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A study to explore the impact of entrepreneur’s nonequilibrium of moral behavior on entrepreneur’s image evaluation

Jing Huang (Department of Marketing, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China)
Ruoyu Yu (Department of Management, Hainan University, Haikou, China)
Shengxiong Wen (Department of Marketing, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China)
Zelin Tong (Department of Management, Hainan University, Haikou, China)
Nan Zhou (Department of Management, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China)

Journal of Contemporary Marketing Science

ISSN: 2516-7480

Article publication date: 12 April 2022

Issue publication date: 24 June 2022

146

Abstract

Purpose

It is unattainable that entrepreneurs engage equivalent resources in public and private morality because of the limitation of resources. This study aims to conduct experiments to test how entrepreneurial deviation in morality affects legitimacy perception of consumers to entrepreneurs.

Design/methodology/approach

This study conducted secondary data analysis and experiment to test how entrepreneurial deviation in morality affects legitimacy perception of consumers to entrepreneurs.

Findings

The experimental results show that entrepreneurial deviation in morality negatively affects legitimacy perceptions of consumers to entrepreneurs. Specifically, when public moral is higher than private moral, consumers have negative perceptions of pragmatic legitimacy to entrepreneurs, because consumers perceive deviation behaviors disobey the norm “Li”. However, entrepreneurial private morality excels public morality, consumers have negative perceptions of social legitimacy to entrepreneurs because consumers perceive deviation behaviors disobey the norm “Qing”. Moreover, the authors examined entrepreneurial values moderate the effects of moral deviation and legitimacy perceptions.

Originality/value

This study expands the ethical marketing of entrepreneurs from the perspective of the deviation between public morality and private morality.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This article was previously published in Mandarin as [黄静,文胜雄,童泽林,周南.企业家道德不均衡行为对企业家形象评价的探索性研究[J].营销科学学报,2019,15(03):21-35]. This translation appears here with the permission of the Chinese Marketing Association of Universities.”

Funding: This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.71572082, 71572136, 71772003.

Citation

Huang, J., Yu, R., Wen, S., Tong, Z. and Zhou, N. (2022), "A study to explore the impact of entrepreneur’s nonequilibrium of moral behavior on entrepreneur’s image evaluation", Journal of Contemporary Marketing Science, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 49-64. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCMARS-03-2022-0004

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited

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