Virtue ethics is regarded as the key in search of moral excellence among corporations. Yet, there are limited works to empirically investigate what virtuous character morally good corporations is expected to exhibit in the course of business from the perspective of customers. To fill this gap, we argue that customers are to evaluate firm’s virtuous character using Confucian cardinal virtues and perceived virtuousness determines customer loyalty. We test this argument using a sample of 276 Hong Kong Chinese. The result suggests (...) that a corporation not only has to offer a good value and high quality to customers but also needs to develop and acquire virtuous character in retaining customer loyalty. Firm has to embrace ren, yi, and li as the primary business goal. In fact, they are not the means but the end in themselves. The continuous pursuit of these cardinal virtues at the firm level not only establishes proper corporate values but also enables a firm to act morally in the course of business. Such kind of firm is known as junzi corporation. (shrink)

Grounded in Bandura’s social cognitive theory of moral thought and action, we develop a conceptual model linking supervisors’ perceptions of organizational injustice and abusive supervision with moral disengagement mechanisms acting as the underlying process. Specifically, we elaborate why and how supervisors’ experiences of each type of injustice would trigger their adoption of distinctive moral disengagement mechanisms, which in turn lead to their abusive supervisory conduct. The present conceptual model sheds new light on linking organizational injustice to abusive supervision from a (...) moral perspective. In addition, it also provides important theoretical and managerial implications to our current understanding of why and how abusive supervision happens. (shrink)

In recent years, social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and LINE has become common in the lives of the people in Asian countries. In this paper, we will examine ethical challenges related to social media from a perspective of normative theories. Many of the general ideas surrounding current social media belong to naturalistic optimism. They use it without any hesitation every time a new social medium is introduced, and believe that the society is getting better by doing so. It seems (...) too irresponsible if a social media company just provides a service and leaves it up to the judgment of users. Efforts to widely inform risks of social media should not target adults only. It should target minors as the most imminent issue. The laissez-faire system in social media can be considered as a laissez-faire system for companies managing social media. Among philosophical theories of technology, there is an idea of social constructivism. It is a theory that society can determine the future of technology. I will give a concrete example of social constructivism. The society must find a way to live with social media ahead of technology, not allowing the technology of social media to build a society. (shrink)

Beyond the adoption of codes of ethics for moderating behaviours within an organization, there is need for change in the dynamism of ethics management in construction companies. This change is necessitated due to inability of ethical codes to function by its mere existence without proper integration into organization’s web. This study aims at identifying supporting factors for code integration and the resultant factors as well as the relationship between the two sets of factors. Questionnaire survey was used to gather data (...) from practitioners in Hong Kong construction organizations. Using Relative Importance Index and correlation analysis, findings revealed that commitment of managing director to ethics, communicating codes with employees and managers acting as role models ranked highest among the input factors, whereas building public trust, enhanced organization’s reputation and increased protection against lawsuits ranked highest among the resultant factors. There were great numbers of significant positive correlations between the input factors and the resultant factors with the exception of consistence of codes with international standards and increased company’s profitability which exhibited negative correlation. The highest significant positive correlation coefficient existed between training about the importance of ethics and subjective and inconsistent management standards are minimized which points to the importance of ethics training in establishing ethical standards. The findings can help construction practitioners to improve organizational ethical standard and be more result-focused in managing ethics. (shrink)

Projects that challenge students to practice service leadership for civic improvement can address the aim of developing civic-mindedness in undergraduates. We conducted two qualitative studies. First, we investigated the learning experiences of four teams of undergraduate business students, who undertook semester-long course-embedded service-learning projects in partnership with four Hong Kong-based social enterprises. The students described five modes of civic engagement as project purposes, mentioned applying six types of service leadership practice for civic improvement, and described eight types of developmental outcome (...) within the domain of civic-mindedness. Comparisons suggested that besides relational support through training and guidance, empowering infrastructure, opportunities to exercise autonomy, and opportunities to demonstrate competence, three project-related features that varied between projects were important in fostering civic-mindedness. These were direct contact with grassroots-based beneficiaries; the experience of making a tangible difference; and linking the campus with the wider community. A second qualitative study indicated that course-embedded team projects with these features that were undertaken in mixed teams that included freshman and senior year business students fostered civic-mindedness for both categories of student. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to empirically examine the impact of national culture on firm’s corporate social responsibility across geographical regions. Empirical tests are based on CSR performance of 3055 corporations from 28 countries located in Eastern Asia and Europe. The findings suggest that the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions have significant impacts on CSR performance, both positively and negatively depending on a given dimension of CSR. In addition, corporations located in European countries tend to effectively outperform those in Eastern Asian (...) countries in every facet of socially responsible practice. (shrink)