Research Tidbits

A selection of interesting articles we came across recently on stakeholders and sustainability. What do you do if you can’t involve stakeholders in accounting & management? According to Anselm Schneider, in order to enable firms to successfully deal with issues of corporate sustainability, the firms' stakeholders would need to participate in sustainability accounting and management. In practice, however, participative sustainability accounting and management are often unfeasible. The resulting consequence is the risk of misbalancing single aspects of [...]

A selection of interesting articles we found recently on leadership styles. Is there really a difference between empowering and laissez-faire leadership? Not as much as originally thought, according to Sut Humborstad and Steffen Giessner’s research. Empowering leadership and laissez-faire leadership are generally thought to represent quite different leadership styles—the former more active and directed in follower development and the latter more passive and dismissive of followers’ needs. The present study questions this sharp differentiation. Building on leader [...]

A selection of interesting articles we found recently on the ethics of finance professionals. Was the GFC the fault of finance professionals’ values? André van Hoorn gives us a wake up call with this article. The idea that the ethical values of professionals in finance (PIFs) (e.g., stockbrokers and fund managers) have played a role in the global financial crisis (GFC) is widespread. The crisis-of-ethics debate is important, concerning one of the main policy challenges [...]

A selection of interesting articles we found recently on individual and corporate morality. Do individual and corporate moral responsibility interact? Yes, according to Mihaela Constantinescu and Muel Kaptein, who note that moral responsibility for outcomes in corporate settings can be ascribed either to the individual members, the corporation, or both. In the latter case, the relationship between individual and corporate responsibility has been approached as inversely proportional, such that an increase in individual responsibility leads [...]

A selection of interesting articles we found recently on women and corporate behaviour. Is capitalism good for women? Ann Cudd asks whether capitalism is good for women. She investigates an aspect of the question of whether capitalism can be defended as a morally legitimate economic system by asking whether capitalism serves progressive, feminist ends of freedom and gender equality. She argue that although capitalism is subject to critique for increasing economic inequality, it can be [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently on multinational perspectives in ethics. Multiculturalism and national competitiveness in Canada and Australia Eddy Ng and Isabel Metz propose that multiculturalism can serve as an effective public policy tool to enhance a nation’s competitiveness, in an era characterized by financial crises, globalization, immigration, and changing demographics. Specifically, Ng and Metz articulate how multiculturalism and strategic tolerance of differences can promote socioeconomic mobility for individuals, and [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently on ethics in accounting and finance. How fair is actuarial fairness? Insurance is pervasive in many social settings. As a cooperative device based on risk pooling, it serves to attenuate the adverse consequences of various risks (health, unemployment, natural catastrophes and so forth) by offering policyholders coverage against the losses implied by adverse events in exchange for the payment of premiums. In the insurance industry, [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently on management craft and ethics. Caring orientations in management craft In view of the ethical crises that have proliferated over the last decade, scholars have reflected critically on the ideal of management as a value-neutral, objective science. The alternative conceptualisation of management as a craft has been introduced but not yet sufficiently elaborated. In particular, although authors such as Mintzberg and MacIntyre suggest craft as [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently on ethical contexts to business actions. Top Management Ethical Leadership and Firm Performance: Mediating Role of Ethical and Procedural Justice Climate Authors: Yuhyung Shin, Sun Young Sung, Jin Nam Choi and Min Soo Kim Despite the prevailing discourses on the importance of top management ethical leadership, related theoretical and empirical developments are lacking. Drawing on institutional theory, we propose that top management ethical leadership contributes to [...]

Different shades of green consciousness in product evaluations The sustainability labelling on the front of a package featured in a print advertisement may influence consumers’ product evaluations and purchase decisions. The findings of this exploratory study suggest that consumers seem to evaluate the sustainability claim more favourably if the advertisement highlights the personal impact on them. Moreover, environmental involvement appears to further moderate the effects of sustainability claims and environmental impact framing. The interactions that [...]