Method issues in business ethics research: finding credible answers to questions that matter

Campbell, David; Cowton, Christopher J.

doi:10.1111/beer.12093

Cited by 40 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…1). This is a familiar charge against normative business ethics, or indeed against any ethical analysis that finds practice wanting in some respect-though it is difficult to imagine the value of a business ethics that was never in tension with business practice (Campbell and Cowton 2015). In the context of business ethics, this often entails explicit or implicit assumptions about the way competitive markets function.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Ethics of Trade Credit: Understanding Good Payment Practice in the Supply Chain

Cowton

San-José

2016

J Bus Ethics

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In spite of its commercial importance and signs of clear concern in public policy arenas, trade credit has not been subjected to systematic, extended analysis in the business ethics literature, even where suppliers as a stakeholder group have been considered. This paper makes the case for serious consideration of the ethics of trade credit and explores the issues surrounding slow payment of debts. It discusses trade debt as a kind of promise, butnoting that not all promises are good ones-goes on to develop an analysis of the ethics of trade credit grounded in an understanding of its fundamental purpose. Making a distinction between ''operating'' trade credit and ''financial'' trade credit, the paper provides an account of the maximum period for which it is appropriate for one company to delay payment to another from which it has purchased goods or services. The concern of commentators and policy makers that companies should not take too long to pay their debts is affirmed, but the understanding of what timely payment means is significantly finessed, with one conclusion being that, if debts have not already been settled according to acceptable standard terms of trade, cash should pass quickly back along the supply chain once the customer in the final product market has paid. The analysis has implications not only for companies that take credit but also for external parties that seek to rate companies or set regulations according to speed of payment-an approach that is shown to be misleadingly simplistic, albeit well intentioned. A corresponding important responsibility for suppliers, not to extend excessive credit (and thus act as a quasi-bank), also follows from the analysis developed. Having provided a novel analysis of an important business problem, the paper then discusses some of the related practical issues and makes suggestions for further research.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Ethics of Trade Credit: Understanding Good Payment Practice in the Supply Chain

Cowton

San-José

2016

J Bus Ethics

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“…Including SD in ethics education research designs strengthens data robustness, as doing so provides a rigorous tool for assessing truthfulness of responses. However, SD issues, traditionally neglected in research on ethics education (Randall & Fernandes, 1991), have been increasingly considered in the past years, in line with the recommendations of recent contributions (see e.g., Campbell & Cowton, 2015;Lehnert et al, 2015). Having this situation in mind, we will explicitly include this issue in our investigation, treating SD as a control variable-as scarce although relevant organizational research has previously done (e.g., Valentine & Hollingworth, 2012).…”

Section: Te Aching Bus Ine Ss E Thi C S In Hi G Her Educ Ati Onmentioning

confidence: 98%

“Don't try to teach me, I got nothing to learn”: Management students' perceptions of business ethics teaching

Tormo‐Carbó

Oltra

Klimkiewicz

et al. 2019

Business Ethics: A Eur Rev

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Interest is growing towards including business ethics in university curricula, aiming at improving ethical behaviour of future managers. Extant literature has investigated the impact of ethics education on different ethics‐related students' cognitive and/or behavioural outcomes, considering variables related to training programmes and students' demographic aspects. Accordingly, we aim at assessing students' understanding of business ethics issues, by focusing on the differences in students' perceptions depending on gender, age, work experience, and ethics courses taken. Testing our hypotheses on a sample of 307 management students at a Polish university, and controlling for social desirability bias, we obtained mixed and partially surprising results. We found significant differences in students' understanding of business ethics depending on their gender and age (female and older students showed more ethical inclinations), but not depending on having taken ethics courses—actually perceptions of such courses worsened after taking them. Besides, work experience was not a significant variable. Moreover, course exposure intensiveness (i.e., number of ethics courses completed), and time passed since completion of the latest course, did not confirm hypothesized effects on most of the dependent (sub)variables. These findings stimulate further questions and challenges for future research (e.g., around course design and methodology, and social/cultural/contextual issues).

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“…The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of some suspected sources of bias on corruption perceptions in surveys, which has been considered to be a crucial issue in business ethics studies (Campbell & Cowton, 2015). We analyzed the influence of the media, positive perceptions of public employees, and social identification with public employees as potential sources of bias on the perceived level of public sector corruption.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The influence of media, positive perception, and identification on survey‐based measures of corruption

Park

Lee

2017

Business Ethics: A European Review

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This study examines the influence of some suspected sources of bias on perceptions of public sector corruption. These sources include dependence on two types of media as information sources about corruption: traditional and social media, positive perception of public employees, and social identification with public employees. Data were collected through a face‐to‐face survey of the general public in South Korea. The sample comprised 472 respondents evenly dispersed across the country. Through regression analysis, we found that dependence on traditional media—but not social media—significantly increased the perceived level of corruption. However, positive perceptions of and social identification with public employees were negatively associated with it, showing that these factors may skew respondents' perceptions of corruption. The results have implications for practitioners and researchers who design, implement, or evaluate anti‐corruption policies, suggesting the need for caution when making use of survey results.

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Method issues in business ethics research: finding credible answers to questions that matter

Cited by 40 publications

References 15 publications

On the Ethics of Trade Credit: Understanding Good Payment Practice in the Supply Chain

On the Ethics of Trade Credit: Understanding Good Payment Practice in the Supply Chain

“Don't try to teach me, I got nothing to learn”: Management students' perceptions of business ethics teaching

The influence of media, positive perception, and identification on survey‐based measures of corruption

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