The influence of organisational culture on corporate accountants' ethical judgement and ethical intention in Vietnam

PurposeThis research examines the impact of organisational culture on the ethical judgement and ethical intention of corporate accountants in Vietnam.Design/methodology/approachThe study relies on survey data collected from 283 practising accountants in Vietnam. Organisational culture was measured using the Organisational Culture Assessment Instrument, developed by Cameron and Quinn (2011). The Instrument is developed based on the competing values framework comprised of four distinct cultures: clan, hierarchy, market and adhocracy. Ethical judgement and ethical intention were measured based on respondent responses to five ethical scenarios, each linked to a principle of professional conduct in the code of ethics.FindingsThe findings indicate that the clan culture (family oriented) is dominant and has a significant positive influence on accountants' ethical judgement and ethical intention. Respondents in the clan culture evaluate scenarios more ethically compared with accountants in the adhocracy and market cultures but not the hierarchy culture. Accountants who emphasise the adhocracy and market cultures display a more relaxed attitude towards unethical scenarios whereas respondents in the hierarchy culture (rule oriented) display the highest ethical attitude.Research limitations/implicationsThe code of ethics, its content and how it is interpreted and applied may differ between professions, organisations or cultures.Originality/valueOrganisational research on ethical decision-making is ample but few studies link organisational culture with ethical judgement and ethical intention from the perspective of individual accountants.

The ethical decisions of life insurance salespeople: the effects of interest conflicts, ethical leadership and ethical training

Purpose Life insurance salespeople are hired to pursue the best interests of life insurers on the one hand, the salespeople are also expected to pursue the best interests of customers on the other hand. However, the best interests of life insurers are not necessarily consistent with the best interests of customers. This study aims to investigate the influences of interest conflicts on the life insurance salespeople’s ethical attitude and ethical intention by focusing on the role of ethical leadership and ethical training. Design/methodology/approach Four types of interest conflicts are studied. Questionnaires are administered to a total of 757 full-time life insurance salespeople. Data analysis is performed by using analysis of variance tests and partial least squares regression. Findings The main results indicate that the types of interest conflicts change the life insurance salespeople’s ethical attitude and ethical intention. Moreover, ethical training could make the life insurance salespeople become more concerned about the interests of customers, but not the interests of life insurers. The results also challenge a belief that ethical leadership and ethical training will often have direct, consistent and significant impacts on the ethical attitude and ethical intention of life insurance salespeople. Originality/value Interest conflict is an important issue in the literature on financial regulation. The potential for life insurance salespeople to behave unethically has also received extensive attention by researchers. This study provides clarification of the relationships among interest conflicts, ethical leadership, ethical training and ethical decision-making of life insurance salespeople. This is the first study that analyzes the relationships. The results of this study may provide some contributions to the relevant literature.

Additional intervention evidence on the relationship between public service motivation and ethical behavior

The nascent scholarship on public service motivation (PSM) and ethics exhibits mixed findings. This research article aims to describe and relate the current landscape of findings in this arena and to conduct an experiment that addresses design weaknesses that may explain some past null findings. Using a national sample of college-age respondents, we found that although self-reported PSM was positively correlated with ethical intentions, prosocial priming did not increase ethical intentions or behavior. We contextualize these findings in terms of previous studies, to inform our understanding of the efficacy of prosocial interventions. While our research suggests that self-reported PSM can predict, if not influence, ethical intention, we are unable to make conclusions about PSM’s effects on ethical behavior. Second, similar to past studies, we are not able to confirm specific mechanisms or interventions that might be used to increase ethical behavior or intentions.

Temporality and the Carer’s Experience in the Narrative Ecology of Illness: Susan Sontag’s Dying in Photography and Prose

This paper joins a discussion about the representational dissonance and commemorative ethics of two self-referential works that engage with Susan Sontag’s 2004 death from Myelodysplastic Syndrome: Annie Leibovitz’s A Photographer’s Life1990–2005 (2006) and David Rieff’s Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son’s Memoir (2008). Instead of approaching these two texts as testimonial accounts measured by standards of reliability and grace, this paper considers how the temporal dissonance produced by an incurable cancer diagnosis thwarts questions of personhood and ethical intention in Leibovitz’s photography and Rieff ’s prose. By contextualizing these works as the caregivers’ experience of Sontag’s illness, this paper reads them as attempts at gauging two distinct temporal perspectives that confound identification—those of living through and of remembering terminal time.

The Gap between Attitudes and Behavior in Ethical Consumption: A Critical Discourse

Background: Although consumers are increasingly concerned with ethical factors when forming product opinions and making purchase decisions, recent studies have highlighted significant differences between consumers’ ethical consumption intentions and their actual buying behavior.Various dimensions concerning how consumers make purchase and consumption decisions and the driving forces behind them have been identified through this study. Objectives: This paper aims to explore the factors leading the gap between attitudes and behavior of consumers in relation to ethical consumption. Methods: The desk review carried out on various related studies reflects that the factors that obstruct the process of ethical consumption and thereby being responsible in forming attitude-behavior gap, which can be helpful in the course of management decision implications worth encouragement of ethical consumption behavior. Moreover, conceptual framework that has been developed for ethical consumption also indicates the factors responsible for creating ethical intention-behavior gap. Findings: This study derives concepts on ethical consumption from literature survey and identifies consumers’ understanding level on ethical consumption. Likewise, the study also provides a comprehensive picture of factors impeding ethical consumption among consumers while providing some theoretical and analytical applications. Conclusions: Price, quality, taste, brand image of products and convenience are some of the considerable issues while buying, due to which consumers’ ethical concerns towards society and environment are not transformed into their consumption behavior.

Antecedents of ethical leadership: the theory of planned behavior

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the antecedents of ethical leadership by drawing on the theory of planned behavior (TPB). The authors hypothesized that a leader’s attitude toward ethical behavior, subjective norm about ethical behavior and perceived behavioral control relate to his/her ethical intention and subsequently to the follower’s perceptions of ethical leadership. Design/methodology/approach The authors found general support for the model using data collected from a two-wave and two-source field study involving 119 supervisor-subordinate dyads. Findings The results demonstrated that the leader’s favorable attitude toward ethical behavior and perceived behavioral control predicted his/her ethical intention and subsequently to the follower’s perception of ethical leadership, whereas the subjective norm did not. Practical implications The findings of the study provide important insights into developing relevant training and intervention programs in organizations to cultivate ethical leadership. These can be done by encouraging leaders’ ethical intentions through changing their attitudinal and control beliefs regarding ethical behavior. Study findings also provide important insight on developing the recruiting device in a way that would help selecting individuals who may have favorable beliefs toward ethical behavior and thus have the potential to be an ethical leader. Originality/value This study first demonstrates the applicability of the TPB in examining the antecedents of ethical leadership.

Ce que l’action doit à l’affection. Éléments d’une phénoménologie de l’initiative chez Ricœur

This essay will try to understand how the problem of the genesis of initiative arises. It will begin by questioning affective perception from the standpoint of the concept of the owned body, to then show how the intentionality that characterizes its relation to objects is also what directs a desire, made explicit by Ricœur through the concept of “thumos.” The ethical intention will proceed from the desire: desire to manifest a freedom, desire that the freedom of others comes about. From these elements of analysis, we shall try to show how initiative articulates the teleological and ethical aspects of ethics, takes part in the advent of an ethical subject while arousing its creativity.