Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons^™

Ua25/3 Newsletter: The Fraud Issue, Issue 8, Wku Internal Auditor

WKU Administration Documents

Newsletter created by and about the WKU Internal Auditor.

Sturm, Ruger & Co And The U.S. Firearms Industry, Eryn Berquist, Julian Cha, Jeffrey S. Harrison, Kelsey Heady, Lindsay Kennedy, Will Macllwiane, Bikram Saini, Natalie Schmidt, Jason Werst

Robins Case Network

Ruger is one of the largest domestic gun and ammunition manufacturers in the United States, and also one of the most successful. Ruger makes very high quality guns at reasonable prices. The company also emphasizes research and development. With no debt and high gross profit margins, one would expect Ruger to be an outstanding investment. However, the U.S. gun industry is extremely volatile and also very competitive. Due to mass shootings, terrorism, and other highly visible events, there is ever increasing pressure for new regulation and restrictions on gun ownership and use. However, the industry has a very powerful friend …

Ethical Responsibility - An Arendtian Turn In Leadership Ethics, Rita A. Gardiner Ph.D

Education Publications

This paper adopts an Arendtian approach to consider the interconnections among responsibility, ethics, and leadership. Considering responsibility through an Arendtian lens may offer insights into leadership ethics. These insights may help deepen our understanding of the nascent theory of responsible leadership. In particular, Arendt's emphasis on judgment illustrates the importance of responsible action. Engaging with the Arendtian corpus may help us rethink connections among leadership, ethics, and responsibility in new and productive ways. This engagement with Arendt's work can in turn add value to thinking about responsible, ethics, and leadership.

Against Pay Secrecy, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Many firms keep pay secret. They do not make information about what their employees are paid available inside or outside of the firm, i.e., to other employees or to the public at large. Indeed, many firms discourage their employees from, or sanction them for, disclosing their pay. Against this, I argue that there are good moral reasons for firms to be transparent about pay. Pay transparency prevents injustice, promotes autonomy, and increases efficiency. After presenting the positive case for pay transparency, I defend it against objections, including the most common reasons firms give for keeping pay secret.

Risky Pay And The Financial Crisis: Who's Responsible?, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

According to an existing “environmental” narrative, the financial crisis of 2007-2009 was due in part to executive compensation packages in the financial services industry that incentivized excessive risk-taking. Also according to this narrative, those who have a duty to protect society – principally, government regulators, but also firms themselves – are open to blame for how executives were paid, and must take steps to change executive compensation. This narrative is important but incomplete. I offer a supplementary “agential” narrative. According to this narrative, executives are open to blame for the financial crisis for taking socially excessive risks. Moreover, since executives …

Accountable To Whom? Rethinking The Role Of Corporations In Political Csr, Jeffrey Moriarty, Waheed Hussain

Philosophy Faculty Publications

According to Palazzo and Scherer, the changing role of business corporations in society requires that we take new measures to integrate these organizations into society-wide processes of democratic governance. We argue that their model of integration has a fundamental problem. Instead of treating business corporations as agents that must be held accountable to the democratic reasoning of affected parties, it treats corporations as agents who can hold others accountable. In our terminology, it treats business corporations as “supervising authorities” rather than “functionaries.” The result is that Palazzo and Scherer’s model does not actually address the democratic deficit that it is …

Marketing Practices Of Socially Responsible And Sustainable Businesses, Brooke A. Bivins

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The topic of this research is marketing practices of socially responsible and sustainable businesses. It examines the strategies companies and brands use to represent themselves to the public through products, advertising, and philanthropy. This includes an evaluation of existing frameworks and case studies, as well as in-depth interviews. The question that this research will answer is as follows: How can new or existing companies embrace and integrate social responsibility or sustainability in a way that is authentic and contributes to a positive public reputation?

Younger generations are increasingly willing to switch to and, in some cases, pay more for products …

God’S Grace And The Marketplace: Mainline Protestant Church, Faith And Business, Sarah Helene Duggin

Scholarly Articles

This paper explores the engagement of Mainline Churches with business ethics in the workplace and offers some ideas for how Mainline churches can participate more fully in the work that needs to be done. Part I suggests that, for many years, Mainline churches were less active than one might expect in supporting the development of robust faith perspectives on business ethics, and it identifies possible cultural, financial, and structural factors why this may be so. Many of these factors are common to other religious traditions, although some are particularly relevant to Mainline denominations. The discussion in Part II begins with …

Criminally Bad Management, Samuel W. Buell

Faculty Scholarship

Because of their leverage over employees, corporate managers are prime targets for incentives to control corporate crime, even when managers do not themselves commit crimes. Moreover, the collective actions of corporate management — producing what is sometimes referred to as corporate culture — can be the cause of corporate crime, not just a locus of the failure to control it. Because civil liability and private compensation arrangements have limited effects on management behavior — and because the problem is, after all, crime — criminal law is often expected to intervene. This handbook chapter offers a functional explanation for corporate criminal …

Fiduciary Principles In Agency Law, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Seeking An Objective For Regulating Insider Trading Through Texas Gulf Sulphur, James D. Cox

Faculty Scholarship

Data summarized in the opening of this article document that inside trading is a growth industry. And, as deals get ever bigger, the growth curve becomes steeper as more the data confirms intuition that the more who know about a good thing the more who will seek to harvest its benefits. Even though insider trading appears to have thrived during the fifty years after Texas Gulf Sulphur, we gather in this symposium to celebrate the decision. But why? As developed below, the Second Circuit’s landmark decision gave way to the Supreme Court’s erection of a fiduciary framework that this article …

Diversity And Inclusion In Art Museum Board Of Governance: Does The Boardroom Reflect The Community?, Margaret Farrell

MA Theses

The objective of this thesis is to examine the diversity and inclusivity of the art museum board of governance to see if the community accurately represents in the boardroom. This study finds a severe resistance to change along with the many obstacles corporate and nonprofit sectors face when incorporating diversity and inclusion in the boardroom. Based on population shifts affecting the cultural landscape of the workforce, this thesis focuses on the crucial need for art museums to strategize and implement diversity and inclusion in their board of directors. This study outlines comprehensive strategies from corporate and nonprofit sectors which are …

Autonomous Vehicles As A Disruptive Innovation: Economic And Social Impact, Tomasz Walivander

Theses

The pace of technology development and innovation is accelerating. The impact of new innovations becomes more and more disruptive, enriching but also challenging peoples' concept of life and the perception of the world. Social and economic implications of new innovations cause rapid and deep shifts in the existing paradigms. The number of tasks, at which machines exceed human capabilities is growing rapidly. Computers analyse medical images, make financial decisions and drive vehicles better than humans. This study is aimed to understand the disruptive nature of self-driving cars and explore the possible socio-economic outcomes that this innovation is expected to bring. …

Examining The Relationship Between Environmental Regulations And Foreign Direct Investment Level: Evidence From China, Hadia Fakhreldin, Yomna Elsawy

Business Administration

This study examines the relationship between the environmental regulations and the FDI levels in China. The environmental regulation stringency is measured using emissions and other energy consumption data. The study is based on the pollution haven hypothesis and additionally applies direction of causality tests. The main objectives of the study are: to measure the environmental regulatory stringency and to identify the relationship between the application of the environmental restrictions and the level of FDI in China in the period from 1979–2013. The study adopts a quantitative approach; a correlation matrix, a multiple regression model, and granger causality are used first; …

Hyperfunding: Regulating Financial Innovations, Seth C. Oranburg

University of Colorado Law Review

Innovations in corporate finance are driven by frustrations with present regulations and fueled by the internet and social media. Hyperfunding is one such example: Tesla paved the way for an electric vehicle revolution by preselling hundreds of thousands of its Model 3 EV direct to consumers. Unwary consumers may not have realized that they were underwriting Tesla's bold strategy to transform multiple product markets. Risks were not disclosed. Rewards proved illusory. Investors would have been entitled to disclosures and colorable claims of fraud when Tesla missed milestones and deadlines. But consumers can only get their $1000 deposit back, without interest, …

Marketing Unhealthy Foods And Beverages: Our Children At Risk, Cheryl Ward, Diane R. Edmondson, Allison Wheeley

Atlantic Marketing Journal

This paper examines the ethical dilemma created because of the largely ineffective self-regulation of the advertising industry as it relates to children and the corresponding drastic increase in childhood obesity. Unhealthy food and beverage companies are intentionally targeting children who have not yet developed the cognitive skills necessary to discern programming content from advertising. Children, who have many years of consumption ahead of them, can be an appealing target market for companies promoting products high in fat and calories. Given that existing self-regulation policies have been largely unsuccessful, four potential solutions are discussed.

Riding To The Future, Paige Fornek

Augustana Center for the Study of Ethics Essay Contest

This paper outlines the development of autonomous vehicles and the ethics of "crash algorithms".

You Can Run But You Can’T Hide: The Advance Of Shareholder Activism, Kendall Greenberg

CMC Senior Theses

Shareholder activism has exploded in popularity since the turn of the century, due in large part to impressive relative returns generated by its major participants. The result has thus been a surge in assets invested in the category, to in excess of $170 billion today up from less than $3 billion in 2000 (Inglis 2015; Romito 2015). This influx of capital, in absolute dollars and pace of growth, has caused many to wonder whether activists truly create shareholder value and, if so, if the value generated is sustainable. Numerous studies of activist interventions prior to 2009 reveal significant stock price …

Employee And Coworker Idiosyncratic Deals: Implications For Emotional Exhaustion And Deviant Behaviors, Dejun Tony Kong, Violet T. Ho, Sargam Garg

Management Faculty Publications

By integrating conservation of resources and social comparison perspectives, we seek to investigate how employees’ own i-deals, independently from and jointly with their coworker’s i-deals, determine their emotional exhaustion and subsequent deviant behaviors. We conducted a field study (131 coworker dyads) focusing on task i-deals, and used Actor–Partner Interdependence Model and polynomial regression to test the hypotheses. We found that emotional exhaustion not only mediated the negative relationship between employees’ own task i-deals and deviant behaviors, but also mediated the positive relationship between upward social comparison of task i-deals (i.e., a coworker’s vs own task i-deals) and deviant behaviors. These …

How Applying Instrumental Stakeholder Theory Can Provide Sustainable Competitive Advantage, Thomas M. Jones, Jeffrey S. Harrison, Will Felps

Management Faculty Publications

Instrumental stakeholder theory considers the performance consequences for firms of highly ethical relationships with stakeholders, characterized by high levels of trust, cooperation, and information sharing. While research suggests performance benefits, an obvious question remains: If instrumental stakeholder theory-based stakeholder treatment is so valuable, why isn't it the dominant mode of relating to stakeholders? We argue that the existing instrumental stakeholder theory literature has three shortcomings that limit its ability to explain variance in performance. (1) Little theory exists around how instrumental stakeholder theory-based stakeholder management could provide sustainable competitive advantage. (2) The literature has largely neglected the potential downsides (i.e., …

Is Corporate Social Responsibility An Agency Problem?, Hao Liang, Luc Renneboog

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This chapter examines whether CSR investments occur mostly in firms with severe agency problems, which suggests that CSR is an agency issue. We demonstrate that this is not the case: CSR investments and performance are higher when dividends are high, leverage is high, cash flows and cash holdings are low, and when there is a high managerial pay-for-performance sensitivity. All these variables combined represent managerial discipline in terms of corporate investing. We also document that better legal protection of shareholder rights is positively related to CSR performance. This implies that when shareholders are more powerful relative to the management, the …

The Effects Of Positive And Negative Environmental Responsibility On Financial Performance, Anna Gurr

CMC Senior Theses

As environmental responsibility (ER) gains momentum in the corporate and stakeholder world, it is imperative to understand the relationship between ER and financial performance. While there is prior research looking at this relationship, this study provides further insight into the specific effects of negative and positive ER. In addition, it looks over the years 2008-2011 having implications for companies about the effects of their ER even through financial hardships. This study uses a widely respected corporate social responsibility database, in which ER scores were separated from. In this study, 287 firms in the S&P 500 are examined through times-series regression …

Microfinance: Combating World Poverty One Small Business At A Time, Alison Basney

Senior Honors Theses

Poverty is a major problem that reaches millions of people around the world. Although many organizations and individuals work daily to combat this, much of the work done to reduce poverty lacks sustainability and serves only to remedy to the effects of poverty, rather than create a solution to the causes of poverty. Microfinance can be very basically defined as the provision of banking to the impoverished who would not otherwise have access to these services. This purpose of this thesis is to show that microfinance is the ideal solution to the poverty problem by using research and evidence from …

Corporate Outsourcing To Take Advantage Of Cheap Labor In Developing Countries, Cecily Schenimann

Senior Honors Theses

Corporate outsourcing is a common practice for many large corporations, and a primary reason that corporations outsource is financial: production in other countries, especially those that are developing is significantly less expensive. There are various reasons corporations use outsourcing and this choice often results in subpar and unhealthy labor conditions for those individuals working in developing countries. Reviews of China, Bangladesh, and El Salvador reveal that operations in developing countries often result in harmful working atmospheres. A call for increased corporate responsibility and accountability for corporations who choose to take their manufacturing and production elsewhere, but specifically to developing nations, …

Rhetoric And Authority In A Polarized Transition: The Development Of China’S Stock Market, Yuan Li, Sandy E. Green, Paul M. Hirsch

School of Economics and Business Administration Faculty Works

How do actors in positions of authority attempt to justify their right to rule while introducing controversial institutional practices that potentially delegitimate their authority? China’s reform leaders have found themselves in a legitimacy conundrum when they established and developed the stock market, yet have been able to assert a central role for the party-state in managing the stock market. Using a critical rhetorical perspective, we analyze how actors use “rhetorical genres,” that is, argumentation and narration with differing content and style, to construct new roles of the speaker and speaker–audience relationships that imply new bases of authority, and how these …

When Corporate Social Responsibility Motivates Employee Citizenship Behavior: The Sensitizing Role Of Task Significance, Madeline Ong, David M. Mayer, P. Tost Leigh, Ned Wellman

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Scholars have proposed that organizations’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts are often positively associated with employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) and have invoked identity-based mechanisms to explain this relationship. Complementing these perspectives, we develop a CSR sensitivity framework that explains how task significance, a micro-level job characteristic, can sensitize employees to their organizations’ macro-level CSR efforts, thereby strengthening the association between CSR and OCB. Across three field studies, we find that CSR and task significance interact to predict OCB, such that an organization’s CSR is more positively associated with OCB among employees who report higher task significance than among those …

Heads Will Roll! Routes To Effective Trust Repair In The Aftermath Of A Ceo Transgression, Donald L. Ferrin, Cecily D. Cooper, Kurt T. Dirks, Peter H. Kim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

CEO transgressions are a common storyline in today's business press. Such incidents result in the need to repair trust for both the CEO and the organisation that the CEO leads. Existing empirical research on trust repair has focused primarily on interpersonal trust, resulting in a body of knowledge that provides many insights to the errant CEO but few insights for those who aim to repair trust in the organisation. Since organisations also need to regain the trust of stakeholders after a CEO transgression, research on organisational trust repair is clearly warranted. Organisations have options for trust repair that are not …

Good Game, Greyory Blake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis and its corresponding art installation, Lessons from Ziggy, attempts to deconstruct the variables prevalent within several complex systems, analyze their transformations, and propose a methodology for reasserting the soap box within the display pedestal. In this text, there are several key and specific examples of the transformation of various signifiers (i.e. media-bred fear’s transformation into a political tactic of surveillance, contemporary freneticism’s transformation into complacency, and community’s transformation into nationalism as a state weapon). In this essay, all of these concepts are contextualized within the exponential growth of new technologies. That is to say, all of these semiotic …

John Lee Hancock, The Founder (2016), Alejandro Hazera

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

Peruvian Antiquities And The Collecting Of Cultural Goods, Terrence H. Witkowski

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Ancient art, artifacts, and architecture have long excited the intellectual curiosity and acquisitive passions of private and institutional collectors who, in turn, have funded archaeological research, preservation initiatives, and public education. Yet, the procurement of these goods also has encouraged looting and trafficking activities. Supplying collectors has destroyed much cultural evidence in source countries and has raised questions about who should control heritage and history. This article investigates the market for Peruvian antiquities, the surviving material culture created by the country’s inhabitants before the Spanish Conquest. It briefly reviews Peru’s early history and the history of collecting its artifacts, and …