Journal of Business Ethics

Maher, Rajiv; Neumann, Moritz; Slot Lykke, Mette

doi: 10.1007/s10551-020-04678-zpmid: N/A

We ask what type of neutralization techniques corporations apply to allegations of human rights abuses. We proceed by undertaking a Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) of 162 responses by ten extractives-sector firms over a period of 14 years. The firms were responding to accusations of human rights impacts documented by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. We use Garrett et al.’s (J Bus Ethics 8(7):507–520, 1989) framework of neutralization techniques consisting of denial, justification, concession and excuse to examine the responses. During our QCA, we observed emerging themes around self-promotion and evasive tactics. We contribute to existing literature by proposing ‘evasion’ as a novel neutralization technique, particularly in circumstances of corporate responses to accusations of wrongdoing. We argue that evasion occurs when firms refuse to engage in the debate brought forward in an accusation. In addition, we enrich our understanding of neutralization techniques by proposing subneutralization techniques in our analysis to diverge from that of other studies. We conclude by discussing the implications of the predominance of corporate narcissism and evasive neutralization techniques to the business and human rights movement and other international corporate responsibility standards.

Xiang, Yi; Jia, Ming; Zhang, Zhe

doi: 10.1007/s10551-020-04709-9pmid: N/A

Although previous studies primarily claim that government-dependent firms can actively engage in compliance activities in order to achieve political legitimacy, access government resources, and build competitive advantages, these studies largely ignore how firms react when firm-dependent governments exert coercive pressures. We thus introduce institutional theory and the behavioral theory of social performance to develop a model of modest imitation, and we propose that the more governments depend on privately owned firms, the more firms demonstrate average social performance in order to balance efficiency concerns with political legitimacy threats. Meanwhile, whether firms imitate peers’ social performance depends on the magnitude of institutional rigidity. In turn, issue salience and spatial proximity undermine modest imitation, and political connections strengthen modest imitation. We study how all listed, privately owned firms react to the Chinese government’s call for social engagement in poverty alleviation initiated in 2015. This study uses a two-stage Heckman selection model to correct for sample-selection bias, and the results provide strong support for our arguments. This research thus extends our understanding of modest imitation in response to coercive pressure from-dependent governments.

Burke, Jenna J.

doi: 10.1007/s10551-020-04715-xpmid: N/A

This study empirically investigates the dismissal of U.S. CEOs following negative media coverage of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices. Extending related literature on the media, ESG, and CEO dismissal, I develop a theoretical framework that considers the media as an influential third party that forms and reflects public opinion about ESG issues. In this role, the media reduces information asymmetry by providing cues on their relative salience and prompting corporate directors to attribute firm-level ESG issues to the CEO, regardless of their involvement in the misconduct. Findings confirm this framework and particularly suggest that coverage of issues in prominent media sources is more likely to result in CEO dismissal. Further, companies that have made public commitments to ESG oversight and those with stronger monitoring are more likely to dismiss the CEO following negative coverage of ESG issues. Overall, this study builds an understanding of how contemporary boards approach the uncertain CEO dismissal decision amidst media coverage of ESG- related misconduct and reflects a shifting norm towards ESG integration at the board-level.

Clarke, Caroline; Knights, David

doi: 10.1007/s10551-020-04666-3pmid: N/A

Viewing animals as a disposable resource is by no means novel, but does milking the cow for all its worth now represent a previously unimaginable level of exploitation? New technology has intensified milk production fourfold over the last 50 years, rendering the cow vulnerable to various and frequent clinical interventions deemed necessary to meet the demands for dairy products. A major question is whether or not the veterinary code of practice fits, or is in ethical tension, with the administration of ‘efficient’ techniques, such as artificial insemination, to enhance reproduction levels among cattle? Vets perform these interventions and their ‘success’ is measured by the maximisation of milk production, requiring perpetually pregnant cows. Our empirical research on 33 farm vets explores how their professional ethical code promising to protect the welfare of the animal ‘above all else’, is increasingly in conflict with, and subordinate to, the financial demands of clients. Since vets cannot stand outside of the productive power–knowledge relations that have intensified the consumption of animal bodily parts and secretions, we argue that a process of adiaphorization’ (Bauman and Lyon, Liquid surveillance, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2013, p. 8) occurs, whereby humans become morally indifferent to cruel practices deemed necessary to our consumerist ways of life. However, this indifference reflects and reinforces a taken-for-granted anthropocentrism among vets, animal owners and the population generally. We suggest that posthumanist ideas may offer new insights for the study of human–animal relations in organisations that transcend the coercive and negative impact of discourses that deny any alternative to prevailing farm/veterinary practices. Our study has major implications in relation to climate warming and zoonotic diseases, both partly derived from our unethical relationship to animals, that are increasingly threatening our, and their, lives.

Reichert, Bernhard E.; Sohn, Matthias

doi: 10.1007/s10551-020-04695-ypmid: N/A

Formal control systems are a common instrument to align employees’ interests with those of managers and companies. However, research shows that employees perceive formal controls as a sign of distrust and restraint, which can lead to costs of control in the form of lower employee cooperation and effort (e.g., Falk and Kosfeld 2006; Christ 2013). We propose that charitable giving reduces these costs of control. We draw on the halo effect and propose that corporate charitable giving alters employees’ perception of and reaction to formal controls. In a laboratory experiment, we find that charitable giving by a company creates a higher level of employee trust in a manager who decides to implement a control and a more positive assessment of formal control. These positive effects of charitable giving lead to lower costs of control compared to the absence of charitable giving. We thereby provide an example of how charitable giving as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) activity yields positive benefits by altering the behavior of internal company stakeholders.

Leyva-de la Hiz, Dante I.; Aragon-Correa, J. Alberto; Earle, Andrew G.

doi: 10.1007/s10551-020-04693-0pmid: N/A

Opportunistic behaviors are considered ethically and strategically troublesome since they disrupt otherwise mutually beneficial relationships. Previous literature has shown that firms attempt to protect their investments from opportunism by generating a large amount of patented marginal innovations in domains central to their industry. However, this approach may generate some ethical dilemmas by preventing firms and societies from more radical, collaborative, and much-needed environmental progress. We extend the environmental innovation literature using strategic and ethical lenses to analyze the potential of an alternative, divergent way to provide financial opportunities for a focal firm without aiming to prevent innovative opportunities for competitors. Our longitudinal analysis of 6768 environmental patents from 59 large companies worldwide in the electrical components and equipment industry shows that high levels of innovation intensity, environmental scope, bargaining power, and environmental expertise increase the incidence of patented environmental innovations related to domains in which industry competitors are less focused (i.e., technological divergence). We also show a positive relationship between this divergence and market-based firm performance. Our results suggest that pursuing innovative divergence to avoid opportunism may make ethical and market sense and we also identify the organizational factors that can support these efforts.

Yun, Jin Ho; Kim, Yaeri; Lee, Eun-Ju

doi: 10.1007/s10551-021-04734-2pmid: N/A

Do liberals’ and conservatives’ brain processes differ in moral reasoning? This research explains these groups’ dissimilar moral stances when they face ethical transgressions in business. Research that explores the effects of ideological asymmetry on moral reasoning processes through moral foundations (i.e., fairness and authority) has been limited. We hypothesize two different moral reasoning processes and test them in the South Korean culture. Study 1 uses the neuroscientific method of event-related potentials (ERP) to explore the dissociable neural mechanisms that underlie Korean liberals’ and conservatives’ moral reasoning processes in business ethical transgressions. Liberals’ early frontal negative-going (EFN) brain waves showed that they are quick to pass negative judgment by intuitively detecting violations of fairness (i.e., moral engagement), while conservatives’ temporoparietal positive-going (TPP) brain waves showed that they have a higher motivation to respect authority (i.e., moral rationalization). Both liberals’ and conservatives’ ERP components occur within the first second of the decision-making phase, suggesting the rapid and intuitive nature of moral reasoning processes. Study 2 tests a mediating process and confirms that Korean liberals (conservatives) exhibit the moral engagement (rationalization) strategy, through the fairness (authority) foundation. These findings from our interdisciplinary research deepen the knowledge of the complexity of human morality in business ethics research.

Ete, Ziya; Epitropaki, Olga; Zhou, Qin; Graham, Les

doi: 10.1007/s10551-020-04728-6pmid: N/A

This paper investigates the concept of behavioral integrity from three important foci in organizational settings: i.e., leader, organization, and follower. Drawing from theories of behavioral integrity, social learning, and social identity, we examine the effects of leader and organizational behavioral integrity on follower behavioral integrity and organizational citizenship behavior via follower identification with leader and with organization, respectively. To test our hypotheses, we used data from three studies. Studies 1 and 2 were online experiments (N = 211 and N = 200, respectively) in which behavioral integrity was manipulated in written scenarios to explore the proposed causal relationships. Study 3 was a multisource field study that tested a mediation model using matched data collected from 280 employees and their co-workers from a Fire and Rescue Service in the United Kingdom. The findings provide partial support for our hypothesized model and highlight the importance of examining multiple foci of behavioral integrity as well as the role of follower identification as key mediating mechanisms of the relationship between leader and organizational behavioral integrity and follower behavioral outcomes. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Johansson, Tobias

doi: 10.1007/s10551-020-04670-7pmid: N/A

This article theorizes and analyzes how two aspects of the increasing accountingization of academia in the form of evaluative pressures and group identification, independently and interactively, work to cultivate academics’ self-interest for their social interactions with the scientific community, forming them to adopt more competitive orientations and cynical attitudes. Using data of a large number of faculty members from the 17 universities in Sweden, it is shown that evaluative pressures and group identification perceived by academics jointly reinforce each other (interact) in affecting their competitive orientation, and that group identification strengthens (moderates) the positive relation between evaluative pressures and academics’ rivalry notions and cynical attitudes. It is shown, contributing further to research on performance evaluation and the cultivation of self-interest and an egoistic ethical climate in academia, that it is evaluative pressures from peers rather than from performance measurements that are the major driver of an individual’s competitive (less cooperative) orientation and cynical attitudes. It is also concluded that while evaluative pressures are related to an increase in academics' competitive orientations, which may be viewed as an intended effect from control designers in universities, such an orientation is inversely related to cooperativeness and openness toward others and goes hand in hand with an increase in having cynical attitudes about peers and the work environment. Control designers in universities may thus not be able to have the one without the other, something that raises ethical concerns for academic leaders to reflect upon when aiming at cultivating self-interest orientations of academics.

Zeng, Fue; Ye, Qing; Yang, Zhilin; Li, Jing; Song, Yiping Amy

doi: 10.1007/s10551-020-04626-xpmid: N/A

This study focuses on two specific privacy policies, namely privacy assurance and personalization declaration. Specifically, we investigate how these distinct privacy policies affect customers’ privacy concerns and subsequent purchase responses. We have developed a conceptual model that addresses the independent effects of privacy assurance and personalization declaration, as well as the mechanism (i.e., privacy concerns) of these effects. Our model is grounded in motivation theory and supported by a field experiment and a controlled experiment. Our study demonstrates that privacy assurance that claims security protection negatively affects customers’ purchase probability and purchase amount. By contrast, personalization declaration that addresses personalized benefits positively affects customers’ purchase probability and purchase amount. Privacy concerns significantly mediate the negative effects of privacy assurance on purchase responses and the positive effects of personalization declaration on purchase responses. Overall, our findings inform managers of how to deploy privacy policies to reduce customers’ privacy concerns and boost purchase responses.