This study examines counterfeit luxury consumption among young adult Chinese students and how established motivations are reconsidered through Taoist consumption values. While previous research identifies financial, social, symbolic, and experiential motivations for counterfeit luxury consumption, this study examines how consumers evaluate these motivations when prompted to reflect through a culturally grounded ethical perspective. Drawing on nine phenomenological interviews with Chinese students studying in Australia who had previously purchased counterfeit luxury products in China, the study identifies four motivations: face and social recognition, fashion seeking, symbolic brand experience, and curiosity. Financial accessibility enabled access to perceived consumption benefits but did not independently explain counterfeit purchasing. When Taoist consumption values were introduced, participants reconsidered these motivations to different extents. Reflection was particularly evident for motivations associated with external recognition and repeated purchasing, while curiosity prompted less reconsideration. The findings suggest that prompted ethical reflection varies according to the relationship between the values introduced and the perceived benefits supporting different motivations. The study positions Taoist consumption values as a culturally grounded framework for prompted ethical reflection rather than an explanation of participants’ original purchasing decisions.
Corporate psychopaths, identifiable as ruthlessly unethical leaders in business, have regularly appeared throughout recent history. However, in this current paper, we explore what may be the World’s earliest identified corporate psychopath operating within a multinational company: the ‘Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie’ (the VOC or Dutch East India Company). As a merchant manager with what is regarded as the World’s first multinational shareholder-owned corporation, Jeronimus Cornelisz assumed command of approximately 200 survivors who were shipwrecked from the flagship Batavia on route to Jakarta. Cornelisz changed the membership of his ruling council of four to appoint his fellow mutinous plotters and thereby guarantee his rule. From the historian Mike Dash’s account and other historical records, it is clear that Jeronimus Cornelisz established an authoritarian, tyrannical form of leadership known as psychopathic leadership. This current paper reviews the events through the lens of a theory of business ethics and leadership called corporate psychopathy theory and identifies Cornelisz as a prototypical primary or corporate psychopath. This extends corporate psychopathy theory historically by showing evidence of corporate psychopathy from 1629. This also gives further insights into the ruthlessness and greed of early European colonial expansion into Asia. Additionally, evidence is provided supporting corporate psychopathy theory by demonstrating the applicability of the idea that corporate psychopaths adopt a common ‘modus operandi’ involving the establishment of a culture of fear across organisations, time and geographies. Findings support corporate psychopathy theory by showing that unethical businesspeople can and do reach senior leadership positions. Additionally, theory is extended by delineating the manner in which these psychopathic leaders defend and maintain their positions. Support is also given by current findings to leadership commentators, from Plato through to Bass and others, who stress the importance of virtue ethics and character for leadership effectiveness and behaviour. This underlines the need for human resource personnel to pay attention to the characters and morals of those selected for senior leadership.
This study is to observe whistleblowing as a moral and contextual process shaped by the interaction of individual moral agency, institutional power, and cultural legitimacy. The study adopts a qualitative interpretive approach using in-depth interviews across multiple functional areas in three Indonesian cities. Empirical patterns were first synthesised into the “Moral Processing Model of Whistleblowing Intentions”, which explains how individuals negotiate competing obligations to truth, loyalty, self-preservation, and public responsibility when deciding whether to report wrongdoing. Further analysis led to the Model of Moral-Contextual Whistleblowing, which conceptualises integrity-driven, conflict-driven, resistance-driven, and suppressed whistleblowing patterns. Together, these models demonstrate that whistleblowing and silence emerge through the interaction of moral agency, institutional power, and cultural legitimacy rather than through simple risk calculations or intention-based reasoning. So, this study advances whistleblowing literature by moving beyond instrumental and intention-based models.
This study examines how legal and regulatory frameworks in emerging economies, with a particular focus on Vietnam, govern corporate responsibility and the ethical limits of business and human rights (BHR) governance. We argue that while the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) provide an essential governance framework for corporate responsibility, the implementation of human rights due diligence inevitably depends upon procedural mechanisms that cannot, by themselves, fully capture the ethical responsiveness required by the vulnerability of affected stakeholders. By analyzing Vietnam’s legal framework, regulatory reforms, and major corporate scandals, we identify a persistent gap between regulatory intent and ethical outcomes, showing how governance tends to center organizational accountability while diffusing responsibility away from vulnerable groups. To explain this gap, we mobilize Levinasian ethics as a theoretical intervention, revealing a blind spot in contemporary BHR governance: the translation of ethical responsibility into procedural forms that can obscure vulnerability and sideline rightsholders. Theoretically, we introduce a Levinasian relational ethics lens that complements existing BHR governance by illuminating the ethical limits of procedural approaches to human rights due diligence. Empirically, we undertake a comparative analysis of selected governance instruments across the United States, China, and Vietnam to examine how different institutional arrangement’s structure responsibility toward vulnerable stakeholders. Finally, we propose an empathy duty as a normative governance principle that guides the interpretation and implementation of existing legal and governance obligations, thereby strengthening the ethical orientation of BHR governance through continuous responsiveness to vulnerable stakeholders.
