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This case study is based on fraudulent press releases by Turbo Global Partners, Inc., an Over the Counter (OTC) traded public company in the United States. After the fraudulent press releases, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suspended the trading of securities of Turbo Global Partners, Inc. and filed a complaint against the company in the US District Court in the Middle District of Florida. This case study presents accounting students (Intermediate II and auditing students) with various concepts related to fraud, ethics, and financial reporting. Specifically, this case study presents the concepts related to (1) fraud triangle; (2) the impact of fraud to various stakeholders; (3) debt extinguishment; (4) analysis of financial statements; (5) accounting for intangible assets; (6) analytical procedures; and (7) SEC investigation and actions. This case provides students with an opportunity of active learning as they analyze a real-world case of fraud and access professional literature such as Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) and SEC documents.

This paper seeks to deepen and improve our understanding of business ethics in services by developing a typology that reconciles and integrates disparate and often conflicting ideas and viewpoints while providing practical guidance for ethical decision-making.

The paper examines current theoretical approaches in ethics to provide an understanding of the ethical theories, how they have been applied and how they have evolved in businesses and marketing. It discusses conceptual issues related to ethical dilemmas and the available typologies.

Based on the axioms of the Triple-A Framework for Ethical Service Research, the Typology of Ethical Dilemmas in Services (TEDS) is proposed. The typology identifies three types of dilemmas based on four dimensions considering all service interactions guided by normative ethics (virtue, deontological and consequentialism).

The proposed DILEMMAS process illustrates the practical application of TEDS.

This paper extends the ethics and services literature by offering a novel theoretical and practical approach to addressing ethical dilemmas. TEDS is authentic, advances our knowledge and applies to all service organizations that aim to manage ethical dilemmas effectively.

The global economy has already experienced recession in 1975, 1982, 1991, 2007 (the Great Recession or the Global Financial Meltdown), and 2020 (The Pandemic Recession). When hope of recovery has just started to emerge with real gross domestic product (GDP) growth reaching 5.7% in 2021, dark clouds are gathering ominously on the horizon again. In January 2022, the World Bank's forecasts (for global growth) were 4.1% for 2022 and 3.3% for 2023. Not only the indicators like industrial activity are shrinking, consumer and investor confidence is at a low point, workers are losing jobs, profit margins and global trade are showing a downward trend, after a period of post-pandemic expansion. But most worrying is the slowing down of the Big Trio of USA-China-Euro Zone that currently accounts for over 50% of real global GDP in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms and contributed 62% to global growth over 2015–2019. Moreover, energy and food prices are showing rising trend, and Ukraine war is showing no sign of ending in the near future. In this context, the present chapter attempts to analyze whether with prices rising and productive activities (including trade) shrinking (described as “stagflation”), is the world headed for another serious slump, and if that happens, what will be its severity? It also tries to point out some limitations of the policy suggestions of the structural projection models used by the World Bank. It also tries to point out the policy suggestions of the models used by the World Bank.

This study focuses on HR practices that foster employee engagement during Covid-19. Companies in transition economies are particularly vulnerable to crisis and downsizing and other recessionary practices are frequently used.

Drawing on the model of caring human resource management, we utilise interviews with human resource representatives of 10 banks in the transition economy of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We analyse the banks at two different times to demonstrate how and why companies adapt their HR practices.

Our findings show a changing mindset in the deployment of highly context-specific HR practices. Strengthening company culture through a sense of community and communication ensure stability and continuity in work. Rather than layoffs, flexible work has become standard.

By highlighting the interplay between HR practices and employee engagement, we contribute to the discussion on engagement in exceptional circumstances and challenging settings and demonstrate how caring responsibilities “migrate” into HR practices in the professional context of a transition economy.

We propose a context-specific “protective caring approach” to foster employee engagement during crises.

This article studies a court case heard by the European Court of Justice in 2008 concerning employment discrimination faced by the mother of a disabled child. This case illustrates the search for a fair balance between informal care work and employment in a market economy is a fresh perspective. The very terms of social justice must be recast for the implementation of a more caring society wherein informal caregivers must be recognized as very often constituting a socially disadvantaged group. The development of a caring society requires a more comprehensive examination of power relations between informal caregivers and care recipients or resulting from care activities. Most analyses of care activities reveal a social reality involving structurally unequal agents. Among these are informal caregivers who face situations of inequality, which will not be overcome as long as care continues to be seen through the category of dependency, unilaterally assigned to those on the receiving end of care.

Professional and corporate codes of ethics (Codes) are commonly used, but they are not consistently effective. Research has indicated the importance of values included in Codes, but there is little research exploring how to improve the effectiveness of Code values. There are proven pedagogies that can be used in ethics training, notably, the values-focused approach known as value self-confrontation (VSC). VSC comes from the field of psychology and has been researched for over 50 years. This theory-based methodology is effective at increasing the importance of targeted values and positively changing attitudes and behaviors. Based on our thematic review of extant VSC literature, we develop a simplified VSC implementation strategy and instrument called code value self-confrontation (CVSC). CVSC involves a self-confrontation between a participant’s personal values and the values of the organization. This confrontation can create value dissonance in the participant, which can increase the importance given to the values of the organization. VSC has been effective at positively impacting pro-organization behaviors as well as societal issues such as equality, race relations, and environmentalism. By increasing the importance of ethical values, organizations can be rewarded with behavioral changes that translate into more ethical work behaviors and decision-making.

Vocational education and training (VET) in Australia has for some time been driven by an agenda of “reasonable adjustment”, in which practices are modified to ensure equitable access and participation by disadvantaged students. However, the growing marketization of VET has instead encouraged the use of more flexible approaches to attract and retain students from diverse backgrounds. They have thus paralleled and confounded reasonable adjustment practices for inclusive development. This study sought to identify the moral dilemmas experienced by VET teachers arising from implementing reasonable adjustment practices.

This phenomenological research project used in-depth conversational interviews with 19 experienced VET teachers from a diversity of teaching fields to identify moral dilemmas experienced as arising from changes in their workplace contexts.

One of the identified dilemmas was responding flexibly to heightened student diversity, to which study participants largely responded by prioritising the economic imperative over social inclusion. Well-intended actions thus led to unintentionally damaging outcomes, raising important ethical questions about the relative value of economic and social development outcomes and the role of reasonable adjustment in their attainment. The study also highlights the lack of appropriate VET teacher training in managing ethical conflicts to minimise risks to themselves and their employing organizations.

As a case study of inclusive development policies in practice, this research may be seen as a cautionary tale for inclusive development policies in other countries with similarly strong VET economic and socially inclusive development policies for sustainability. The paper thus opens a dialogue for critical reflection on the current problems in a reasonable development approach in the field of comparative and international education. Those two parallel agendas have presented VET teachers and trainers with ethically challenging situations in which the economic and social development imperatives are experienced as being conflict with each other.

The increasing relevance of environmental, social and governance (ESG) engagement has attracted interest in its drivers and effects on business outcomes under different organizational settings. By focusing on family firms (FFs), we deepen both the role of business ethics as a predictor of enhanced ESG engagement and the link with improved corporate financial performance (CFP). In this way, we aim to provide new insights into the impact of business ethics and ESG engagement on FFs competitiveness.

Based on a worldwide panel of 335 FFs covering the 2002–2020 time horizon, this study adopts a two-stage Heckman model (1979) to empirically address two research questions: (RQ1) Do business ethics predict greater ESG engagement in FFs? (RQ2) Does ESG engagement positively affect the corporate financial performance (CFP) of FFs?

The results of the current study are twofold. First, we demonstrate that an ethical approach to business drives greater ESG engagement. Second, we show that higher levels of ESG engagement lead to improved financial performance in FFs.

Our study contributes to filling the knowledge gaps regarding the drivers and effects of ESG engagement in FFs. On the one hand, we demonstrate the positive connection between dimensions that have their own identity, such as business ethics and ESG constructs. On the other hand, by shedding light on the impact of ESG engagement on improved CFP, we contribute to solving the trade-off between economic and noneconomic FF goals.

The aim of this study is to empirically explore and analyze the concrete tasks of output measurement and the inherent challenges related to these tasks in a traditional and autonomous professional public work setting – the judicial system.

The analysis of the tasks is based on a categorization of general performance measurement motives (control-motivate-learn) and main stakeholder levels (society-organization-professionals). The analysis is exploratory and conducted as an empirical content analysis on materials and reports produced in two performance improvement projects conducted in European justice organizations.

The identified main tasks in the different categories are related to managing resources, controlling performance deviations, and encouraging improvement and development of performance. Based on the results, key improvement areas connected to output measurement in professional public organizations are connected to the improvement of objectivity and fairness in budgeting and work allocation practices, improvement of output measures' versatility and informativeness to highlight motivational and learning purposes, improvement of professional self-management in setting output targets and producing outputs, as well as improvement of organizational learning from the output measurement.

The paper presents empirically founded practical examples of challenges and improvement opportunities related to the tasks of output measurement in professional public organization.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how general performance management motives realize as concrete tasks of output measurement in justice organizations.