Moral Market Research Articles

Moral markets: A marginalistic interpretation of Adam Smith

The article is built upon James Otteson's analogy between the structure of moral and economic rules. In Otteson's interpretation of Adam Smith's works both of them develop from an exchange of information of interacting agents. We develop that concept about Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, analyzing those exchanges, and considering them Moral Market processes, in the Austrian Tradition of markets as processes. We think that Smith's emphasis on graduality and his metaphor of the Impartial Spectator allows us to propose a marginalistic approach to those markets stating how, in some of them which we call moral exchanges of justice, and through a great number of exchanges, moral rules of justice emerge. Finally, we present the problems that arise when legislation tries to change the results of these exchanges, in what we called a price control in the moral market.

The Effect of Ethical Aspects of Brand on Increase of Corporates Reputation among Consumers in Shiraz

In common models, brand and its equity are defined and measured by the economic performance in fiscal periods. Today, interest in studying marketing moralities, social issues, and the power of society is growing, and commercial brands have become popular in many aspects of the human life. In fact, these brands have influenced life styles and cultures, and even serve as their representative. Brands have penetrated the private lives of people and may influence their values, beliefs, policies, and even their spirits. Brand creation has gone beyond marketing and advertising, and its social structure is as important as its economic structure. While advertisement is a manifest factor in marketing, brand is its center of communication, and most of the challenges in advertisement come from brand policies. In this research, after reviewing the research literature, consulting with professors, and making use of the opinions of brand and marketing experts, the composing factors of moral brand were identified and then the data that was collected from a statistical sample of 384 people using questionnaires was analyzed. Considering its aim, this research is developmental in nature, but in respect to its data collection methods (research proposal), it is a descriptive-survey research. As mentioned above, data was collected using questionnaires where Likert Scale was used to determine the number of response options. Research data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential methods. At the descriptive level, the sample characteristics were descriptively analyzed using statistical measures such as abundance, percentage, average, and standard deviation, while correlation coefficients test was used at the inferential level to provide answers for research hypotheses and to discover some specific relations between the sample variables. The relation between the two variables of moral brand creation and companies' reputation was identified to be a positive and strong one in this research. This means that companies must pay much more attention to moralities, moral marketing, and especially moral brand creation and its variables in order to earn a better reputation.

Capitalism and the Fall of Market Morality: How Piketty, Sandel, and the Skidelskys Vindicate R. H. Tawney's Economic Ethic

This article reappraises the thought of the British economic historian, writer on political economy, Christian socialist, and great intellectual of the Labour Party, R. H. Tawney on market morality. It extracts and synthesizes moral insights from Tawney's two most influential books Religion and the Rise of Capitalism and Equality in order to present his economic ethic, its political implications, and Christian theological roots. Tawney's ethic, which holds that market morality, social ethics, and politics are inseparably linked, is then evaluated in the light of contemporary economists and philosophers, including Thomas Piketty, Michael Sandel, Robert and Edward Skidelsky, and Harry Frankfurt. Tawney's ideas are found to be insightful and useful, particularly in linking unrestrained capitalism with inequality, exploring capitalism's opposition to market morality, finding synergies between theological and secular humanist critiques of capitalism, and in addressing criticisms of the moral significance of equality itself.

James Davis, Medieval Market Morality. Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace, 1200–1500. Cambridge/New York/Melbourne, Cambridge University Press 2012

James Davis, Medieval Market Morality. Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace, 1200–1500. Cambridge/New York/Melbourne, Cambridge University Press 2012

農民の生計における市場経済的行為とモラル・エコノミー的行為

農民の生計における市場経済的行為とモラル・エコノミー的行為

Public Value in Moral Market: A Case Study of Human Organ Transplantation System

ABSTRACTAlthough public value may be a new paradigm beyond traditional and new public management, some important theoretical questions are still unanswered. These questions could be clarified by the comparison to economic value in free market. Most public values have been ignored and threatened in free market, but they could be partially measured by some methodology. The issue of public value is emerging at the background of market society and so the moral market should be clarified. A human organ transplantation system has been analyzed to show how the public value could be created in a moral market.

When Mom-and-Pops Differ From Chains: How Perceptions of Moral Authenticity Offer Market Advantage

The primary objective of this paper is to provide a firmer theoretical and empirical foundation for the idea that small organizations (and retailers in particular) may enjoy a morality-based compet...

Re-thinking Capitalism: What We can Learn from Scholasticism?

The macro-level business ethics in Scholasticism contrasts with modern Anglo-Saxon Capitalism, which is very influential worldwide. Scholasticism, developed between the thirteenth and the mid-seventeenth centuries, deals with key elements of free market morality, including private property, contracts, profits, prices, and free competition. For over 500 years Scholasticism tried to understand economic phenomena and business activities and reflected on them from an ethical perspective. Scholasticism offered the crucial lesson of the centrality of justice and the role of practical wisdom in considering market morality. Justice is seen as both a virtue and a principle, and commutative justice (justice in exchanges) with the common good of society as the reference for the Scholastics, is regarded as being especially important.

A Moral Grounding of the Duty to Further Justice in Commercial Life

This paper argues that economic agents, including corporations, have the duty to further justice, not just a duty merely to comply with laws and do their share. The duty to further justice is the requirement to assist in the establishment of just arrangements when they do not exist in society. The paper is grounded in liberal theory and draws heavily on one liberal theorist, Kant. We show that the duty to further justice must be interpreted as a duty of virtue that is owed. This means that the duty is not enforceable but that violating this duty is still wrong and not merely non-virtuous. Our analysis has consequences for the morality of commercial life. It is often suggested that the morality of the market is a special, restricted morality that is leaner than the morality that agents must acknowledge outside the market. If our analysis is correct, the duty to further justice cannot be exempted from market morality, even if it is agreed that this must be leaner than the morality outside commercial life. Our analysis also has direct consequences for John Ruggie’s view on the responsibilities of (internationally operating) businesses. Ruggie has never explicitly acknowledged a duty on the part of business enterprises to further justice. If our analysis is correct, his view is contradictory in that it presupposes the normative validity of free market enterprise yet shrinks from taking into account the conditions of its possibility.

The Effect of Ethical Aspects of Brand on Increase of Corporates Reputation among Consumers in Shiraz

In common models, brand and its equity are defined and measured by the economic performance in fiscal periods. Today, interest in studying marketing moralities, social issues, and the power of society is growing, and commercial brands have become popular in many aspects of the human life. In fact, these brands have influenced life styles and cultures, and even serve as their representative. Brands have penetrated the private lives of people and may influence their values, beliefs, policies, and even their spirits. Brand creation has gone beyond marketing and advertising, and its social structure is as important as its economic structure. While advertisement is a manifest factor in marketing, brand is its center of communication, and most of the challenges in advertisement come from brand policies. In this research, after reviewing the research literature, consulting with professors, and making use of the opinions of brand and marketing experts, the composing factors of moral brand were identified and then the data that was collected from a statistical sample of 384 people using questionnaires was analyzed. Considering its aim, this research is developmental in nature, but in respect to its data collection methods (research proposal), it is a descriptive-survey research. As mentioned above, data was collected using questionnaires where Likert Scale was used to determine the number of response options. Research data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential methods. At the descriptive level, the sample characteristics were descriptively analyzed using statistical measures such as abundance, percentage, average, and standard deviation, while correlation coefficients test was used at the inferential level to provide answers for research hypotheses and to discover some specific relations between the sample variables. The relation between the two variables of moral brand creation and companies' reputation was identified to be a positive and strong one in this research. This means that companies must pay much more attention to moralities, moral marketing, and especially moral brand creation and its variables in order to earn a better reputation.

The Genesis and Ethos of the Market, Luigino Bruni. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 240 pages.

Both modern political economy and capitalism rest on the separation of economics from ethics, which in turn can be traced to a number of shifts within philosophy and theology – notably the move away from practices of reciprocity and the common good towards the sole pursuit of individual freedom and self-interest. In his latest book, Luigino Bruni provides a compelling critique of capitalist markets and an alternative vision that fuses Aristotelian-Thomist virtue ethics with the Renaissance and Neapolitan Enlightenment tradition of ‘civil economy’. The book develops three broad yet closely intertwined theses. First, that Greco-Roman Antiquity and the Christian Middle Ages invented models of civil life that transcended tribalism and political absolutism but produced sacral communities wherein the power and privilege of the ‘few’ denied freedom and equality to the ‘many’. Second, that modernity inaugurated the primacy of free and equal individuals over communities but that it undermined and destroyed the social bonds on which societies ultimately depend. Just as in Antiquity and the Middle Ages we had communities without individuals, so in the modern era we have individuals without communities. Beyond these two similarly undesirable conditions, Bruni proposes the ‘civil economy’ model as the most radical alternative – the book’s third and most important thesis. Accordingly, the ‘civil economy’ alternative combines the relationality and sociability of all human beings with the flourishing of each and everyone by fusing self-interest with wider social benefit. Crucially, the ties of public faith (fides) and friendship (philia) can overcome the false divide between egoism and altruism in the direction of a moral market that is governed not just by the pursuit of profit but also by the practice of virtue.

James Davis, Medieval market morality: life, law and ethics in the English marketplace, 1200–1500. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.) Pages xviii+458+Bibliography+Index. £65 hardback.

James Davis, Medieval market morality: life, law and ethics in the English marketplace, 1200–1500. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.) Pages xviii+458+Bibliography+Index. £65 hardback. - Volume 28 Issue 2

Consumer Behavior in Moral Markets. On the Relevance of Identity, Justice Beliefs, Social Norms, Status, and Trust in Ethical Consumption

This article addresses ethical consumer behavior and uses the purchase of Fair Trade (FT) coffee to gain insights into determinants of ‘moral behavior’ in the marketplace. Our primary concern is to clarify which theoretical concepts and determinants are more useful than others in explaining FT consumption. We compare the explanatory power of consumer budget restrictions, consumer identity, social and personal norms, social status, justice beliefs, and trust. Our second aim is methodological; we contrast data on self-reported consumption of FT coffee with experimental data on hypothetical choices of different coffee products. To gain insights into the robustness of our measurement and findings, we test our propositions using two samples of undergraduate students from Germany and the United States. Our data show that consumer identity and personal norms are the major determinants of FT consumption in both samples, the results from survey-based data and from our experimental data are similar in this regard. Further, we demonstrate that studies based on a limited number of determinants might overestimate effects; the effect of justice beliefs for instance vanishes if other determinants are taken into account.

James Davis. Medieval Market Morality: Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace, 1200–1500. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. 532. $105.00 (cloth).

James Davis. Medieval Market Morality: Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace, 1200–1500. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. 532. $105.00 (cloth).

The Moral System and Market Distortions: A Case Study of the Modern Diamond Industry

The Moral System and Market Distortions: A Case Study of the Modern Diamond Industry

The market state vs the good society

In this polemical analysis of the rise of neoliberalism in the UK and the political culture it threw up, the author argues that the market state no longer serves the nation, but transnational capital. Consequently, inequality and poverty have been structured into society. Government rhetoric about the small state, ‘big society’ and localism are cons that smooth the way to privatisation, the undermining of democracy, and the imposition of market morality. It is by resisting the market state and its political culture that new social movements can ‘socialise’ global capital-in-crisis as the labour movement once socialised industrial capital.

Moral Voices and Market Forces

Moral Voices and Market Forces

Medieval market morality: life, law and ethics in the English marketplace, 1200-1500

Introduction 1. Images of market trade 2. Regulation of the market 3. The behaviour of market traders 4. An evolving market morality? Conclusion Bibliography.

Multinational enterprises and climate change: Exploring institutional failures and embeddedness

This paper explores how climate change affects multinational enterprises (MNEs), focusing on the challenges they face in overcoming liabilities and filling institutional voids related to the issue. Climate change is characterized by institutional failures, because there is neither an enforceable global agreement nor a market morality. Climate change is also a distinctive international business issue, as its institutional failures materialize differently in different countries. As governments are still highly involved, MNEs need to consider carefully their strategies to cope with non-market forces, including their embeddedness in multiple institutional settings. Using some illustrative examples of MNE responses to climate-related components in stimulus packages, we explore MNEs’ balancing act concerning their institutional embeddedness (or lack thereof) in home, host and supranational contexts as input for further research on the dynamics of MNE activities in relation to climate change.

Is the Market Moral? Protestant Assessments of Market Society

Is the market moral? Do different Protestant traditions have competing views of “market society”? Despite the increasing diffusion of market logics in American society, scholars of religion have little empirical data on these questions. Employing discourse analysis of market-related topics in two prominent Christian periodicals over a twenty-year period, this paper compares evangelical and mainline Protestant evaluations of markets. We find that neither group views markets as redeeming, self-regulating, or value neutral, and both groups argue that markets require constraints. Evangelicals prioritize moral constraints on markets, while mainline Protestants prioritize governmental and democratic constraints. The degree of difference between the groups varies considerably by topic, however, depending on the degree of potential state intervention. We close by discussing our findings in light of recent debates over the relationship between religious conservatism and economic conservatism. We find that economic conservatism among evangelicals is driven at least as much by a commitment to collective voluntarism as by atomized individualism or free market ideology.