Virtue Orientation Research Articles

CEO narcissism and CSR: role of organizational virtue orientation

PurposeThis study aims to explore how CEO narcissism drives investment in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its mediating mechanism.Design/methodology/approachThis study includes panel regression based on archival data.FindingsCEO narcissism leads to signaling of organizational virtuous orientation that results in increase in CSR investment.Originality/valueRelevance of CEO traits on CSR remains unexplored in emerging markets context, especially the underlying mechanism. This study uncovers these mechanisms.

Being the best one can be: The influence of organizational virtue orientation on firms' innovation

Innovation as key driver of success has been widely studied. Despite the influence of firm and top management team characteristics little is known about the underlying mechanisms that promote and inhibit innovative behavior in companies. Going beyond classical innovation research, we analyze the underlying virtuous mechanism by evaluating the relation between firms’ organizational virtue orientation and innovation. We find that the dimensions of OVO influence innovative behavior in firms and highlight the contrary effects when differentiating between high- and low-tech firms. Additionally, by examining the moderation effect of technology diversification, we find implications that the relationship between OVO and innovation in high-tech firms is strongly influenced by the level of technological diversification. We base our study on secondary data of S&P 500 U.S. manufacturing firms accounting for 1,520 firm-year observations. For our analysis we utilize a unique and comprehensive set of data: We determine innovation as output measures via hand-collected product announcements, derive a measure of OVO based on computer-aided text analysis of MD&A sections and utilize patents data for the derivation of technological diversification.

Does Money Spoil Character? Exploring Managerial Antecedents of Organizational Virtue Orientation

The beneficial effects of organizational virtue orientation (OVO) on firm outcomes have been established across several fields within strategic management scholarship. However, the scholarly understanding of this strategic orientation’s managerial antecedents remains scarce. At the same time, the effects of executive compensation, confidence and ethics-focused functional roles on strategic orientations indicate a missing link within top management scholarship. The recently formulated behavioral agency theory presents a fertile basis to derive hypothesis regarding incentives, executive behavior, and functional roles and their respective effects on OVO. Applying longitudinal data based on a unique data set of letters-to-shareholders (LtS) and the recently established CATA methodology, we indicate the positive association of cash-incentives and option-based incentives with OVO. We can furthermore support a positive association of executive confidence with OVO, moderated by market turbulence. The nomination o...

Top Management Team Characteristics and Organizational Virtue Orientation: An Empirical Examination of IPO Firms

ABSTRACT:Despite extensive research on organizational virtue, our understanding about factors that promote virtue within organizations remains unclear. Drawing on upper echelon theory, we examine the relationship between five top management team (TMT) characteristics and organizational virtue orientation (OVO)—the integrated set of values and beliefs that support ethical traits and virtuous behaviors of an organization. Specifically, we utilize prospectuses of initial public offering (IPO) firms and 10-K post-IPO filings to explore how TMT composition with respect to member age, tenure, education, functional background, and gender influences OVO. Additionally, we examine the moderating effects of organizational size, and argue that the more expansive structures and processes associated with larger organizations diminish the main relationships. Our findings, using two sources of data, are consistent, but somewhat mixed in their support for our hypotheses. Overall, TMT characteristics do appear to influence OVO, but in more complex and counterintuitive ways than initially expected.

Reciprocity in the Civil Economy: a Critical Assessment

AbstractThe civil economy approach is an attempt to reconcile economic market interactions with the normative standards of traditional virtue ethics. We analyze critically some of its main elements with a special focus on the concept of reciprocity, which plays a central role in the whole approach. Its strengths include, among others, virtue orientation, emphasis on happiness rather than utility, and in particular the notion of reciprocity. However, we argue that this concept of reciprocity would on average not be incentive compatible, and from a methodological point of view, the implied hypothesis of a homo reciprocans is not a viable alternative to the standard model of homo oeconomicus. We also consider that the approach is not entirely new, as it shares many characteristics with the social market economy conception.

Organizational Orientations, Industrial Category, and Responsible Innovation

This paper explores the foundations of firms’ involvement in responsible innovation. A number of hypotheses appearing in the literature, regarding the direct effect of strategic orientations and the moderating effect of industrial category on responsible innovation engagement, were tested by using text analytics and statistical methods. The data comprise 475 documents of firms’ annual reports with a total word count of 192,179,794 and a mean of 404,589, supplemented with corresponding financial data, yielding 372 firm-year observations. The results show that long-term orientation and organizational virtue orientation are positively associated with responsible innovation, while profitability orientation is negatively correlated. The results also show that industrial category moderates the relationship between strategic orientations and responsible innovation engagement, such that the positive relationship between both long-term and organizational virtue orientation and responsible innovation is weaker in the industrial products category than in the consumer products category. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Virtue orientation & firm performance – Does “good” do better?

“Does good do better?” – This study investigates the relationship between a firm’s virtue-focused strategy, its organizational virtue orientation (OVO), and its financial performance (RoA), especia...

Ethics in Perinatal Medicine

Background: The current trend in perinatal medicine addresses the challenge posed to newborn survival by newborn prematurity and other morbidities requiring neonatal newborn intensive care. These ethical concerns span through the spectrum of education, clinical practice and research, domicile in obstetrics and neonatology. Effective application of ethics to perinatal medicine requires basic knowledge bioethics in health care and medical research.Objectives: The objective of the article is to highlight the basic aspects of ethics, review research ethics and practical ethical issues in perinatal medicine and provide an analytical application of the principles involved in bioethics.Methodology: A search for the relevant literature available on the internet, journal publications, textbooks and monographs was conductedResult: The basics of ethics span through the definition of medical ethics, ethical codes and bioethics. It also includes the various bioethical orientations (historical, duty-based, utilitarian, feminist, casuistry, communitarian and virtue orientation), together with the guiding principles of modern bioethics and their levels of application (micro-ethical, macro-ethical, meso-ethical and mega-ethical level). Research ethics developed tremendously during the 20th century and it was boosted by a number of regulations such as Nuremberg code, CIOMS, Helsinki declaration, Belmont Report and the Nigerian National Code of Health Research Ethics. Ethics in perinatal medicine focus on medical decision making and foeto-maternal conflict as well as the concept of a foetus as a patient and medical futility. It includes prenatal diagnosis and interventions for severe congenital malformations of the foetus, safe mother hood and cord blood collection and newborn care.Conclusion: Bioethics is an important component of perinatal medicine. The consideration and application of bioethics in all aspect of perinatal medicine will undoubtedly improve the quality of care for obstetric patients and their newborn infants.

Organizational Virtue and Stakeholder Interdependence: An Empirical Examination of Financial Intermediaries and IPO Firms

Organizational virtue orientation (OVO), an organizational-level construct, refers to the integrated set of beliefs and values that support ethical character traits and virtuous behaviors. To advance the study of organizational virtue, we examine OVO in firms making their initial public offerings (IPOs), with respect to key external stakeholders that serve as financial intermediaries (i.e., venture capital firms and underwriting banks). Drawing on stakeholder and resource dependence theories, we argue that mutual interdependencies occur between financial intermediaries and IPO firms such that venture capital firms’ ownership levels and underwriter reputation are positively associated with the selection of more virtuous IPO firms. We also argue for the moderating relationship of IPO firm age on these main relationships; since IPO firms have more history and information availability, less importance will be placed on OVO in the selection process. In support of our hypotheses, the results of this study suggest the organizational virtue of IPO firms influences the selection decisions of financial intermediaries by reflecting positively on these key stakeholders to improve legitimacy and reputation.

Mind and virtue: The meaning of learning, a matter of culture?

Abstract Does the meaning of learning vary across cultures? In order to answer this question we propose a theoretical framework that integrates various reported cultural differences in the domain of learning. Building on the qualitatively derived themes of mind and virtue orientations by Li, 2003 , Li, 2005 , we argue that the Western philosophical tradition has led to a ‘mind orientation’ in learning, whereas learning beliefs in East-Asia can be characterized as ‘virtue oriented’. Characteristic of the Western mind orientation is for learning to be primarily attributed to the cognitive domain. In the virtue orientation, the moral dimension is just as much associated with learning as the cognitive, focusing on the development of the person as a whole. These two orientations are proposed to represent cultural mandates of learning in the respective cultures and are suggested to influence a variety of cultural tasks that can be clustered into four domains. As the review reveals, the purpose, processes, affect and motivation and social perceptions that are associated to the concept of academic learning in Western and East-Asian settings are influenced by equally elaborated cultural traditions and can be meaningfully interpreted in the framework of mind and virtue orientations.

Virtue Ethics as a Resource in Business

ABSTRACT:This article provides an account of virtues as praiseworthy traits of character with a far-reaching capacity to influence conduct. Virtues supply their possessors both with good reasons that indicate, for diverse contexts, what sort of thing should be done and with motivation to do them. This motivational power of virtue is crucial for the question of what kind of person, or businessperson, one wants to be. The article shows how the contrast between virtue ethics and rule ethics is often drawn too sharply and indicates how virtue theories can incorporate both theoretical and practical uses of rules. More generally, it shows how a virtue orientation affects attitudes in management practices and how an understanding of certain virtues can help in making better decisions, both ethically and in relation to success in business.

Organizational Virtue Orientation and Family Firms

ABSTRACT:This manuscript develops the concept of organizational virtue orientation (OVO) and examines differences between family and non-family firms on the six organizational virtue dimensions of Integrity, Empathy, Warmth, Courage, Conscientiousness, and Zeal. Using content analysis of shareholder letters fromS&P 500companies, our analyses find that there are significant differences between family and non-family firms in their espoused OVO, with family firms generally being higher. Specifically, family firms were significantly higher on the dimensions of Empathy, Warmth, and Zeal, but lower on Courage. Based on these findings we further develop the OVO concept through the discussion of implications and areas for future research.