Journal of Business Ethics最新文献

Undocumented migrant workers are among a group of marginalized stakeholders who are severely exploited at their workplace and across broader society. Despite recent scholarly discussions in marginalized stakeholder theory and migration studies, our understanding of how undocumented workers experience marginalization in noncooperative spaces remains very limited. In noncooperative spaces, uncooperative powerful actors deliberately thwart cooperation with local marginalized stakeholders and fail to develop supportive institutional frameworks, such as regulative and transparent governance principles. To address these issues, we conducted interviews with 47 undocumented workers and civil society workers in Italy. Our findings reveal that the marginalization experienced by undocumented workers encompasses socio-economic immobility, systemic incapability, and a sense of meaninglessness. Further, our research challenges the principles of stakeholder capitalism inherent in traditional stakeholder theory, revealing the inadequacy of conventional notions in noncooperative spaces where marginalized stakeholders deal with disempowerment and immobility. We delve into the silent and tacit collusion among uncooperative firms in these spaces, shedding light on the ways in which this problematic cooperation leads to the creation of normative harm. Moreover, we introduce the experience of meaninglessness as an internal barrier hindering migrant inclusion, underscoring the imperative need for widespread immigration reforms and normative changes to foster an environment conducive to meaningful transformations for migrants.

In this editorial essay, we argue that Generative Artificial Intelligence programs (GenAI) draw on what we term a “hypercommons”, involving collectively produced inputs and labour that are largely invisible or untraceable. We argue that automatizing the exploitation of common inputs, in ways that remix and reconfigure them, can lead to a crisis of academic authorship in which the moral agency involved in scholarly production is increasingly eroded. We discuss the relationship between the hypercommons and authorship in terms of moral agency and the ethics of academic production, speculating on different responses to the crisis of authorship as posed by GenAI.

This paper investigates Street Fight Radio’s consumer community’s resistance to neoliberal financial consumer responsibilization. Extant scholarship critiques consumer responsibilization on ethical grounds for placing too much responsibility on consumers at the expense of institutional actors. It also describes some forms of aversion to parts of the responsibilization process among individuals and short-lived consumer collectives. However, it falls short of analyzing community-driven resistance to financial consumer responsibilization writ large, or consumers’ efforts to responsibilize other stakeholders. Our netnographic and ethnographic study of Street Fight Radio (SFR), a populist grassroots political comedy radio show and podcast with a strong anti-neoliberal consumer community, addresses these previous theoretical limitations. Drawing from Foucault’s counter-conduct concept, we show how SFR’s consumer community bolsters and sustains community-level resistance to financial consumer responsibilization. It encourages consumers to push for collective protections from markets and responsibilize other actors to address systemic, structural precarity. Our analysis makes novel contributions by theorizing the role of community in sustaining resistance to consumer responsibilization and by demonstrating the role of precarious consumers’ performative staging of supposedly excessive, irresponsible consumption in reorienting consumer ethics.

Although ethics research shows that prospective penalties for tax fraud can increase taxpayers’ compliance with tax laws, we do not have a clear understanding of how perceptions of penalty severity impact tax compliance. To address this gap, I first conduct a survey to establish what propriety of penalty severity encourages compliance. I then examine experimentally whether taxpayers’ compliance is jointly influenced by penalty severity and social norms. I expect social norms to moderate the impact of penalty severity because social norms provide a contextual cue about the scope and relevance of an ethical issue. Specifically, I expect that when taxpayers anchor (do not anchor) on information about social norms, the positive impact of penalty severity on tax compliance is suppressed (not suppressed). My results are as predicted. I conclude that governments can increase compliance with tax laws by imposing appropriately severe tax fraud penalties and carefully considering the release of information related to compliance norms.

The effects of state ownership on firms’ outcomes depend on how governments influence the goals of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Yet scant scholarly attention has been devoted to understanding what circumstances shape governmental influence on SOEs’ corporate social performance (CSP). Addressing this gap is important because SOEs are becoming increasingly more hybrid, and must thus balance multiple private and public stakeholders’ financial and social goals. We contend that, compared to non-SOEs, SOEs face additional institutional and legitimacy pressures that lead them to act in socially responsible ways, resulting in higher social and environmental CSP. However, these pressures are moderated by two other factors that determine the strength of governmental influence: whether the state has a majority shareholding and the incumbent government’s political ideology. We examine a 12-year panel of 150 Brazilian listed firms, including 41 SOEs, and demonstrate that state ownership is positively associated with the social dimension of CSP but only when the state is the majority shareholder, and thus able to strongly influence SOEs’ goals. Moreover, the more right-leaning the government, the weaker becomes the moderating effect of majority state ownership. This is because political ideology determines how governments influence the tradeoffs between SOEs’ economic and social goals.

Unlike the many services already transformed by artificial intelligence (AI), the financial advice sector remains committed to a human interface. That is surprising as an AI-powered financial advisor (a robo-advisor) can offer personalised financial advice at much lower cost than traditional human advice. This is particularly important for those who need but cannot afford or access traditional financial advice. Robo-advice is easily accessible, available on-demand, and pools all relevant information in finding and implementing an optimal financial plan. In a perfectly competitive market for financial advice, robo-advice should prevail. Unfortunately, this market is imperfect with asymmetric information causing generalised advice aversion with a disproportionate lack of trust in robo-advice. Initial distrust makes advice clients reluctant to use, or switch to, robo-advice. This paper investigates the ethical concerns specific to robo-advice underpinning this lack of trust. We propose a regulatory framework addressing these concerns to ensure robo-advice can be an ethical resource for good, resolving the increasing complexity of financial decision-making. Fit for purpose regulation augments initial trust in robo-advice and supports advice clients in discriminating between high-trust and low-trust robo-advisors. Aspiring robo-advisors need to clear four licensing gateways to qualify for an AI Robo-Advice License (AIRAL). Licensed robo-advisors should then be monitored for ethical compliance. Using a balanced score card for ethical performance generates an ethics rating. This gateways-and-ratings methodology builds trust in the robo-advisory market through improved transparency, reduced information asymmetry, and lower risk of adverse selection.

Academic and public debate is continuing about whether digital nomadism, a new Internet-enabled phenomenon in which digital workers adopt a neo-nomadic global lifestyle, represents ‘real’ emancipation for knowledge workers—or if it is, instead, the opposite. Based on a field study of digital nomadism, and accepting a pluralist approach to emancipation, we analyse the ‘emancipatory project(s)’ that digital nomads engage in. This analysis, following Weberian idealtypes, employs a tripartite structure: unsatisfactory conditions (what people want to overcome); emancipatory means (actions taken); and emancipatory ends (desired outcomes). We critically compare digital nomadism to the traditional descriptions of emancipatory projects in nation-state contexts, as found in prior literature, using the same analytical framework. Juxtaposing these idealtypes, we discuss similarities and differences and analyse their inherent assumptions, logics and ethical stances. We conclude that digital nomadism generates an emancipation that is very much ‘real’ for digital nomads, whose experience cannot be disregarded, but with a ‘postmodern’ ethos that is at odds with modernity and its ethos originating from the Enlightenment.

CEOs who participate in hunting and fishing benefit by appreciating natural environments and permanently consuming natural resources. We examine whether CEOs who hunt and fish make different environmental decisions and find that firms led by CEOs who obtain the most hunting and fishing licenses have lower environmental performance as measured by MSCI-KLD. This effect is strongest in the environmental category of climate change but also extends to pollution, waste, and the protection of natural capital. Furthermore, firms led by CEOs with the most hunting and fishing licenses are significantly more likely to pay a regulatory settlement for an environmental regulatory infraction.

This issue was initiated in a period of global tension and widespread corporate expressions of concern about racism. The articles presented here document the continued presence of disparate racialized experiences in a range of work environments. They provide deep insight into the ways that race shapes the lives of educators, researchers, students, employees, and managers. Such racialized experiences are widely unacknowledged by those whose lives and bodies insulate them. In the time since we initiated this special issue, the anxiety related to talking about race in schools and the workplace has become yet more virulent. In the United States, many municipalities have adopted laws constraining and controlling classroom conversations about race. Corporations continue to struggle with how to implement high-minded DEI policy statements without provoking backlash. We are hopeful that these articles provide greater awareness of racialized capitalism. Further, we aspire to open the door for business ethics research that recognizes the impact of race on institutional policies as well as formal and informal practices. Awareness, recognition, and acknowledgment of disparate impact are essential steps in creating more just work and educational environments.

This paper examines the tension between creative destruction—an inherent feature of capitalist economies—and the ideal of autonomy. Creative destruction is vital for economic growth, but it undermines the conditions necessary for autonomy by disrupting individuals’ ability to plan their lives. This creates a dilemma: we must either abandon the ideal of autonomy or economic growth. The paper explores potential regulatory strategies to mitigate the impact of disruptive innovation on life plans, but argues these ultimately fail. It then proposes a novel conception of autonomy consistent with capitalist creative destruction. With artificial intelligence poised to initiate unparalleled creative destruction, understanding this dilemma and potential solutions is crucial from an ethical perspective. The paper contends its revised conception of autonomy offers a path forward amidst transformative technological change.