Business Ethics Scholarship Research Articles

A shadowy negotiation involving dams and its fiscal and legal implications: a Portuguese case study

Purpose This paper aims to explore the intricate and controversial sale of six hydroelectric dams in the Douro hydrographic basin by Energias de Portugal (EDP), a prominent Portuguese energy company, to a French Consortium – ENGIE. The transaction, completed at the end of 2020, has sparked significant debate and scrutiny within the Portuguese legal and fiscal spheres due to its corporate and budgetary manoeuvres. The crux of the controversy lies in the complex corporate restructuring strategies used by EDP and the acquiring consortium to execute this transaction. These strategies, aimed at achieving tax neutrality, effectively circumvented the traditional tax liabilities typically associated with large-scale asset transfers. The paper delves into the legal intricacies of this operation, scrutinising the application of taxes such as stamp duty, corporate income tax, value added tax and property transfer tax, which were, in theory, applicable to the transaction. Furthermore, this study examines the broader implications of the deal, particularly concerning the principle of tax neutrality in corporate restructurings, the enforcement of anti-abuse clauses and the economic substance over legal form doctrine. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on secondary data supported by publicly reported evidence. Findings This case study highlights the challenges in taxing corporate transactions in the modern financial landscape and reflects these corporate manoeuvres' societal and ethical considerations. Originality/value Through an analysis of legal frameworks, corporate strategies and tax policies, this paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the transaction and its implications, offering insights valuable to legal professionals, policymakers and scholars in corporate law, taxation and business ethics.

Business without Management: MacIntyrean Accounting, Management, and Practice-Led Business

Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique of managerial capitalism is well known, with some arguing that MacIntyrean thought is antithetical to contemporary capitalist business. Nevertheless, substantial efforts have been taken to demonstrate how different business activities constitute MacIntyrean practices, which points to an incoherence at the heart of MacIntyrean business ethics scholarship. This article proposes a way of bridging these perspectives, suggesting a reimagined MacIntyrean approach to business that is thoroughly ‘practice-led.’ A detailed comparison of accounting and management shows that while neither are practices in ‘good order,’ they differ in significant ways: where management does not meet the criteria for a MacIntyrean practice, accounting is a ‘distorted’ practice. This leads to a categorisation of practice-led business activity, whereby the traditional tasks of management are subsumed, shared or subordinated to practices and practitioners. Insights on how this can be implemented are drawn from the ‘communities of practice’ literature and a consideration of professions.

Making Sense of CSR Challenges and Shortcomings in Developing Economies of Latin America

Firms operating in developing economies are increasingly expected to implement CSR practices aligned with recognized global standards. Drawing on extensive field study data in four Latin American countries, we contribute to business ethics scholarship by making visible and explaining firm shortcomings across social, environmental, and governance goals and activities of CSR. Building on and extending sensemaking literature, we find that leaders and managers responsible for their firms’ CSR activities make sense of and justify CSR shortcomings. We specify that justification based on individual, organizational/industry, and macro-environmental influences serves as a mechanism that decouples firms’ actual CSR practices from recognized CSR standards. Further, we propose that detachment, involving disconnection from the local operating environment, underlies the CSR shortcomings of firms. We develop a theoretical multi-level model that specifies justification as a mechanism and detachment as an underlying driver of CSR shortcomings.

Leader's desire for promotion, workplace anxiety and exploitative leadership: the moderating effect of Machiavellianism

PurposeDrawing on the conservation of resources theory, the present research paper examines the moderating role of leaders' Machiavellianism in the relationships between the desire for promotion, workplace anxiety and exploitative leadership.Design/methodology/approachThe authors collected matched time-lagged data from part-time MBA students and their subordinates. The subordinate questionnaires were paired and coded by the researchers and then directly distributed and instructed to be filled out, which would not be known to the MBA students. The final sample size came to 370 leader-subordinate dyads. The data were analyzed using SPSS 24 and Mplus 7.0.FindingsLeaders' desire for promotion is positively related to exploitative leadership via workplace anxiety. Furthermore, this mediating effect is significant when Machiavellianism is high, but not when Machiavellianism is low.Originality/valueFor business ethics scholars and practitioners, this study points out that leaders with a desire for promotion can produce workplace anxiety, lead to subordinates' perception of exploitative leadership and how this process varies by key personality trait—Machiavellianism.

The Ethics and Politics of Academic Knowledge Production: Thoughts on the Future of Business Ethics

To commemorate 40 years since the founding of the Journal of Business Ethics, the editors in chief of the journal have invited the editors to provide commentaries on the future of business ethics. This essay comprises a selection of commentaries aimed at creating dialogue around the theme The Ethics and Politics of Academic Knowledge Production. Questions of who produces knowledge about what, and how that knowledge is produced, are inherent to editing and publishing academic journals. At the Journal of Business Ethics, we understand the ethical responsibility of academic knowledge production as going far beyond conventions around the integrity of the research content and research processes. We are deeply aware that access to resources, knowledge of the rules of the game, and being able to set those rules, are systematically and unequally distributed. One could ask the question “for whom is knowledge now ethical’”? (See the Burrell commentary.) We have a responsibility to address these inequalities and open up our journal to lesser heard voices, ideas, and ways of being. Our six commentators pursue this through various aspects of the ethics and politics of academic knowledge production. Working with MacIntyre’s scheme of practices and institutions, Andrew West provides commentary on the internal good of business ethics learning and education. Inviting us to step out of the cave, Christopher Michaelson urges a clear-eyed, unblinking focus on the purposes and audiences of business ethics scholarship. As developmental editor, Scott Taylor uncovers some of the politics of peer review with the aim of nurturing of unconventional research. Mike Hyman presents his idiosyncratic view of marketing ethics. In the penultimate commentary, Julie Nelson attributes difficulties in the academic positioning of the Business Ethics field to the hegemony of a masculine-centric model of the firm. And finally, Gibson Burrell provides a powerful provocation to go undercover as researcher-investigators in a parallel ethics of the research process.

The Involvement of Firms in Chinese Foreign Aid Projects: A Data Overview and Research Agenda

Governments increasingly give for-profit companies key roles in the implementation of foreign aid projects, thereby forming public-private partnerships with the aim of promoting development. These projects bring together various stakeholders, often with their own distinct set of objectives. Case evidence suggests that such conflicting aims seem to be particularly reflected in the foreign aid projects carried out by stakeholders from certain emerging economies, such as China. Yet, on a larger scale, relatively little is known about the characteristics of Chinese public-private partnerships in foreign aid. Using project-level data available for 1308 Chinese aid projects in 50 countries across Africa, I characterize the projects undertaken by firms and government agencies in a public-private partnership, and contrast them to those executed by government agencies without firm involvement. My exploratory data overview suggests that important differences apply, as Chinese public-private partnerships tend to target different Sustainable Development Goals, work on the basis of distinct aid conditions, and implement projects that tend to be larger than those that are solely run by governments. Such observations raise important questions of an ethical, theoretical and international nature, and warrant further research, so that I develop a research agenda that takes aim at issues particularly important for business ethics scholars, organization theorists, and international business scholarship.

How do Russian National Systems of Institutional Absences Shape Insensitive Corporate Environmental Violence of a Russian Extractive Multinational Corporation?

Aiming to develop normative recommendations for preventing corporate irresponsibility (CiR), business and society scholars have adopted strategic approaches—exploring the causal links between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and profitability—and moral approaches—exploring the moral principles of CSR that guide managers. However, some business ethics scholars have recently argued that these studies are too simplistic as they disregard the systemic logics of broader institutional environments that generate ‘bad apples’ firms and managers. Drawing on literature that sheds light on the systemic origin of CiR (i.e. the comparative institutionalist perspective and the critical management perspective), we conduct an in-depth case study on how Russian systems of institutional absences shape insensitive corporate environmental violence of a Russian extractive multinational corporation. In doing so, we develop a novel cultural approach to the analysis of CiR that advances knowledge about the systemic origin of CiR in two ways. First, this approach allows for identifying how the sources of CiR are located within firms’ home national systems of institutional absences, which shape systemic logics of CiR that make corporate violence less traceable by firms and broader society. Second, this approach allows for identifying how governments can sustain and perpetuate insensitive corporate violence through the deliberate and systemic absenting of national institutions that could pressure firms to be more socially and environmentally responsible, thus making negative consequences of corporate violence invisible to firms and broader society. We propose future research directions and suggest policy changes in Russia and other countries with similar systems of institutional absences.

Overlooked Thinkers: Stretching the Boundaries of Business Ethics Scholarship (Guest Editors’ Introduction) – Corrigendum

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The Ethics of Employment-at-Will: An Institutional Complementarities Approach

Employment-at-will (EAW) is the legal presumption that employers and employees may terminate an employment relationship for any or no reason. Defenders of EAW have argued that it promotes autonomy and efficiency. Critics have argued that it allows for the domination, subordination, and arbitrary treatment of employees. We intervene in this debate by arguing that the case for EAW is contextual in a way that existing business ethics scholarship has not considered. In particular, we argue that the justifiability of EAW for a given jurisdiction depends on existing complementarities among the institutions that constitute the jurisdiction’s political economy. Notably, our view takes seriously the ethical concerns EAW critics have raised by showing how these concerns can be mitigated through public policy measures that do not require eliminating EAW.

Applying a stakeholder management approach to ethics in charitable fundraising

AbstractWhile nonprofit accountability literature recognizes many stakeholders, even theoretically grounded approaches to fundraising ethics tend to focus more narrowly on donors, organizations, and their missions. This paper draws on business ethics scholarship by proposing a stakeholder management approach to ethics in fundraising. This approach foregrounds intentional examination of the multiple stakeholders in the fundraising process: the organization; its donors; current beneficiaries; the broader population within the issue; the fundraisers themselves; and the community. Following stakeholder theory, ethical fundraising activities must align with the charitable mission of the organization, and take into account the legitimate interests of those groups and individuals who can affect, or be affected by, its activities. The process of intentionally identifying, prioritizing, mapping claims, engaging with, and monitoring stakeholders offers fundraisers, nonprofit executives, and members of governing and advisory boards a pragmatic means of aligning fundraising efforts with the mission, values, and long‐term strategy of their organizations.

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Overlooked Thinkers: Stretching the Boundaries of Business Ethics Scholarship

This special issue is devoted to highlighting thinkers who have been overlooked within business ethics and who have important contributions to make to our field. We make the case that, as scholars of a hybrid discipline that also aims to address important issues of business practice, we need to look continually for new sources of insight and wisdom that can both enrich our discourse and improve our ability to generate ideas that have a positive impact on business practice. In this introductory essay, we discuss our rationale for creating this special issue, summarize the articles contained within, and close with thoughts on its significance for the field going forward.

Person-Centered Leadership: The Practical Idea as a Dynamic Principle for Ethical Leadership.

In search of ethical conceptual frameworks that are applicable to the practical reality of companies, ethical leadership has recently gained ground in Business Ethics scholarship as a broad umbrella under which to fit both normative and descriptive approaches to management. This article delves into Carlos Llano's seminal studies in the field, and his rediscovery of the “practical idea” as a dynamic principle for integrating the practice of management and ethical leadership in light of a realistic personalism. Llano was one of the first authors to study the firm from a humanistic, people-centered perspective as a “community or people,” and his view of practical wisdom is an effort to integrate this intellectual virtue with human will by offering a personalist open dynamism that is at the center of all relationships at work, allowing those involved to grow therein. Hence, his notion of the practical idea is his most original contribution to the promotion of managerial action as a catalyst for person-centered leadership.

Do business ethics really matter?

Do business ethics really matter?

Is behaving unethically for organizations a mixed blessing? A dual-pathway model for the work-to-family spillover effects of unethical pro-organizational behavior

This research examines the mixed work-to-family spillover effects of unethical pro-organizational behavior. Drawing on conservation of resources theory and the work–home resources model, we develop a dual-pathway model to explain such effects. Based on a three-wave field study involving 214 respondents in China, we find engagement in unethical pro-organizational behavior to be positively associated with employees’ organization-based self-esteem and stress at work, which in turn, leads to work-to-family positive spillover and work-to-family conflict, respectively. We also find that performing tensions moderate the mixed effects of unethical pro-organizational behavior on organization-based self-esteem and work stress and the indirect effects of unethical pro-organizational behavior on work-to-family positive spillover and work-to-family conflict. Our findings have theoretical implications for business ethics scholars and practical implications for managers.

The ethics of corporate hypocrisy: An experimental approach

In the current landscape of management and business ethics scholarship, a prominent type of dissimulation is exemplified by corporate hypocrisy. The concept of corporate hypocrisy brings traditional morality to bear on the institutions of the modern society and thereby emphasizes the contested relationship between the research programs of individual and institutional ethics. Assuming that morality in the modern society resides in institutions rather than individuals, institutional ethics emphasizes limits to the ability of traditional morality to come to terms with the moral complexity of the market economy. The case of corporate hypocrisy shows however that traditional morality nurtures individual sensitivity to immoral behaviors which may undermine the modern institutional fabric theorized by institutional ethics. This argument is supported by our central experimental finding that the moral evaluation of individual and corporate hypocrisy is driven by essentially the same psychological mechanisms. Moreover, the experiment showed that both corporate and individual hypocrisy are condemned stronger than frankly wrong behavior even if their consequences are identical.

When Discrimination is Worse, Autonomy is Key: How Women Entrepreneurs Leverage Job Autonomy Resources to Find Work–Life Balance

This article examines the relationship between women entrepreneurs’ job autonomy and work–life balance, with a particular focus on how this relationship might be augmented by environments that discriminate against women, whether socio-economically, institutionally, or culturally. Multisource data pertaining to 5334 women entrepreneurs from 37 countries indicate that their sense of job autonomy increases the likelihood that they feel satisfied with their ability to balance the needs of their work with those of their personal life. This process is particularly prominent when they operate in countries characterized by discriminatory socio-economic and institutional conditions, though a mitigating instead of invigorating effect arises in culturally discriminatory settings. For business ethics scholars and practitioners, these findings indicate how the extent to which women entrepreneurs, seeking to combine professional and private responsibilities, derive benefits from initiatives aimed at enhancing their job-related freedom critically depends on whether they operate in adverse external environments.

Spheres of Influence: A Walzerian Approach to Business Ethics

Michael Walzer is one of the most distinguished political philosophers and social critics of this century. His ideas have had great import and influence in political philosophy and political discussion, yet very few of his ideas have been incorporated explicitly into the business ethics literature. We argue that Walzer’s work provides an important conceptual canvas for business ethics scholars that has not been adequately explored. Scholars in business ethics often borrow from political theory and philosophy to generate new insights and develop new substantive contributions. Many valuable theoretical resources are already used extensively—particularly Aristotle, Kant, Marx and a variety of utilitarian philosophers. Walzer offers another set of resources to bring to the conversation of what business ethics is and how business ethicists add value. This paper provides an opportunity to delve further into Walzer’s writings, particularly themes that are tied to business ethics, and to illustrate how his ideas can be extended to reshape our understanding of the field and develop new perspectives on ethical issues in commerce.

Which Duties of Beneficence Should Agents Fulfill on Behalf of Principals?

Business ethics scholars, especially those who favor shareholder primacy, frequently claim, either that the manager should not fulfill corporate duties of beneficence, or that if she is required to fulfill them she has to do so by going against the interests of shareholders. Establishing some distinctions between structurally different types of duties of beneficence and recognizing the full force of the normative dimension of the principal-agent relationship reveals that this view needs to be qualified. If the manager is conceptualized as the agent of shareholders, then she is not required to fulfill wide duties of charity but she is required to fulfill a wide variety of narrow duties of beneficence. In addition, fulfilling these duties should be seen as aligning with the interest of shareholders, not as going against them.

Corporate Governance and Supplemental Environmental Projects: A Restorative Justice Approach

Firms have traditionally responded to environmental violations by increasing information disclosure and/or communication to manage stakeholder perceptions. As such, these approaches may be symbolic in nature, with no genuine intention to improve the environment. We draw from restorative justice grounded in stakeholder theory and explore a relatively new approach in the form of supplemental environmental projects (SEPs) aimed at restoring the environment, and empirically examine the role of corporate governance (board structure) in firms’ decisions to undertake reparative actions. Using environmental violations and SEPs data from the US Environmental Protection Agency between 2002 and 2015, we find that firms with smaller boards are more likely to undertake SEPs. We also find that firms with higher board independence and CEO duality undertake SEPs more frequently; however, board gender diversity and the existence of a sustainability committee appear to have no impacts. These results are robust to propensity score matching and an alternative data source. We extend the scope of stakeholder theory by emphasizing a new approach—restorative justice—by which corporations can repair damaged relationships and also improve the environment. We also contribute to corporate governance and environmentalism literature by identifying governance structures that promote environmental restorative justice. Thus, our study will inform different stakeholders, including regulators, shareholders, and boards of directors, and will open new avenues for business ethics scholarship.

Popular Culture, Moral Narratives and Organizational Portrayals: A Multimodal Reflexive Analysis of a Reality Television Show

This paper contributes to the Business Ethics literature by unpacking the multimodal construction of moral narratives in popular culture and its portrayals of organizations and organizational roles. Understanding such portrayals and their construction is crucial to Business Ethics scholarship because they shape organizational imaginaries, influencing understandings and expectations of the ethical/moral responsibilities of organizations and the actors within them. In particular, we study the construction of moral narratives within a reality TV show that focuses on immigration and border control at an airport. We find that the immigration officers are depicted as rational and heroic figures whilst the travellers are presented as emotional and potentially dangerous characters. Our analysis highlights how this is achieved via five multimodal editing dimensions—the structure of interactional scenes, the ability to address the camera, the narrator’s comments, the visual and music effects—that are key in constructing clearly defined personae. We show how, through the intersubjective construction of clear-cut characters, the show downplays the moral complexity of its content. Portraying immigration officers as heroic, while presenting travellers as potentially dangerous, allows for a silencing of any ethical questioning of immigration officers’ organizational practices.