizational research to theorize how organizations navigate the quest for recognition, highlighting the resulting tensions and conflicts. Employing a process-based approach, we construct an event timeline to trace the emergence of organizational identity recognition crises and the negotiation strategies employed to garner community support. Acknowledging the intricate relationship between an organization and its surrounding community, we interpret this process as a continuous struggle for recognition. Finally, we present theoretical and managerial implications to balance organizational and societal priorities.

Wu, Sirui; Ding, Wenfu; Wang, Lingzhi

doi: 10.1007/s10551-026-06366-wpmid: N/A

This study examines how biodiversity conservation affects corporate tax avoidance. Exploiting China’s 2017 “Green Shield Initiative,” a nationwide campaign strengthening oversight of national nature reserves, as a quasi-natural experiment and adopting a difference-in-differences design, we find that treated firms experience a significant increase in their effective tax rates post-implementation. The results suggest that when biodiversity protection becomes more salient, firms face stronger pressure to contribute to the public revenues that support ecological governance. Channel analyses show increases in local environmental expenditures and tax penalties following the policy, consistent with stronger tax base protection incentives by local governments. They also show greater biodiversity-related public attention measured through textual analysis, consistent with heightened external scrutiny of corporate conduct. Cross-sectional results indicate stronger effects in cities with greater fiscal pressure and land finance dependence, among firms receiving greater media attention and analyst following, and among firms with high ex ante tax planning capacity. Further analyses show that the policy significantly deterred new firm entry, suggesting a negative spillover on local market dynamism. Our findings suggest that biodiversity conservation influences firms’ economic incentives and the legitimacy conditions surrounding corporate tax behavior. The study contributes to the business ethics literature by showing how environmental governance can reshape firms’ responsibilities for supporting collectively financed ecological goods, while also generating distributional trade-offs that are central to ethical evaluation.

Craig, David A.; Plaisance, Patrick Lee; Schauster, Erin; Roberts, Chris; Place, Katie R.; Medina, Lana; Yetter, Casey; Vardeman, Christopher

doi: 10.1007/s10551-026-06358-wpmid: N/A

Rosca, Eugenia; Lashitew, Addisu; Kang, Sehwon

doi: 10.1007/s10551-026-06362-0pmid: N/A

Corporate social responsibility initiatives in global value chains have had limited success in improving labor conditions at supplier factories. While prior research has underscored the importance of buyers’ organizational practices and institutional contexts, we lack a micro-foundational account of why some firms are more effective than others in influencing suppliers’ working conditions. This study advances such an explanation by theorizing and testing the role of buyers’ employee-focused stakeholder orientation, an organizational culture that treats employees as salient stakeholders and values their dignity, safety, and voice. We argue that buyers with strong employee-focused stakeholder orientation are more likely to transfer values and practices conducive to better working conditions across their supply chains. However, the effectiveness of this transfer is shaped by institutional pressures in suppliers’ home countries, including formal institutions that protect democratic rights and informal cultural norms. We test our arguments using data on the internal employment practices of 87 global apparel and footwear companies, combined with hand-coded labor violations from 833 supplier factories. The results demonstrate that buyers’ employee-focused stakeholder orientation is significantly associated with improved working conditions at supplier factories, and this effect is moderated by the institutional environments of suppliers. Our findings contribute to the literature by illuminating how firms’ internal stakeholder orientation influences global labor standards, offering managerial and policy implications for improving working conditions in global supply chains.

Isséki, Brice; Ferhani, Billel

doi: 10.1007/s10551-026-06350-4pmid: N/A

Organizational integrity, understood as the set of values, practices, and governance mechanisms that promote ethical behavior within organizations, has become a central yet conceptually ambiguous notion in management research. While interest in integrity has grown exponentially, the literature remains fragmented across disciplines and is often conflated with related notions such as compliance, corporate responsibility, or ethical culture. This dispersion limits theoretical consolidation and creates practical challenges for organizations seeking to reconcile ethical accountability with performance imperatives in increasingly digital and globalized contexts. To address this gap, we conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 1741 peer-reviewed publications indexed in Scopus and Web of Science over the past 80 years. Combining co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling, and following extensive data cleaning to ensure robustness, the study maps the intellectual and thematic structure of the field. Results reveal two foundational dimensions ethics and performance and four structured research clusters: ethical leadership and strategic alignment, public regulation and professional ethics, organizational behavior and ethical paradoxes, and information management and digital ethics. By clarifying the intellectual foundations of organizational integrity, identifying its main thematic structures, and highlighting its paradoxes, this study provides both a conceptual synthesis and a methodological contribution. It advances academic debates by situating integrity as a systemic and contested construct, while also offering practical insights for ethics-driven leadership, governance, and organizational transformation.

Kingston, Ewan

doi: 10.1007/s10551-026-06361-1pmid: N/A

Most discussions in mainstream normative business ethics assume that firms belong to industries that society welcomes or tolerates. However, some industries face industry-threatening controversies. In these controversies, a significant set of actors sees the industry’s core product as deeply problematic, and call for it to be phased-down or phased-out. Older examples include the tobacco and coal industries, and newer examples include the social media and AI industries. Even if industry actors agree their product is deeply problematic, controversies about the manner of the phase-out or phase-down arise. This paper develops the concept of an industry-threatening controversy over deeply problematic products and explains why it is an important topic in business ethics. It lays out an expansive research agenda for future work in normative business ethics that explores which kinds of reactions by firms to industry-level controversies might be justifiable or unjustifiable across domains such as production, marketing, research, collaboration, and political activity.

Sugahara, Satoshi; Kano, Keita

doi: 10.1007/s10551-026-06365-xpmid: N/A

This study examines the impact of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) advice on ethical judgment in accounting and auditing, particularly in comparison to conditions involving no advice and/or advice from a human auditor. We employ an experimental design, in which the independent variable consists of five distinct advice conditions, varying by source (GenAI or human auditor) and by framing context (deontological or consequentialist). We simulate an experimental scenario in which financial controllers either consider or disregard advice from external auditors during audit negotiations. In this context, accounting majors are used as proxies for financial controllers working in the finance department. To assess how these conditions influence ethical judgment, we conducted several logistic regression analyses. Participants were accounting majors recruited from seven leading universities in Japan. The results provide compelling evidence that receiving advice, whether from GenAI or a human auditor, increases the likelihood of making a deontological judgment (i.e., a judgment grounded in moral duties, rules, or principles), compared to receiving no advice. This suggests that the impact of GenAI advice closely mirrors that of human auditors. Further analysis revealed that among participants receiving GenAI advice, those exhibiting a higher degree of algorithm appreciation (i.e., the tendency to perceive algorithmic advice as more credible) were significantly more inclined to make deontological judgments. Moreover, when comparing advice from GenAI and human auditors directly, the findings confirm that the effects of moral advice from both sources were remarkably similar. However, contextual factors played a critical role: participants with greater familiarity with consolidated accounting standards (KNOW) and those who had completed internships at accounting firms (INTER) were more likely to make deontological judgments—even when exposed to consequentialist advice (i.e., advice oriented toward maximizing overall welfare). These findings offer important implications for accounting ethics education and highlight the need to consider individual differences and contextual factors in algorithm-assisted decision-making. The study also acknowledges several limitations and suggests directions for future research.

Su, Kun; Fu, Senliulu; Shahab, Yasir

doi: 10.1007/s10551-026-06353-1pmid: N/A

Firms are ethically responsible for proactively supporting the community in which they operate. These ethical commitments go beyond regulatory or legal obligations (i.e. formal institutions). Accordingly, we provide novel evidence on how executives’ hometown identity inspires firms to ethically engage in poverty alleviation efforts. Using a unique sample of Chinese listed firms from 2016 to 2020, our key findings are threefold. First, we find that firms headquartered in executives’ hometown are more likely to engage in poverty alleviation initiatives. This finding indicates that poverty alleviation can be viewed as an ethical responsibility rooted in community connections rather than being viewed solely as a reaction to external institutional requirements. Second, the results of the mediation analyses suggest that agency costs, political capital and corporate reputation mediate the relationship between executives’ hometown identity and corporate poverty alleviation. Third, our moderating results suggest that state ownership negatively moderates the main relationship, while Confucian culture and media pressure positively moderate it. Our results are robust across different sensitivity and endogeneity tests and matching and sample selection techniques. This study extends the literature on firms’ pro-ethical and humanitarian engagement in emerging markets and offers policy implications for both government authorities and corporations.