Business Ethics the Environment & Responsibility最新文献

Building on the notion that organizations are congruence seeking systems, this study investigates the impact of green investing on corporate environmental violations (CEVs). The research sample consists of China's A-share-listed companies for the period 2009–2020. The study employs a robust analytical framework that integrates least squares dummy variable approach, different proxies for regressors and moderators, and instrumental variable technique. Based on the rigorous methods, empirical analysis reveals that green investing helps mitigate CEVs, aligning with the theoretical premise of environmental strategic congruence. The moderating results indicate that elevated CEO ability and a higher proportion of female directors on boards enhances strategic congruence and amplifies the alleviating effects of green investing on CEVs. Furthermore, cross-sectional analysis suggests that the mitigating effect of green investing on CEVs is more pronounced for firms in sensitive sectors, state-owned, and lacking internal controls for environmental, health, and safety. This research contributes nuanced insights on the role of strategic congruence in sustainable finance and governance and presents practical implications for policymakers, managers, and corporate leaders navigating the intricate landscape of environmental responsibility within an emerging market.

Drawing on attribution theory and expectancy violation theory, this study investigates the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on stock market reactions in the context of intentional crises, during which stakeholders are likely to attribute crisis responsibility to the focal firm. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2012 to 2022, we find that in the context of an intentional crisis, the stock market reacts more negatively to firms with higher prior CSR performance. Two contingency factors (i.e., media attention and state ownership) strengthen this negative relationship. This study contributes to the CSR literature by broadening knowledge of the insurance-like effects of CSR and by identifying a “boomerang effect” of CSR in the context of intentional crises.

This study investigates the impact of economic uncertainty on information asymmetry and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) controversies within companies, while exploring the moderating role of digital integration. By analyzing a panel of 1303 companies across 20 European countries from 2016 to 2023, and employing the two-stage generalized method of moments (GMM) and two-stage least squares (2SLS) for robustness tests, the research reveals that economic uncertainty, as measured by the Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) index, exacerbates information asymmetry and heightens ESG controversies. However, the adoption of digital technologies mitigates these adverse effects by enhancing transparency and reducing the likelihood of opportunistic behavior. Theoretically, this research contributes to the understanding of how digitalization can reinforce corporate governance and sustainability in uncertain times. Practically, the findings suggest that companies should accelerate their digitalization efforts to safeguard against the destabilizing effects of economic uncertainty, while bolstering their governance and social responsibility performance.

Although considerable efforts have been made to summarize the behavioral ethics literature, a quantitative visualization is necessary to generate an overall understanding of research on unethical behavior in organizations. Using CiteSpace, this study conducts a bibliometric review and visualizes the intellectual base of the unethical workplace behavior field. Based on a dataset of 8765 unethical-behavior-related publications collected from the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) database from 1993 to 2023, we identify landmark studies, analyze key research themes, visualize the network of major theories, and track the evolution of research on unethical behavior in organizations via co-citation and co-occurrence analysis. After tracking the developmental trajectory and outlining the current state of the art, we identify potential trends in research on unethical workplace behavior and suggest some important research directions. Our bibliometric review generates a clear visualization of unethical behavior in organizations, contributing to a comprehensive understanding of this body of literature. These findings also offer valuable insights for managers seeking to address unethical behavior in their organizations and highlight implications for policymakers aiming to promote ethical workplace environments.

The term “stakeholder capitalism” has become part of our shared business lexicon. This is due in large part to the work of R. Edward Freeman and his collaborators who conceive of stakeholder theory not simply as an approach to ethics in business but also of a new narrative for the ethics of capitalism. We argue that stakeholder thought as it is developed in this literature remains deficient as an ethics of capitalism because it fails to fully appreciate the distinction between business firms as one institution of capitalism and capitalism as an interrelated network of institutions. Failing to appreciate this distinction thwarts any facile movement between the theory's account of the ethics of business, which is concerned with the aims that guide business management, and the ethics of capitalism, which is concerned with how various institutions should be designed as a system with an internal division of moral labor. This difference suggests a prospective way forward for stakeholder theory that focuses more attention on the responsibilities that business firms owe to support the legal and economic institutions of capitalism.

Previous research on the detrimental consequences of employees' unethical pro-organizational behaviors (UPB) has been based mainly on cognitive dissonance theory. The authors suggest that moral disengagement theory and cognitive dissonance theory can be used to explain the negative effects of UPB. We conducted two studies, including a scenario experiment and a survey, to test the mediating roles of moral identity and moral disengagement and the moderating role of performance pressure in the relationship between UPB and organizational deviance. The results revealed that UPB impacts organizational deviance through moral identity and moral disengagement and that distinct psychological reactions are differentially moderated by performance pressure. Employees who face low levels of performance pressure are more receptive to the effects of moral identity; in contrast, employees who face high levels of performance pressure are more receptive to the effects of moral disengagement. The theoretical and managerial implications of this research are discussed.