Sareh Pouryousefi

A multi-disciplinary body of research has long recognised trust as a pivotal feature of social and economic exchange. Empirical studies of trust by psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, and economists have examined different features of trust. Within this literature, the structure, components, preconditions, and implications of trust have received much attention. However, a question that has received comparatively little attention in the empirical literature is whether and to what extent trust is morally significant. Moral dimensions of trust have been discussed extensively by philosophers, who focus predominantly on interpersonal relationships involving trust. The purpose of this paper is to offer an experimental study of a dominant philosophical distinction between trust and mere reliance. Our findings suggest that the position taken in the philosophical literature is correct; there is a recognisable difference between trust and mere reliance, and, crucially, trust, but not reliance, has a moral dimension. These findings have significant implications for the existing body of empirical work on trust outside philosophy. They also help set the philosophy of trust subfield onto firm(er) foundations.

Philosophers have had much to say about the moral obligations arising from trust. These obligations involve, predominantly, interpersonal relationships. But what can we say about the moral relevance of trust in institutional settings? In this paper, we consider the particularised approach to trust and its focus on interpersonal relationships and argue that it is far from clear whether this is the kind of relationship that persons can have with respect to firms. For a particularised view of trust to be applicable to firms, firms must be seen as institutions that are to some extent distinct from their individual members. They would also have to be fitting targets and sources of reactive attitudes in morally relevant trust relationships. Such an account of trust in firms is not as yet forthcoming. To inspire future work on trust and firms, we take note of an argumentative strategy in the literature on corporate agency that lets us conceive of firms as appropriate targets and/or sources of reactive attitudes. In so far as this strategy turns out to have empirical efficacy, we suggest it may also prove fruitful for thinking about trust in relation to firms.

A dominant claim in the philosophical literature on trust is that we should stop thinking in terms of group trustworthiness or appropriate trust in groups. In this paper we push back against this claim by arguing that philosophical work on trust would benefit from being brought into closer contact with empirical work on the nature of trust. We consider data on reactive attitudes and moral responsibility to adjudicate on different positions in the philosophical literature on trust. An implication of our argument is that the distinction between different kinds of groups – mere groups versus institutional groups – deserves more attention than is currently recognized in the philosophical literature on trust.

Pragmatists believe that philosophical inquiry must engage closely with practice to be useful and that practice serves as a source of social norms. As a growing alternative to the analytic and continental philosophical traditions, pragmatism is well suited for research in business ethics, but its role remains underappreciated. This article focuses on Richard Rorty, a key figure in the pragmatist tradition. We read Rorty as a source of insight about the ethical and political nature of business practice in contemporary global markets, focusing specifically on his views about moral sentiments, agency, and democratic deliberation. Importantly for business ethicists, Rorty’s approach sets in stark relief our moral responsibility as useful, practical thinkers in addressing the societal challenges of our time. We use “modern slavery” as an empirical context to highlight the relevance of Rorty’s approach to business ethics.

For nearly as long as the topic of sustainable business has been taught and researched in business schools, proponents have warned about barriers to genuine integration in business school practices. This article examines how academic sustainability centres try to overcome barriers to integration by achieving technical, cultural and political fit with their environment :67–92; Ansari et al., Academy of Management Review 35:67–92, 2010). Based on survey and interview data, we theorise that technical, cultural and political fit are intricately related, and that these interrelations involve legitimacy, resources and collaboration effects. Our findings about sustainability centres offer novel insights on integrating sustainable business education given the interrelated nature of different types of fit and misfit. We further contribute to the literature on fit by highlighting that incompatibility between strategies to achieve different types of fit may act as a source of dynamism.

This paper highlights the emergence of different ‘vocabularies’ that describe various values-driven business functions within large organizations and argues for improved horizontal alignment between them. We investigate two established functions that have long-standing organizational histories: Ethics and Compliance and Corporate Social Responsibility. By drawing upon research on organizational alignment, we explain both the need for and the potential benefit of greater alignment between these values-driven functions. We then examine the structural and socio-cultural dimensions of organizational systems through which E&C and CSR horizontal alignment can be coordinated to improve synergies, address tensions, and generate insight to inform future research and practice in the field of Business and Society. The paper concludes with research questions that can inform future scholarly research and a practical model to guide organizations’ efforts towards inter-functional, horizontal alignment of values-driven organizational practice.

Despite the extensive body of literature that aims to explain the phenomenon of consumer scams, the structure of information in scam relationships remains relatively understudied. The purpose of this article is to develop an agency-theoretic approach to the study of information in perpetrator–victim interactions. Drawing a distinction between failures of observation and failures of judgment in the pre-contract phase, we introduce a typology and a set of propositions that explain the severity of adverse selection problems in three classes of scam relationships. Our analysis provides a novel, systematic explanation of the structure of information that facilitates scam victimization, while also enabling critical scrutiny of a core assumption in agency theory regarding contract design. We highlight the role of scam perpetrators as agents who have access to private information and exercise considerable control over the terms and design of scam relationships. Focusing on the consumer scam context, we question a theoretical assumption, largely taken for granted in the agency literature, that contact design is necessarily in the purview of the uninformed principal.

ABSTRACT:Some business ethicists view agency theory as a cautionary tale—a proof that it is impossible to carry out successful economic interactions in the absence of ethical behaviour. The cautionary-tale view presents a nuanced normative characterisation of agency, but itsunilateralfocus betrays a limited understanding of the structure of social interaction. This article moves beyond unilateralism by presenting a descriptive and normative argument for abilateralcautionary-tale view. Specifically, we discuss hat swaps and role dualism in asymmetric-information principal-agent relationships and argue that the norm of reciprocity can function as a moral solution to agency risks in adverse-selection and moral-hazard problems. Our bilateral cautionary-tale formulation extends the normative boundaries of agency theory, while leaving the fundamental economic assumptions of agency theory intact.