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PurposeThe study of business ethics has seldom shed light on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) despite their theoretical and practical significance. Drawing from strain perspective, the purpose of this paper is to address this insufficiency and investigate SME owners’ ethical attitudes toward money-related deviances.Design/methodology/approachBased on a large sample of 741 Chinese SMEs, an OLS regression analysis was employed to test associated hypotheses. The robustness of results was additionally checked.FindingsThe results suggest that for stratification variables, education level is positively related to ethical attitudes, whereas household income level is surprisingly negatively associated with ethical attitudes; for materialism facets, success and happiness exert a negative impact on ethical attitudes as hypothesized, but centrality has no associated impact.Research limitations/implicationsThis study has examined both structural and motivational sources of personal strains on the ethical attitude of SME owners, while the characteristics of these strains could be explored in the future studies.Originality/valueThis study advances and complements the dominant behavior approach that emphasizes cognitive and other psychological processes in explaining individual ethical attitudes. It is also seemingly the first study to examine the influence of three materialism facets on entrepreneurial ethical attitudes.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine international decision making, information processing, and related performance implications. The authors aim to explore the relationship between international decision making and problem-solving dissensions related to entry mode decisions. In addition, they aim to investigate the effects of dissension on entry mode performance, and the moderating effect of the foreign direct investment (FDI) vs non-FDI decision as it relates to dissension-mode performance. Despite their significance from an information processing perspective, these issues have not been sufficiently explored in international entry mode research. Design/methodology/approach – This research presents data collected from 233 privately owned internationalized Chinese firms. The analysis in this investigation includes hierarchical ordinary least squares regression. Findings – The findings suggest an inverse U-shaped relationship between dissension and entry mode performance, as opposed to a linear one, and a moderating effect of FDI vs non-FDI decisions on this curvilinear dissension-performance association. These findings support and refine the rationale of the information processing perspective. Originality/value – These findings add realistic elements to the alleged “rational” international decision-making doctrine assumed in previous entry mode literature. The findings show the importance of the heterogeneity of information processing in entry mode strategic decision-making processes (SDMPs), and its effects on specific decision types. The authors believe that this is the first empirical study to use an information processing perspective to examine the effects of SDMPs on entry mode performance.