As I write this editorial March has been a humanitarian tragedy with the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces. Most had hoped that land grabbing by wealthy nations was a venture of the distant past. Unfortunately, that hope has been extinguished. For a business journal the invasion has provided interesting insights into business ethics. Over the past three decades business ethics has been a significant topic of universities and colleges with schools establishing centers, courses and case studies around the issue. Several editorials in this journal have questioned whether business ethics is a distinct topic or a small part of the broader area of philosophy. At the heart of this seems to be to actually make an impact who should be teaching ethics and when that instruction should begin. While it is fodder for debate as to who should provide the instruction it seems rather fool hearty to believe that a three-credit course embedded within a four year undergraduate or two years of graduate study can make much of a dent in 20–30 years of life. The formula for how much impact a course or several case studies would have would appear something like: Impact effect of a course = 40 hours/71,200 (8 hours a day × 25 years). What has been interesting over the last months has been what seems to be a difference between macro and micro ethics. That is to say, what individuals do and what companies do. One might argue what companies do is a function of what individual’s drive, but others might point to the oligopoly nature of corporations. One lemming leads and others rush to follow. The last week saw a leader group of financial firms boycott Russia and within a week MasterCard followed by American Express and then other industries joined. This generates the interesting question of how is it that firms acquire and maintain a personality as well as do private and public companies evolve their personality differently? It does seem clear that Holmes of Theranos formed that company’s corrupt corporate culture but what forms the culture of public firms. Consider that within two weeks public corporations such as Netflix, TikTok, Samsung, credit card operators and the largest auto firms including General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co., Volkswagen AG, and Toyota Motor Corp. Volvo AB and Daimler Truck Holding AG all announced a freeze on business activities with Russia. It would be nice to think these actions are a result of board conscience however, it seems appropriate to question if the actions were driven by conviction or were simply characteristic of oligopoly behavior? That is to say in the words of the song of Ruth “Where thou goest I will go.” There is certainly no simple answer however it does raise interesting business discussion and research questions. I look forward to seeing research submitted to this, and other journals, which take on the complexity of the issue.
The Journal of Transnational Management
The Journal of Transnational Management seeks the interesting balance in maintaining itself as a high quality professional publication while continuing to distinguish itself as a leader in providing authors from developing nation’s editorial assistance. This is deemed essential to optimize the opportunity for these authors to present their management articles to an international audience. The journal has a dedicated editorial board that is multinational in scope and prepared to provide the assistance needed to encourage authors from nations that are not the traditional contributors with their submissions. The journal, in addition to research publications, is interested in receiving media/book reviews. Information concerning the JTM relating to past volumes and submission information is available on the web site of the IMDA found at www.imda-usa.org