This article proposes and tests a social-cognitive framework for examining the joint influence of situational factors and the centrality of moral identity on moral intentions and behaviors. The authors hypothesized that if a situational factor increases the current accessibility of moral identity within the working self-concept, then it strengthens the motivation to act morally. In contrast, if a situational factor decreases the current accessibility of moral identity, then it weakens the motivation to act morally. The authors also expected the influence of situational factors to vary depending on the extent to which moral identity was central to a person's overall self-conception. Hypotheses derived from the framework were tested in 4 studies. The studies used recalling and reading a list of the Ten Commandments (Study 1), writing a story using morally laden terms (Study 4), and the presence of performance-based financial incentives (Studies 2 and 3) as situational factors. Participants' willingness to initiate a cause-related marketing program (Study 1), lie to a job candidate during a salary negotiation (Studies 2 and 3), and contribute to a public good (Study 4) were examined. Results provide strong support for the proposed framework.

We use convergent elements of major ethical theories to create a typology of corporate stakeholder cultures-the aspects of organizational culture consisting of the beliefs, values, and practices that have evolved for solving problems and otherwise managing stakeholder relationships. We describe five stakeholder cultures-agency, corporate egoist, instrumentalist, moralist, and altruist-and explain how these cultures lie on a continuum, ranging from individually self-interested (agency culture) to fully other-regarding (altruist culture). We demonstrate the utility of our framework by showing how it can refine stakeholder salience theory.

This research developed and tested a model of turnover contagion in which the job embeddedness and job search behaviors of coworkers influence employees' decisions to quit. In a sample of 45 branches of a regional bank and 1,038 departments of a national hospitality firm, multilevel analysis revealed that coworkers' job embeddedness and job search behaviors explain variance in individual "voluntary turnover" over and above that explained by other individual and group-level predictors. Broadly speaking, these results suggest that coworkers' job embeddedness and job search behaviors play critical roles in explaining why people quit their jobs. Implications are discussed.

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Many scholars and managers endorse the idea that the primary purpose of the firm is to make money for its owners. This shareholder wealth maximization objective is justified on the grounds that it maximizes social welfare. In this article, the first of a two-part set, we argue that, although this shareholder primacy model may have been appropriate in an earlier era, it no longer is, given our current state of economic and social affairs. To make our case, we employ a utilitarian moral standard and examine the apparent logical sequence behind the link between shareholder wealth maximization and social welfare. Upon close empirical and conceptual scrutiny, we find that utilitarian criteria do not support the shareholder model; that is, shareholder wealth maximization is only weakly linked to social welfare maximization. In view of the dubious validity of this sequential argument, we outline some of the features of a superior corporate objective-a variant of normative stakeholder theory. In the second article, we will advance and defend our preferred alternative and then discuss some institutional arrangements under which it could be implemented.KEY WORDS: shareholder wealth maximization (SWM), corporate objective function, normative corporate governance, utilitarianism, social welfare "If you will pardon me for being personal, it makes a great difference in my attitude toward my job as an executive officer of the General Electric Company whether I am a trustee of the institution or an attorney for the investor. If I am a trustee, who are the beneficiaries of the trust? To whom do I owe my obligations?"-Owen D. Young, former Chairman of GE (Dodd, 1932(Dodd, : 1154 T HE ISSUE ARTICULATED BY MR. YOUNG decades ago is still relevant today and is one that a considerable number of scholars have devoted themselves to, not in terms of particular companies, but for corporations in general. This article addresses the underlying question, one that lies at the very core of corporate governance for both practicing managers and business scholars: what should be the objective of corporations in a market capitalist economy? Put somewhat differently, what should managers, who govern these firms, strive to achieve?https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.5840/beq201323215Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 52.183.12.225, on 28 Apr 2019 at 03:44:10, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at Business Ethics QuarterlyWe aim to answer these questions in two separate articles. This first article will demonstrate the weaknesses of the conventional corporate objective-shareholder wealth maximization (SWM)-from a utilitarian perspective. It will focus on the apparent logic behind SWM as part of a set of institutions intended to produce maximal social welfare, the ultimate goal of utilitarian moral thought. After finding each of the four interconnected arguments that make up that logic quite weak, we suggest a path toward a credible alternative corporate objective. The second ...