Abstract:Purpose: All European companies are faced with the lack of payment discipline, which often affects even their survival. One of the key reasons for the lack of payment discipline is poor business ethics, which is primarily introduced with the subject of ethical climate in the literature.For this reason, we wanted to determine whether a company's ethical climate influences its payment discipline.Design/methodology/approach: In the research, we used Arnaud's measurement instrument (2010) that helped us to identify six dimensions of ethical climate. The data about a company's ethical climate were later compared with the data about its payment discipline, calculated using the Dun & Bradstreet rating agency methodology. We included in the sample 273 Slovenian companies, which represented 9.1% of all companies invited to take part in the survey (2978 Slovenian enterprises with 10 or more employees). Findings:We established that (among the six dimensions of the ethical climate) the dimension "moral sensitivity -the lack of norms of empathetic concern" had statistically significant influence on the average delay of payment, and the more significant for the company the lack of norms of empathetic concern was, the longer the delay of the payment to suppliers would be.Our conclusion is that the appropriate forms of the incorporation of training and education on ethical subjects into business studies may increase the payment discipline of companies.-73-Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management -http://dx
Prethodna istraživanja pokazuju da učenici imaju teškoće u razumijevanju evolucije čovjeka zbog zahtjevnosti teme. Cilj rada je bio utvrditi kakvo je znanje hrvatskih i slovenskih osnovnoškolaca te gimnazijalaca o evoluciji čovjeka. Nastojalo se utvrditi postoji li razlika u znanju učenika između dviju država, spolova, vrste škola te dobi učenika. Osim znanja, željelo se utvrditi i postojanje učeničkih miskoncepcija o evoluciji čovjeka. Istraživanje je provedeno 2017. godine u slovenskim i hrvatskim gimnazijama te osnovnim školama. Sudjelovalo je 170 učenika, od čega 100 osnovnoškolaca, te 70 gimnazijalaca iz obiju zemalja. Ukupni prosječni uspjeh na ispitu znanja bio je 64,8 %. Najzastupljeniji točan odgovor učenika odnosio se na nalazište neandertalaca u Hrvatskoj, kod kojeg je 96,4% učenika odabralo Krapinu kao točan odgovor. Rezultati su pokazali da postoje razlike u znanju o evoluciji čovjeka između učenika različitih zemalja, škola i razreda. Slovenski gimnazijalci su pokazali više znanja o evoluciji čovjeka u odnosu na hrvatske (14 statistički značajnih razlika; p < 0,05), dok su hrvatski osnovnoškolci bili uspješniji od slovenskih (16 statističko značajnih razlika; p < 0,05). Hrvatski gimnazijalci pokazali su lošije rezultate na ispitu od slovenskih osnovnoškolaca. Osnovnoškolsko znanje o evoluciji čovjeka se razlikuje od gimnazijskog po učestalosti točnih odgovora. Hrvatski osnovnoškolci su pokazali više znanja o evoluciji čovjeka od hrvatskih gimnazijalaca. Postoje razlike u poznavanju evolucije čovjeka među spolovima, ali nisu statistički značajne. I hrvatski i slovenski učenici imaju slične miskoncepcije povezane s evolucijom čovjeka. Čak 41,5% učenika smatra da su se ljudi razvili iz čimpanzi, a da smo potomci biblijskog Adama i Eve smatra 39,2% učenika. Dobiveni rezultati trebali bi utjecati na promjene u poučavanju sa svrhom postizanja boljih rezultata učenika vezanih uz koncept evolucije čovjeka, a posebice na sprečavanje stvaranja uočenih miskoncepcija.
European countries have faced the problem of poor payment discipline for many years. Despite legislation adopted in 2000 and 2011, the situation is not improving. Not much empirical research has been done about the causes of low payment discipline, and even the work that has been done has been generally focused solely on the financial reasons. The current research tried to determine whether the payment discipline is affected and influenced by management ethics. The study showed that board’s and senior management’s ethics affects the length of the average payment delay to suppliers. Based on this evidence and prior research in the field of moral judgment, this study developed a package of measures against late payments based on the improvement of the moral judgments of management.
Late payments have long been a problem for enterprises, and the situation only escalated following the recent global economic crisis. Even though new legislation has been adopted at the European level, the problem of late payments has not improved. The aim of the study presented in this paper was to find out whether late payments can be explained by enterprises' ethical culture. The analysis of ethical culture was performed by Kaptein's (2008) measurement instrument. Of the six dimensions that could be confirmed with our sample, three correlated statistically significantly with late payments: sanctionability, feasibility and transparency. Sanctionability refers to the likelihood that unethical behavior will be sanctioned and ethical behavior will be rewarded; feasibility refers to the creation of conditions that allow employees to meet normative expectations; and transparency refers to the degree to which incorrect behavior is visible to those who can have an influence on changing such behavior. The more sanctionability and feasibility are expressed in enterprises, the better their payment discipline; the more transparency is present, the worse the payment discipline. Furthermore, our research showed that the size of the enterprise, liquidity (current ratio) and financial leverage (debt to asset ratio) have no statistically significant influence on the payment discipline of the observed enterprises.
Purpose Poor payment discipline has been a constant problem faced by European companies and has only deteriorated with the current global economic crisis. Even though new legislation has been adopted several times on the European level, the situation has not changed in favor of improved payment discipline. This research aims to determine the correlation between ethical culture of the company and how it influences its payments. Design/methodology/approach The factor structure of Kaptein’s (2008) instrument for measuring ethical culture was analyzed using principal component analysis with varimax rotation. This factor analysis yielded six factors with eigenvalues over 1.00. The reliabilities of the single constructs were as follows: clarity (α = 0.891), feasibility (α = 0.918), discussability (α = 0.955), supportability (α = 0.956), sanctionability (α = 0.879) and transparency (α = 0.801). These six factors explained 78 per cent of the total variance. All six factors were named according to Kaptein’s (2008) proposal, whose factor analysis yielded, in addition to the six factors, the following two factors: “Congruence of supervisors” and “Congruence of management”. Both factors represent the ethical culture dimension that Kaptein (1998) called “Congruence”, which refers to the extent to which superiors’ and managers’ acts are in line with their ethics on the declarative level. Findings The results showed that two dimensions of ethical culture, sanctionability and feasibility, improve payment discipline. Research limitations/implications The results of this study provide an important link between ethical culture and late payments. However, the research has some limitations. The first limitation is the response rate of only 9.1 per cent. The next limitation is geographical location; the results in other European countries could be different. The third limitation of the research arises from the data collection, because ethical culture was evaluated by one person from each enterprise, and the average payment delay was also calculated based only on a sample of invoices. Future research should therefore attempt to confirm the correlation between ethical culture and payment discipline in other European countries. It would be interesting to compare finds among different European countries, to determine whether there are major differences among companies in the field of payment discipline. Originality/value Good payment discipline can be defined as settling obligations to the customer on time. Late payments have been one of the biggest problems in many European economies. Trade credit becomes even more important during economic crises (Guariglia and Mateut, 2006), when investments are in decline, trading volume is reduced, bank credit is harder to obtain and interest rates are increased (Vojinović et al., 2013; Lin and Martin, 2010). Because customers do not fulfill their obligations on time, even enterprises with healthy sales growth encounter cash flow problems (Tsai, 2011). This paper’s empirical research has been implemented in Slovenia because it has some of the worst payment disciplines among European countries. Such research is unique in Slovenia as well as wider.
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