INTRODUCTIONSince the early 1980s the field of purchasing and supply management has undergone dramatic change presenting professionals with an array of new, continually evolving challenges to effective supply chain management. Identified and analyzed in recent studies (WEF 2013; PwC 2013a; Carter, et al., 2012; McKinsey, 2010), current challenges expected to continue into the future for supply chains include, among others, rising competitive pressures, consumer expectations about customer services and product quality, complex patterns and volatility of customer demand, the increasing role of global markets for labor and talent including rising wages, constant changes in regulatory requirements, the need for increased automation and improved transparency, a focus on sustainability and social responsibility, a growing need for continuing education and skills training for employees in response to the rapidly changing nature of the functions involved in effective supply chain management, inadequate crossfunctional collaboration regarding supply chain-related issues, and limited involvement of CEOs in supply chain planning.Differing approaches employed by organizations to bring about change in response to these and other challenges are all rooted in a set of values, some of which are more likely to lead to ethical outcomes than (Burnes and By, 2012, p. 239; Giacalone, Jurkiewicz and Deckop, 2008). Whereas some approaches for dealing with change are built on a base composed of ethical principles, others give little, if any, direct recognition to ethics, relying instead heavily on power and politics to bring about change (Burnes and By, 2012). The past several decades have witnessed an ongoing global shift in values in which the importance of materialism has declined relative to that of expansive values focusing, according to Jurkiewicz and Giacalone (2008), on individual lifestyle preferences, the well being of people in society, and concern for group and values-based oriented outcomes. New ethical expectations of internal and external stakeholders arising from this shift in the priority of values have led many organizations to adopt new ethical principles reflecting expansive values (Giacalone, Jurkiewicz and Knouse, 2012). Organizations have become more concerned with incorporating the three key elements of sustainability-environmental, social, and economic-into decisionmaking. Ethics principles are being broadened to reflect more directly societal values related to human and labor rights. Businesses are expanding their responsibilities for the behavior of others with whom they do business.This paper examines the extent to which supply managers, currently engaged in dealing with potential change that in many cases may prove to be critical to the effective operation of supply chains in the future, are facing an ethical environment that has shifted over the past two decades. The findings of a study conducted in 1995 by Cooper, Frank and Kemp (1997) and cosponsored by the National Association of Purchasing Managers (NAPM) are compared with those of a 2012 follow-up study of the key ethical issues currently faced by those managing supply chains. Once again, data was gathered using an ethical issues questionnaire sent during the last quarter of 2012 to randomly selected samples of the Institute for Supply Management's (ISM, formerly NAPM) members some with and others without professional designations. The questionnaire also included items used to gather information about the respondents and their companies (or government organizations) to permit analysis of the issues for various participant subgroups.SURVEY DESIGNISM maintains membership lists that identify those holding professional designations and those who do not, hereafter referred to as designees and members, respectively. ISM members were randomly selected from each group, making 2,000 designees and 2,000 members available for the survey. …

With the nursing profession continuing to face an array of ethical issues, the article reports the findings of a survey of members of the American Organization of Nurse Executives conducted in 2012 to determine the extent to which nurse leaders at different organization levels perceive various factors in their personal, professional and organizational environments to be helpful in resolving ethical dilemmas. After their personal values, nurse leaders perceive factors related to their organization to be more helpful than those related to their profession, including, among others, the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics. The two highest rated business-related factors deal with the absence of pressure to compromise one’s own ethical standards which suggests that one way healthcare organizations can assist nurses and their leaders is by neither explicitly nor implicitly pressuring them to go against their own ethical values. Other key factors related to the organization include formal organizational factors such as the existence of an ethics committee or a person to whom unethical activity can be reported as well as more informal factors related to organizational climate such as the actions and responsiveness of one’s immediate boss, the ability to go beyond one’s boss if necessary, the organizational culture, management philosophy, and management’s communication of appropriate ethical behavior. Comparison of the findings of the 2012 survey with those of a similar study conducted in 2000 indicated the four factors perceived as most helpful in both studies were identical with the same rank order and the top-10 factors were identical with some differences in ranking. Further analysis indicated the relative degree of helpfulness of the 17 help factors common to both studies was perceived by responding nurse leaders as quite similar overall. The authors also discuss the implications for the profession and the healthcare industry today and in the future.

Background: After more than a decade of the nursing profession contending that healthcare reform based almost exclusively on cost cutting was creating an array of serious ethical issues for nurses, healthcare organizations and other providers are now facing increasing demands primarily from payers to demonstrate improvement in both quality of care and patient experience along with continued cost reduction. Research Question: Have efforts by healthcare organizations to comply with these recently imposed requirements influenced the ethical environment faced by nurses and nurse leaders and if so, how? Materials and Methods: Data for assessing the current ethical environment was gathered with a close-ended survey mailed in October 2012 to a random sample of 3000 members of the American Organization of Nurse Executives. Results and Discussion: Statistical analysis of the data and comparison with the findings of a similar study conducted in 2000 indicated that along with five highly rated issues in the earlier study attributed largely to economic constraints imposed by healthcare organizations, the top-10 key ethical issues today included five issues primarily attributable to interprofessional conflict. Conclusion: Given the success of many ongoing efforts aimed at weakening these key sources of ethical conflict that have blocked many proposals to improve the quality of care, opportunities should arise for the nursing profession to more fully achieve its goals of improving the quality of care, safety and patient satisfaction and enhancing nurses’ work environments essential to that effort.

Along with competence, ethical behavior is a key component of professionalism. In carrying out their duties, all life insurance professionals encounter a variety of ethical dilemmas as well as a number of factors that can present challenges to their efforts to resolve these dilemmas in an ethical manner. By comparing the ethical environments of the U.S. and South Korean life insurance industries, this paper examines how significant differences in culture can affect the key ethical issues and the hindrances to ethical behavior faced by life insurance professionals working in the two countries.

This paper presents the findings of two surveys conducted in April 2003 of Chartered Life Underwriters (CLUs) and Chartered Financial Consultants (ChFCs) who are members of the Society of Financial Service Professionals. The first survey of 3000 CLUs and ChFCs – the life insurance industry’s most highly regarded professionals – was aimed at identifying the key ethical issues faced by professionals working in the life insurance industry today. A comparison of these findings with those of earlier studies conducted in 1990 and 1995 suggests that while the key ethical issues facing those working in the life insurance business today are essentially the same as those encountered during industry’s highly troubled ethical environment of the early 1990s, these issues are perceived as presenting somewhat less serious problems than in the past. The second survey of 3000 CLUs and ChFCs was aimed at determining the extent to which these professionals perceive the industry created Insurance Marketplace Standards Association (IMSA) as having contributed to any change in the ethical environment that has taken place. The findings suggest that IMSA has played an important role in influencing senior managers to more strongly encourage and support ethical market conduct, a critical step in improving the industry’s ethical environment.

Traditionally, corporate governance has focused on the problem of crafting mechanisms to align the interests of owners and managers. The key characteristic has been to minimize the potential for managers to act in their own self-interest at the expense of shareholders. The purpose of this paper is to focus on employees as stakeholders in the governance process. We argue that creating an environment where employees have help in behaving ethically, in the course of their work, is the first step in encouraging them to voice observations of wrongdoing. Seven groups of professionals in the accounting and insurance fields were surveyed during a 10-year period and asked to indicate the extent to which 14 items were helpful in dealing with ethical challenges. Over 2700 responses were analyzed. The findings indicate that professionals think that their organizational culture and policy for voice was more helpful in dealing with ethical dilemmas than was their professional association.

The authors compare the results of a May 2002 ethics issues survey of staff nurses who are members of the American Nurses Association (ANA) with those of a February 2000 survey of American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE) nurse leaders. The findings reveal a common set of key ethical issues that result from the ineffective management of the conflict between clinical ethics and organizational ethics. Implications for healthcare professionals and the organizations that employ them are discussed.

This paper examines several key aspects of the ethical environment facing the insurance industries of Poland, The Czech Republic and Hungary as they complete the transition from Communist insurance systems built upon state-owned monopolies to viable private domestic insurance markets, and then seek to harmonize their markets with the single insurance market of the European Union. Since many types of ethical problems encountered during the transition are unlikely to diminish significantly as a result of either privatization or regulation of the insurance markets of these countries, measures are identified that should help to improve the ethical environments of these markets.

Professional healthcare providers are held responsible for technologic and financial decisions and also for the moral ramifications of their decisions. The authors report the findings of a survey of nurse leaders conducted to determine the key factors that provide help and present challenges as they seek to respond ethically to the dilemmas encountered in the course of their work. Implications for the healthcare industry and the nursing profession are discussed.

Based on the findings of several research studies of professionals in both the property-liability insurance industry and the life insurance industry, the paper makes and supports several important points. First, ethical challenges in the insurance industry involve not only a series of ethical dilemmas frequently faced by those working in the business, but also a variety of factors that hinder those working in the industry as they seek to resolve the ethical dilemmas encountered in the course of their work. Both of these two components of ethical challenges must be understood by those in the financial services industry who will deal with insurance operations in the future. Second, whereas the life insurance business and the property-liability insurance business have traditionally been viewed as being quite different from one another and still are in terms of operations and regulation, the research findings show that they are no longer very different in terms of the key ethical challenges faced by those working in the two segments of the industry. The paper shows how during the past decade the ethical challenges in the property-liability insurance industry have become quite similar to those in the more troubled life insurance industry.

By the very nature of their daily work, nurse executives find themselves at the crossroads of the changing and challenging healthcare ethical environment in which clinical ethics and organizational ethics often collide. The authors present the findings of a survey of members of American Organization of Nurse Executives aimed at more clearly identifying the key ethical issues encountered in healthcare organizations by their nurse executives and others. Implications of the findings for healthcare organizations and their managers also are discussed briefly.

This paper presents the findings of a study of purchasing and supply management professionals in India conducted to identify the key ethical issues they face in carrying out their work related responsibilities as well as to determine the extent to which various factors appear to be helpful or to present challenges to their efforts to act ethically in the course of their work. The Indian findings are then compared to those for studies conducted among purchasing and supply management professionals in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. Key findings for the four studies are summarized and implications for business and the professions are presented.

This paper presents the key findings of a study cosponsored by The Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply that surveyed 1,500 CIPS members in an effort to (1) identify the key ethical issues facing the profession of purchasing and supply chain management today, and (2) determine the extent to which those working in the profession tend to find various factors to be helpful or to present challenges to their efforts to act ethically in the conduct of their work. The implications of the key findings for business and the profession - both CIPS and its individual members - are discussed.

This article presents the key findings of a study cosponsored by NAPM that surveyed NAPM members in an effort to (1) identify the key ethical issues facing the profession of purchasing and materials management today, and (2) determine the extent to which purchasing professionals find various factors to be helpful or to present challenges to their efforts to act ethically. A comparison of the findings for C.P.M.s and non‐C.P.M.s indicates that the two groups of NAPM members have very similar views regarding the key ethical issues and the helps and challenges encountered by the profession. The implications of the key findings for business and the profession are discussed.

This paper compares the findings of studies of seven groups of professionals in various key segments of the fields of accounting and insurance conducted during 1990 through 1994 in an effort to determine the extent to which they tend to rely on various factors in their business and professional environments for help in behaving ethically in the course of their work. Commonalities among the findings for these rather diverse groups are highlighted and their possible implications for business and the professions are discussed.

Based on the results of a study conducted in 1988 in conjunction with the Center for Advanced Purchasing Studies (CAPS), Janson (1988, p. 7) concluded, "Ethical challenges have dramatically increased for purchasing personnel as well as for management in general." With the business environment in general becoming increasingly competitive and tumultuous in recent years, those in the profession of purchasing and supply management continue to face a very challenging ethical envi ronment. In light of the increasing emphasis being placed on ethics throughout the business world today, the National Association of Purchasing Management (NAPM) cosponsored a 1995 study of 6,000 of its members?3,000 C.P.M.s (members who hold the Certified Purchasing Manager designation) and 3,000 non-C.P.M.s-in an effort to get an updated and expanded picture of the ethical environment faced by those in the field of purchasing and materials management in the United States. In addition to identifying the key ethical issues faced by U.S. purchasers (a task undertaken periodically in the past by other researchers, including Rudelius and Buchholz, 1979; Dubinsky and Gwin, 1981; and Forker and Janson, 1990), the recent study of NAPM members also identified the key factors which those in the profession view as helping and hindering their efforts to respond