Yu Yang

Conceptual improvements are a significant dimension through which local moral progress occurs, both at the individual and societal levels. Michele Moody-Adams (1999) offers a narrow view of moral progress, suggesting that only a deepened understanding of complex, existing moral concepts can constitute moral progress. Consequently, she views the role of moral philosophy as limited to constructing deeper accounts of these concepts. We broaden Moody-Adams’s (1999) account by identifying three distinct types of conceptual improvements that can constitute moral progress: deepening the understanding of existing concepts, creating new concepts, and enhancing the ability to apply concepts. We support this typology with historical examples where such improvements constituted moral progress. Based on this typology, we argue that the role of moral philosophy extends beyond developing and refining moral theories to include the active creation of new concepts and the facilitation of conceptual application.

This chapter explores how perceived misfit influences the performance of self-regulatory processes in the workplace. The authors integrate person–environment fit theory with research on self-regulation to show how misfit impairs goal setting, monitoring, and adjustment. They argue that misfit disrupts individuals’ capacity to align effort with goals, leading to resource depletion, reduced persistence, and impaired performance. The chapter develops a conceptual model in which misfit triggers negative affect and cognitive interference that weaken self-control and hinder adaptive goal pursuit. It also considers the moderating roles of individual and contextual factors such as resilience, self-efficacy, autonomy, and organisational support in shaping how employees respond to misfit. The authors propose that some individuals can use misfit experiences as feedback to recalibrate goals or craft their jobs, thereby restoring functional regulation. The framework therefore positions misfit not only as a stressor but also as a potential stimulus for learning and adaptation. By linking misfit to fundamental self-regulatory mechanisms, the chapter provides a psychological account of why misfit sometimes leads to exhaustion and failure, yet in other circumstances promotes development and renewed engagement. This integration advances understanding of the motivational consequences of misfit and its implications for individual effectiveness at work.

Partner selection is an important aspect of the customer collaborative product innovation process and aims to select innovative customer partners from huge numbers of customers, fast and accurately. The purpose of this article is to present a quantitative partner selection method based on the complex network theory. In this method, the complex network model of the Online Community Customer Network is constructed, and network centrality is used as the initial index of customer partner selection. Then, network efficiency and delta centrality are used to evaluate the effect of the index. An example is presented to reflect the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed method. Results validate the small-world and scale-free properties of the OCCN and show that betweenness centrality is the most appropriate index for partner selection in the OCCN.

The issue of trust has increasingly attracted attention in the business ethics literature. Our aim is to contribute further to this literature by examining how the use of the carbon copy function in email communication influences felt trust. We develop the argument that the use of cc enhances transparency—representing an important characteristic of workplace ethics—and hence promotes trust. We further argue that a downside of the cc option may be that it can also be experienced as a control mechanism, which may therefore negatively affect trust. The results of our first study showed that the use of cc indeed enhances perceived transparency, but at the same time also leads to the experience of increased control. Building upon this insight, the findings of five subsequent studies consistently revealed that the use of cc negatively influences felt trust. More precisely, employees felt trusted the least when the supervisor was always included in cc. This effect on felt trust also negatively influenced how trustworthy the organizational climate was perceived. We further replicated these results in two field surveys, which showed that the negative effect of cc on felt trust lowered perceptions of psychological safety and contributed to a culture of fear. Taken together, our findings suggest that when transparency in email communications is experienced as a control mechanism, its use is perceived as unethical, rather than as ethical. Implications and recommendations for future business ethics research are discussed.

A growing body of research has started to examine how individuals from different countries may differ in their use of ethically questionable tactics during business negotiations. Whereas prior research focused on the main effect of the national culture or nationality of the negotiator, we add a new factor, which is the nationality of the counterpart. Looking at both these variables allows us to examine whether and how people may change their likelihood of using ethically questionable tactics in inter-cultural negotiations as opposed to intra-cultural ones. Results of an experiment show that overall, American participants were less likely than Chinese participants to use ethically questionable tactics in negotiations. However, American participants were more likely to use ethically questionable tactics, particularly those related to false promises and inappropriate information gathering, in inter-cultural negotiations with Chinese counterparts, than in intra-cultural negotiations with American counterparts. By contrast, Chinese participants were less likely to use ethically questionable tactics, particularly those related to false promises and attacking opponent’s network, in inter-cultural negotiations with American counterparts, than in intra-cultural negotiations with Chinese counterparts. Implications and future directions are discussed.