Considering the organization’s ethical context as a framework to investigate workplace phenomena, this field study of military reserve personnel examines the relationships among perceptions of psychosocial group variables, such as cohesiveness, helping behavior and peer leadership, employee job attitudes, and the likelihood of individuals’ withholding on-the-job effort, a form of organizational misbehavior. Hypotheses were tested with a sample of 290 individuals using structural equation modeling, and support for negative relationships between perceptions of positive group context and withholding effort by individual (...) employees was found. In addition, individual effort-performance expectancy and individual job satisfaction were negatively related to withholding effort. The findings provide evidence that individual perceptions of positive group context play a key role in the presence of misbehavior at work. The results indicate that positive group context might be an important element of ethical climate that should be managed to temper occurrence of such adverse work behavior. (shrink)

Two major management philosophies of the 20th Century, scientific management and quality management, are often contrasted. Scientific management is seen as a system that focuses on task efficiencies whereas quality management is described as a collaborative, people-centered process approach to continuous improvement. This paper examines the ethical implications of these diverse approaches, particularly in the way information is used to decide which employees to lay off in times of economic difficulty. The paper uses case examples of quality management as teaching (...) tools to place the conduct of managers within utilitarian, deontological and justice approaches to ethical decision making. Finally, it suggests that a third system, open-book management, may help deal with this ethical dilemma, though not without risk. (shrink)

Faculty across a wide range of academic disciplines at 89 AASCB-accredited U.S. business schools were surveyed regarding their perceptions of the ethical nature of faculty behaviors related to undergraduate course content, student evaluation, educational environment, research issues, financial and material transactions, and social and sexual relationships. We analyzed responses based on whether instruction in the academic discipline focused mainly on quantitative topics or largely on qualitative issues. Faculty who represented quantitative disciplines such as accounting and finance (n = 383) were (...) more likely to view behaviors such as selling complimentary textbooks and grading on a strict curve as more ethical than faculty representing more qualitative disciplines such as management and marketing (n = 447). In contrast, faculty in quantitative disciplines were more likely to view behaviors such as showing controversial media and bringing up sexual or racial charged matters as less ethical than their counterparts. Whereas these differences may be attributed to the respondents’ academic backgrounds, the large level of agreement on ethical behaviors raises questions about the growing influence of business disciplines that operate within more unified research and teaching paradigms. (shrink)

Family firm leaders acting as stewards of a close-knit enterprise may attempt to build a positive atmosphere of trust, clarity, and cohesiveness in the firm’s operation. Yet, conditions unique to family firms may lead some family members to develop a heightened sense of entitlement and weaker bonds to the organization. This creates conditions for a Fredo effect, where a family member’s incompetence, opportunistic behaviors, and/or ethically dubious actions can impede the firm’s success, potentially resulting in a scandal that could lead (...) to the firm’s demise and negative economic impact on employees, customers, and other stakeholders. Surveying 147 family-firm members, we examine the role that linkages among perceptions of family harmony norms, distributive fairness, role ambiguity, and relationship conflict play in the emergence of a family member who acts as an impediment to the firm, which can be manifested in damaging unethical behaviors. As hypothesized, family harmony norms and fairness perceptions are negatively related to family impediment, while role ambiguity is positively related to family impediment. However, relationship conflict mediates these connections, underscoring the potential damage this type of conflict can create in a family firm, even if leaders of the firm attempt to establish conditions that reflect a stewardship approach to firm governance. We discuss how these findings impact the development of an ethical climate in the family firm and the implications for family business survival or scandal. (shrink)

Lying and dysfunctional impression management have been identified as two serious forms of deviant behavior in organizations. One manifestation of such behavior is distortion of one's résumé. In 1981, Janet Cooke lost American journalism's highest honor, the Pulitzer Prize, and her job when her work was exposed as a hoax. The revelation surfaced after it was discovered that she had lied on her résumé and her biographical record. Twenty years later, football coach George O'Leary resigned from one of the most (...) coveted jobs in college sports when it was discovered that he had falsified his academic and athletic accomplishments decades earlier. This paper summarizes the two cases - their similarities and differences - and places them in the context of organizational deviance. The case studies provide discussion points, practical advice and instructional material for students in business ethics and management classes. Lessons include the importance of preparing accurate, unvarnished résumés and the morally bankrupt nature of allegedly minor distortions that can later cause huge trouble for the individuals and the institutions involved. (shrink)

This study used experimental and correlational techniques to examine perceptions that university faculty hold regarding the practice of professorial selling of examination textbooks to wholesalers. Faculty members (n = 236) from 14 universities and community colleges and a wide variety of academic disciplines responded to a web-based survey. We presented hypothetical selling situations to respondents with manipulated variables consisting of solicitation status (unsolicited versus solicited) and use of money (for faculty or for student activities). Both main effects and the interaction (...) effect were significant such that respondents perceived it to be more ethical to sell an examination book when the book was unsolicited and when the money was being used to fund student activities. The variable most correlated with faculty members' beliefs that book selling is ethical and the faculty members' self-reports of whether or not they have engaged in bookselling was how widespread the practice appeared to be on campus. About 30 percent of faculty members sold textbooks over the past year at a dollar value of about $80 per professor. About 38 percent of respondents reported they believed the practice to be generally ethical. Implications for business ethics theory, students' moral development, and advancement of on-campus codes of ethics policies are discussed along with avenues for future research. (shrink)

Lying and dysfunctional impression management have been identified as two serious forms of deviant behavior in organizations. One manifestation of such behavior is distortion of one's résumé. In 1981, Janet Cooke lost American journalism's highest honor, the Pulitzer Prize, and her job when her work was exposed as a hoax. The revelation surfaced after it was discovered that she had lied on her résumé and her biographical record. Twenty years later, football coach George O'Leary resigned from one of the most (...) coveted jobs in college sports when it was discovered that he had falsified his academic and athletic accomplishments decades earlier. This paper summarizes the two cases — their similarities and differences — and places them in the context of organizational deviance. The case studies provide discussion points, practical advice and instructional material for students in business ethics and management classes. Lessons include the importance of preparing accurate, unvarnished résumés and the morally bankrupt nature of allegedly minor distortions that can later cause huge trouble for the individuals and the institutions involved. (shrink)

Years of research clearly shows that relying on traditional organizational power bases is not effective when companies want to promote business ethics and performance. It is not only that the use of legitimate power to establish ethics codes and coercive power to punish employees who do not comply does not work; this study—based on a multi-method research approach in the retail industry—indicates that the classic iron fist leads to unethical business values and lower service performance. But there is a light (...) at the end of the tunnel for forward-looking managers. The ethical attitudes and behaviors of employees within international organizations is a dynamic variable that is possible to change by the use of values-based leadership. Our extensive study of a large grocery store chain owned by a multinational corporation indicates that managers who lead by example will boost team values and commitment. (shrink)

A survey of 830 faculty members at 89 AASCB-accredited business schools throughout the United States was conducted in Fall 2002 to develop a snapshot of perceptions of ethical and unethical conduct with regard to undergraduate business instruction across a wide range of business disciplines. These behaviors fell into such categories as course content, evaluation of students, educational environment, disrespectful behavior, research and publication issues, financial and material transactions, social relationships with students, and sexual relationships with students and other faculty. Of (...) the 55 behaviors, two were almost universally perceived to be unethical. Eight behaviors were controversial in that there was wide variance on whether the behavior was perceived to be unethical. In addition, females' ethical perceptions differed significantly from males on three behaviors; older participants differed from younger participants on seven behaviors; participants at research-oriented institutions differed from participants at teaching-oriented institutions on one behavior; and tenured, untenured tenure-track, and untenured non-tenure-track participants differed on three behaviors. The findings of this study and the detailed comments of the respondents provide a starting point for discussing more systematic means to consider ethical issues within collegiate schools of business. (shrink)

This study used experimental and correlational techniques to examine perceptions that university faculty hold regarding the practice of professorial selling of examination textbooks to wholesalers. Faculty members (n = 236) from 14 universities and community colleges and a wide variety of academic disciplines responded to a web-based survey. We presented hypothetical selling situations to respondents with manipulated variables consisting of solicitation status (unsolicited versus solicited) and use of money (for faculty or for student activities). Both main effects and the interaction (...) effect were significant such that respondents perceived it to be more ethical to sell an examination book when the book was unsolicited and when the money was being used to fund student activities. The variable most correlated with faculty members' beliefs that book selling is ethical and the faculty members' self-reports of whether or not they have engaged in bookselling was how widespread the practice appeared to be on campus. About 30 percent of faculty members sold textbooks over the past year at a dollar value of about $80 per professor. About 38 percent of respondents reported they believed the practice to be generally ethical. Implications for business ethics theory, students' moral development, and advancement of on-campus codes of ethics policies are discussed along with avenues for future research. (shrink)

A corporate culture strengthened by ethical values and other positive business practices likely yields more favorable employee work responses. Thus, the purpose of this study was to assess the degree to which perceived corporate ethical values work in concert with group creativity to influence both job satisfaction and turnover intention. Using a self-report questionnaire, information was collected from 781 healthcare and administrative employees working at a multi-campus education-based healthcare organization. Additional survey data was collected from a comparative convenience sample of (...) 127 sales and marketing employees working for a variety of firms operating in the south-central United States. The results indicated that group creativity and corporate ethical values were positively related, and that both variables were associated with increased job satisfaction. Conversely, corporate ethical values and job satisfaction were associated with decreased turnover intention. Sales managers should create work cultures that precipitate increased ethical values and group creativity, and suggestions about how they may institutionalize these factors are provided. (shrink)

This study explores the ability of career satisfaction to mediate the relationship between corporate ethical values and altruism. Using a sample of individuals employed in a four-campus, regional health science center, it was determined that individual career satisfaction fully mediated the positive relationship between perceptions of corporate ethical values and self-reported altruism. The findings imply that companies dedicating attention to positive corporate ethical values can enhance employee attitudes and altruistic behaviors, especially when individuals experience a high degree of career satisfaction.

Le physicien a-t-il le moyen de dire ce qu'il en sait? Le modèle proposé en Occident depuis vingt-cinq siècles pour la connaissance du monde a permis le progrès scientifique en vue d'un objectif : dominer la nature. Ce modèle ne rencontre-t-il pas aujourd'hui les limites de sa pertinence? D'autres civilisations l'ont adopté récemment pour son efficacité pratique. La conception occidentale du monde était-elle nécessaire, ou est-elle un artefact sans consistance, un épiphénomène?

The role of followers in financial statement fraud has not been widely examined, even though these frauds typically involve collusion between followers and destructive leaders. In a study with 140 MBA students in the role of followers, we examined whether two follower personality traits were associated with behavioral intentions to comply with the demands of an unethical chief executive officer to be complicit in committing financial statement fraud. These personality traits are self-sacrificing self-enhancement, a form of maladaptive narcissism characterized by (...) seemingly altruistic behaviors that are actually intended to boost self-esteem and proactivity, a trait characterized by behaviors reflecting efforts to positively change one’s environment. As predicted, follower SSSE was positively associated with follower behavioral intentions to comply with CEO pressure to commit fraud, while follower proactivity was negatively associated with fraud compliance intentions. Also as predicted, follower SSSE interacted with follower proactivity, such that followers high in SSSE and high in proactivity reported greater intentions to resist pressure from the unethical CEO to commit fraud compared to low-SSSE followers. Implications for future research and corporate governance are discussed. (shrink)

This volume describes the current "main contenders," including neo-Piagetian, neo-connectionist, neo-innatist and sociocultural models.

The experimental philosophy movement advocates the use of empirical methods in philosophy. The methods most often discussed and in fact employed in experimental philosophy are appropriated from the experimental paradigm in psychology. But there is a variety of other (at least partly) empirical methods from various disciplines that are and others that could be used in philosophy. The paper explores the application of corpus analysis to philosophical issues. Although the method is well established in linguistics, there are only a few (...) tentative attempts of philosophers to utilise it. Examples are introduced and the merit of corpus analysis is compared to that of using general internet search engines and questionnaires for similar purposes. (shrink)

This article describes interactional features of an interrogation method that is used by law enforcement and private security companies in the US known as the ‘soft accusation’ method. We demonstrate how the method, in contrast to the more common ‘story solicitation’ method, makes use of a ‘telling about oneself ’ activity to actually suppress a subject’s talk by setting up and maintaining an exceptionally long turn by the interrogator. This turn not only constrains subjects’ speaking contributions to the issuing of (...) continuers and acknowledgments, and, as such, their opportunities to challenge or resist, but, based as it is on ‘telling about oneself ’, re-organizes the knowledge differential to one in which it is the interrogator rather than the subject who has primary epistemic rights of disclosure. We provide an overview of interactional problems associated with the story solicitation method and then consider how the soft accusation method is designed to counter them, particularly via practices of informing and describing that are associated with the activity of ‘telling about oneself ’. As we show, these practices make use of techniques of elaboration that provide a resource for turn expansion, as well as for seamless topical movement that works to positively align the subject to the interrogator’s talk and, thus, to smooth the interactional pathway to the subject’s admission of guilt. (shrink)

Drawing on mostly ignored texts, this book thoroughly reassesses Marx and Engels's engagement with theology.

This book functions as a set of theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical challenges to two fields of scholarship.

The debate on how an individual human life can be understood as being more or less meaningful has been pursued for a considerable time now. Despite extensive discussion some important aspects remain under-explored, namely the relation between meaningfulness and morality – even though many authors implicitly assume a connection between these two value dimensions. But how does morality contribute to a meaningful life? Is it a necessary condition? Or is it not necessary but sufficient or contributive? Or is there, when (...) explored further, no connection at all? This article discusses the relation between morality and meaning by outlining the central positions in the debate, explains the main arguments for and against, and offers some indications for future work in the field. (shrink)

This book offers a contemporary critique of liberal democracy, understood as a set of institutions and as a set of ideas.

Contrary to received opinion among philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists, conscious duality as a principle of brain organization is neither incoherent nor demonstrably false. The present paper begins by reviewing the history of the theory and its anatomical basis and defending it against the claim that it rests upon an arbitrary decision as to what constitutes the biological substratum of mind or person.

In this commentary we discuss the possibility of subcortical consciousness and its implications for fetal anesthesia and analgesia. We review the neural development of structural and functional elements that may participate in conscious representation, with a particular focus on the experience of pain. (Published Online May 1 2007).

Today''s business students have grown up in a society where distinctions between right and wrong have become blurred and where unethical behavior is observed and even expected in high-profile leaders. Especially troubling is the impression educators have that many students no longer view cheating as morally wrong (Pavela and McCabe, 1993). By contrast, the general public is demanding higher ethics of businesspeople. In this environment, educators are challenged to instill ethical norms in business students, especially when recent research indicates that (...) students intending to enter business fields are more likely than any other group of students to engage in cheating and other forms of academic dishonesty (McCabe and Trevino, 1995). One of the major future roles of accounting students depends on their honesty, however. For audits to have economic value, the auditors must be perceived by the public as acting with independence, integrity, and objectivity. Public accountants have adopted a Code of Professional Conduct in order to protect the integrity of the profession. In an effort to teach accounting students the importance of ethical professional conduct, the author has developed a class project wherein groups of students write proposals for a student honor code at Niagara University. (shrink)

This book presents one of the first systematic assessments of aesthetic insights into world politics. It examines the nature of aesthetic approaches and outlines how they differ from traditional analysis of politics. The book explores the potential and limits of aesthetics through a series of case studies on language and poetics"--Provided by publisher.

This article undertakes a dual task. The first is to argue that the various positions of major Marxist thinkers on revolution may be gathered under the common framework of kairós, understood as a resolutely temporal term relating to the critical time, the opportune moment that appears unexpectedly and must be seized. The second task is to question the nature of kairós in terms of its biblical, class and economic residues. An investigation of the use of the term in classical Greece (...) reveals that it refers to both time and place, designating primarily what is in the right time and correct place. Given the class identifications of the Greek writers who deal with kairós and their subtle defences of their propertied, ruling class status, the term becomes problematic in light of these associations that trail behind it. In response, I seek to develop the political implications of the true opposite of kairós, namely ákairos, what is ill-timed and in the wrong place. (shrink)

A woman is found lying dead on the floor of the living room of her house in Leiden, the Netherlands, and because of a swollen and a slightly wounded eyelid, an autopsy is performed on the body the day after it is found. Behind the wound, there is a whole ballpoint pen, which entered the head of the deceased through her right eye causing mortal brain damage. How did it get there? This question was to cause a stir in Dutch (...) society, holding a group of police detectives and several scientists in its grip for several years. In this article, the ballpoint case is analyzed as to the boundary work between credible and noncredible expertise. As it is often assumed that boundary work in continental law is preempted by the structure of these law models, this case study adds a comparative note to the growing literature about science and the law. (shrink)

Une approche philosophique de la prière à des fins politiques est possible dans le cas où les deux substantifs sont mis en relais inconditionnel. Le premier élément responsable de cette filature des liens c’est la présence de l’autre. Prier et faire de la politique sont deux activités humaines trop humaines qui exigent l’ouverture à l’autre, pour l’autre comme pour l’édification de sa propre identité individuelle et collective. Comme les rites et les cultes, la liturgie, notamment la prière collective, a un (...) effet thérapeutique, et pédagogique, disons didactique et sociopolitique. Elle calme les esprits, la volonté, apaise l’angoisse et solidifie les liens sociaux. L'Eglise, par exemple, est née du rassemblement du peuple de Dieu en prière et c'est dans son sein que toute célébration liturgique trouve perpétuellement son accomplissement aussi bien que sa régénération dans l’invocation du nom du Christ-Vérité, Rédempteur, Fondateur, Roi et Prêtre. La présente étude sur « Vérité et Royauté » focalise l’attention sur l’essence même du politique qui se nourrit du religieux tout en lui fournissant gloire, pouvoir et moyens d’existence. (shrink)

The 2015 Disneyland outbreak of measles in the US unequivocally brought to light what had been brewing below the surface for a while: a slow but steady decline in vaccination rates resulting in a rising number of outbreaks. This can be traced back to an increasing public questioning of vaccines by an emerging anti-vaccination movement. This article argues that, in the face of diminishing vaccination rates, childhood vaccinations should not be seen as part of the domain of parental choice but, (...) instead, as a non-negotiable legal obligation. The first part of the article formulates and defends two arguments in favour of unqualified mandatory childhood vaccination laws. First, government should not permit parents to put their children at avoidable risk of death and suffering; second, government should guard the common good of herd immunity to protect vulnerable persons. The second part rejects legal and pragmatic objections against such mandatory vaccination laws. (shrink)