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The purpose of this paper is to focus on business responses to the pandemic through an ethical lens and to make recommendations for future research in this unique environment. The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic presents many ethical implications for businesses’ responses in balancing individual health and firm risks during the initial and recovery stages. What decisions are businesses making in this pandemic environment? What ethical foundations most align with these decisions?

The authors review recent business actions taken in response to the pandemic in light of models of motivation for corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Businesses have engaged in a wide range of philanthropic CSR actions during the pandemic, likely motivated by both utilitarianism and deontological factors in response to the needs of internal and external stakeholders. The pandemic has disparate impacts, generally hurting lower-income individuals more, likely increasing inequality.

There are many questions for future research to determine where pandemic-related CSR has different effects for businesses over the long term compared to the pre-pandemic environment.

Businesses must act to benefit society, protect employees and maintain the trust of their stakeholders during the pandemic.

Existing models have examined corporate disaster philanthropic responses that were localized and acute. Business responses to the COVID-19 virus are unique given the severity, the widespread nature and the duration of the crisis.

This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

The World Wide Web (Web) is quickly becoming an efficient and preferred medium for business transactions, information, and entertainment. Academic research is also migrating to the Web as the number of persons who have access to cyberspace increases. Tasks previously accomplished by means of traditional mail or by use of personal computers in the laboratory can now be performed at any location subjects have Internet access. The purpose of this paper is to present the issues involved when electronic research (e-research) projects are undertaken. E-research is the use of the Web to disseminate research materials to subjects, manipulate constructs, and capture empirical data. While this approach provides many opportunities for accounting behavioral researchers, certain issues must be understood and addressed before e-research projects are begun.

This research is a 6-year extension of Bernardi's (2005) initial ranking of the top ethics authors in accounting; it also represents a broadening of the scope of the original data into accounting's top-40 journals. While Bernardi only considered publications in business-ethics journals in his initial ranking, we developed a methodology to identify ethics articles in accounting's top-40 journals. The purpose of this research is to provide a more complete list of accounting's ethics authors for use by authors, administrators, and other stakeholders. In this study, 26 business-ethics and accounting's top-40 journals were analyzed for a 23-year period between 1986 through 2008. Our data indicate that 16.8 percent of the 4,680 colleagues with either a PhD or DBA who teach accounting at North American institutions had authored/coauthored one ethics article and only 6.3 percent had authored/coauthored more than one ethics article in the 66 journals we examined. Consequently, 83.2 percent of the PhDs and DBAs in accounting had not authored/coauthored even one ethics article.

In June 1999, the Government Accounting Standards Board issued Government Accounting Standards Board Statement No. 34 - Basic Financial Statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis for State and Local Governments (GASB 34) to improve the transparency and accountability of governments. This study examines the adoption of GASB 34 in local governments where the state government does not mandate GAAPcompliant financial reporting. The findings show low adoption rates among small, rural, local governments and high adoption rates among large, urban, local governments. Factors such as occupational specialization, government type, and a history of GAAP-compliant financial reporting are positively associated with adoption.

We explore a case example of hybridity between a large worker-owned cooperative and a union through three lenses: organizational forms, multiple institutional logics, and organizational identity. We delineate three types of organizational hybridity: (1) stretching an existing organizational form; (2) creating a new organizational form; and (3) and retaining multiple discrete organizational forms in a common venture. The cooperative–union hybrid shares members from the two contributing organizations, and so can be classified as a matrix sub-form of multi-organizational hybridity. This study describes how the coop-union hybrid manages the multiple logics and identities retained from both contributing organizations. It considers the hazards of combining these logics and identities, and offers some suggestions on how to avoid potential difficulties. Finally, given the complexity and inefficiencies of the matrix form, we explore whether matrix hybridity is a transitional or permanent form in this particular instance of a cooperative–union venture.