Abstract This study redefines Family–Work Balance (FWB) as a relational and ethical condition emerging from the interaction between employee agency and organisational structures, rather than just as an individual coping outcome. Drawing on care ethics and other explanatory perspectives, we develop and empirically test a model examining how organisational cultures, internal market orientation, employee skill development, and personal life activities collectively influence perceived barriers to FWB and overall balance. Survey data from knowledge-intensive service employees indicate that organisational conditions and developmental practices play a crucial role in shaping perceived barriers, which, in turn, significantly affect perceived FWB. Although personal life activities do not directly affect FWB, they have indirect effects through perceived barriers, highlighting the importance of organisational responsiveness for achieving balance. The findings demonstrate that FWB is not ethically neutral but is systematically shaped by managerial choices, cultural norms, and developmental expectations that either create or reduce barriers. By conceptualising FWB as a relational ethical issue rooted in organisational responsibility and lived experience, this research advances discussions on ethical management, internal marketing, and work–life integration, providing implications for managerial accountability and the development of work environments that foster employee dignity and sustainable well-being.

Abstract Although research on ethics and creativity has been fruitful, it has also yielded mixed results and two different perspectives, raising questions about whether ethics hinders or facilitates creativity. These two perspectives have been fueled by limited consistency in terms of theoretical specification and mechanisms. One potentially important but overlooked factor that may help shed light on this relationship is religion. Building on the theory of intimate co-creation, our study examines the dyadic relationship between individuals and God in the creative process. We conduct an inductive, qualitative study using 49 interviews of entrepreneurial monks and nuns across 25 monasteries in Italy to understand how religion influences the relationship between ethics and creativity. Our findings suggest an ethical process of relational moralization occurs between individuals and God through three stages: relational development, relational identity, and relational obedience. Rather than simply hindering or facilitating creativity, our study finds a more nuanced understanding where relational moralization acts as a double-edge sword that both limits the creative domain and enables creativity within the domain through relationally-bounded-creativity . Our study takes an important step in reconciling competing views of the relationship between ethics and creativity. Our findings have important theoretical implications for the ethics-creativity relationship, ethics and a constructive view of obedience, and intimate co-creation.

Abstract This research discusses relational recognition and the organisation of situated responsibility by exploring how diverse civil society actors from various local, national, and transnational levels, individually and collectively, facilitate safe and sustainable work for women workers in the Bangladeshi garment industry. Drawing on Nancy Fraser and Richa Nagar’s theoretical conversations into the mobilisation of publics and situated solidarity—where recognition is central to justice-seeking—we examine how public actions and debates within the gendered global apparel production network (GAPN) have the potential to democratise relations of recognition that can transcend the boundary for transformative changes to address equity. Through a 7-year qualitative, in-depth study, our analysis highlights how situated solidarity, rooted in a felt responsibility that entails accountability, is mobilised as collective “we”. This solidarity addresses struggles for recognition and offers a relational frame of recognition that integrates demands for redistribution—advancing equity, equality, and status for women workers within the GAPN—and representation, by promoting inclusion within production practices and institutional cultures. By examining the interplay between political-economic and localised conditions, alongside transnational dynamics involving multiple publics, we demonstrate how various actors situate their solidarity. This reveals how relational recognition, grounded in mutual recognition, contributes to the democratisation of GAPN governance by illustrating how accountability shapes the structuring of situated responsibilities.

Abstract Our paper examines the effectiveness of formal control (i.e., whistleblowing mechanism) and informal control (i.e., ethical leadership) on the relationship between delegation of decision rights and displacement of responsibility on managers’ misreporting. We find delegation of decision rights affects managers’ misreporting indirectly through displacement of responsibility. We also find that whistleblowing mechanism and ethical leadership negatively moderate the relationship between delegation of decision rights and managers’ misreporting under low displacement of responsibility situations. This result suggests that whistleblowing mechanism and ethical leadership are effective formal and informal controls, respectively, to deter managers’ misreporting only when displacement of responsibility is low. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.

Abstract Product-service systems (PSS) are increasingly adopted by firms seeking to pursue environmental and social responsibilities alongside commercial goals, often with near-term trade-offs. Yet, their implementation across diverse national contexts is often fraught with tensions between competing institutional logics, constraining the scalability and robustness of PSS strategies. While institutional theory highlights how logics guide organizational behavior, less is understood about how firms transfer global sustainability logics across organizational and national boundaries and translate them into locally viable practices in differing institutional environments. This study addresses this gap through a comparative qualitative case study of a global heating system provider, drawing on 43 in-depth interviews and complementary field data from its headquarters in Japan and its subsidiary and customers in Türkiye. We identify three institutional logics—sustainability, state, and commercial—that jointly influence PSS adoption but interact differently across contexts. Our findings reveal three mechanisms of institutional work that underpin the transfer and translation of logics: strategic creation of sustainability practices, tight and loose coupling of logics under varying institutional conditions, and negotiation of disruption trade-offs between environmental and profitability priorities. We develop a conceptual model that specifies the mechanisms through which sustainability logics are transferred across organizational and national boundaries and translated into locally enacted practices, leading to either tight, incremental, or symbolic integration of PSS strategies. Theoretically, this research advances institutional theory by demonstrating that institutional logics are not fixed determinants of behavior but resources that actors actively interpret, recombine, and sometimes only nominally adopt when transferring them across contexts. Practically, it provides guidance for managers and policymakers on designing harmonization strategies, aligning incentives, and overcoming infrastructural barriers to enable substantive sustainability transitions.

Abstract Working in a cemetery carries ethical weight – getting it ‘right’ matters. How might tragedy help us to illuminate the meaning, nature, and ethical significance of this work? This paper draws from a feminist reading of the Greek tragedy Antigone, via the theoretical work of Adriana Cavarero, to show what we can learn about the ethico-political significance of cemeterial work as an enactment of grievability. It showcases the power of tragedy through vignettes drawn from a research project on cemeterial work in the UK and Italy, offering valuable insight into the ethical challenges such work entails, as well as its ethical importance. Bringing the empirical and philosophical concerns of the paper together, the analysis shows how cemeterial work is simultaneously ‘dirty’ and meaningful, imbued with ethical responsibility. In so doing, the paper contributes to debates surrounding the relationship between tragedy and business ethics, while also providing insights into a socially and culturally significant yet under-researched type of work.