The Role of Individual Variables, Organizational Variables and Moral Intensity Dimensions in Libyan Management Accountants’ Ethical Decision Making

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and (in Libya) Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world

Sí Se Puede: Using Participatory Research to Promote Environmental Justice in a Latino Community in San Diego, California

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) increasingly is seen as a potent tool for studying and addressing urban environmental health problems by linking place-based work with efforts to help effect policy-level change. This paper explores a successful CBPR and organizing effort, the Toxic Free Neighborhoods Campaign, in Old Town National City (OTNC), CA, United States, and its contributions to both local policy outcomes and changes in the broader policy environment, laying the groundwork for a Specific Plan to address a host of interlocking community concerns. After briefly describing the broader research of which the OTNC case study was a part, we provide background on the Environmental Health Coalition (EHC) partnership and the setting in which it took place, including the problems posed for residents in this light industrial/residential neighborhood. EHC’s strong in-house research, and its training and active engagement of promotoras de salud (lay health promoters) as co-researchers and policy change advocates, are described. We explore in particular the translation of research findings as part of a policy advocacy campaign, interweaving challenges faced and success factors and multi-level outcomes to which these efforts contributed. The EHC partnership's experience then is compared with that of other policy-focused CBPR efforts in urban environmental health, emphasizing common success factors and challenges faced, as these may assist other partnerships wishing to pursue CBPR in urban communities

Understanding the Interplay Among Regulatory Self-Efficacy, Moral Disengagement, and Academic Cheating Behaviour During Vocational Education: A Three-Wave Study

The literature has suggested that to understand the diffusion of unethical conduct in the workplace, it is important to investigate the underlying processes sustaining engagement in misbehaviour and to study what occurs during vocational education. Drawing on social-cognitive theory, in this study, we longitudinally examined the role of two opposite dimensions of the self-regulatory moral system, regulatory self-efficacy and moral disengagement, in influencing academic cheating behaviour. In addition, in line with the theories highlighting the bidirectional relationship between cognitive processes and behaviour, we aimed to also examine the reciprocal influence of behaviour on these dimensions over time. Overall, no previous studies have examined the longitudinal interplay between these variables. The sample included 866 (62.8% female) nursing students who were assessed three times annually from the beginning of their vocational education. The findings from a cross-lagged model confirmed that regulatory self-efficacy and moral disengagement have opposite influences on cheating behaviour, that regulatory self-efficacy negatively influences not only the engagement in misconduct but also the justification mechanisms that allow the divorce between moral standards and action, and that moral disengagement and cheating behaviour reciprocally support each other over time. Specifically, not only did moral disengagement influence cheating behaviour even when controlling for its prior levels, but also cheating behaviour affected moral disengagement one year later, controlling for its prior levels. These findings suggest that recourse to wrongdoing could gradually lead to further normalising this kind of behaviour and morally desensitising individuals to misconduct

Beyond the particular and universal:dependence, independence, and interdependence of context, justice, and ethics

This article reflects on context effects in the study of behavioral ethics and organizational justice. After a general overview, we review three key challenges confronting research in these two domains. First, we consider social scientific versus normative approaches to inquiry. The former aims for a scientific description, while the latter aims to provide prescriptive advice for moral conduct. We argue that the social scientific view can be enriched by considering normative paradigms. The next challenge we consider, involves the duality of morally upright versus morally inappropriate behavior. We observe that there is a long tradition of categorizing behavior dichotomously (e.g., good vs. bad) rather than continuously. We conclude by observing that more research is needed to compare the dichotomous versus continuous perspectives. Third, we examine the role of “cold” cognitions and “hot” affect in making judgments of ethicality. Historically speaking, research has empathized cognition, though recent work has begun to add greater balance to affective reactions. We argue that both cognition and affect are important, but more research is needed to determine how they work together. After considering these three challenges, we then turn to our special issue, providing short reviews of each contribution and how they help in better addressing the three challenges we have identified

An Integrative Approach to Understanding Counterproductive Work Behavior: The Roles of Stressors, Negative Emotions, and Moral Disengagement

Several scholars have highlighted the importance of examining moral disengagement (MD) in understanding aggression and deviant conduct across different contexts. The present study investigates the role of MD as a specific social-cognitive construct that, in the organizational context, may intervene in the process leading from stressors to counterproductive work behavior (CWB). Assuming the theoretical framework of the stressor-emotion model of CWB, we hypothesized that MD mediates, at least partially, the relation between negative emotions in reaction to perceived stressors and CWB by promoting or justifying aggressive responses to frustrating situations or events. In a sample of 1,147 Italian workers, we tested a structural equations model. The results support our hypothesis: the more workers experienced negative emotions in response to stressors, the more they morally disengaged and, in turn, enacted CW

Demographic History of Indigenous Populations in Mesoamerica Based on mtDNA Sequence Data

The genetic characterization of Native American groups provides insights into their history and demographic events. We sequenced the mitochondrial D-loop region (control region) of 520 samples from eight Mexican indigenous groups. In addition to an analysis of the genetic diversity, structure and genetic relationship between 28 Native American populations, we applied Bayesian skyline methodology for a deeper insight into the history of Mesoamerica. AMOVA tests applying cultural, linguistic and geographic criteria were performed. MDS plots showed a central cluster of Oaxaca and Maya populations, whereas those from the North and West were located on the periphery. Demographic reconstruction indicates higher values of the effective number of breeding females (Nef) in Central Mesoamerica during the Preclassic period, whereas this pattern moves toward the Classic period for groups in the North and West. Conversely, Nef minimum values are distributed either in the Lithic period (i.e. founder effects) or in recent periods (i.e. population declines). The Mesomerican regions showed differences in population fluctuation as indicated by the maximum Inter-Generational Rate (IGRmax): i) Center-South from the lithic period until the Preclassic; ii) West from the beginning of the Preclassic period until early Classic; iii) North characterized by a wide range of temporal variation from the Lithic to the Preclassic. Our findings are consistent with the genetic variations observed between central, South and Southeast Mesoamerica and the North-West region that are related to differences in genetic drift, structure, and temporal survival strategies (agriculture versus hunter-gathering, respectively). Interestingly, although the European contact had a major negative demographic impact, we detect a previous decline in Mesoamerica that had begun a few hundred years before

Asthma Prevalence and Severity in Arab American Communities in the Detroit Area, Michigan

Immigrant populations provide a unique intersection of cultural and environmental risk factors implicated in asthma etiology. This study focuses on asthma prevalence and severity in 600 Arab American households in metro Detroit, the largest immigrant reception zone for Arab Americans in North America. The survey method introduced a number of novel features: (a) a ranking scheme for the key environmental risk factors for asthma was used to derive an aggregated environmental risk index (ERI) for each household, and (b) an aggregate measure of asthma severity based on symptom frequency and intensity. Environmental risk factors and surrogates for socioeconomic status (SES) were found to be stronger predictors of asthma prevalence than asthma severity, while demographic variables such as English fluency and birth in the United States were better predictors of asthma severity than asthma prevalence. These results suggest that SES variables may be more reflective of environmental exposures in communities involved in this study, while English fluency and birth in the United States may be linked to health care access and utilization behavior that can influence the asthma management. We also found a significant relationship between asthma prevalence and degree of acculturation. Asthma prevalence was highest among moderately acculturated immigrants compared with new immigrants and those who were well acculturated, suggesting that among Arab Americans in the Detroit area, risk factors associated with new immigrant status are replaced by “western” risk factors as the population becomes more acculturated.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44945/1/10903_2005_Article_3673.pd

Ethical Awareness, Ethical Judgment and Whistleblowing: A Moderated Mediation Analysis

This study aims to examine the ethical decision-making (EDM) model proposed by Schwartz (J Bus Ethics, doi:10.1007/s10551-015-2886-8,2016), where we consider the factors of non-rationality and aspects that affect ethical judgments of auditors to make the decision to blow the whistle. In this paper, we argue that the intention of whistleblowing depends on ethical awareness (EAW) and ethical judgment (EJW) as well as there is a mediation–moderation due to emotion (EMT) and perceived moral intensity (PMI) of auditors. Data were collected using an online surveywith 162 external auditors who worked on audit firms in Indonesia as well as 173 internal auditors working in the manufacturing and financial services. The result of multigroup analysis shows that emotion (EMT) can mediate the relationship between EAW and EJW. The nature of this relationship is more complex and then tested by adding moderating variables using consistent partial least squares approach. We found that EMT and PMI can improve the relationship between ethical judgments and whistleblowing intentions. These findings indicate that internal auditors are more likely to blow the whistle than external auditors; and reporting wrongdoing internally and anonymously are the preferred way of professional accountants to blow the whistle in Indonesia

Everyday-Life Business Deviance Among Chinese SME Owners

Despite its prevalence in emerging economies, everyday-life business deviance (EBD) and its antecedents have received surprisingly little research attention. Drawing on strain theory and the business-ethics literature, we develop a socio-psychological explanation for this deviance. Our analysis of 741 owners of Chinese small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) suggests that materialism and trust in institutional justice affect EBD both directly and indirectly in a relationship mediated by the ethical standards of SME owners. These findings have important implications for researching deviant business behavior within SMEs