In the first decade of the 21st century, the number of functioning business organizations in Nigeria decreased by 45%. The high rate of business failures in Nigeria has left many questions about what is needed for creating business success. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the influence of internal and external dynamics on leaders in Nigerian microfinance organizations. Twenty leaders from microfinance institutions participated in face-to-face semistructured interviews. The data analysis process involved the use of Moustakas's modified van Kaam method, which resulted in the emergence of 12 themes. The themes that emerged included: (a) staff turnover, (b) financial fraud, (c) knowledge gap, (d) lack of real-time technology, (e) ethical behavior of leaders, (f) organizational bureaucracy, (g) foreign exchange fluctuation, (h) poor state of Nigerian economy, (i) competition from unethical practices of other organizations, (j) constant changes of government policies and poor regulatory controls, and (k) noncompliance with the Microfinance Policy and Framework by stakeholders. There was a common perception among the participants that there was a need for government intervention in providing improved infrastructure and adequate regulatory controls. The findings provide indications from participants' responses that business success is dependent upon business leaders' effectiveness in their roles and ethical practices as perceived by the followers. The study is significant in that its findings may assist businesses and government to focus on the effectiveness of leaders, increase labor relations, and increase the overall success of business which in turn improve the economy of Nigeria.

This study's aim was to investigate the strength of contextual aspects' influences on environmentally ethical behaviour (EEB). A survey method with a selfadministered questionnaire was used and a cross-section of the Muslim male population of New Zealand was taken. The qualitative interviews and email questionnaires were also utilised to further explain the survey results. The linear regression analyses show correlations between contextual aspects (i.e., social, religious, economic, political, and demographic) and EEB (pre-cycling, re-use and recycling). Results indicate that the contextual aspects are influential on EEB in many ways and degrees. A model describing the relationship was developed. The economic aspect statistically significantly related to EEB the strongest. The qualitative interview and email questionnaire data support the findings of the survey. The relationship was positive, meaning that the more the consumers were influenced by the economic aspect to behave in an environmentally ethical way, the more they were likely to perform EEB. Compared to the economic aspect, white collar workers, number of household occupant, work involvement with the environment, type of house, and age had a weaker statistically significant relationship with EEB. The relationships were positive, meaning that the better the consumers' occupation (i.e., white collar workers), the more household member they had (i.e., 4 and above), the higher their level of work involvement with the environment, and the better their dwelling (i.e., bungalow or semi-detached houses), the more they were likely to perform EEB. However, the relationship between age and EEB was negative, meaning that the younger the consumers the more they were likely to perform EEB. However, the results of this study, from both the survey and the interview methods, indicate that demographic characteristics were not as important as the contextual aspects, particularly the economic aspect, in understanding consumers' EEB. This study shows that the economic aspect was very important in understanding consumers' EEB compared to the other contextual aspects even the political aspect was statistically significantly related to EEB via the economic aspect. Thus, the economic aspect should be used optimally by public and private sector managers to promote EEB.

Business ethics is a fragmented and well covered scientific field. This Master thesis study concerns two type of organizations, namely family businesses (FB’s) and venture capital firms (VCF’s), in relation to the ethical decision-making process, which is a relatively undiscovered field. The study is conducted in the way it sheds a light on the influences on a manager when taking decisions concerning ethical considerations. Important scholars such as Colby and Kohlberg (1987) and Rest et al. (1999) framed the field of moral development of individuals, and what makes managers unaware of their unethical decisions (Bazerman, 2008). However, a manager’s possibility to take decisions is also influenced by organizational factors and actors. The type of management and ownership structure, and the expectations these actors have with regard to profits, as well as situational factors such as business strategy, maturity of the company, human and financial resources and market position are shaping the environment and possibility for managers to pursue ethical behavior because they affect the decision-making process.The purpose of this study is to understand how managers in FB’s and VCF’s manage ethical considerations. The creating of the conceptual framework was used as a foundation to visualize how ethical behavior is constructed, while the focus laid on the influences and possibility to take decisions including ethical considerations and content. While performing this research, we have conducted eight semi-structured interviews with managers in three VCF’s and two FB’s in Sweden. The respondent companies and interviewees remain anonymous. We did that to increase the chance of honest and unbiased answers since we saw a risk to receive adjusted and image improving responses.The empirical findings show that the VCF’s do not pay attention to ethical considerations in the same extent as FB’s do. Discovered reasons were lack of time and know-how, financial and human resources, business maturity and the fact that they were to generate a high ROI to the venture capitalist. Such a relationship makes the managers focus on profit maximization and short term objectives rather than ethical considerations. The two FB’s did have an ethical code of conduct with the employees and was constructed in order to fulfill acceptance, integration and efficiency with this management tool. The ethical codes of conduct were created with the goal to steer behavior and ensure ethical commitment in certain areas of interest. The major finding is that situational factors either suffocate or give room for ethical considerations in companies when taking decisions.In particular, this research contributes to the field of business ethics and VCF’s in general, but also with regard to FB’s. The results of this thesis are constructed in the decision-making model which is different than the ethical decision-making model we constructed based on the theoretical research. However, reality did not allow us to recognize the fragmented patterns we interpreted from the theory. We therefore created a new top-down model which takes the need for a decision in companies into account, the actors and factors in the organization, the situational factors that influence the happenings in the organization and the outcome of the decision, which possibly contains ethical considerations and content. With the improved model we visualize the decision-making process while taking influences towards ethical decision-making into consideration and visualize organizational reality as we discovered it.Key words: business ethics, ethical considerations, ethical code of conduct, moral awareness, ethical decision-making, ethical behavior, family business, venture capital firm, profit maximization, shareholder preferences.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-16T14:48:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1667148 bytes, checksum: c7e491fcedcd71da764a127854df5760 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-09-03 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The present study aimed at understanding the behavior of individuals and groups in society in a context where social rules and/or legal matters are not clearly set: ethical consumption. If in relation to organizations ethical stance has been increasingly demanded by society in general, including rules related to corporate social responsibility, for consumers, the other actor in the process of buying, the demand for a responsible behavior is not yet a reality. We believe that marketing can contribute as a tool in understanding consumer behavior at the moment of deciding to purchase counterfeit products. This will occur by spreading ethical problems (as well as others that are understood by the social responsibility of the consumer) to be considered, leading to the awakening of the individual perception of the existence of the ethical dilemma in purchasing counterfeit videogames, as well as to the awareness of the many consequences for society in general, thus promoting actions that can be taken either by the companies involved in the sectors by the government or by society itself in order to find a balance in this process. Taking the above into consideration, this research is justified and becomes relevant due to the fact that it focused on understanding those issues. The analysis of the ethical behavior of consumers in relation to counterfeit videogames used materialism and ethical consumption (encompassed by the social responsibility of the consumer - SRCons) as references. Based upon this set of issues, the following research goal was proposed: to evaluate the social responsibility of the consumer and the degree of materialism in relation to the consumption of counterfeit videogames. A literature review was conducted where ethics issues were considered from a macro to a micro perspective by relating it to the marketing discipline. Then SRCons were discussed, which explored the possible dimensions of the construct components (altruistic behavior, environmentally sustainable behavior, activist behavior or engaged consumer, and ethical behavior or honest consumer). The scope of materialism as a motivator of behavior was also studied, since this construct is negatively related to collective as well as to ethical behavior. A brief background of the videogame market and its domestic supply chain was described in order to clarify its dynamics and therefore finally treat the case of counterfeit in the market of videogames. This process culminated in a proposal for a reinterpretation of that phenomenon based on the constructs of SRCons and Materialism. To enable the measurement of these constructs previously known and applied scales were used. The sample consisted of 225 consumers of videogames. Overall, the results indicated that SRCons and materialism do not influence consumer behavior in relation to counterfeit videogames, either in their intention, practice or in favorability. However, ethical behavior or honest consumer was the only dimension that slightly influenced it (statistically significant). At last a few considerations were woven, which answered the research problem and established objectives, containing the main results and their practical and theoretical implications, and recommendations for possible future research concerning the topic were made. / Nesta dissertação, o principal interesse esteve na compreensão do comportamento de indivíduos e grupos na sociedade num contexto em que as normas sociais e/ou legais ainda não estão claramente configuradas: o consumo ético. Se em relação às organizações tem sido cada vez mais cobrada uma postura ética pela sociedade em geral, inclusive com normas relativas à responsabilidade social corporativa, em relação aos consumidores, o outro ator do processo de compra, a exigência por um comportamento responsável ainda não é uma realidade. Acreditamos que o marketing pode contribuir como uma ferramenta na compreensão do comportamento do consumidor no momento de sua decisão de compra por produtos piratas. Isso ocorrerá difundindo os problemas éticos (bem como outros que também são compreendidos pela responsabilidade social do consumidor - RSCons) a serem considerados, levando o sujeito ao despertar da percepção da existência do dilema ético no consumo de jogos de videogames piratas, bem como a conscientização das inúmeras consequências para a sociedade em geral, fomentando assim ações que possam ser tomadas seja por parte das empresas envolvidas no setor, seja pelo governo ou mesmo pela própria sociedade no sentido de se buscar equilíbrio neste processo. Assim, essa pesquisa se justifica e se torna relevante à medida que procurou compreender tais questões. Para essa pesquisa, a análise deste comportamento ético do consumidor em relação à pirataria, tomou como referencial o materialismo e o consumo ético (abarcado pela responsabilidade social do consumidor). Como base neste conjunto de questões, se propôs o seguinte objetivo de pesquisa: avaliar o comportamento de responsabilidade social do consumidor e o seu grau de materialismo em sua relação com o consumo de jogos de vídeogame piratas. Foi desenvolvida uma revisão de literatura onde foi tratada a questão da ética, partindo de uma perspectiva macro para uma micro relacionando-a com a disciplina marketing. Depois, abordamos a responsabilidade social do consumidor, na qual são exploradas as possíveis dimensões componentes do construto (comportamento altruísta, comportamento ambientalmente sustentável, comportamento ativista ou engajado do consumidor e comportamento ético ou honesto do consumidor). Ainda pesquisamos o materialismo como motivador de um comportamento, à medida que esse construto se relaciona negativamente ao comportamento coletivo e, consequentemente, ao ético. Realizou-se também uma breve contextualização do mercado de videogames domésticos e sua cadeia logística no sentido de clarificar seu funcionamento para, por último, tratarmos do processo da pirataria no mercado de jogos de vídeogames. Este processo culminou em uma proposta de reinterpretação do fenômeno a partir dos construtos da Responsabilidade Social do Consumidor (RSCons) e Materialismo. Para viabilizar a mensuração destes construtos, foram aplicadas escalas já conhecidas e aplicadas anteriormente. A amostra foi composta por 225 consumidores de jogos de videogames. De maneira geral, os resultados indicam que a responsabilidade social do consumidor e o materialismo não influenciam o comportamento de pirataria de jogos de videogames, seja na intenção, na prática ou na favorabilidade, sendo comportamento ético ou honesto do consumidor a única dimensão que o influenciou sutilmente, de forma estatisticamente significativa. No final, foram tecidas as devidas considerações, que devem preencher o problema da pesquisa e os objetivos estabelecidos, contendo os principais resultados encontrados bem como suas implicações práticas e teóricas, além de recomendações para possíveis pesquisas futuras.

The aim of this master thesis is to evaluate the importance of audits of banks with respect to the Czech national economy within years 1993 - 2014. The primary purpose of this study is to determine the value of both external and internal audits as well as of internal control systems and of bank supervision in order to maintain a long-term stability of banks on the Czech financial market. In the light of knowledge gathered from the Czech banking crisis (late nineties of the 20th century) and from the latest widely-spread economic and financial crisis (2008), it has been proved that low-quality audits may consequently contagiously affect a great deal of financial institutions. As for the economies, a collapse of a larger number of banks in the short run may cause higher social costs (mainly due to government budget deficit when bailing out affected banks and to economic downturn). Analyses suggest that these crises have been a result of a confluence of many factors. In particular, a poor a management of banks and its interest in short-term profit-maximizing goals, trades with highly risky financial instruments (especially in the US and in the EU), likewise failures of both auditors and bank supervisors, account for some of the main factors. Moreover, it has been concluded that an institutional background (a weak law system in the Czech Republic) played an important role, too. The quality of audits was also influenced by an everlasting conflict of interest of statutory auditors who have been paid by the audited banks. This probably resulted in an unethical behavior of auditors. Furthermore, auditors were lacking the state-of-the-art knowledge in terms of rapidly developing financial instruments. As a matter of fact, auditors did not address all the risks the banks were facing to the stakeholders. This study indicates that both external and internal audits along with a bank supervision are important, nonetheless, not sufficient conditions assuring a long-term stability on financial markets.

The United States jewelry industry recognized that the illegal import and trade of conflict diamonds is a matter of serious international and national concern, leading to human rights abuse. As such, human rights and conflicts became the primary impetus for establishing the Kimberly Process (KP) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies. The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate the effectiveness of the KP and CSR policies in deterring the use of conflict diamonds in the U.S. jewelry industry. This study was an investigation as to whether conflict diamonds are entering the U.S. jewelry supply chain and a review of the ethics of the U.S. jewelry industry in light of the conflict diamond issue. Conflict theory provided the theoretical framework used to gather data on conflict diamond protocols and on corporate social responsibilities within the U.S. jewelry industry. The sample was composed of 59 randomly selected participants from the U.S. jewelry industry whose opinions were indicative of that industry. Data were analyzed descriptively and inferentially. Multiple statistical tests were used for the data analysis that included regression and the Mann-Whitney U test. The overall results indicated that the KP and the CSR policies were insignificant in deterring the use of conflict diamonds in the U.S. jewelry industry; therefore, the null hypothesis was retained. This study contributed to a better understanding of the ethical dimensions of conflict diamonds and the committed management practices of the U.S. jewelry industry. Positive social change can be realized when respect for fundamental human rights is achieved by the global diamond industry and becomes a requisite foundation for every society to bring an end to the flow of conflict diamonds.

An ethical organizational environment ensures a trustworthy organization. This case study explored strategies that banking managers in the United Arab Emirates used to create an ethical organizational environment, one that emphasized the inclusion of ethical values, moral principles, and commitment to society. The target population included senior managers who created and implemented strategies to ensure employees adopted the ethical values in pursuit of an ethical environment. Ethical climate theory provided the conceptual framework for this study. Interviews with 5 managers and company documentation contributed the data for this research. Data were analyzed following inductive investigation and case description. Connecting corporate values with measurable indicators emerged as the most prominent strategy among these 5 managers. Translating soft value statements into hard performance factors allowed for the creation of an ethical environment that signaled consistent messages about appropriate behavior. Employee engagement was another prominent finding. Providing opportunities for informal interaction allowed employees to establish relationships and facilitated cross-functional collaboration. Other important strategies were related to maintaining transparency and leadership role-modeling. Implications for positive social change include the potential to regain trust in banking by providing banking managers with a guideline to create an ethical organizational environment.

Despite an abundance of research on the problem of insider threats, only limited success has been achieved in preventing trusted insiders from committing security violations. Virtue ethics may be an approach that can be utilized to address this issue. Human factors such as moral considerations impact Information System (IS) design, use, and security; consequently they affect the security posture and culture of an organization. Virtue ethics based concepts have the potential to influence and align the moral values and behavior of information systems workers with those of an organization in order to provide increased protection of IS assets. An individual’s character strengths have been linked to positive personal development, but there has been very little research into how the positive characteristics of virtue ethics, exhibited through the character development of information systems workers, can contribute to improving system security. This research aimed to address this gap by examining factors that affect and shape the ethical perspectives of individuals entrusted with privileged access to information. This study builds upon prior research and theoretical frameworks on institutionalizing ethics into organizations and Information Ethics to propose a new theoretical model which demonstrates the influences on Information Systems Security (ISS) trusted worker ethical behavior within an organization. Components of the research model include ISS virtue ethics based constructs, organizational based internal influences, societal based external influences, and trusted worker ethical behavior. This study used data collected from 395 professionals in an ISS organization to empirically assess the model. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling was employed to analyze the indicators, constructs, and path relationships. Various statistical tests determined validity and reliability, with mixed but adequate results. All of the relationships between constructs were positive, although some were stronger and more significant. The expectation of the researcher in this study was to better understand the character of individuals who pose an insider threat by validating the proposed model, thereby providing a conceptual analysis of the character traits which influence the ethical behavior of trusted workers and ultimately information system security.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T13:51:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 AnaPRL_TESE.pdf: 1398783 bytes, checksum: a39a285b2b65a0e25d04622cb65d8880 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-09-17 / Ethics on scientific research is approached and often discussed in several areas of knowledge connected to health. In the Administration area there are very few studies which approach the topic of ethics on research. The present paper tried to fill in this gap in the production of knowledge about the topic, investigating how the ethical principles found in the literature and in the codes of conduct are noticed and taken into account in Administration research activities developed by acting researchers in Administration Post Graduation Programs. Theoretically speaking, the study was based mainly on the approaches by Creswell (2007) and Bell and Bryman (2007), which discuss the research ethical principles. Methodologically speaking it was all about an exploratory kind of study, with qualitative research approach. Upon data collection, personal interviews were made aiming at its depth and focus groups were formed. The first stage had interviews with four experienced researchers who took part on a teaching and researching event and on the second stage we used the focus group technique. The focus groups were done in four college institutions along with the post graduation programs in Administration in the states of Rio Grande do Norte, Para?ba and Pernambuco, in Brazil. The results suggest the existence of general principles and parameters for the scientific research recommended in the literature and on official resolution. However, in the Administration area, there are only a few recommendations of good practices when it comes to submitting articles for scientific publications but we found no guidance with ethical principles and parameters which cover all the activities in the scientific research and which specifically meet the research particularities in Administration. The main ethical dilemma pointed by the researchers refers to ethical questions which arise at the time of data collection and on disclosing the results. Most researchers do not know the guidelines and the ethical norms on ethics about research that we have in our country neither do they send in their projects to the research ethics committee. When dilemma arises, they decide the ethical question based on their values and common sense. These elements confirm the thesis that the researcher s procedure in the research activities in Administration is predominantly signed by personal values or by common sense and less by ethical principles, whether by not knowing the normative instruments related to ethics or by disagreeing with any disciplining rules on ethical behavior in the research / A ?tica na pesquisa cient?fica ? um tema abordado e muito discutido em diversas ?reas do conhecimento ligadas ? sa?de. Na ?rea da Administra??o, s?o raros os estudos que abordam o tema da ?tica na pesquisa. O presente estudo buscou preencher esta lacuna na produ??o do conhecimento sobre o tema, investigando como os princ?pios ?ticos encontrados na literatura e nos c?digos de conduta s?o percebidos e considerados nas atividades de pesquisa em Administra??o, desenvolvidas por pesquisadores atuantes em Programas de P?s-Gradua??o em Administra??o. Teoricamente, o estudo apoiou-se principalmente nas abordagens de Creswell (2007) e Bell e Bryman (2007), que discutem os princ?pios ?ticos na pesquisa. Metodologicamente, tratou-se de um estudo de car?ter explorat?rio, com abordagem de pesquisa qualitativa. Na coleta de dados foram feitas entrevistas pessoais e em profundidade e formados grupos focais. Na primeira etapa, foram realizadas entrevistas com quatro pesquisadores experientes, participantes de um evento de ensino e pesquisa e na segunda etapa, foi adotada a t?cnica de grupo focal. Os grupos focais foram realizados em quatro institui??es de ensino superior junto aos Programas de P?s-Gradua??o em Administra??o nos Estados do Rio Grande do Norte, Para?ba e Pernambuco. Os resultados apontam para a exist?ncia de princ?pios gerais para a pesquisa cient?fica propostos na literatura e em resolu??o oficial. Por?m, na ?rea da Administra??o existem apenas recomenda??es de boas pr?ticas no tocante ? submiss?o de artigos para publica??es cient?ficas, mas n?o foram encontradas orienta??es com princ?pios ?ticos que englobem todas as atividades da pesquisa cient?fica e que atendam especificamente ?s particularidades das pesquisas em Administra??o. Os principais dilemas ?ticos, apontados pelos pesquisados se referem ?s quest?es ?ticas que surgem nas fases da coleta dos dados e na divulga??o dos resultados. A maioria dos pesquisados n?o conhecem as diretrizes e as normas sobre ?tica na pesquisa existentes no pa?s e nem enviam seus projetos aos comit?s de ?tica na pesquisa. Em caso de dilemas, decidem a quest?o ?tica com base nos seus valores e senso comum. Estes elementos confirmam a tese de que a conduta do pesquisador nas atividades de pesquisa em Administra??o ? predominantemente balizada por valores pessoais ou pelo senso comum e menos por princ?pios ?ticos, seja pelo desconhecimento de instrumentos normativos relacionados ? ?tica, como tamb?m pela discord?ncia com quaisquer regras de disciplinamento sobre conduta ?tica na pesquisa