Four ethical values — maximizing benefits, treating equally, promoting and rewarding instrumental value, and giving priority to the worst off — yield six specific recommendations for allocating medical resources in the Covid-19 pandemic: maximize benefits; prioritize health workers; do not allocate on a first-come, first-served basis; be responsive to evidence; recognize research participation; and apply the same principles to all Covid-19 and non–Covid-19 patients.
The Protein Ontology (PRO) provides a formal, logically-based classification of specific protein classes including structured representations of protein isoforms, variants and modified forms. Initially focused on proteins found in human, mouse and Escherichia coli, PRO now includes representations of protein complexes. The PRO Consortium works in concert with the developers of other biomedical ontologies and protein knowledge bases to provide the ability to formally organize and integrate representations of precise protein forms so as to enhance accessibility to results of protein (...) research. PRO (http://pir.georgetown.edu/pro) is part of the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry. (shrink)
This article furthers the argument for a stakeholder theory that integrates into managerial decision-making the relationship between business organizations and the natural environment. The authors review the literature on stakeholder theory and the debate over whom or what should count as a stakeholder. The authors also critique and expand the stakeholder identification and salience model developed by Mitchell and Wood (1997) by reconceptualizing the stakeholder attributes of power, legitimacy, and urgency, as well as by developing a fourth stakeholder attribute: proximity. (...) In this way, the authors provide a stronger basis for arguing for the salience of the natural environment as the primary and primordial stakeholder of the firm. (shrink)
A review of the literature on Corporate Codes of Ethics suggests that whilst there exists an informative body of literature concerning the prevalence of such codes, their design, implementation and promulgation, it is also evident that there is a relative lack of consideration of their impact upon members' everyday organizational behaviour. By drawing upon organizational sociology and psychology this paper constructs a contextualist and interpretive model which seeks to enable an analysis and evaluation of their effects upon individual, group and (...) organizational behaviour. (shrink)
This book is both a good introduction to Chinese philosophy and an invaluable reference tool for sinologists. Comments by important Chinese thinkers are arranged around sixty-four key concepts to illustrate their meaning and use through twenty-five centuries of Chinese philosophy. This unique guide was prepared by Zhang Dainian, one of China’s most famous living philosophers. Zhang reaches back to include concepts in use before the oracle bones —what could be called a philosophical “prehistory.” But the focus of the (...) work is those concepts that gained currency in classical Chinese philosophy, especially those whose meanings are deeper and more difficult to grasp. Translated and edited by Edmund Ryden in consultation with the author, the book also includes helpful introductory commentary by Ryden for each section. (shrink)
Background: One of the barriers to interprofessional ethics education is a lack of resources that actively engage students in reflection on living an ethical professional life. This project implemented and evaluated an innovative resource for interprofessional ethics education. Objectives: The objective of this project was to create and evaluate an interprofessional learning activity on professionalism, clinical ethics, and research ethics. Design: The Brewsters is a choose-your-own-adventure novel that addresses professionalism, clinical ethics, and research ethics. For the pilot of the book, (...) a pre-test/post-test design was used. Once implemented across campus, a post-test was used to evaluate student learning in addition to a student satisfaction survey. Participants and research context: A total of 755 students in six academic schools in a health science center completed the activity as part of orientation or in coursework. Ethical considerations: The project was approved as exempt by the university’s Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects. Findings: The pilot study with 112 students demonstrated a significant increase in student knowledge. The 755 students who participated in the project had relatively high knowledge scores on the post-test and evaluated the activity positively. Discussion: Students who read The Brewsters scored well on the post-test and had the highest scores on clinical ethics. Clinical ethics scores may indicate issues encountered in mass media. Conclusion: The Brewsters is an innovative resource for teaching interprofessional ethics and professionalism. Further work is needed to determine whether actual and long-term behavior is affected by the activity. (shrink)
Much of the recent work on the epistemology of causation has centered on two assumptions, known as the Causal Markov Condition and the Causal Faithfulness Condition. Philosophical discussions of the latter condition have exhibited situations in which it is likely to fail. This paper studies the Causal Faithfulness Condition as a conjunction of weaker conditions. We show that some of the weaker conjuncts can be empirically tested, and hence do not have to be assumed a priori. Our results lead to (...) two methodologically significant observations: (1) some common types of counterexamples to the Faithfulness condition constitute objections only to the empirically testable part of the condition; and (2) some common defenses of the Faithfulness condition do not provide justification or evidence for the testable parts of the condition. It is thus worthwhile to study the possibility of reliable causal inference under weaker Faithfulness conditions. As it turns out, the modification needed to make standard procedures work under a weaker version of the Faithfulness condition also has the practical effect of making them more robust when the standard Faithfulness condition actually holds. This, we argue, is related to the possibility of controlling error probabilities with finite sample size (“uniform consistency”) in causal inference. (shrink)
Behavioral ethics research has focused predominantly on how the attributes of individuals influence their ethicality. Relatively neglected has been how macro-level factors such as the behavior of firms influence members’ ethicality. Researchers have noted specifically that we know little about how a firm’s CSR influences members’ behaviors. We seek to better merge these literatures and gain a deeper understanding of the role macro-level influences have on manager’s ethicality. Based on agency theory and social identity theory, we hypothesize that a company’s (...) commitment to CSR shifts managers’ focus away from self-interests toward the interests of the firm, bolstering resistance to temptation. We propose this occurs through self-categorization and collective identification processes. We conduct a 2 × 2 factorial experiment in which managers make expense decisions for a company with commitment to CSR either present or absent, and temptation either present or absent. Results indicate that under temptation, managers make decisions consistent with self-interest. More importantly, we find when commitment to CSR is present, managers are more likely to make ethical decisions in the presence of temptation. Overall, this research highlights the interactive role of two key contextual factors—temptation and firm CSR commitment—in influencing managers’ ethical decisions. While limited research has highlighted the positive effects that a firm’s CSR has on its employees’ attitudes, the current results demonstrate CSR’s effects on ethical behavior and imply that through conducting and communicating its CSR efforts internally, firms can in part limit the deleterious effects of temptation on managers’ decisions. (shrink)
Is calculation possible without language? Or is the human ability for arithmetic dependent on the language faculty? To clarify the relation between language and arithmetic, we studied numerical cognition in speakers of Mundurukú, an Amazonian language with a very small lexicon of number words. Although the Mundurukú lack words for numbers beyond 5, they are able to compare and add large approximate numbers that are far beyond their naming range. However, they fail in exact arithmetic with numbers larger than 4 (...) or 5. Our results imply a distinction between a nonverbal system of number approximation and a language-based counting system for exact number and arithmetic. (shrink)
Modern scholarship has drawn hasty and numerous parallels between the Yellow Peril discourses of the 19th- and 20th-century plagues and the recent racialization of infectious disease in the 21st-century. While highlighting these similarities is politically useful against Sinophobic epidemic narratives, Michel Foucault argues that truly understanding the past’s continuity in the present requires a more rigorous genealogical approach. Employing this premise in a comparative analysis, this work demonstrates a critical discontinuity in the epidemic imaginary that framed the Chinese as pathogenic. (...) Consequently, those seeking to prevent future disease racialization must understand modern Sinophobia as fundamentally distinct from that of the past. (shrink)
In this paper, we outline some of the connections between the literatures of organizational storytelling, spirituality in the workplace, organizational culture, and authentic leadership. We suggest that leader storytelling that integrates a moral and spiritual component can transform an organizational culture so members of the organization begin to feel connected to a larger community and a higher purpose. We specifically discuss how leader role modeling in authentic storytelling is essential in developing an ethically and spiritually based organizational culture. However, we (...) also acknowledge a potential dark side to leader storytelling. Implications for authentic storytelling research and practice are discussed. (shrink)
Although the composition of the board of directors has important implications for different aspects of firm performance, prior studies tend to focus on financial performance. The effects of board composition on corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance remain an under-researched area, particularly in the period following the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). This article specifically examines two important aspects of board composition (i.e., the presence of outside directors and the presence of women directors) and their relationship with CSR (...) performance in the Post-SOX era. With data covering over 500 of the largest companies listed on the U.S. stock exchanges and spanning 64 different industries, we find empirical evidence showing that greater presence of outside and women directors is linked to better CSR performance within a firm’s industry. Treating CSR performance as the reflection of a firm’s moral legitimacy, our study suggests that deliberate structuring of corporate boards may be an effective approach to enhance a firm’s moral legitimacy. (shrink)
Duncan Pritchard recently proposed a Wittgensteinian solution to closure-based skepticism. According to Wittgenstein, all epistemic systems assume certain truths. The notions that we are not disembodied brains, that the Earth has existed for a long time and that one’s name is such-and-such all function as “hinge commitments.” Pritchard views a hinge commitment as a positive propositional attitude that is not a belief. Because closure principles concern only knowledge-apt beliefs, they do not apply to hinge commitments. Thus, from the fact that (...) a subject knows that he is sitting in a room, and the fact that the subject’s sitting in a room entails his bodily existence, it does not follow that the subject also knows that he is not an envatted brain. This paper rejects Pritchard’s non-belief reading of hinge commitments. I start by showing that the non-belief reading fails to solve the skeptical paradox because the reasons that Pritchard uses to support the non-belief reading do not exempt hinge propositions from closure principles. I then proceed to argue that the non-belief reading is false as it claims that hinge commitments, unlike ordinary beliefs, are rationally unresponsive—with the help of a scenario in which a subject’s experience is internally chaotic, we can safely conclude that the hinge commitment that one is not systematically mistaken about the world is equally responsive to one’s evidential situations. (shrink)
In February 2015 the UK became the first country to legalise high-profile mitochondrial replacement techniques, which involve the creation of offspring using genetic material from three individuals. The aim of these new cell reconstruction techniques is to prevent the transmission of maternally inherited mitochondrial disorders to biological offspring. During the UK debates, MRTs were often positioned as a straightforward and unique solution for the ‘eradication’ of mitochondrial disorders, enabling hundreds of women to have a healthy, biologically-related child. However, many questions (...) regarding future applications and potential users remain. Drawing on a current qualitative study on reproductive choices in the context of mitochondrial disorders, this article illustrates how the potential limitations of MRTs have been obscured in public debates by contrasting the claims made about the future beneficiaries with insights from families affected by mitochondrial disorders and medical experts. The analysis illuminates the complex choices with which families and individuals affected by mitochondrial disorders are faced, which have thus far remained invisible. An argument is presented for improved information for the public as well as an intensification of critical empirical research around the complex and specific needs of future beneficiaries of new reproductive biotechnologies. (shrink)
We explore the potential impact of CEO entrepreneurial orientation on firm choice of CSR activities. Integrating upper echelon theory and attention-based view of the firm, we find that CEO entrepreneurial orientation leads to more engagement in CSR innovation rather than corporate philanthropy. We find that the effect of CEO entrepreneurial orientation on firm choice of CSR activities varies under two situational contexts: state-owned enterprises and incoming/departing CEO. The hypotheses are tested using two different studies. Study 1 uses a cross-sectional survey (...) of Chinese CEOs, whereas study 2 employs a longitudinal analysis of Chinese publicly listed firms from 2003 to 2017. Both studies support our theoretical hypotheses. (shrink)
In the artificial intelligence literature a promising approach to counterfactual reasoning is to interpret counterfactual conditionals based on causal models. Different logics of such causal counterfactuals have been developed with respect to different classes of causal models. In this paper I characterize the class of causal models that are Lewisian in the sense that they validate the principles in Lewis’s well-known logic of counterfactuals. I then develop a system sound and complete with respect to this class. The resulting logic is (...) the weakest logic of causal counterfactuals that respects Lewis’s principles, sits in between the logic developed by Galles and Pearl and the logic developed by Halpern, and stands to Galles and Pearl’s logic in the same fashion as Lewis’s stands to Stalnaker’s. (shrink)
This article draws on the qualitative research component of a mixed-methods project exploring the Australian news media’s representation of violence against women. This critical discourse analysis is on print and online news reporting of the case of ‘Kings Cross Nightclub Rapist Luke Lazarus’, who in March 2015 was tried and convicted of raping a female club-goer in a laneway behind his father’s nightclub in Sydney, Australia. We explore the journalism discursive practices employed in the production of the news reports about (...) the Lazarus trial. Our analysis shows how some lexical features, quoting strategies and structuring elements serve to minimise the victim’s experience while emphasising the adverse effects of the trial on the accused. Furthermore, we demonstrate how such practices allow for the graphic representation of the attack in a salacious manner while minimising the impact of the crime on the victim by selectively referencing her victim impact statement. We found some differences between print and online news stories about this case, some of which may be attributable to the greater space available to the telling of news stories online. We conclude that in news reporting of the Lazarus case, routine journalism discursive practices, such as the inverted pyramid news-writing structure and decisions about who and what to quote, serve simultaneously to diminish the victim’s experience while objectifying her. These results build on international findings about media reporting practices in relation to violence against women and add substantially to what we know about these practices in Australia. (shrink)
Truth-telling is often regarded as a challenge in Chinese medical practices given the amount of clinical and ethical controversies it may raise. This study sets to collect and synthesize relevant ethical evidence of the current situation in mainland China, thereby providing corresponding guidance for medical practices. This study looks into the ethical issues on the basis of the philosophy of deontology and utilitarianism and the ethical principles of veracity, autonomy, beneficence, and nonmaleficence. Chinese philosophy, context and culture are also discussed (...) to provide some suggestions for decision-making about disclosure in a medical setting. This study holds that, in order to respect the basic rights to which critically ill patients are entitled, decisions regarding truth-telling and their implementation should be carried out with thorough consideration, which can be achieved by critical thinking, well-developed and effective communication skills, the consideration of cultural context, an understanding of individual differences, and compliance with relevant laws and regulations. (shrink)
In response to the lack of empirical studies examining the internal disclosure behavior in the Chinese context, this study tested a whistleblowing -decision-making process among employees in the Chinese banking industry. For would-be whistleblowers, positive affect and organizational ethical culture were hypothesized to enhance the expected efficacy of their whistleblowing intention, by providing collective norms concerning legitimate, management-sanctioned behavior. Questionnaire surveys were collected from 364 employees in 10 banks in the Hangzhou City, China. By and large, the findings supported the (...) hypotheses. Issues of whistleblowing in the Chinese context and implications were discussed. (shrink)
Retention and continuation are key challenges for educators in higher education; understanding the issues that make either a positive or negative impact on student success and drop‐out is therefore pivotal. Previous studies have concentrated around the issues contributing to students' decisions not to continue with their course of study. In contrast, this study used a questionnaire approach in a university in the North West of England with a group of students who have successfully progressed between levels of study. Two hundred (...) and forty‐eight students took part in the study in the first week of the new academic year; they were asked about the support services that they had accessed generically, and then specifically related to academic and pastoral issues during the previous year of study. Students reported that their preferred support mechanisms for academic issues were, unsurprisingly, academic tutors and peers on their course; pastoral issues were more frequently referred to friends and family outside the university‐central services although academic tutors were also consulted by some students. These ‘front‐line’ support mechanisms were supported by a second tier of more specialist, but applied support including careers services and student finance. Student welfare, health, chaplaincy and counselling services provided a third tier of support accessed by individual students in particular circumstances. We argue that the sign‐posting role played by academics requires that they have a complete knowledge of the support services available at their institution and for the greater integration of these services. (shrink)
This article assumes that a profession is a number of individuals in the same occupation voluntarily organized to earn a living by openly serving a moral ideal in a morally-permissible way beyond what law, market, morality, and public opinion would otherwise require. Our question is whether the concept of profession may have a far wider range than the term, so that, for example, pointing out that a certain language lacks a word for “profession” in our sense, is not enough to (...) show that those who speak the language also lack the concept. We believe the survey of 71 Chinese reported here begins to answer that question. This article has four parts. The first describes who was interviewed, how, when, and so on. The second describes some important features of the survey’s questions, explaining how the questions track the concept of profession. The third part reports and interprets the results relevant to our question. The forth defends a tentative answer to the question with which we began—arguing the survey supports the claim that China has a profession of engineering. This article should serve as a “proof of concept”, that is, a model for similar studies around the world both of engineering and of other occupations thought to be professions. (shrink)
We examine a formal semantics for counterfactual conditionals due to Judea Pearl, which formalizes the interventionist interpretation of counterfactuals central to the interventionist accounts of causation and explanation. We show that a characteristic principle validated by Pearl’s semantics, known as the principle of reversibility, states a kind of irreversibility: counterfactual dependence (in David Lewis’s sense) between two distinct events is irreversible. Moreover, we show that Pearl’s semantics rules out only mutual counterfactual dependence, not cyclic dependence in general. This, we argue, (...) suggests that Pearl’s logic is either too weak or too strong. (shrink)
Urbanization is causing profound changes in ecosystem functions at local and regional scales. The net primary productivity is an important indicator of global change, rapid urbanization and climate change will have a significant impact on NPP, and urban expansion and climate change in different regions have different impacts on NPP, especially in densely populated areas. However, to date, efforts to quantify urban expansion and climate change have been limited, and the impact of long-term continuous changes in NPP has not been (...) well understood. Based on land use data, night light data, NPP data, climate data, and a series of social and economic data, we performed a comprehensive analysis of land use change in terms of type and intensity and explored the pattern of urban expansion and its relationship with NPP and climate change for the period of 2000–2015, taking Zhengzhou, China, as an example. The results show that the major form of land use change was cropland to built-up land during the 2000–2015 period, with a total area of 367.51 km2 converted. The NPP exhibited a generally increasing trend in the study area except for built-up land and water area. The average correlation coefficients between temperature and NPP and precipitation and NPP were 0.267 and 0.020, respectively, indicating that an increase in temperature and precipitation can promote NPP despite significant spatial differences. During the examined period, most expansion areas exhibited an increasing NPP trend, indicating that the influence of urban expansion on NPP is mainly characterized by an evident influence of the expansion area. The study can provide a reference for Zhengzhou and even the world's practical research to improve land use efficiency, increase agricultural productivity and natural carbon sinks, and maintain low-carbon development. (shrink)
Sandra Field, Jeffrey Flynn, Stephen Macedo, Longxi Zhang, and Martin Powers discussed Powers’ book China and England: The Preindustrial Struggle for Social Justice in Word and Image at the American Philosophical Association’s 2020 Eastern Division meeting in Philadelphia. The panel was sponsored by the APA’s “Committee on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies” and organized by Brian Bruya.
We consider Geanakoplos and Polemarchakis’s generalization of Aumman’s famous result on “agreeing to disagree", in the context of imprecise probability. The main purpose is to reveal a connection between the possibility of agreeing to disagree and the interesting and anomalous phenomenon known as dilation. We show that for two agents who share the same set of priors and update by conditioning on every prior, it is impossible to agree to disagree on the lower or upper probability of a hypothesis unless (...) a certain dilation occurs. With some common topological assumptions, the result entails that it is impossible to agree not to have the same set of posterior probabilities unless dilation is present. This result may be used to generate sufficient conditions for guaranteed full agreement in the generalized Aumman-setting for some important models of imprecise priors, and we illustrate the potential with an agreement result involving the density ratio classes. We also provide a formulation of our results in terms of “dilation-averse” agents who ignore information about the value of a dilating partition but otherwise update by full Bayesian conditioning. (shrink)
This article is a reconsideration of Tesch's (1977) ethical, educational, and methodological functions for debriefing through a literature review and an Internet survey of authors of articles published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Journal of Traumatic Stress . We advocate for a larger ethical role for debriefing in nondeception research. The educational function of debriefing is examined in light of the continued popularity of undergraduate participant pools. A case is made for the methodological function of debriefing (...) to clarify aspects of research participation. Recommendations are made to improve the conducting and reporting of debriefings. (shrink)
In Religion in Secular Education Cathy Byrne explores the secular principle as a guiding compass for religions in state schools. Historical and contextual research and international comparisons explore the ideologies, policies, pedagogies and practices affecting national and individual religious identity.
This study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding about the mechanism that underlies the detrimental effects of workplace spirituality dimensions on employee unethical pro-organizational behavior, directly as well as indirectly, through job satisfaction. Using a sample consisting of 458 employees in various organizations in China, this study reveals that two dimensions of WPS are positively associated with UPB. Also the results of this paper show that each of the three dimensions of WPS has a significant positive relationship with job satisfaction. (...) Furthermore, this study successfully confirms the mediating effect of job satisfaction in the relationship between WPS dimensions and UPB. Finally, theoretical and practical implications, future research directions and limitations of this study are discussed at the end of this research article. (shrink)
Cyberbullying involves the use of ICTs to carry out an act or a series of acts intended to harm victims emotionally [12, p. 288]. As a crucial type of cyberbullying, flaming is also intended for emotional harm to victims [10, p. 419]. WeChat subscription accounts, as one kind of the most popular social media in China, are a perfect venue for flaming. WeChat account writers are permitted to post their attitudes which may contain flaming language under the veil of legitimate (...) account. Sometimes such flaming language may further incite crimes or moral wrongs. However, the potential harmful effect and the underlying risk of incitement become invisible and have been paid little attention. In order to reveal the flaming nature of WeChat accounts, twenty-six suspect articles from a Chinese Wechat subscription account are analysed from the perspectives of corpus linguistics and pragmatics. As a result, linguistic clues to flaming are recognised, and related legal issues concerning internet incitement are addressed. Specifically, it is found that: firstly, the linguistic manifestations of the invisible flaming could be revealed in terms of keywords, semantic prosodies and speech acts; secondly, the flamer is very good at formulating some emotionally harmful keywords and semantic prosodies into his attitudes and imposing them upon the readers; thirdly, language crime of incitement requires only the inciter’s illocutionary act, i.e., intention, rather than the outcome of the incitement. These results suggest that linguistic approach helps in penetrating and recognising flaming articles in Chinese social media for protecting the mass audience from being fallen victims. Besides, the results also provide some implications on social media laws and regulations in mainland China. (shrink)
The authors propose a framework to integrate virtue ethics into marketing theory and apply it to the development of marketing strategies. Virtue ethics, a philosophy that focuses on an individual's moral character, has received limited attention from marketing scholars and researchers. The authors argue that without consideration of virtue ethics a comprehensive analysis of the ethical character of marketing decision makers and their strategies cannot be achieved. They provide an overview of virtue ethics supplemented by a case study of The (...) Body Shop, International to demonstrate how evaluation of the ethics of corporate executives and their marketing strategies is completed by virtue ethics. (shrink)
Universal Bundle Theory holds that objects are fundamentally identical with bundles of universals. Universals are multiply instantiable properties. One popular objection to UBT concerns the possibility of distinct indiscernibles. There are mainly two replies in the literature, corresponding to two representative UBTs, which I shall call the Identity-View and the Instance-View. Each view faces serious problems. This paper proposes a new version of UBT and argues that it is better than these other two versions.
Based on a crowdsourced truth value judgment experiment, we provide empirical evidence challenging two classical views in semantics, and we develop a novel account of counterfactuals that combines ideas from inquisitive semantics and causal reasoning. First, we show that two truth-conditionally equivalent clauses can make different semantic contributions when embedded in a counterfactual antecedent. Assuming compositionality, this means that the meaning of these clauses is not fully determined by their truth conditions. This finding has a clear explanation in inquisitive semantics: (...) truth-conditionally equivalent clauses may be associated with different propositional alternatives, each of which counts as a separate counterfactual assumption. Second, we show that our results contradict the common idea that the interpretation of a counterfactual involves minimizing change with respect to the actual state of affairs. We propose to replace the idea of minimal change by a distinction between foreground and background for a given counterfactual assumption: the background is held fixed in the counterfactual situation, while the foreground can be varied without any minimality constraint. (shrink)
Scientists normally earn less money than many other professions which require a similar amount of training and qualification. The economic theory of marginal utility and cost-benefit analysis can be applied to explain this phenomenon. Although scientists make less money than entertainment stars, the scientists do research work out of their interest and they also enjoy a much higher reputation and social status in some countries.
The focus of this paper is to further a discussion of codes of ethics as institutionalized organizational structures that extend some form of legitimacy to organizations. The particular form of legitimacy is of critical importance to our analysis. After reviewing various theories of legitimacy, we analyze the literature on how legitimacy is derived from codes of ethics to discover which specific form of legitimacy is gained from their presence in organizations. We content analyze a sample of codes to consider the (...) question of whether a strategic, self-interested rationale lies behind the adoption of a code of ethics. We propose that the process of employing codes of ethics in this strategic manner has become, through isomorphism, an institutionalized practice that itself confers a cognitive form of legitimacy to the organization and further distances the codes from their moral foundation. (shrink)
In this paper, we examine the interactive effects of positive affect and perspective-taking on workplace incivility and family incivility, through moral disengagement. We draw from broaden-and-build and moral disengagement theories to suggest a potential negative consequence of positive affect. Specifically, we argue that positive affect increases incivility toward coworkers and spouses through moral disengagement among employees with low, but not high perspective-taking. Data from two time-lagged field studies and one online experiment provide support for our hypotheses. These findings suggest that (...) the beneficial effects of positive feelings are not universal, and the fostering of positive feelings at work might have unintended negative consequences, namely moral disengagement, and increased incivility at work and at home. Implications for theory and research are discussed. (shrink)
We investigate the effectiveness of corporate social responsibility disclosure in protecting corporate reputation following financial restatements. As expected under legitimacy theory, firms can signal their legitimacy via nonfinancial disclosure after the negative effects of financial restatements. Our results show that restating firms make substantial improvements to overall CSR disclosure quality by changing their standalone reports to a more conservative tone, increasing readability and report length, even though they strategically disclose less forward-looking and sustainability-related content. Such improvements are more pronounced in (...) restating firms with prior low-quality CSR disclosure. Moreover, restating firms with CSR disclosure have smaller forecast errors than non-CSR disclosers, yet the change in CSR disclosure after restatements does not further improve analyst forecast accuracy. Finally, we find that compared with nondisclosers, restating firms with CSR disclosure suffer smaller firm value losses. Overall, the evidence supports the view that consistent CSR reporting alleviates reputational damage and plays an insurance-like or value protection role during crisis periods. (shrink)
The focus of this paper is to further a discussion of codes of ethics as institutionalized organizational structures that extend some form of legitimacy to organizations. The particular form of legitimacy is of critical importance to our analysis. After reviewing various theories of legitimacy, we analyze the literature on how legitimacy is derived from codes of ethics to discover which specific form of legitimacy is gained from their presence in organizations. We content analyze a sample of codes to consider the (...) question of whether a strategic, self-interested rationale lies behind the adoption of a code of ethics. We propose that the process of employing codes of ethics in this strategic manner has become, through isomorphism, an institutionalized practice that itself confers a cognitive form of legitimacy to the organization and further distances the codes from their moral foundation. (shrink)
