Gian Luca Casali

A Quest for Ethical Decision Making: Searching for the Holy Grail, and Finding the Sacred Trinity in Ethical Decision‐Making by Managers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify what ethical framework(s) small business managers use in making decisions, and whether they differ from those drawn on by the wider community?Design/methodology/approach – A scale for managerial ethical decision‐making has been used, targeting small business people and academics and students in Australia. This scale was piloted in a geographical test community in Queensland Australia. Targeted respondents were asked to fill in the self‐assessment survey (MEP). A quantitative evaluation of the results was carried out by measuring variance between eight ethical variables by ANOVA (analysis of variance).Findings – This study found statistically significant differences in the ethical decision‐making profile of business and non‐business decision makers. Contrary to expectations, small business people do not hold economical return as the most important factor in making managerial decisions to the exclusion of other more ethical criteria. There are, however, sig...

Ethical values in emergency medical services A pilot study

Background: Ambulance professionals often address conflicts between ethical values. As individuals’ values represent basic convictions of what is right or good and motivate behaviour, research is needed to understand their value profiles. Objectives: To translate and adapt the Managerial Values Profile to Spanish and Swedish, and measure the presence of utilitarianism, moral rights and/or social justice in ambulance professionals’ value profiles in Spain and Sweden. Methods: The instrument was translated and culturally adapted. A content validity index was calculated. Pilot tests were carried out with 46 participants. Ethical considerations: This study conforms to the ethical principles for research involving human subjects and adheres to national laws and regulations concerning informed consent and confidentiality. Findings: Spanish professionals favoured justice and Swedish professionals’ rights in their ambulance organizations. Both countries favoured utilitarianism least. Gender differences across countries showed that males favoured rights. Spanish female professionals favoured justice most strongly of all. Discussion: Swedes favour rights while Spaniards favour justice. Both contexts scored low on utilitarianism focusing on total population effect, preferring the opposite, individualized approach of the rights and justice perspectives. Organizational investment in a utilitarian perspective might jeopardize ambulance professionals’ moral right to make individual assessments based on the needs of the patient at hand. Utilitarianism and a caring ethos appear as stark opposites. However, a caring ethos in its turn might well involve unreasonable demands on the individual carer’s professional role. Since both the justice and rights perspectives portrayed in the survey mainly concern relationship to the organization and peers within the organization, this relationship might at worst be given priority over the equal treatment and moral rights of the patient. Conclusion: A balanced view on ethical perspectives is needed to make professionals observant and ready to act optimally – especially if these perspectives are used in patient care. Research is needed to clarify how justice and rights are prioritized by ambulance services and whether or not these organization-related values are also implemented in patient care.

Understanding Roles and Functions of Academic Libraries as Innovation Intermediaries within the Service-Dominant Logic Perspective: An Australian Case Study

ABSTRACT This study defines the academic library as an innovation intermediary that under the service-dominant logic perspective has a role of co-creator of value instead of a traditional service provider focused on collecting and exchanging knowledge. Innovation intermediaries develop a number of roles and functions to stimulate knowledge creation and transfer by supporting interactions and collaborations among multiple parties. As result, 2×2 Matrix was created to position each librarys service based on its unique combination of necessary innovation roles and functions. A single case study focused on a university library and highlighted the existence of two different types of intermediaries: generalist and specialist.

A Journey Through Possible Views of Relational Logic

This chapter discusses how the relational logic is one of the most interesting and profitable management paradigms to understand firms’ behaviour and to foster value co-creation processes.

DO SMES CLUSTER AROUND INNOVATION ACTIVITIES? DISCOVERING ACTIVE, INCREMENTAL AND OPPORTUNISTIC INNOVATORS

Do SMEs cluster around different types of innovation activities? Are there patterns of SME innovation activities? To investigate we develop a taxonomy of innovation activities in SMEs using a qualitative study, followed by a survey. First, based upon our qualitative research and literature review we develop a comprehensive list of innovation activities SMEs typically engage in. We then conduct a factor analysis to determine if these activities can be combined into factors. We identify three innovation activity factors: R&D activities, incremental innovation activities and cost innovation activities. We use these factors to identify three clusters of firms engaging in similar innovation activities: active innovators, incremental innovators and opportunistic innovators. The clusters are enriched by validating that they also exhibit significant internal similarities and external differences in their innovation skills, demographics, industry segments and family business ownership. This research contributes to innovation and SME theory and practice by identifying SME clusters based upon their innovation activities.