•  111
    This paper argues that multinational corporations face levels of environmental and social responsibility higher than their national counterparts. Drawing on the literatures of stakeholder salience, corporate reputation management, and evidence from the confrontation between Shell and Greenpeace over the Brent Spar, in 1995, two mechanisms – international reputation side effects, and foreign stakeholder salience – are identified and their contribution in creating an environment more restrictive, …Read more
  •  71
    The Escalation of Deception in Organizations
    with Peter Fleming
    Journal of Business Ethics 81 (4): 837-850. 2008.
    Drawing on a number of recent high-profile cases of corporate corruption, we develop a process model that explains the escalation of deception in corrupt firms. If undetected, an initial lie can begin a process whereby the ease, severity and pervasiveness of deception increases overtime so that it eventually becomes an organization level phenomenon. We propose that organizational complexity has an amplifying effect. A␣feedback loop between organization level deception and each of the escalation …Read more
  •  53
    Ethical Distance in Corrupt Firms: How Do Innocent Bystanders Become Guilty Perpetrators?
    with Peter J. Fleming
    Journal of Business Ethics 78 (1-2): 265-274. 2008.
    This paper develops the concept of the ‘continuum of destructiveness’ in relation to organizational corruption. This notion captures the slippery slope of wrongdoing as actors engage in increasingly dubious practices. We identify four kinds of individuals along this continuum in corrupt organizations, who range from complete innocence to total guilt. They are innocent bystanders, innocent participants, active rationalizers and guilty perpetrators. Traditional explanations of how individuals move…Read more
  •  50
    Ethical implications of text generation in the age of artificial intelligence
    with Laura Illia and Elanor Colleoni
    Business Ethics, the Environment and Responsibility 32 (1): 201-210. 2022.
    We are at a turning point in the debate on the ethics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) because we are witnessing the rise of general-purpose AI text agents such as GPT-3 that can generate large-scale highly refined content that appears to have been written by a human. Yet, a discussion on the ethical issues related to the blurring of the roles between humans and machines in the production of content in the business arena is lacking. In this conceptual paper, drawing on agenda setting theory and s…Read more
  •  47
    Rationalization, Overcompensation and the Escalation of Corruption in Organizations
    with Peter J. Fleming and Sandra Rothenberg
    Journal of Business Ethics 84 (S1). 2009.
    An important area of business ethics research focuses on how otherwise normal and law-abiding individuals can engage in acts of corruption. Key in this literature is the concept of rationalization. This is where individuals attempt to justify past and future corrupt deeds to themselves and others. In this article, we argue that rationalization often entails a process of overcompensation whereby the justification forwarded is excessive in relation to the actual act. Such over-rationalization prov…Read more
  •  30
    The Evolution of Corporate Social Responsiveness
    with Juha Nasi, Salme Nasi, and Nelson Phillips
    Business and Society 36 (3): 296-321. 1997.
    In this article, the authors investigate the applicability and usefulness of three alternative perspectives on corporate issues management: issue life cycle theory, legitimacy theory, and stakeholder theory. Each perspective makes certain as- sumptions about the nature of issues management activities and certain general predictions about corporate social responsiveness. The authors test the relative applicability of the three theories through a case study of the issues management activities of f…Read more
  •  23
    The Impact of Corporate Philanthropy on Reputation for Corporate Social Performance
    with Donald H. Schepers, Pavlos C. Symeou, and Naomi A. Gardberg
    Business and Society 58 (6): 1177-1208. 2019.
    This study seeks to examine the mechanisms by which a corporation’s use of philanthropy affects its reputation for corporate social performance (CSP), which the authors conceive of as consisting of two dimensions: CSP awareness and CSP perception. Using signal detection theory (SDT), the authors model signal amplitude (the amount contributed), dispersion (number of areas supported), and consistency (presence of a corporate foundation) on CSP awareness and perception. Overall, this study finds th…Read more
  •  13
    The Corporate Social Performance of Developing Country Multinationals
    with Peter Williamson and Pavlos Symeou
    Business Ethics Quarterly 26 (3): 379-406. 2016.
    ABSTRACT:In this article, we explore the Corporate Social Performance (CSP) of Developing Country Multinationals (DMNCs). We argue that in competing internationally, DMNCs often face both reputation and legitimacy deficits, which they address by improving their CSP. We develop a series of hypotheses to explain the variation in CSP between DMNCs and domestic-only firms from developing countries and also examine variations in CSP between DMNCs depending on the extent of their multinationality and …Read more
  •  11
    On Becoming and Being an Ethical Leader: A Platonic Interpretation
    Journal of Business Ethics 173 (1): 1-11. 2020.
    The question of whether ethical individuals have a disadvantage in becoming leaders is an important one that has not been adequately discussed in the business ethics/leadership literature. In this paper, drawing on Plato’s middle dialogues and particularly on the Republic, I develop a Platonic framework of the constraints that might hinder the emergence of what the dialogues term ‘philosopher kings’. Subsequently, I use this framework to elucidate the emergence of ethical leaders in todays’ orga…Read more
  •  8
    How Corruption is Tolerated in the Greek Public Sector: Toward a Second-Order Theory of Normalization
    with Spyros Lioukas, Maria Boura, and Peter Fleming
    Business and Society 61 (1): 191-224. 2022.
    Secrecy and “social cocooning” are critical mechanisms allowing the normalization of corruption within organizations. Less studied are processes of normalization that occur when corruption is an “open secret.” Drawing on an empirical study of Greek public-sector organizations, we suggest that a second-order normalization process ensues among non-corrupt onlookers both inside and beyond the organization. What is normalized at this level is not corruption, but its tolerance, which we disaggregate …Read more
  • The evolution of corporate social responsiveness: an exploratory study of Finnish and Canadian forestry companies
    with Juha Näsi, Salme Näsi, and M. Phallus
    Business and Society 36 296-321. 1997.