Search results for: ethics of automation

Authors: Hamideh Rahmani

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The subject matter of ethics is being changed in modern life, which had been an issue for a long time and aimed to define its moral boundaries in human's intellectual and everyday life. This has led to the introduction of notions based on the separation of religion from ethics in recent decades. It is in conflict with the traditional view, which introduces ethics as raised from religion and religion as the most crucial credit for ethics. The purpose of this study is to investigate the elements of secular ethics from the perspective of Mostafa Malekian, seeking to achieve his notions. After examining the strengths of secular ethics parameters from the viewpoint of Malekian, this research found his ethics in his interpretation of the ideal life which he treats as ethics, got a very strong link with his secularist project known as rationality and spirituality. We will analyze, review, and critique his ethics in the following.

Keywords: secular ethics, Mostafa Malakian, global ethics, rationality, spirituality

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Authors: Routsukol Sunalai

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The objectives of this paper were to study current problem of ethics of entrepreneurs in information and communication technology professional, and to build their awareness of ethics, which would be useful as guidance for strengthening professional ethics among them. The study employed quantitative research method in order to analyze relationships or differences found in each ethics factor and report in statistics. The sample of this paper was 300 information technology users of Rajabhat Universities in Bangkok. The findings revealed that the ethics factors which gained the highest and high level of opinion included possessing principles of righteousness, having trust in themselves and others, and respecting different opinions of others and accepting the fact that people of different opinions.

Keywords: communication, ethics, information, entrepreneurs

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Authors: Andrei Contan, Richard Torkar

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Aim: The process of test automation and its practices in industry have to be better understood, both for the industry itself and for the research community. Method: We conducted a quantitative industry survey by asking IT professionals to answer questions related to the area of test automation. Results: Test automation needs and practices vary greatly between organizations at different stages of the software development life cycle. Conclusions: Most of the findings are general test automation challenges and are specific to small- to medium-sized companies, developing software applications in the web, desktop or mobile domain.

Keywords: survey, testing, test automation, status of test automation

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Authors: Ömer Akkaya, Muammer Zerenler

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Ethics is important for all shareholders and stakeholders that a firm has in its environment. Whether a firm behaves ethically or unethically has a significant influence on consumers’ decision making and buying process. This research tries to explain business ethics from consumers’ perspective. The survey includes several questions to explain how consumers react if they know a firm behave unethically or ethically. What are consumers’ expectations regarding the ethical behavior of firm? Do consumer reward or punish the firms considering the ethics? Does it really important for consumers firms behaving ethical?

Keywords: business ethics, consumer behavior, ethics, social responsibility

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Authors: Nagmani Lnu

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Test automation is a vital requirement of any organization to release products faster to their customers. In most cases, an organization has an approach to developing automation but struggles to maintain it. It results in an increased number of Flaky Tests, reducing return on investments and stakeholders’ confidence. Challenges grow in multiple folds when automation is for UI behaviors. This paper describes the approaches taken to identify the root cause of automation instability in an extensive payments application and the best practices to address that using processes, tools, and technologies, resulting in a 75% reduction of effort.

Keywords: automation stability, test stability, Flaky Test, test quality, test automation quality

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Authors: Asima Mehaboob Khan, Rizwan Taj

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Purpose: This study aims to estimate the knowledge, attitude and practices of medical ethics among young healthcare professionals. Method: A qualitative descriptive study was conducted among young healthcare professionals from both public and private sector medical institutions. Using the convenience sampling technique, 272 healthcare professionals participated in this study. A pre-structured modified questionnaire was used to collect the data. Descriptive analyses were executed for each variable. Result: About 76.47% of healthcare professional considers the importance of adequate knowledge of medical ethics, and 82.24% declared lecture, seminars and clinical discussion as the source of their medical knowledge of biomedical ethics. About 42.44% of healthcare professionals exhibited a negative attitude toward medical ethics, 57.72% showed a mildly positive attitude, whereas 1.10% and 0.74% indicated a moderately positive attitude and a highly positive attitude towards medical ethics. Similarly, the level of practice according to medical ethics is also very poor among young healthcare professionals. 34.56% of healthcare professionals deviated from medical ethics during their clinical practices, whereas 0.74% showed a good level of medical practice according to medical ethics. Conclusion: It is concluded in this research study that young healthcare professionals have adequate theoretical knowledge of medical ethics but are not properly trained to perform their clinical practices according to the guidelines of medical ethics. Furthermore, their professional attitude is poorly developed to maintain medical ethics during their clinical practices.

Keywords: knowledge, attitude, practices, medical ethics

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Authors: S. B. Tende, H. L. Abubakar

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It is acknowledged that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) may encounter different ethical issues and pressures that could affect the way in which they strategize or make decisions concerning the outcome of their business. Therefore, this research aimed at assessing entrepreneurial ethics in the business of SMEs in Nigeria. Secondary data were adopted as source of corpus for the analysis. The findings conclude that a sound entrepreneurial ethics system has a significant effect on the level of performance of SMEs in Nigeria. The Nigerian Government needs to provide both guiding and physical structures; as well as learning systems that could inculcate these entrepreneurial ethics.

Keywords: culture, entrepreneurial ethics, performance, SME

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Authors: Chu Chen, Giorgio Gotti, Tony Kang, Michael Wolfe

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This study examines the role of codes of ethics in reducing the extent to which managers’ act opportunistically in reporting earnings. Corporate codes of ethics, by clarifying the boundaries of ethical corporate behaviors and making relevant social norms more salient, have the potential to deter managers from engaging in opportunistic financial reporting practices. In a sample of international companies, we find that the quality of corporate codes of ethics is associated with higher earnings quality, i.e., lower discretionary accruals. Our results are confirmed for a subsample of firms more likely to be engaging in opportunistic reporting behavior, i.e., firms that just meet or beat analysts’ forecasts. Further, codes of ethics play a greater role in reducing earnings management for firms in countries with weaker investor protection mechanisms. Our results suggest that corporate codes of ethics can be a viable alternative to country-level investor protection mechanisms in curbing aggressive reporting behaviors.

Keywords: corporate ethics policy, code of ethics, business ethics, earnings discretion, accruals

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Authors: Mrigakshi Das

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The ethics of a business is currently a high profile issue owing to sensational corporate scandals that had taken place in many countries causing extensive damages to the economy and society. These corporate scandals question the morality of businessmen in general and accountants in particular. It is argued that the accountants have been the main contributors to the decline in ethical standards of a business. This researcher has reviewed the need and impact of ethics education in accounting profession. Despite of ethical interventions, the rate of accounting scandals are increasing and have left the public questioning that has the profession become really less ethical?

Keywords: accounting, ethics education and intervention in accounting, accounting education, accounting profession, moral reasoning and development, ethics education

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Authors: Payman Tajalli, Steven Segal

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Applied ethics is an area of ethics which is looked upon most favorably as the most appropriate and useful for educational purposes; after all if ethics finds no application would any investment of time, effort and finance by the educational institutions be warranted? The current approaches to ethics in business and management often entail appealing to various types of moral theories and to this end almost every major philosophical approach has been enlisted. In this paper, we look at ethics through the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to argue that since ethics is ‘first philosophy’ it can neither be rule-based nor rule-governed, not something that can be worked out first and then applied to a given situation, hence the overwhelming emphasis on ‘applied ethics’ as a field of study in business and management education is unjustified. True ethics is not applied ethics. This assertion does not mean that teaching ethical theories and philosophies need to be abandoned rather it is the acceptance of the fact that an increase in cognitive awareness of such theories and ethical models and frameworks, or the mastering of techniques and procedures for ethical decision making, will not affect the desired ethical transformation in our students. Levinas himself argued for an ethics without a foundation, not one that required us to go ‘beyond good and evil’ as Nietzsche contended, rather an ethics which necessitates going ‘before good and evil'. Such an ethics does not provide us with a set of methods or techniques or a decision tree that enable us determine the rightness of an action and what we ought to do, rather it is about a way of being, an ethical posture or approach one takes in the inter-subjective relationship with the other that holds the promise of ethical conduct. Ethics in this Levinasian sense then is one of infinite and unconditional responsibility for the other person in relationship, an ethics which is not subject to negotiation, calculation or reciprocity, and as such it could neither be applied nor taught through conventional pedagogy with its focus on knowledge transfer from the teacher to student, and to this end Levinas offers a non-maieutic, non-conventional approach to pedagogy. The paper concludes that from a Levinasian perspective on ethics and education, we may need to guide our students to move away from the clear and objective professionalism of the management and applied ethics towards the murky individual spiritualism. For Levinas, this is ‘the Copernican revolution’ in ethics.

Keywords: business ethics, ethics education, Levinas, maieutic teaching, ethics without foundation

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Authors: Kylie Leonard

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Investment in artificial intelligence (AI) can be an attractive opportunity for business leaders as there are many easy-to-see benefits. These benefits include task completion rates, overall cost, and better forecasting. Business leaders are often unaware of the challenges that can accompany AI, such as data center costs, access to data, employee acceptance, and privacy concerns. In addition to the benefits and challenges of AI, it is important to practice AI ethics to ensure the safe creation of AI. AI ethics include aspects of algorithm bias, limits in transparency, and surveillance. To be a good business leader, it is critical to address all the considerations involving the challenges of AI and AI ethics.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence ethics, business leaders, business concerns

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Authors: Mohammad Iqbal Malik

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Economic development of a country depends on its business ethics and values. Islamic teachings provide obvious guidelines in this regard. Mutual understanding, honesty and ethics possess central place in Islamic teachings. These teachings not only prohibit from amalgamation, black-marketing, hoarding and deception but also force to treat a customer amiably. Business ethics are broad spectrum in Islamic society due to these high moral values. One can estimate the importance of business ethics in Islam for economic development in Islamic society is evident by the Hadith of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in which He excluded a trader from Muslim community who did not behave in good manners with his clients. In this study we present impact of business ethics on economic development of a Muslim society. This study is based on basic teachings of Quran and Sunnah, Fiqh, Economics and other books. This study explores the behavior of Muslim traders and reveals useful inferences. Policy makers, traders, academia, scholars, and general public may learn lessons from this study with respect to business ethics in Islamic perspective.

Keywords: ethics, business, Islam, economic perspective

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Authors: Akram Hatami, Naser Firoozi, Vesa Puhakka

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Ethics and responsibility are rapidly becoming a distinguishing feature of organizations. In this paper, we analyze ethics and responsibility in shadow factories in China. We engage ourselves with Bauman’s moral impulse perspective because his idea can contextualize ethics and responsibility. Moral impulse is a feeling of a selfless, infinite and unconditional responsibility towards, and care for, Others. We analyze a case study from a secondary data source because, for such a critical phenomenon as business ethics in shadow factories, collecting primary data is difficult, since they are unregistered factories. We argue that there has not been enough attention given to the ethics and responsibility in shadow factories in China. Our main goal is to demonstrate that, considering the Other, more importantly the employees, in ethical decision-making is a simple instruction beyond the narrow version of ethics by ethical codes and rules.

Keywords: moral impulse, responsibility, shadow factories, Bauman’s moral impulse

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Authors: Fotis Vouzas

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This paper is an attempt to investigate the Business Ethics link to Quality Management. Business Ethics as a management practice is well rooted in many organizations, but its contribution to quality management implementation programs and practices is not well documented. The ISO 9000 and the Business Excellence frameworks and Awards seem to provide a basis for the implementation of a TQM philosophy contributing to efficiency, enhanced performance and sustainability. The author examines a series of Corporate Ethics initiatives and investigates the relationship to Total Quality Management in an MNC operating in Greece. The data gathering was carried out through extensive and in-depth interviews with several multiple informants, i.e., the plant manager, the production manager, and the personnel manager, using a semi-structured questionnaire with open-ended questions.

Keywords: total quality management, business ethics, Greece, ISO 9000

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Authors: Shabnam Naderi

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Traditional understandings of ethics considered translators, translations, technologies and other agents as separate and prioritized human agents. In fact, ethics was equated with morality. This disengaged understanding of ethics is superseded by an ethics of relation/entanglement in the posthuman philosophy. According to this ethics of entanglement, human and nonhuman agents are in constant ‘intra-action’. The human is not separate from nature, from technology and from other nonhuman entities, and an ethics of translation in this regard cannot be separated from technology and ecology and get defined merely within the realm of human-human encounter. As such, a posthuman ethics offers opportunities for change and responds to the changing nature of reality, it is negotiable and reveals itself as a moment-by-moment practice (i.e. as temporally emergent and beyond determinacy and permanence). Far from the linguistic or cultural, or individual concerns, posthuman translational ethics discusses how the former rigid norms and laws are challenged in a process ontology which puts emphasis on activity and activation and considers ethics as surfacing in activity, not as a predefined set of rules and values. In this sense, traditional ethical principles like faithfulness, accuracy and representation are superseded by principles of privacy, sustainability, multiplicity and decentralization. The present conceptual study, drawing on Ferrando’s philosophical posthumanism (as a post-humanism, as a post-dualism and as a post-anthropocentrism), Deleuze-Guattarian philosophy of immanence and Barad’s physics-philosophy strives to destabilize traditional understandings of translation ethics and bring an ethics that has loose ends and revolves around multiplicity and decentralization into the picture.

Keywords: ethics of entanglement, post-anthropocentrism, post-dualism, post-humanism, translation

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Authors: Otto Kakhidze, Hoda Alkhzaimi, Adam Ramey, Nasir Memon

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This paper provides an alternative, cyber security based a conceptual framework for the ethics of automated warfare. The large body of work produced on fully or partially autonomous warfare systems tends to overlook malicious security factors as in the possibility of technical attacks on these systems when it comes to the moral and legal decision-making. The argument provides a risk-oriented justification to why technical malicious risks cannot be dismissed in legal, ethical and policy considerations when warfare models are being implemented and deployed. The assumptions of the paper are supported by providing a broader model that contains the perspective of technological vulnerabilities through the lenses of the Game Theory, Just War Theory as well as standard and non-standard defense ethics. The paper argues that a conventional risk-benefit analysis without considering ethical factors is insufficient for making legal and policy decisions on automated warfare. This approach will provide the substructure for security and defense experts as well as legal scholars, ethicists and decision theorists to work towards common justificatory grounds that will accommodate the technical security concerns that have been overlooked in the current legal and policy models.

Keywords: automated warfare, ethics of automation, inherent hijacking, security vulnerabilities, risk, uncertainty

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Authors: Kalsoom Sumra

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The increasing concern of public sector reforms brings new challenges to public service ethics in developing countries not only at central level but also at local level. This paper aims to identify perceptions on public service ethics of public officials and examines more generally the understanding of public servants in Pakistan towards public service ethics in local public organizations. The study uses an independently administered structured questionnaire to collect data to know the extent of the recognition of public service ethics in local organizations. A total of 150 completed questionnaires are analyzed received from public servants working at the local level in Pakistan. The analysis explores how traditional, social patterns and cultural ethics can provide us with a rounded picture of the main antecedents, moderators of public service ethics in Pakistan. Moreover, the findings of this study contribute in association of public service ethics which are crucial in ongoing political and administrative culture of Pakistan, the most crucial core for public organizational ethical climate. This study also has numerous implications for local public administration and it highlights the importance of expanding research agenda on public service ethics in developing settings with challenging institutional contexts with imperfect training and operating environments. This study may well be particularly important for practice of public service ethics in developing countries in public administration. To the best of author’s knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to provide an initial step in practical implications to emphasize relevant public service ethics in public administration in developing transparent and accountable organization.

Keywords: public service ethics, accountability and transparency, public service reforms, public administration, organizational ethical climate

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Authors: Irene Ludji

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This article discusses the relevance of the sanctuary movement in relation to the idea of solidarity understood through the lens of ethics. There are three parts of this article. First is the investigation on the background of sanctuary movements in the U.S., the UK, and Canada. The repeated theme behind sanctuary movements includes practicing religious traditions, protecting vulnerable life, and challenging the unjust law. Second is the examination of the ethics of solidarity using Thomas D. Williams, who claims it as the extension of responsible love based on respect towards human dignity, and Rebecca Todd Peters, who claims the ethics of solidarity as the transformative ethic rooted in social justice. Third is the analysis of the connection between the central theme of sanctuary movements and the ethics of solidarity. This article concludes that sanctuary movement is indeed a solidarity movement that remains relevant in our world today because the acknowledgment of human dignity, as the basis for solidarity, is vital in transforming an unjust social system that creates the need for a sanctuary in the first place.

Keywords: sanctuary movement, solidarity, ethics, U.S., UK, canada

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Authors: Abubakar Mohammed Bakoji

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The paper examine business ethics through it pursuit for corporate social responsibility to the society in which the business long existed, Zenith bank PLC was selected as case study for it longer period of its business in the state, in order to achieve the research objective of the paper which sought the following: i. To examine relationship between business ethics and corporate social responsibility in Zenith bank PLC Jalingo; ii. To establish whether or not such ethics statement that acclaim corporate social responsibility are adhere to by the Zenith bank PLC Jalingo; iii. To determine the benefit drive by the society on the corporate social responsibility of Zenith bank PLC Jalingo to the people of the state of their operation. The research was conducted using qualitative research design approach, where convenience sampling technique was adopted using semi structured interview to one of the key staff of Zenith bank PLC Jalingo and five other beneficiaries of Zenith bank PLC corporate social responsibility projects served as respondents. The data obtained was analyze using content analysis and the result of the findings revealed that Zenith bank PLC has a Good business ethics and they adhere to the ethics, that they have completed several viable projects to the state as their corporate social responsibility and the beneficiaries and the respondents beneficiaries has confirmed and have produced evidence of how the projects has assisted in stifle their hardship. Hence, business ethics has a significant relationship with corporate social responsibility in Zenith bank PLC Jalingo.

Keywords: business ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Zenith Bank PLC, business ethics

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Authors: Mella Ismelina Farma Rahayu

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Environmental problems could not be separated from unethical human perspectives and behaviors toward the environment. There is a fundamental error in the philosophy of people’s perspective about human and nature and their relationship with the environment, which in turn will create an inappropriate behavior in relation to the environment. The aim of this study is to investigate and to understand the ethics of the environment in the context of humans interacting with the environment by using the hermeneutic approach. The related theories and concepts collected from literature review are used as data, which were analyzed by using interpretation, critical evaluation, internal coherence, comparisons, and heuristic techniques. As a result of this study, there will be a picture related to the interaction of human and environment in the perspective of environmental ethics, as well as the problems of the value of ecological justice in the interaction of humans and environment. We suggest that the interaction between humans and environment need to be based on environmental ethics, in a spirit of mutual respect between humans and the natural world.

Keywords: environment, environmental ethics, interaction, value

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Authors: Mohammad Daud Ali

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For the past decade, marketing ethics has been a central point for academic researchers and practitioners. In particular, the development of frameworks and models to help in the analysis of marketing decisions are the focus of research. The current study aims at finding whether ethical decisions (honesty, fairness, responsibility, and respect) affect organizational marketing decisions. A selection of 250 respondents was purposely made from the telecommunication industry of Pakistan, out of which 204 responses were induced at an acceptable rate of 81.6%. A five-point Likert Scale, itemized with 12 items, was adopted from Taylor-Dunlop & Lester (2000) and used to draw responses regarding ethics.

Keywords: marketing, ethics, decisions making, telecommunication, Pakistan

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Authors: Marvin Ricardo Awarab

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There has never been a greater need for telecom services. The Internet of Things (IoT), 5G networking, and edge computing are the driving forces behind this increased demand. The fierce demand offers communications service providers significant income opportunities. The telecom sector is centered on automation, and realizing a digital operation that functions as a real-time business will be crucial for the industry as a whole. Automation in telecom refers to the application of technology to create a more effective, quick, and scalable alternative to the conventional method of operating the telecom industry. With the promotion of 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT), telecom companies will continue to invest extensively in telecom automation technology. Automation offers benefits in the telecom industry; developing countries such as Namibia may not fully tap into such benefits because of the lack of funds and infrastructural resources to invest in automation. This paper fully investigates the benefits of automation in the telecom industry. Furthermore, the paper identifies hiccups that developing countries such as Namibia face in their quest to fully introduce automation in the telecom industry. Additionally, the paper proposes possible avenues that Namibia, as a developing country, adopt investing in automation infrastructural resources with the aim of reaping the full benefits of automation in the telecom industry.

Keywords: automation, development, internet, internet of things, network, telecom, telecommunications policy, 5G

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Authors: Yuandi Hu, Gang Yang

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In order to study the business ethics of the international enterprise, the thirteenth-largest car manufacturer and second-largest truck manufacturer in the world, Daimler AG was taken as research object. At first, Daimler AG is briefly introduced and the bribery affairs of Daimler AG in China are simply reviewed. Subsequently, the causes of the bribery are discussed in depth and the manifestations of the value conflict are analyzed in detail. Based on the analyzed results, the reasons why they bribe are investigated. Furthermore, some proposals for improving business ethics of international enterprises are put forward based on the study of Daimler bribery case.

Keywords: business ethics, Daimler AG, bribe, cultural conflict

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Authors: Caroline Foulquier-Expert

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In many states around the world, actions to improve judicial ethics are developing significantly through the production of professional standards for judges. The quest to improve the ethics of judges is legitimate. However, as this development tends to be very important at the moment, some risks it presents must be highlighted. Indeed, if the objective of improving Judges’ Ethics is legitimate, it can also lead to banalization of justice, reinforcement of criticism against the judiciary and to broach incidentally the question of the limits of judgment, which is most perilous for the independence of the judiciary. This research, based on case studies, interviews with judges and an analysis of the literature on this topic (mainly from the United States of America and European Union Member States), tends to draw attention to the fact that the result of the development of these professional standards is that the ethical requirements of judges become ethical requirements of justice, which is an undesirable effect of which we must be aware, in order to prevent it.

Keywords: judicial ethics, codes of conduct, independence, limits of judgment

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Authors: A. Javorova, J. Oravcova, K. Velisek

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The article summarizes the experience of technical subjects teaching methodologies using a number of software products to solve specific assigned tasks described in this paper. Task is about the problems of automation and mechanization in the industry. Specifically, it focuses on introducing automation in the wood industry. The article describes the design of the automation process for marking wooden hammers. Similar problems are solved by students in CA laboratory.

Keywords: CA system, education, simulation, subject

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Authors: Rohit Khankhoje

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The rapid evolution of software development practices has given rise to an increasing demand for efficient and effective test automation. The paper titled "Mastering Test Automation: Bridging Gaps for Seamless QA" delves into the crucial aspects of test automation, addressing the obstacles faced by organizations in achieving flawless quality assurance. The paper highlights the importance of bridging knowledge gaps within organizations, emphasizing the necessity for management to acquire a deeper comprehension of test automation scenarios, coverage, report trends, and the importance of communication. To tackle these challenges, this paper introduces innovative solutions, including the development of an automation framework that seamlessly integrates with test cases and reporting tools like TestRail and Jira. This integration facilitates the automatic recording of bugs in Jira, enhancing bug reporting and communication between manual QA and automation teams as well as TestRail have all newly added automated testcases as soon as it is part of the automation suite. The paper demonstrates how this framework empowers management by providing clear insights into ongoing automation activities, bug origins, trend analysis, and test case specifics. "Mastering Test Automation" serves as a comprehensive guide for organizations aiming to enhance their quality assurance processes through effective test automation. It not only identifies the common pitfalls and challenges but also offers practical solutions to bridge the gaps, resulting in a more streamlined and efficient QA process.

Keywords: automation framework, API integration, test automation, test management tools

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Authors: Daphne Sobolev, Niklas Voege

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During the last three decades, consumer ethics perceptions have attracted the attention of a large number of researchers. Nevertheless, little is known about the effect of the cognitive and situational contexts of the decision on ethics judgments. In this paper, the interrelationship between consumers’ ethics perceptions, legality evaluations and mind-sets are explored. Legality evaluations represent the cognitive context of the ethical judgments, whereas mind-sets represent their situational context. Drawing on moral development theories and priming theories, it is hypothesized that both factors are significantly related to consumer ethics perceptions. To test this hypothesis, 289 participants were allocated to three mind-set experimental conditions and a control group. Participants in the mind-set conditions were primed for aggressiveness, politeness or awareness to the negative legal consequences of breaking the law. Mind-sets were induced using a sentence-unscrambling task, in which target words were included. Ethics and legality judgments were assessed using consumer ethics and internet ethics questionnaires. All participants were asked to rate the ethicality and legality of consumer actions described in the questionnaires. The results showed that consumer ethics and legality perceptions were significantly correlated. Moreover, including legality evaluations as a variable in ethics judgment models increased the predictive power of the models. In addition, inducing aggressiveness in participants reduced their sensitivity to ethical issues; priming awareness to negative legal consequences increased their sensitivity to ethics when uncertainty about the legality of the judged scenario was high. Furthermore, the correlation between ethics and legality judgments was significant overall mind-set conditions. However, the results revealed conflicts between ethics and legality perceptions: consumers considered 10%-14% of the presented behaviors unethical and legal, or ethical and illegal. In 10-23% of the questions, participants indicated that they did not know whether the described action was legal or not. In addition, an asymmetry between the effects of aggressiveness and politeness priming was found. The results show that the legality judgments and mind-sets interact with consumer ethics perceptions. Thus, they portray consumer ethical judgments as dynamical processes which are inseparable from other cognitive processes and situational variables. They highlight that legal and ethical education, as well as adequate situational cues at the service place, could have a positive effect on consumer ethics perceptions. Theoretical contribution is discussed.

Keywords: consumer ethics, legality judgments, mind-set, priming, aggressiveness

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Authors: Reuben Govender, M. L. Woermann

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The ISO 14001 management system standard was first published in 1996. It is a voluntary standard adopted by both private and public sector organizations globally. Adoption of the ISO 14001 standard at the corporate level is done to help manage business impacts on the environment e.g. pollution control. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) revised the standard in 2004 and recently in 2015. The current revision of the standard appears to adopt a communitarian-type philosophy. The inclusion of requirements to consider external 'interested party' needs and expectations implies this philosophy. Therefore, at operational level businesses implementing ISO 14001 will have to consider needs and expectations beyond local laws. Should these external needs and expectations be included in the scope of the environmental management system, they become requirements to be complied with in much the same way as compliance to laws. The authors assert that the recent changes to ISO 14001 introduce an ethical dimension to the standard. The authors assert that business ethics as a discipline now finds relevance in ISO 14001 via contemporary stakeholder theory and discourse ethics. Finally, the authors postulate implications of (not) addressing these requirements before July 2018 when transition to the revised standard must be complete globally.

Keywords: business ethics, environmental ethics, ethics practice, ISO 14001:2015

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Authors: Leila Angélica de O. Castro, Thiago R. Pereira

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The number of refugees currently is alarming, having overcome the numbers of World War II. The objective of this research will be to examine this refugee crisis the light of the main contemporary ethical theories, mainly by analyzing whether there is an ethical obligation to assist these refugees. Among the many existing theories like virtue ethics, Kantian ethics, utilitarian ethics, ethical egoism and psychological egoism, will be the ethical theories used to analyze the current refugee crisis. The ethics of virtue is the oldest of theories, an action can be considered correct if we are acting virtuously if we predisposition to act that virtuously, where the goal is always the eudaimonia, a good life, a happy life. The Kantian ethics of the works of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, where we apply the hypothetical and categorical imperatives to find universal truths, actions that we consider to be universally correct. Utilitarian ethics believes that action will be considered as correct to bring happiness to the greatest possible number of people, even if they somehow have to bring unhappiness to any number of people. Ethical egoism should be concerned first with our individual happiness, and then we can worry about the happiness of others, so long as it causes us some happiness. Thus, action is correct since it is causing us a greater degree of happiness than unhappiness. Finally, the psychological egoism does not seek to determine whether an action is right or not, but claims that all our actions, even if they seem altruistic, actually has another motivation, which will always be a selfish motivation, that is, concerned with the our well-being. From these initial concepts, the issue of refugees, especially the question of whether states and their citizens have or not any ethical obligation to help them and receive them in their territories will be analyzed .

Keywords: refugees, ethics, obligation to help, contemporary theories

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Authors: Philemon Rakoto

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This paper tests the improvement of financial reporting quality when firms award stock options to their executives. The originality of this study is that we introduce the moderating effect of business ethics in the model. The sample is made up of 116 Canadian high-technology firms with available data for the fiscal year ending in 2012. We define the quality of financial reporting as the value relevance of accounting information as developed by Ohlson. Our results show that executive stock option award alone does not improve the quality of financial reporting. Rather, the quality improves when a firm awards stock options to its executives and investors perceive that the level of business ethics in that firm is high.

Keywords: business ethics, Canada, high-tech firms, stock options, value relevance

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