Big Business and Fascism: A Dangerous Collusion Abstract Anxieties stemming from rising inequalities have led significant sections of the world’s population to reject democratic practices and place their trust in politicians with fascist tendencies who promise to wrest control of their destinies from elites. Ironically, elite interests, far from being threatened, are bolstered by the rise of fascism, as discredited democratic institutions can be dismantled with impunity. The emerging alliance between the neoliberal project and fascist politics is a phenomenon that the business and society scholarship is ill-equipped to confront as it remains trapped in the same neoliberal pro-elite paradigms that neglect meaningful attention to material (in)equality and focus instead on ensuring a minimum floor of rights required for subsistence. Neglecting the concentration of wealth among the elite, particularly in countries with historic legacies of inequalities based on race, caste, ethnicity, and religion, creates ideal conditions for the eruption of fascisms premised upon programmatic denial of the full range of civil rights to one or more sections of the population, so that even the floor minimum becomes impossible to achieve for all. This paper argues that corporate collusions with fascism can be challenged only by a commitment to redistribution of wealth and creating critical citizens and by generating knowledge that can question authority: in other words, scholarship must become a subversive activity.

The Effects of Spirituality and Moral Intensity on Ethical Business Decisions: A Cross-Sectional Study Abstract We present a cross-sectional study of ethical decision-making correlated with spirituality and utilizing moral intensity as a moderator for workers in the Southeastern United States (N = 117). This study presents spirituality as an individual variable and moral intensity as a situational variable along with ethical decision-making to examine the interaction of these factors in moral dilemmas. Utilizing previously validated instruments for ethical decision-making and individual spirituality, we find that workers with relatively high measured spirituality made less ethical decisions compared to workers with relatively lower measures of spirituality. Further, we find that the introduction of high moral intensity as a situational variable does not moderate the observed correlation between spirituality and ethical decision-making. This research supports the conceptual nature of the Interactionist Theory by presenting in a single study both individual and situational variables in ethical decision-making.

Thematic Symposium: Accounting Ethics and Regulation: SOX 15 Years Later

Evidence on Whether Banks Consider Carbon Risk in Their Lending Decisions Abstract Banks face a dilemma in choosing between maximising profits and facilitating the sustainable use of resources within a carbon-constrained future. This study provides empirical evidence on this dilemma, investigating whether a bank loan announcement for a firm with high carbon risk conveys information to investors about the firm’s carbon risk exposure collected through a bank’s pre-loan screening and ongoing monitoring. We use a sample of 120 bank loan announcements for ASX-listed firms over the period 2009–2015. We measure high (low) carbon risk exposure based on whether firms meet (do not meet) the reporting threshold of the NGER scheme. We document positive and significant excess loan announcement returns for loan renewals for high carbon risk firms, but not for loan initiations. Further, we document a more significant loan announcement return for renewals with favourable term revisions. Finally, we find no evidence that the market differentiates between domestic and foreign lenders. Taken together, our results suggest that investors perceive that banks incorporate carbon risk considerations into their lending decisions. Our results highlight the value of banks as financial intermediaries given the information asymmetry surrounding firms’ carbon risk exposure, and more generally the need to extend modern banking theory to consider issues such as the impact of banks’ CSR reputation on lending decisions.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Disclosures: An Investigation of Investors’ and Analysts’ Perceptions Abstract We conjecture that corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be indicative of managerial ethics and integrity and examine whether equity investors and financial analysts consider CSR performance when they assess firms’ disclosures of actual and forecasted earnings. We find that only adverse CSR performance affects investors’ assessments of these disclosures. In contrast, we find that both positive and adverse CSR performance affect analysts’ forecast revisions in response to firms’ disclosures. We also find that firms with adverse CSR performance exhibit lower disclosure quality and earnings persistence, but do not find that firms with positive CSR performance exhibit higher levels of both measures. This asymmetric result is consistent with investors’, but not analysts’, assessments of the effect of CSR performance on corporate disclosures. Our results are robust to using a three-stage least squares approach to address endogeneity concerns and to a battery of robustness and sensitivity analyses. Overall, our findings suggest that investors and analysts consider CSR when assessing the information in earnings-related corporate disclosures.

In Search of Sustainable Behaviour: The Role of Core Values and Personality Traits Abstract Understanding the individual-level factors associated with sustainable behaviour in the workplace is important to advance corporate ethics and sustainability efforts. In two studies, we simultaneously assess the role of core values and personality traits in relation to a broad set of sustainability actions, both beneficial and harmful. Results from a student sample (N = 411) and then a national sample (N = 639) confirm that values and personality are distinct constructs that incrementally and differentially predict economic, social, and environmental outcomes. We successfully replicate previous findings pertaining to values and find that, controlling for values, the personality dimension of Honesty–Humility is the strongest negative predictor of harmful actions. Our analyses highlight the unique characteristics of values and personality and their distinct implications for ethical and sustainable management practice. By assessing values and personality together, we also contribute to more general efforts within psychology to develop an integrative view of the person.

Deeds Not Words: A Cosmopolitan Perspective on the Influences of Corporate Sustainability and NGO Engagement on the Adoption of Sustainable Products in China Abstract To make a business case for corporate sustainability, firms must be able to sell their sustainable products. The influence that firm engagement with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) may have on consumer adoption of sustainable products has been neglected in previous research. We address this by embedding corporate sustainability in a cosmopolitan framework that connects firms, consumers, and civil society organizations based on the understanding of responsibility for global humanity that underlies both the sustainability and cosmopolitanism concepts. We hypothesize that firms’ sustainability engagement and their NGO engagement influence consumer adoption of sustainable products. Empirically, we investigate the adoption of sustainable Eco-circle products made from recycled fibers marketed by Li Ning, a China-based global sportswear brand. We apply a stepwise regression approach to test our hypotheses with paper-and-pencil survey data from 217 Chinese consumers. We find adoption to be positively associated with consumers’ sustainability attitude but not with firms’ sustainability engagement. For firm–NGO engagement, these relationships are reversed: Adoption is positively associated with firm–NGO engagement, but not with consumers’ related attitude. Our results present a picture of the Chinese context in which there is a business case for corporate sustainability if firms’ words about sustainable product strategies are supported by signals from civil society about firm deeds. The results imply that in a Chinese context, firms need to be particularly aware of the role of NGOs when hoping to be rewarded for sustainability.

Environmental Behavior On and Off the Job: A Configurational Approach Abstract The current literature on environmental sustainability acknowledges that habits are often shaped in private life and that experiences with environmental activities in a non-work setting positively influence environmental behaviors in the work domain. However, the conditions that lead individuals to behave responsibly at work based on their environmental commitment outside the workplace remain poorly understood. We address this issue by pursuing two objectives. First, we outline archetypes of environmental behavior on and off the job and classify individuals into four profiles: Apathetic, Conformist, Citizen and Enthusiast. Second, we examine a set of organizational and psychological variables that explain the likelihood of behaving in accordance with the principles of an archetype in terms of pro-environmental behavior at work. Our findings show that supervisory support, job self-efficacy and affective commitment increase the likelihood of being green at work but that environmental management practices do not. The results differ according to the profiles identified, allowing a better understanding of employees’ commitment to environmental sustainability. We conclude the paper by discussing the theoretical and managerial implications of our findings.

The Relationship Between Sarbanes–Oxley Policies and Donor Advisories in Nonprofit Organizations Abstract This study examines the impact of Sarbanes–Oxley (SOX) on the nonprofit sector. Focusing on three key SOX policies applicable to charities—conflict-of-interest policies, records retention policies, and whistleblower policies—this study tests the relationship between the existence and addition of these policies on subsequent ethical and governance lapses as reflected in the issuance of “donor advisories” by the large third-party ratings agency Charity Navigator. The findings suggest that, controlling for other relevant organizational factors, the three SOX-inspired written policies are related to a reduced likelihood of donor advisories in the organizations rated by Charity Navigator.

Stakeholder Salience for Small Businesses: A Social Proximity Perspective Abstract This paper advances stakeholder salience theory from the viewpoint of small businesses. It is argued that the stakeholder salience process for small businesses is influenced by their local embeddedness, captured by the idea of social proximity, and characterised by multiple relationships that the owner-manager and stakeholders share beyond the business context. It is further stated that the ethics of care is a valuable ethical lens through which to understand social proximity in small businesses. The contribution of the study conceptualises how the perceived social proximity between local stakeholders and small business owner-managers influences managerial considerations of the legitimacy, power and urgency of stakeholders and their claims. Specifically, the paradoxical nature of close relationships in the salience process is acknowledged and discussed.