Business Ethics Awards: variables to consider, facts and sources, best alternative

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1.) What are some of the variables considered by Business Ethics in coming up with its list of 100 Best Corporate Citizens?

The variables considered by Business Ethics in coming up with its list of 100 Best Corporate Citizens are the groups of stakeholders, that is shareholders, community, minorities and women, employees, environment, non-US Stakeholders and customers in each category.

In each category there are concerns and strengths. These include strengths like profit sharing, retirement benefits, and employee involvement. The concerns include variables like union relations and workforce reductions.

Other variables include: Environmental strengths, for example, might include beneficial products, pollution prevention, and recycling, while concerns would include emissions, climate change, and regulatory problems.

In addition to this the issues considered are social scandals, or other issues possibly missed, and firms to be pulled. Firms were removed for accounting fraud, for example, or if they lost money two or more years in a row.

The initial screening of the companies is done on the basis of serving a variety of stakeholders. In addition social data for the companies is considered. Further industry balance and social performance is assessed.

I arrived at my answer based on the methodology behind the corporate citizenship rankings
By Samuel P. Graves, Sandra Waddock, and Marjorie Kelly. The facts considered are the Data analysis done by Sandra Waddock and Samuel Graves with the Carroll School of Management, Boston College. My response is best because it is based on the details given by the persons who have done the ranking.

2.) Do you agree with these variables? What, if anything, should be added or deleted and why?

I DO NOT AGREE WITH THESE VARIABLES AS THESE ARE TOO BROAD AND ALL ENCOMPASSING
The current ethical decision making model in negotiation by Lewicki, Saunders,
& Minton (1999) identifies numerous individual differences and contextual factors that
affect the intention and motive to use ethically marginal tactics in a negotiation (see
Figure 1). Among the variables identified by the model are 'cultural norms' - referring
to the national culture.

While a number of researchers have investigated the effect of culture on ethical
decision-making in negotiations - notably Allerheiligen, Graham, & Lin (1985), Triandis
et al (2001), Volkema, (1998, 1999; 2001) and Zarkada-Fraser & Fraser,(2001) - our
understanding of how culture effects ethical decision-making in negotiation remains
incomplete. Typically, researchers have found that there are significant differences in
views of ethicality across cultures but there is no explanation of how culture affects views
of ethicality.

This paper seeks to extend our understanding of how culture affects ethical
decision-making in negotiation by first arguing for a 'culture in context' view of culture
as the most appropriate to investigate ethical decision making. We then investigate
several situational variables that we believe to be particularly significant in cross-cultural
negotiations by integrating qualitative data from an exploratory study of Australian and
Chinese (People's Republic of China) negotiators and findings from the business ethics
literature. From this we propose a model of exogenous variables that interact with, or are
part of culture.

Culture in Context

A culture in context approach recognises that no human behaviour is determined
by a single cause and may be understood at many different levels simultaneously
(Lewicki et al., 1999). In its original form as articulated by Janosik (1987), culture in
context suggests that the effect of culture is likely to be moderated by structural and
contextual factors. This contrasts with the 'culture as shared values' view of culture that
still dominates cross-cultural negotiation research. Whereas culture as shared values
operationalises culture as one or more value dimensions (for example individualism-
collectivism and high-low context) that act as independent variables on ethical decision
making, culture in context sees culture as a sticky entity that has both a direct effect and
moderating effect on situational variables that impact ethical decision making.

By adopting a culture in context view to investigate cross-cultural differences in
the way negotiators decide whether or not a tactic is appropriate addresses two related
concerns. Firstly, in the business ethics literature there is some evidence that there are
cross-cultural differences in how situational decision-makers are. For example, one
cultural difference between Easterners and Westerners is that Westerners tend to be more
universalistic in the application of their ethics whereas ...