Society for Business Ethics 2024 Annual Meeting

Paper Abstracts: Session 5

Session 5A: Hybrid Session 2

• Sweatshop Boycotts And Consumer Choices: A Contractualist Approach
  • This article presents an argument favoring ex ante contractualism as a normative framework for determining consumers’ obligations regarding sweatshop boycotts. First, I identify a moral collective action problem regarding consumers’ actions to boycott sweatshops. I call it “the collective action problem of consumers.” Second, I defend ex ante contractualism for solving the collective action problem of consumers. Finally, I respond to some possible and actual criticisms of my position. One major criticism is the compensatory option defended by Ferguson and Ostmann. I argue that, in most cases, joining a boycott is morally superior to the compensatory option.
• The Ethics Of Mergers And Acquisitions: It’s Not Just Business Ethics As Usual
  • Mergers and acquisitions can reshape entire sectors, generating incredible wealth or destroying the livelihoods of thousands. Despite their importance, there has been relatively little ethical reflection on mergers and acquisitions, with what little there is primarily focused on intrafirm and interfirm dynamics. But mergers and acquisitions are not “business as usual” because they can undermine the competitiveness of the market, prompting comprehensive government regulation. Consequently, firms and regulators share an epistemic burden for identifying market level harms resulting from mergers and acquisitions. And it is for this reason that regulatory capture not only harms the public, it harms firms by re-shifting the epistemic burden back onto them.
• Navigating Change: The Role Of Strategic Flexibility In Shaping Corporate Culture
  • This study investigates the relationship between strategic dynamism and corporate culture (CC) in publicly traded US companies, addressing a gap in management literature. Using a dataset of 40,840 observations of firms over the years 2001 to 2020, we apply rigorous quantitative approaches to analyze the impact of strategic dynamism on CC. The results reveal a clear connection between strategic dynamism and the development of strong CCs. Importantly, the research uncovers the subtle ways in which business size and environmental dynamism influence this interaction. Smaller companies and those working in rapidly changing contexts demonstrate a more pronounced correlation between their ability to quickly adapt to new strategies and the evolution of their culture. This investigation not only enhances the comprehension of how strategic dynamism influences CC but also reveals circumstances that accentuate or diminish this impact. The findings obtained have ramifications for strategists and organizational leaders, providing a road map for developing a competitive and adaptable company culture in a range of business environments.

Session 5B: Corporate Crime, Litigation Finance and Whistleblower Protection

• Corporate Crime’s Invisible Victims
  • A casual observer would be excused for thinking that corporate crimes are generally victimless. Even an informed observer would be hard pressed to articulate how, if at all, the criminal justice system accounts for victims when it resolves cases against corporations. When prosecutors focus on big-sticker fines and compliance mandates, victims drop out of the equation. Sometimes, prosecutors even take steps to actively exclude victims. This vague impression about the absence of victim participation in corporate criminal justice is empirically verifiable. Drawing on an original, hand-collected data set of corporate criminal resolutions to investigations, I argue that the most striking thing about corporations’ victims is how little we know about them. This essay seeks to reintroduce prosecutors, judges, and scholars to the victims of corporate crime. It uncovers mechanisms through which the criminal justice system elides the many thousands of people corporations physically and financially injure each year. Rather than allow our public representatives to pretend these victims do not exist, we should force the question: What do we owe them? The place to start is finding out who they are. Only then can we begin to acknowledge the wrong they suffered. Below, I offer several proposals for making progress.
  • The Business Ethics Of Litigation Finance
    • Most scholarship that seeks to elucidate the ethical implications of litigation finance focuses on legal ethics. That is most research has focused on how lawyers, judges, and litigants are influenced by the presence of litigation finance. This article seeks to elucidate the business ethics implications of litigation finance. It argues that litigation finance can be seen as a mechanism to promote business ethics, making companies behave more in line with both legal and ethical norms. It does this because it creates a large incentive for companies to follow private and regulatory laws. As the probability of being sued and facing damages increases, rationally, companies seek to invest in actions that are going to decrease the likelihood of litigation occurring. To do this, companies must invest in legal compliance and other workplace programs to decrease the potential of a lawsuit that ultimately has the effect of aligning a company’s behavior with ethical norms proscribed by business ethicists and management scholars. As an upshot, this article seeks to bring litigation finance into business scholarship with the hope that non-legal scholars will also begin to engage with this market phenomenon. Ultimately, the article provides a novel reason why litigation finance should be encouraged and promoted by regulators, businesses, and the marketplace at large.
• The Duty Speech Loophole In Whistleblower Protection And The Argument From Moral Luck
  • This paper demonstrates that ambiguity around the protection of role-prescribed reporting remains in key whistleblowing legislation in the US and EU, and argues that this ambiguity is ethically unacceptable because it depends on moral luck. A Role-Prescribed Reporter (RPR) is any worker who reports wrongdoing as part of their normal job duties, also known as duty speech. These workers are not whistleblowers when they report wrongdoing as part of their normal job. When they are neglected or experience retaliation they may report the same wrongdoing through a formally designated whistleblowing channel. We discuss loopholes in the US (Whistleblower Protection Act, False Claims Act, Dodd-Frank Act) and the EU (Ireland, France, the Netherlands), in which an RPR does not enjoy whistleblower protection for any retaliation that occurred prior to using a formal channel. We use the notion of moral luck (Nagel, Williams) to argue that ambiguity around these loopholes is ethically unacceptable.

Session 5C: Stakeholder, Empathy and Biodiversity

• 40 Years Of Stakeholder Approach In Management Education: A Single Case Study Of The Darden School Of Business
  • 40 years ago, Edward Freeman’s book “Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach”, was published as a textbook for courses in business policy and strategy. The stakeholder approach gained popularity in practice and became a major theoretical lens in business ethics as well as an integral part of management education. While the literature covers the application of the stakeholder approach in the various management disciplines (e.g., finance, accounting, management, and marketing), little is known about its integration in teaching practices, its implications and benefits in business education. This single case study aims to fill this gap by examining the historical and disciplinary development of the stakeholder approach at Darden School of Business, where Freeman has been teaching for 37 years. Based on interviews and content analysis, the research uncovers cross-disciplinary benefits of the stakeholder approach and identify untapped potential for the further improvement of management education.
• Empathy By Design: The SpaceJam Strategy For Organizational Ethics Education
  • Amidst the ethical challenges facing the corporate world, there is an urgent demand for enhanced ethics education in business schools. In response, we introduce SpaceJam, an innovative pedagogical strategy designed to cultivate empathy—a fundamental relational capacity crucial for ethical decision-making and behavior within organizations. Grounded in a relational and pragmatist perspective, SpaceJam offers a holistic strategy that targets affective, cognitive, and motivational dimensions of empathy. By diversifying learning spaces—encompassing the classroom, home, and community—and employing experiential and art-based methods, SpaceJam fosters plural immersive learning experiences and opportunities in diverse contexts. The core of its integrative nature is manifested through the creation of an artistic portfolio, serving as a fourth space for students to express, comprehend, and reflect upon their learning journey. Implemented through an action research project, this paper presents the results of this project, showing the impact of the SpaceJam strategy in enhancing and sustaining students’ empathy and ethical engagement across contexts. Our findings thus underscore the effectiveness of SpaceJam in nurturing ethical awareness and behaviors among future business leaders, offering a promising pathway for business schools to meet the imperative need for ethical education.
• Navigating Corporate Biodiversity Management: Financial Institutions Between Purpose, Profits And Moral Principles
  • Corporate biodiversity management in financial institutions (FIs) stands at the intersection of purpose, profits, and moral principles, prompting a critical inquiry into the ethical and ecological dimensions of sustainable organizing. This study navigates the urgent need to address biodiversity loss within the context of business ethics, encapsulating the complex interplay between human activity, ecosystems, and societal welfare. By synthesizing insights from organizational sciences and business ethics literature, this work explores how FIs reconcile their fiduciary duties to shareholders with ethical responsibilities towards biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. Employing institutional theory and paradox theory as theoretical frameworks, the study examines the institutional pressures and competing demands shaping corporate biodiversity management practices. Methodologically, a semi-structured literature review and content analysis of sustainability-related disclosures are conducted across a sample of 220 high-revenue FIs in the USA and Europe from 2010 to 2023. Expected outcomes include a systematic delineation of biodiversity considerations in FI disclosures, elucidation of paradoxes between institutional logics and business practices, identification of value creation potentials, and a critical analysis of the ethical implications of corporate biodiversity management. The research aims to contribute empirically grounded insights into how regulatory environments and stakeholder demands influence biodiversity-related practices of FIs while highlighting the ethical imperatives inherent in balancing financial objectives with moral principles. Ultimately, the study seeks to formulate a theoretical foundation for understanding the complex dynamics of sustainable organizing, integrating insights from social and natural sciences to propel interdisciplinary discourse towards a more comprehensive understanding of biodiversity conservation within FIs.

Session 5D: Democracy and Injustice

• A Challenge To The Epistemic Diversity Argument For Democracy
  • Theorists have defended the superiority of democracy over alternative political systems by appealing to its instrumental value as a decision-making mechanism. Along this line, theorists such as Elizabeth Anderson and Hélène Landemore argue that democracy is epistemically superior because it can leverage situated knowledge from a diverse voter population, a strength that alternative political systems do not possess. However, a parallel argument is available for alternative systems. Powered by modern information technologies, dictators and oligarchs can also access local information from diverse sources through mass surveillance, especially physical surveillance and surveillance embedded in markets. Relying on these emergent technologies such as AI-enabled facial recognition and blockchain-enabled surveillance of market transactions, some non-democratic regimes in real life have already started collecting information about various aspects of people’s lives that would otherwise be inaccessible to policymakers, including detailed information about every individual transaction in various markets, back-end behavioral data possessed by private businesses, posts on social media, individuals’ physical trajectories in public space, and more. Collected data are then fed into statistical analysis to generate high-level insights to track societal issues and assist policymaking. Appealing to democracy’s ability to harness highly situated knowledge alone cannot provide sufficient justifications for democracy, since that ability is not unique to democracy. Instead of searching for non-procedural consequentialist justifications for democracy, scholars on epistemic democracy should focus on giving normative guidance on how democracies should be arranged to optimize their epistemic potential.
• Navigating Self-Organization And Organizational Democracy: A Qualitative Investigation
  • Organizing beyond hierarchy, organizational agility, and the future of work spark contemporary discussions. Notably, the concepts of self-organization and organizational democracy are seldom explored together in academia, despite being commonly integrated in business practices. Bridging this gap is essential for a comprehensive understanding of organizations navigating beyond traditional hierarchies. Our qualitative research, involving 71 interviews across four organizations, revolves around understanding how organizations navigate arising tensions. Utilizing an in-depth analysis rooted in grounded theory and the Gioia methodology, we have developed a model that classifies three areas in which organizations need to navigate tensions: freedom, empowerment, and collaboration. We find three organizational approaches: idealism, seeking to create a superior work environment; conflict based on binary interpretations; and structuration based on constructive acceptance. We contribute to the academic debate by demonstrating the interrelatedness of organizational democracy and self-organization, identifying emergent paradoxes, and categorizing types of orientations navigating tensions. Ultimately, we show how organizing beyond hierarchy results in innovative dynamics of structuration and find indication that the ethical principle of subsidiarity serves processes of structuration. Our paper provides a foundational framework for future research at the intersection of self-organization and organizational democracy, advancing the academic discourse in this field.
• The Business of Injustice

Session 5E: Emerging Scholars 3

• Exploring The Role Of Businesses In Promoting Peace: An Empirical Study On Organized Crime Dynamics And Business Practices In Mexico
• Corporate Responses To Right-Wing Populism: Insights From Eastern Germany
• Beyond The Bottom Line: Corporate Diplomacy & Human Rights Responsibility Within The Context Of UN Sustainable Development Goal 16
• Cross-Sector Partnerships For Sustainability In Politically Complex Institutional Contexts: Leveraging Alliance Capabilities

Session 5F: Panel 3

• Ethics Of Digital Technology And Concepts Of The Moral Self