Search

Whereas past research on the trickle-down diffusion of abusive supervision has demonstrated that abused supervisors often translate the abuse that they experience from their managers downward to their followers, we examine the active involvement of abused supervisors through leading in a more principled and positive manner. Adopting the sociofunctional perspective on emotions, we propose that supervisors who feel contempt for their abusers and are morally attentive will be motivated to morally differentiate themselves from perpetrators by treating their subordinates with greater, rather than less, interpersonal justice. Four studies, including two survey-based studies and two scenario-based experiments, based on data collected in China and the United Kingdom show consistent evidence supporting the overall moderated mediation model. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In business as elsewhere, "ugly people" are treated worse than "pretty people." Why is this so? This article investigates the ethics of aesthetic injustice by addressing four questions: 1. What is aesthetic injustice? 2. How does aesthetic injustice play out? 3. What are the characteristics that make people being treated unjustly? 4. Why is unattractiveness (considered to be) bad? Aesthetic injustice is defined as unfair treatment of persons due to their appearance as perceived or assessed by others. It is plays out in a variety of harms, ranging from killing (genocide), torture, violence, exclusion (social or physical), discrimination, stigmatization, epistemic injustice, harassment, pay inequity, bullying, alienation, misrecognition, stereotyping, and to prejudice. The characteristics that make people treated unjustly are (lack of) attractiveness, averageness, proportion, and homogeneity. Furthermore, prejudice, psychological biases, logical fallacies, and unwarranted fear of disease are some reasons why unattractiveness is (considered to be) bad. In sum, this study synthesizes insights from a wide range of research and draws attention to aesthetic injustice as a generic term for a form of injustice that deserves more systematic attention. Having a definition, description, and explanation of the concept makes it easier to target the problems with aesthetic injustice. As the business world is an arena of ubiquitous aesthetic injustice business ethics can take the lead in identifying, explaining, and addressing the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grievance landscapes form in rapidly industrialising contexts where social and environmental impacts are inevitable. This paper focuses on the complex operational and organisational settings in which grievances arise and the industrial pathologies that form around resource development projects. The arguments draw on classic and contemporary literature on "grievance", "right" and "entitlement", and the authors' own sustained engagement with global mining companies and local communities. Our contention is that the grievance landscape is far more critical to understanding environmental, human rights, and mining interactions than the managerial systems that companies construct to signal compliance with voluntary international norms. These managerial systems, or operational-level grievance mechanisms, map the procedural contours of how a local grievance would travel once it is made visible to the company. In practice, however, it is fiction, illegibility and invisibility that dominate. Across the pathologies, the common denominator is the corporate propensity to avoid recognising the legitimacy of a local grievance and the source of its cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many business ethicists, activists, analysts, and corporate leaders claim that businesses are obligated to promote diversity for the sake of justice. Many also say—good news!—that diversity promotes the bottom line. We do need not choose between social justice and profits. This paper splashes some cold water on the attempt to mate these two claims. On the contrary, I argue, there is philosophical tension between arguments which say diversity is a matter of justice and (empirically sound) arguments which say diversity promotes performance. Further, the kinds of interventions these distinct arguments suggest are different. Things get worse when we examine the theory and empirical evidence about how diversity affects group performance. The kind of diversity which promotes justice and the kind which promotes the bottom line are distinct—and the two can be at odds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leadership archetypes are embodied and emotionally powerful identity profiles related to cultural conceptualizations of leadership and implicit leadership theories. The currently dominant archetype reinforces "think leader, think male" and racial biases that have been long- and well-documented in leadership research, and more recently highlighted as integrated into ethical leadership models. The pervasiveness of the archetype of leaders as agentic solo heroes leading through competition and power over others blinds us to other ways of leading. Unpacking archetype reveals that our culturally dominant narrative is what restricts leadership to a narrow group of people, creating the misperception of a shortage of leadership talent. The dominant cultural archetype is traced back through time to figures in culturally foundational texts, and forward in time to modern stories, art, and media. An alternative leadership archetype is developed through historical and theological analysis, revealing a leadership archetype in Mary of Nazareth as a young, pregnant, ethnically oppressed leader, and her Magnificat as a leadership vision statement oriented toward justice and the common good. This analysis revitalizes a neglected implicit theory or archetype of leadership, which had been crushed under layers of patriarchy, comprising leadership through supportive, creative collaboration; self-named holistic identity; feminine voice and values; justice-based vision; and a contemplative spiritual foundation. Implications for business ethics, organizations, and leadership are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) lens of parentalism, this paper investigates the more subtle and less-visible interactional dynamics and strategies of power, resistance and justification that manifest between a multi-stakeholder-governed foundation and victims of a mining corporation's dam collapse. The Renova Foundation was established to provide remedy through a deliberative approach to hundreds of thousands of victims from Brazil's worst socio-environmental disaster—the collapse of Samarco Mining Corporation's Fundão tailings dam. Data were collected from a combination of fieldwork and archival analysis to assess the perceptions of victims, their defenders and foundation executives. The findings reveal 12 dialectical tensions from Renova's attempts to remedy the victim's injustices. The case analysis contributes through proposing a dialectical process model of stakeholder resistance and subversion to parentalist PCSR. The case reveals the pivotal use of time via the act of stalling as a strategic resource to exhaust victims and reach settlements. Furthermore, organizations justify their parentalism by blaming delays on the bureaucracy and shared responsibility of multi-stakeholder deliberation. Ultimately, I contend that victims must have an equal voice in the outcome of their remediation and that businesses responsible for causing harm should not decide these matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research has shown that human trafficking has multiple facets and is deeply enmeshed in societies around the world. Two central challenges for anti-trafficking organizations pertain to confronting systemic injustices and establishing caring organizations for survivors to start the process of healing and restoration. Analyzing the work of an anti-trafficking organization, International Sanctuary (ISanctuary) in Mumbai, we seek to elucidate how a space for caring for trafficking survivors is constructed in a largely non-egalitarian and unjust context. We contribute to discussions on how caring infrastructures are possibly developed so that they do not write off (pre)existing gendered and in-egalitarian social structures and how they shape individual biographies. We also highlight how the specific, situated context—defined by those very structures—shapes and influences the transformative potential of care interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments and majoritarian political formations often present police violence as nationalist media spectacles, which marginalize the rights of the accused and normalize the discourse of majoritarian nationalism. In this study, we explore the public discourse of how the State and political actors repeatedly labeled a college-going student Ishrat Jahan, who died in a stage-managed police killing in India in 2004, as a terrorist. We draw from Derrida's ethics of unconditional hospitality to show that while police violence is aimed at constructing safety for the cultural majority, in reality, it reveals discourses of anxiety and precariousness. The unethicality of police violence lies in the enlargement of recognition in vicariously blaming the person who has been killed for being involved in several terror attacks. We show that police violence is premised on the temporal structure of majoritarian nationalism, the prevalence of gender inequity, and the call to breach the secular framework of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rights claims are ubiquitous in modernity. Often expressed when relatively weaker agents assert claims against more powerful actors, especially against states and corporations, the prominence of rights claims in organizational contexts creates a challenge for virtue-based approaches to business ethics, especially perspectives employing MacIntyre's practices–institutions schema since MacIntyre has long been a vocal critic of the notion of human rights. In this article, I argue that employee rights can be understood at a basic level as rights conferred by the rules constitutive of practices. As such, employee rights correspond to the obligations of practitioners to treat fellow practitioners according to the standards of excellence and requirements of justice. Thus, one way that managers can ensure that their core practice is well-functioning is to recognize employee rights. One implication of this argument is that managers should adopt a more positive stance toward labor unions, insofar as they are a key way for employees to ensure that their voice is heard, and their rights respected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on my study of the Rhodes Must Fall movement, I develop a rejectionist perspective by identifying the understanding and mobilization of epistemic disobedience as the core premise of such a perspective. Embedded in this contextual perspective, epistemic disobedience refers to the decolonization of the self and a fight against colonial legacies. I argue that, rather than viewing a rejectionist perspective as a threat, it should be integrated into the moral learning of contemporary institutions and businesses. This approach is important in ensuring colonial legacies and biases do not create further racism or unequal situations for marginalized groups. The implication for critical management studies is that scholars from this camp should be more sensitive to issues of black consciousness and implement an authentic pragmatic ideal to promote black culture and historiographies in universities and curricula. It also highlights a need for the field of business ethics to apply more sensitive theory of marginalized stakeholders in order to prevent any escalation of violence by multinational corporations in the name of shareholder value creation and profit-maximization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a rich tradition of inquiry in consumer research into how collective consumption manifests in various forms and contexts. While this literature has shown how group cohesion prescribes ethical and moral positions, our study explores how ethicality can arise from consumers and their relations in a more emergent fashion. To do so, we present a Levinasian perspective on consumer ethics through a focus on Restaurant Day, a global food carnival that is organized by consumers themselves. Our ethnographic findings highlight a non-individualistic way of approaching ethical subjectivity that translates into acts of catering to the needs of other people and the subversion of extant legislation by foregrounding personal responsibility. These findings show that while consumer gatherings provide participants a license to temporarily subvert existing roles, they also allow the possibility of ethical autonomy when the mundane rules of city life are renegotiated. These sensibilities also create 'ethical surplus', which is an affective excess of togetherness. In the Levinasian register, Restaurant Day thus acts as an inarticulable 'remainder'—a trace of the possibility of being able to live otherwise alongside one another in city contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtue words, such as justice, fairness, care, and integrity, frequently feature in organizational codes of conduct and theories of ethical leadership. And yet our modern organizations remain blemished by examples lacking virtue. The philosophy of virtue ethics and numerous extant theories of leadership cite virtues as essential to good leadership. But we seem to lack understanding of how to develop or embed these virtues and notions of good leadership in practice. In 2012, virtue ethicist Julia Annas pointed to a training program which she touted as a practical application of virtue ethics. The program Annas (Ethical Theory: An Anthology, Wiley, New York, 2012) identified is called The Virtues Project, and while promising, she warned that in its current state, it lacked theorizing. We address this by aligning its practical strategies to extant theory and evidence to understand what virtues it might develop and how it might facilitate good leadership. Doing so makes two key contributions. First, it lends credence to The Virtues Project's potential as a leadership development program. Second, it provides a means of applying theories of good leadership in practice. Our overarching objective is to advance The Virtues Project as a means of incorporating virtues into workplace dynamics and embedding virtues in the practice of organizational leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on justice theory and upper echelons perspective, this study develops and tests an integrative model linking justice to the implementation of IT-enabled supply chain information integration (IeSCII) through the top management. Specifically, the study investigates the effects of the three facets of justice—distributive, procedural, and interactional justice—on the two dimensions of IeSCII (information sharing and collaborative planning), and examines the mediating influences of top management beliefs (TMB) and top management participation (TMP) in these relationships. Using structural equation modeling to analyze data collected from 190 firms in China, the study documents that interactional justice positively affects both TMB and TMP, while procedural justice positively affects TMB (but not TMP) in the IeSCII implementation process. In contrast, distributive justice is not significantly related to either TMB or TMP, but is positively associated with information sharing. The results also show that procedural justice positively affects TMB, which then positively affects TMP in IeSCII. Furthermore, the study finds significant mediating effects of TMB and TMP in the relationship between interactional justice and IeSCII. The theoretical and managerial implications of this study are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major challenge for supply chain managers is how to manage sourcing relationships to ensure reliable and predictable actions of distant suppliers. The extant research into sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) has traditionally focused on the transactional and collaboration approaches through which buyers encourage suppliers to act responsibly. However, little effort has been devoted to investigating the factors that underpin and enable effective implementation of these two approaches, or to exploring alternative approaches to help sustain an acceptable level of social performance from suppliers. Building on organisational justice theory, we developed a framework in which we propose that buyers' justice (i.e. distributive, procedural and interactional) as perceived by suppliers can serve as an alternative and complementary vehicle to the conventional sustainability governance approaches for driving the social justice exhibited by suppliers. The paper sheds new light on an alternative relational approach to help to restrain potentially harmful acts of suppliers. It provides a foundation for new research avenues in the SSCM context and supports more informed decision making by practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of literature has examined managers' use of restorative practices in the workplace. However, little is currently known about why managers use restorative practices as opposed to alternative (e.g., punishment) responses. We employed a qualitative interview technique to develop an inductive model of managers' restorative versus punitive response in the context of employee wrongdoing. The findings reveal a set of key motivating and moderating influences on the manager's decision to respond to wrongdoing in a restorative versus punitive manner. The findings also suggest that managers' personal needs and perceived duties in the aftermath of employee wrongdoing are generally more consistent with restorative responses than punishment responses, which helps explain managers' use of restorative workplace practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to understand how two basic schemas—vigilante and reparation—influence online public complaining. Drawing on two experiments, a longitudinal field study and content analysis of online complaints, the current research makes three core contributions. First, we show that for similar service failures, each schema is associated with different justice motivations (i.e., in terms of recovery, revenge, and protection of others), which have different moral implications for consumers. Second, vigilante and reparation complainers write complaints in a different manner and are drawn to different online platforms; this information is helpful to identify complainers using each schema. Third, the schemas moderate the process leading to different post-complaint benefits (i.e., resolution and positive affect). Specifically, perseverance has a greater effect on obtaining a resolution for reparation complainers compared to vigilantes. Additionally, whereas a recovery leads to an increase in positive affect for reparation complainers, vigilantes experience a high level of positive affect simply by posting their complaint (regardless of the resolution). The theoretical, ethical, and managerial implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates a series of normative principles that are used to justify different aspects of executive compensation within business firms, as well as the remuneration of lower-ranking employees. We look at how businesses perform pay benchmarking; employees' engagement, fidelity and loyalty (and their effects on pay practices); and the acceptability of what we call both-ends-dipping, that is, receiving both ex ante and ex post benefits for the same work. We make two observations. First, either different or incoherent principles are used to justify the pay of executives compared to employees, or the same principles are applied differently. Second, these differences or inconsistencies tend to be to the benefit of executives and/or to the detriment of employees. We conclude by asking whether there is any reason for thinking differently about executive pay than we do about employee pay. Our analysis leads us to question the principles justifying current executive compensation and to wonder if these principles are potentially being instrumentalized to serve other ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mutually beneficial exchanges in markets can be exploitative because one party takes advantage of an underlying injustice. For instance, employers of sweatshop workers are often accused of exploiting the desperate conditions of their employees, although the latter accept the terms of their employment voluntarily. A weakness of this account of exploitation is its tendency for over-inclusiveness. Certainly, given the prevalence of global and domestic socioeconomic inequalities, not all exchanges that take place against background injustices should be considered exploitative. This paper offers a framework to identify exploitation in mutually beneficial exchange, focusing on the case of sweatshop labor. It argues that an employer can be viewed as taking unfair advantage of an underlying injustice if and only if the employer's surplus from the exchange in the unjust state of affairs exceeds the surplus it could maximally obtain in a just state of affairs. The paper illustrates the applicability of this framework using three different conceptions of justice and argues that it is superior to microlevel accounts of exploitation that regard background justice as irrelevant. The paper concludes by describing some normative implications that follow from judging an exchange exploitative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their controversial 2016 paper in this journal, Brennan and Magness argue that fair pay for part-time, adjunct faculty would be unaffordable for most colleges and universities and would harm students as well as many adjunct faculty members. In this critique, I show that their cost estimates fail to take account of the potential benefits of fair pay for adjunct faculty and are based on implausible assumptions. I propose that pay per course for new adjunct faculty members should be tied to pay per course for new full-time non-tenure track instructors or to pay per course for new assistant professors. That framework for adjunct faculty justice yields an aggregate cost range of $18.5-$27.9 billion, one-third to one-half lower than the range computed by Brennan and Magness. Its opportunity cost would not be borne by students since students and faculty are complements, not substitutes, in the educational process. Instead it could be financed by reducing spending on non-educational purposes. Current adjunct faculty members would be protected from job displacement in this justice framework. The real obstacle to achieving justice for adjunct faculty is the priorities of university administrators, not budget constraints or opportunity costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I address the question of whether corporations should be considered as part of the basic structure of society as defined in Rawls’s Theory of Justice. To do so, it becomes necessary to understand which institutions are crucial for defining Rawls’s basic structure of society. I will argue that a social ontology aimed at understanding how human institutions influence various aspects presupposed in Rawls’s basic structure of society can help addressing this topic. To do so, I shall draw upon the social ontology elaborated by Searle, who follows an approach that is particularly suitable for showing how Rawls’s basic structure of society already contains an institutional setting that must take corporations into account in its very formulation, due to the implications of the activities of the corporation for distributive justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the link between employees' adult attachment orientations and perceptions of line managers' interpersonal justice behaviors, and the moderating effect of national culture (collectivism). Participants from countries categorized as low collectivistic ( N = 205) and high collectivistic ( N = 136) completed an online survey. Attachment anxiety and avoidance were negatively related to interpersonal justice perceptions. Cultural differences did not moderate the effects of avoidance. However, the relationship between attachment anxiety and interpersonal justice was non-significant in the Southern Asia (more collectivistic) cultural cluster. Our findings indicate the importance of 'fit' between cultural relational values and individual attachment orientations in shaping interpersonal justice perceptions, and highlight the need for more non-western organizational justice research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper builds on the Rawlsian critique of utilitarianism in order to identify the moral implications of Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory. While Luhmann aptly discerned the pervasive problems of the precarious system-environment relations throughout the modern society, he took moral communication to be person-centered and thus ill-equipped to deal with these problems. At the same time, the Rawlsian possibility of sacrificing fundamental liberties for the sake of economic gains not only exemplifies the Luhmannian precariousness of the relations of the economic system to its societal environment, but also shows this precariousness to be a moral problem. Thus, from the systems-theoretic perspective, the Rawlsian idea of justice denotes the moral dimension of the capacity of the societal environment to carry the economic system. More generally, the proposed complementarity between Rawls and Luhmann allows to see the precariousness of system-environment relations, for any type of social system, as a moral problem. Two implications follow. First, the morally problematic manifestations of the precarious system-environment relations are not limited to the Rawlsian case of the discrimination of the least advantaged groups but rather include a broad range of social costs and damaging effects of business on society and nature. Second, and related, the proposed systems-theoretic perspective explicates the moral value of sustainability of the economic as well as other social systems in their environment, societal and ecological alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fairness and justice are core issues in stakeholder theory. Although such considerations receive more attention in the 'normative' branch of the stakeholder literature, they have critical implications for 'instrumental' stakeholder theory as well. In research in the instrumental vein, although the position has seldom been articulated in significant detail, a stakeholder's inclination to take action against the firm or, conversely, to cooperate with it, is often taken to be a function of its perceptions concerning the fairness or unfairness (or equity or inequity) of the treatment it receives in its relationship with the firm. Thus, from various works in this domain can be distilled what might be termed a 'fairness-based perspective on stakeholder behaviour'. This perspective, as it currently stands, assumes a high degree of homogeneity in stakeholders' responses to fair, unfair, or munificent treatment by the firm. This supposition is itself typically based on a presumption that stakeholders consistently and uniformly adhere to norms of equity and reciprocity in their relationships with firms. However, research developments in equity theory and social exchange theory suggest that such assumptions are likely untenable. Accordingly, in this work, after outlining the fairness-based perspective on stakeholder behaviour, I undertake to augment it by presenting propositions concerning the possible influences of stakeholders' equity preferences and exchange ideologies on their propensities to sanction or support the firm. Incorporating these stakeholder traits into the fairness-based perspective should enhance the predictive validity of its propositions concerning stakeholder behaviour in response to fairness or unfairness in the firm-stakeholder relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The certification-based Fair Trade initiative has been steadily growing during the last two decades. While many scholars have analyzed its main characteristics and developments, only a few have assessed it against a concept of justice. And those exceptional cases have only focused on distributive justice, proving unable to grasp the important ethical elements that Fair Trade integrates in its project. In reaction to this, this article intends to critically examine what the Fair Trade movement proposes to be 'fair' by resorting to the thought of the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas. To accomplish this goal, a new understanding of his conception of justice is presented, one that seeks to overcome the limitations that the two most common interpretations in the literature suffer. The idea of Lévinas' 'dialectics of justice' is used to discuss Fair Trade's relation of alterity, its appropriation of the notion of 'face' and its commitment to and responsibility for marginalized producers and workers. This analysis shows that Fair Trade operates with what could be described as a fetishized understanding of Levinasian ethics that justifies a deeply unjust praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on the formation of employee ethical climate perceptions focuses mainly on organization characteristics as antecedents, and although other constructs have been considered, these constructs have typically been studied in isolation. Thus, our understanding of the context in which ethical climate perceptions develop is incomplete. To address this limitation, we build upon the work of Rupp (Organ Psychol Rev 1:72-94, 2011) to develop and test a multi-experience model of ethical climate which links aspects of the corporate social responsibility (CSR), ethics, justice, and trust literatures and helps to explain how employees' ethical climate perceptions form. We argue that in forming ethical climate perceptions, employees consider the actions or characteristics of a complex web of actors. Specifically, we propose that employees look (1) outward at how communities are impacted by their organization's actions (e.g., CSR), (2) upward to make inferences about the ethicality of leaders in their organizations (e.g., ethical leadership), and (3) inward at their own propensity to trust others as they form their perceptions. Using a multiple-wave field study ( N = 201) conducted at a privately held US corporation, we find substantial evidence in support of our model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pulling from theories of social exchange, deonance, and fairness heuristics, this study focuses on the relationship between overall justice climate and both the prosocial and deviant behaviors of groups. Specifically, it considers two contextual boundary conditions on this effect-corporate social responsibility (CSR) and group moral identity. Results from a laboratory experiment are presented, which show a significant effect for overall justice climate and a two-way interaction between overall justice climate and CSR on group-level prosocial and deviant behaviors, and a marginally significant interaction of group moral identity with overall justice climate on group deviance. The implications of contextual influences on workplace ethics and justice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although managing fairness is a critical concern for organizations, not all managers are predisposed to enact high levels of fairness. Emerging empirical evidence suggests that personality characteristics can be an important antecedent of managers' fair behavior. However, relatively little attention has been devoted to understand how to promote fairness among managers who are naturally predisposed to engage in lower levels of fairness. Building upon self-awareness theory, we argue that increasing managers' self- awareness can motivate managers with low trait empathy to engage in greater levels of justice. We test the interactive effects of trait empathy and state self-awareness using an experimental study ( N = 76) in which individuals were asked to communicate negative news. In support of our hypothesis, our results indicate that increasing self-awareness through self-focusing situations can help promote interactional justice when communicating negative news for individuals with low trait empathy. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moral legitimacy entails intrinsic value and helps executives convince firm's stakeholders and the general public of the ethical acceptability of an institution or its activities or projects. Social license to operate (SLO) is the social approval of those affected by a certain business activity, and it is receiving increasing attention, especially in the context of controversial projects such as mining and public works. Moral legitimacy provides ethical support to SLO. Drawing from the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition and taking substantive justice and the common good of society as the key references, this paper applies the Triple Font of Morality Theory and proposes four criteria which serve to evaluate moral legitimacy: (1) contribution of the project or activity to the common good in a better way than other alternatives (intended end), (2) morality of the means and procedures employed (means elected), (3) ethical evaluation of the situation including stakeholder concerns and needs (concurrent relevant circumstances), and (4) ethical evaluation of reasonably foreseeable consequences associated with the project and how to minimize possible damage or risks, and balance foreseeable negative consequences and benefits. The application of these criteria is illustrated through a project, presented as a case study, which certainly involved controversy and problems with SLO. The project was the construction of a rail tunnel for a high-speed train near the foundations of the Sagrada Familia, the well-known monumental church in Barcelona, Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of literature documents the important role played by moral outrage or moral anger in stakeholders' reactions to cases of corporate social irresponsibility. Existing research focuses more on the consequences of moral outrage than a systematic analysis of how appraisals of irresponsible corporate behavior can lead to this emotional experience. In this paper, we develop and test, in two field studies, an extended model of moral outrage that identifies the cognitions that lead to, and are associated with, this emotional experience. This research contributes to the existing literature on reactions to corporate social irresponsibility by explaining how observers' evaluation of irresponsible corporate behavior leads to reactions of moral anger. The paper also helps clarify the difference between moral outrage and other types of anger and offers useful insights for managers who have to confront public outrage following cases of irresponsible corporate behavior. Finally, the analysis of the causes of stakeholders' anger at irresponsible corporations opens important avenues for future research that are presented in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last decade, an increasing amount of research has focused on the ethical context in organizations. Among the recent approaches in this area is the construct of socio-moral climate (SMC), which adopts a developmental perspective and refers to specific elements of organizational climate that include communication, cooperation, and how organizations handle conflict. In this article, we present the results of three empirical studies, shedding light on the nomological network of SMC. Whereas the first study introduces a short SMC measure, the other two studies examined antecedents and outcomes of SMC as well as related mediating mechanisms. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed good fit indices of the 21-item measure of SMC with five subscales. Structural equation modeling confirmed a strong relationship with servant leadership as antecedent to SMC. In turn, employees who perceived a positive SMC were less likely to experience feelings of organizational cynicism and to engage in deviant behaviors. Results indicate that SMC accounted for additional variance above and beyond perceived overall justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What, if anything, is wrong with high executive compensation? Is the common 'lay reaction' of indignation and moral outrage justified? In this paper, my main goal is to articulate in a more systematic and philosophical manner the egalitarian responses to these questions. In order to do so, I suggest that we take some insights from recent debates on two versions of egalitarianism: a distributive one, according to which no one should be worse off than others because of unfair distributions of goods and resources, especially ones based on matters of luck or arbitrary factors, and a relational one, which maintains that egalitarian justice requires members of a society to relate to one another as equals. Drawing on recent attempts to highlight the tricky nature of managerial authority, I argue that high inequalities in pay are not simply a distributional matter but should also be analyzed through a relational lens. I also attempt to show that relational egalitarians are well-equipped to question the now dominant 'incentives' view of CEO compensation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the subsistence of the fundamental theorem of contemporary financial mathematics is the ethical concept 'reciprocity'. The argument is based on identifying an equivalence between the contemporary, and ostensibly 'value neutral', Fundamental Theory of Asset Pricing with theories of mathematical probability that emerged in the seventeenth century in the context of the ethical assessment of commercial contracts in a framework of Aristotelian ethics. This observation, the main claim of the paper, is justified on the basis of results from the Ultimatum Game and is analysed within a framework of Pragmatic philosophy. The analysis leads to the explanatory hypothesis that markets are centres of communicative action with reciprocity as a rule of discourse. The purpose of the paper is to reorientate financial economics to emphasise the objectives of cooperation and social cohesion and to this end, we offer specific policy advice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been a surge in popularity of the fair-trade industry, which seeks to improve trading conditions and to promote the rights of marginalized workers. Although research suggests that fair-trade products are perceived as promoting social and economic responsibility, some individuals-namely, those who seek to maintain existing group inequalities (i.e., those high in social dominance orientation or SDO) or those induced to think inequality is a good thing-may not share this perception. Across three studies, we found that (1) SDO relates negatively to fair-trade consumption, and (2) this relationship is mediated by the tendency for high-SDO individuals to see fair-trade products as less compatible with their conception of social justice. Our findings held after controlling for related individual-differences variables, and regardless of whether SDO was measured or manipulated. Implications for how to maximize the likelihood that people will perceive fair-trade products as 'fair' are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Downsizing remains a topic of great interest to both academics and practitioners. Yet, the impact of layoff decisions on perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has hardly been studied. We examine the impact of responsibility of business leaders making these layoff decisions, and characteristics of the downsizing implementation on convergence and divergence in (1) CSR perceptions, (2) victims' perceptions of fairness, and (3) survivor commitment, in four countries. Using an experimental design, sixteen scenarios were distributed to (1) 163 managers in Estonia, (2) 152 MBA students in India and 125 MBA students in France, and (3) 186 (non-traditional) undergraduate students in the USA. Results suggest that when top managers are attributed with the responsibility for downsizing, the resulting perceptions of CSR are negative. A similar pattern of results is obtained for victims' perceptions of fairness and survivor commitment. In addition, although there are differences in effect-size based on differences in power distance, these results hold good (are similar) across the four countries, from four different society clusters. We discuss implications, limitations, and future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Management scholars and social scientists investigate dynamics of subjective fairness perceptions in the workplace under the umbrella term 'organizational justice.' Philosophers and ethicists, on the other hand, think of justice as a normative requirement in societal relationships with conflicting interests. Both ways of looking at justice have neither remained fully separated nor been clearly integrated. It seems that much could be gained and learned by more closely integrating the ethical and the empirical fields of justice. On the other hand, it may simply not be possible to bridge the divide between the subjective empirical and the normative prescriptive justice as both fields pose different questions and rely on different assumptions and methods. In this paper, we propose a 'reconciliation' model, as a third way of considering justice in the workplace, taking into account normative and psychological issues pertaining to justice. Through applying a reconciliation model, we provide a new way of looking at the interconnections between justice philosophy and organizational justice that could advance future research in both fields. Our model also implies that justice researchers can and should be concerned with the moral implications of their own subject of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correction to the article ''Deliberating or Stalling for Justice? Dynamics of Corporate Remediation and Victim Resistance Through the Lens of Parentalism: The Fundão dam Collapse and the Renova Foundation in Brazil'' is presented.

Cyber harassment can have harmful effects on social media users, such as emotional distress and, consequently, withdrawal from social network sites or even life itself. At the same time, users are often upset when network providers intervene and deem such an intrusion an unjust occurrence. This article analyzes how decisions to intervene can be communicated in such a way that users consider them adequate and acceptable. A first experiment shows that informational justice perceptions of social network users depend on the format in which network providers present the decision to intervene. More specifically, if a decision to intervene is presented in the form of a story, as opposed to an analytical rendering of facts and arguments, decisions to intervene prompt more positive informational justice perceptions. A second experiment reveals that when users relate the experience to themselves, narrative transportation increases, which positively affects perceptions of the justice of decisions to intervene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about employee reactions in the form of un/ethical behavior to perceived acts of unfairness toward their peers perpetrated by the supervisor. Based on prior work suggesting that third parties also make fairness judgments and respond to the way employees are treated, this study first suggests that perceptions of interactional justice for peers (IJP) lead employees to two different responses to injustice at work: deviant workplace behaviors (DWBs) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Second, based on prior literature pointing to supervisors as among the most important sources of moral guidance at work, a mediating role is proposed for ethical leadership. The article suggests that supervisors who inflict acts of injustice on staff will be perceived as unethical leaders, and that these perceptions would explain why employees react to IJP in the form of deviance (DWBs) and citizenship (OCBs). Data were collected from 204 hotel employees. Results of structural equation modeling demonstrate that DWBs and OCBs are substantive reactions to IJP, whereas ethical leadership significantly mediates reactions in the form of DWBs and OCBs. Behavioral ethics and managerial implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite considerable debate as to what corporate social responsibility (CSR) is, consumer social responsibility (CnSR), as an important force for CSR (Vogel in Calif Manag Rev 47(4):19-45, ), is a term that remains largely unexplored and under-theorized. To better conceive the role consumers play in activating CSR, this paper provides a multi-level, multi-agent conceptualization of CnSR. Integrating needs-based models of decision making with justice theory, the article interpretively develops the reasons (instrumental, relational, and moral) why variously positioned agents leverage consumers as a force for corporate social responsibility. The paper theoretically expands currently limited conceptions of CnSR by exploring the levels at which diverse agents engage with CnSR ( Who and What?) and the needs driving these agents ( Why?). The paper suggests that the so-called 'consumer side of CSR' (Devinney et al. in Stanf Soc Innov Rev:29-37, ) is contingent upon the presence, absence, and varying intensities of underlying agent needs. Academic and managerial implications are drawn in the paper's conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality is commonly applied to products and processes, but we can also define human quality in dealing with people. This requires first establishing what treatment is appropriate to the human condition. Through an inquiry into the characteristics that define the human being and what ethical requirements constitute a good treatment, we define 'Human Quality Treatment' (HQT) as dealing with persons in a way appropriate to the human condition, which entails acting with respect for their human dignity and rights, caring for their problems and legitimate interests, and fostering their personal development. With this in mind, we can distinguish between five different levels or degrees of HQT in organizations which can be characterized by the following terms: (1) maltreatment (blatant injustice through abuse of power or mistreatment), (2) indifference (disrespectful treatment through lack of recognition of people's personhood and concern), (3) justice (respect for persons and their rights), (4) care (concern for people's legitimate interests and support for them in resolving their problems), and (5) development (favoring human flourishing, mutual esteem, and friendship-based reciprocity). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated how female directors of corporate boards of directors (BoD) experience boardroom dynamics. The study represents an initial research trend that moves from a unilateral focus on financial outcomes of female representation in BoDs toward stronger attention on the social dynamics in the boardroom. Drawing on social identity theory, the study proposed that female directors often constitute an out-group within the BoD, preventing them from experiencing positive board dynamics. More specifically, the study explored the extent to which female directors do experience less justice, lower cohesion, and higher levels of conflicts within the BoD than their male counterparts do. Moreover, we assumed that female directors with nontraditional educational backgrounds would be particularly likely to experience negative boardroom dynamics whereas female chairpersons of BoDs would perceive boardroom dynamics more positively than other female directors. The sample consisted of 491 directors from 149 BoDs. Our findings revealed that there were generally few differences in the way female and male directors experienced boardroom dynamics and female chairpersons of BoDs did not perceive the dynamics differently than other female directors. Female directors with nontraditional educational backgrounds perceived the boardroom dynamics somewhat more negatively than other female directors, but the differences were not statistically significant. The conclusions from this study are that there are reasons to believe that female directors are welcomed into boardrooms, not perceived as out-groups, and BoDs are able to benefit from the female directors' experience and skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interdisciplinary theoretical framework is proposed for analysing justice in global working conditions. In addition to gender and race as popular criteria to identify disadvantaged groups in organizations, in multinational corporations (MNCs) local employees (i.e. host country nationals (HCNs) working in foreign subsidiaries) deserve special attention. Their working conditions are often substantially worse than those of expatriates (i.e. parent country nationals temporarily assigned to a foreign subsidiary). Although a number of reasons have been put forward to justify such inequalities-usually with efficiency goals in mind-recent studies have used equity theory to question the extent to which they are perceived as fair by HCNs. However, since perceptual equity theory has limitations, this study develops an alternative and non-perceptual framework for analysing such inequalities. Employment discrimination theory and elements of Rawls's 'Theory of Justice' are the theoretical pillars of this framework. This article discusses the advantages of this approach for MNCs and identifies some expatriation practices that are fair according to our non-perceptual justice standards, whilst also reasonably (if not highly) efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Customers complain because they want to be treated fairly by the company when a service failure occurs. The role of perceived complaint justice and its relation to customer satisfaction has been discussed and researched. However, a static view is mostly adopted in previous literature. We argue that satisfaction is cumulative and both prior satisfaction and post-recovery satisfaction should be looked at in relation to complaint justice in the context of service recovery. This study attempts to fill the gap by investigating the mediating role of justice in the relationship between prior satisfaction and post-recovery satisfaction (both with the recovery and with the organization) and examining the mediating role of post-recovery satisfaction in the relationship between the dimensions of justice and customer retention. Hypotheses were tested using a sample of 200 customers that had service failure experience at Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong. Justice dimensions (distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice) were found to fully mediate the relationship between prior satisfaction and satisfaction with recovery. All dimensions, except the interactional justice, were also found to be partial mediators in the relationship between prior satisfaction and post-recovery satisfaction with organization. Findings also revealed the mediating roles of two post-recovery satisfaction variables in transferring the justice dimensions into behavioral intention, with the two variables playing almost opposite roles. Discussion and recommendations are provided for future development and improvement in building long-term relationship with customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent concern over 'high frequency trading' (HFT) has called into question the fairness of the practice. What does it mean for a financial market to be 'fair'? We first examine how high frequency trading is actually used. High frequency traders often implement traditional beneficial strategies such as market making and arbitrage, although computers can also be used for manipulative strategies as well. We then examine different notions of fairness. Procedural fairness can be viewed from the perspective of equal opportunity, in which all market participants are treated alike. The same rules apply to HFT as to other traders. Another approach to fairness is in the equality of outcomes. Many HFT strategies are beneficial to other market participants, so one cannot categorically denounce the practice as unfair. Other strategies, for both high and low frequency trading, are not. It is thus important to distinguish between the technology and the use of the technology to make judgments on fairness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the last 50 years the idea of consumer rights has formed an essential element in the formulation of policy to guide the workings of the marketplace. The extent and coverage of these rights has evolved and changed over time, yet there has been no comprehensive analysis as to the purpose and scope of consumer rights. In moral and ethical philosophy, rights are integrally linked to the notion of justice. By reassessing consumer rights through a justice-based framework, a number of key issues emerge regarding the way in which markets enable justice for consumers. The consumer rights which underpin the United Nations consumer protection guidelines address all forms of justice to some degree, but the predominant focus is on procedural justice. Our conclusions question whether this is sufficient and also whether there is a case to develop the notion of consumer 'duties' that complement the idea of rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article leverages insights from the body of Adam Smith's work, including two lesser-known manuscripts-the Theory of Moral Sentiments and Lectures in Jurisprudence-to help answer the question as to how companies should morally prioritize corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives and stakeholder claims. Smith makes philosophical distinctions between justice and beneficence and perfect and imperfect rights, and we leverage those distinctions to speak to contemporary CSR and stakeholder management theories. We address the often-neglected question as to how far a company should be expected to go in pursuit of CSR initiatives and we offer a fresh perspective as to the role of business in relation to stakeholders and to society as a whole. Smith's moral insights help us to propose a practical framework of legitimacy in stakeholder claims that can help managers select appropriate and responsible CSR activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the extent to which perceptions of the authenticity of supervisor's personal integrity and character (ASPIRE) moderate the relationship between people's love of money (LOM) and propensity to engage in unethical behavior (PUB) among 266 part-time employees who were also business students in a five-wave panel study. We found that a high level of ASPIRE perceptions was related to high love-of-money orientation, high self-esteem, but low unethical behavior intention (PUB). Unethical behavior intention (PUB) was significantly correlated with their high Machiavellianism, low self-esteem, and low intrinsic religiosity. Our counterintuitive results revealed that the main effect of LOM on PUB was not significant, but the main effect of ASPIRE on PUB was significant. Further, the significant interaction effect between LOM and ASPIRE on unethical behavior intention provided profoundly interesting findings: High LOM was related to high unethical behavior intention for people with low ASPIRE, but was related to low unethical intention for those with high ASPIRE. People with high LOM and low ASPIRE had the highest unethical behavior intention; whereas those with high LOM and high ASPIRE had the lowest. We discuss results in light of individual differences, ethical environment, and perceived demand characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]