Gene R. Laczniak

The influence of stated organizational concern upon ethical decision making

This experimental study evaluated the influence of stated organizational concern for ethical conduct upon managerial behavior. Using an in-basket to house the manipulation, a sample of 113 MBA students with some managerial experience reacted to scenarios suggesting illegal conduct and others suggesting only unethical behavior. Stated organizational concern for ethical conduct was varied from none (control group) to several other situations which included a high treatment consisting of a Code of Ethics, an endorsement letter by the CEO and specific sanctions for managerial misconduct. Only in the case of suggested illegal behavior tempered by high organizational concern were managers influenced by organizational policy to modify the morality of their actions. However, the responses to the illegal scenarios were significantly “more ethical” than the reactions given to the unethical (but not illegal) situations. The implications of these findings are then discussed.

The evolving marketing concept, competitive intensity and organizational performance

Marketing educators generally assume in their teaching that there is little inconsistency between adherence to the marketing concept and the stakeholder concept. Some assume that the latter is a logical extension of the former but there has been no empirical analysis of this issue. In this paper, research based on the perceptions of Fortune 500 executives is presented which focuses on this issue. Of particular concern are their views concerning the future business environment, organizational conduct and expected performance in 1995. This data is used to empirically examine the inseparability of the marketing concept and stakeholder concept. In addition, the relationship of the competitive environment upon these philosophies as well as upon perceived organizational performance is empirically investigated and discussed.

Ethical Marketing Decisions: The Higher Road

1. Analyzing Marketing Ethics. 2. Ethical Reasoning and Marketing Decisions. 3. Ethics in Marketing Research. 4. Product Management Ethics. 5. Ethical Issues in Distribution, Retailing and Pricing. 6. Ethical Concerns in Advertising. 7. Personal Selling Ethics. 8. International Marketing Ethics. 9. The Ethics of Social, Professional, and Political Marketing. 10. Implementing and Auditing Marketing Ethics.

Normative Perspectives for Ethical and Socially Responsible Marketing

This article presents a normative set of recommendations for elevating the practice of marketing ethics. The approach is grounded in seven essential perspectives involving multiple aspirational dimensions implicit in ethical marketing. More important, each basic perspective (BP), while singularly useful, is also integrated with the other observations as well as grounded in the extant ethics literature. This combination of BPs, adhering to the tenets of normative theory postulation, generates a connective, holistic approach that addresses some of the major factors marketing managers should consider if they desire to conduct their marketing campaigns with the highest levels of ethics and social responsibility.

An ethical basis for relationship marketing: a virtue ethics perspective

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an ethical foundation for relationship marketing using a virtue ethics approach.Design/methodology/approach – The approach is a conceptual one providing a background on relationship marketing from both American and European perspectives. Earlier studies published in EJM on relationship marketing are featured in a table.Findings – The proposed ethical relationship marketing approach has three stages (establishing, sustaining and reinforcing) that are paired with specific virtues (trust, commitment and diligence). These and other facilitating virtues are shown in a figure.Researchlimitations/implications – The model and its components have yet to be tested empirically. Some strategies for undertaking such research are discussed.Practical implications – Several European and American companies that currently practice ethical relationship marketing are discussed.Originality/value – Although relationship marketing has been studied for a number of years by many s...

Fostering Ethical Marketing Decisions

This paper begins by examining several potentially unethical recent marketing practices. Since most marketing managers face ethical dilemmas during their careers, it is essential to study the moral consequences of these decisions. A typology of ways that managers might confront ethical issues is proposed. The significant organizational, personal and societal costs emanting from unethical behavior are also discussed. Both relatively simple frameworks and more comprehensive models for evaluating ethical decisions in marketing are summarized. Finally, the fact that organizational commitment to fostering ethical marketing decisions can be accomplished by top management leadership, codes of ethics, ethics seminars/programs and ethical audits is examined.

Distributive Justice: Pressing Questions, Emerging Directions, and the Promise of Rawlsian Analysis

DJ has an ethics component because it concerns the fairness of allocations; such adjudications always involve inherently moral judgments (Laczniak 1999). In fact, the American Marketing Association Statement of Norms and Values lists fairness as one of six ethical values for marketers. For example, even when the transactions between a large retailer and consumers are overwhelmingly positive and satisfying, members of the supply chain may have been unfairly exploited as a by-product of that system. For instance, some have claimed—perhaps too stridently—that while “big box” retailers are advantageous for large numbers of consumers, some of these benefits have come at the disproportionate expense of small suppliers and familyowned retail competitors (Fishman 2003). While big box retailing is clearly a net economic plus, this occurrence may have happened due to a flaw in the distributional system that did not fairly compensate all the players in the value chain. Such DJ questions are germane to the moral responsibility of marketing. In articulating what they consider to be the major normative perspectives of ethical marketing, Laczniak and Murphy (2006) portray the principle of DJ as one of the fundamental ethical tenets to be considered when evaluating the social dimensions of marketing practices. DJ also has a public policy component because inequities (i.e., benefits and burdens) resulting from “unfair” marketing practices are often remedied by legal regulation (Gundlach, Block, and Wilkie 2007; Gundlach and Murphy 1993). The Federal Trade Commission adopted the fairness doctrine some years ago to promote more ethical advertising. For instance, while marketers have the right to gather information from consenting parties via the Internet, their ability is markedly restricted when it comes to gathering information from minors owing to the Children’s On-line Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998. Day and Montgomery Over the years, the concept of distributive justice (DJ) has consistently been defined as addressing how a community treats its members in terms of the assignments of benefits and burdens according to some standard of fairness (Johnson 1956; Jackson 2005). Unlike other aggregate concepts used in social economics and macromarketing (e.g., Quality of Life or living wage) that have dynamically shifted definitions depending on time and place, our understanding of the core meaning of DJ has remained remarkably stable. Despite the definitional stability, as we learn below, this situation does not mean that arriving at a consensus about whether DJ has been attained in specific business situations is simplistic or uncontroversial. Indeed, as we shall see, quite the opposite seems to be the case. From our initial definition above, it follows that DJ applied to marketing deals with how the marketing system, in terms of its structure, policies, or practices, fairly apportions rewards and penalties among the various parties affected by the market exchange process. Examples of topical issues with DJ implications that come to mind are: (1) the treatment of suppliers and consumers when marketers establish footholds in emerging markets, (2) the seeming lack of leverage for subprime borrowers when they try to purchase a home or automobile, and (3) the proportionate awards going to migrant farm workers who are employed in the agribusiness supply chain. As globalization of the economy inevitably expands further and business targets more impoverished market segments, the concerns of DJ will only become more critical. Of course, no definition of a particular social concept exists in a vacuum. A further consideration in any analysis of DJ in a marketing context is that it is tethered in clear connection to major streams of the marketing literature, especially ethics, public policy, and macromarketing. Together these research connections create a “distributive justice nexus” worth noting because these highlighted areas of the marketing literature can shed insight on DJ questions. This nexus is summarized in Figure 1 and is now discussed briefly.

Marketing to the poor: An integrative justice model for engaging impoverished market segments

The relatively recent entry of multinational corporations (MNCs) into low-income markets, particularly in developing countries, affords the opportunity for the more inclusive capitalism envisioned by globalists. Alternatively, an expansion of MNC marketing in less developed economies might foreshadow the greater exploitation of disadvantaged consumers predicted by many critics of expanded free trade. To diffuse the charge of “exploitative” marketing, it is imperative that corporate marketing efforts seeking to engage impoverished segments be grounded in a strong ethical framework. This article unveils one such framework—the “integrative justice model” (IJM). The IJM is an aspirational model that outlines how to market ethically to disadvantaged consumers in both developed and developing countries. The authors derive the elements of this model from frameworks of moral philosophy and management theory. Although the IJM is normative in nature, the authors connect it to real-world examples, which provides MNCs that market to the poor practical benchmarks for conducting their business operations with fairness and equity. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the IJM for public policy.

The social disorder of the broadened concept of marketing

The concept of “social order” is fundamental to the stability of most social systems. In this paper, three dimensions of social order—drawn predominantly from the writings of Talcott Parsons—are analyzed in terms of how they are influenced by broadened marketing. The authors maintain that the widespread acceptance and application of broadened marketing,defined as marketing, is inconsistant with social order and could ultimately erode the reputation of all marketing practioners. Furthermore, such a series of events could lead to the severe regulation of marketing practices and the development of inhibitions by bright young students regarding the formal study of marketing.

Ethics and Personal Selling: Death of a Salesman as an Ethical Primer

AbstractUsing the motif of the famous play, Death of a Salesman, this article discusses a number of critical issues facing sales managers that involve ethical concerns. The play provides a launching point for the discussion of sales ethics and the development of an ethical primer intended for sales representatives and managers.