Welcome to the first issue of the International Journal of Ethics and Systems in 2026. We are proud to present articles on such different topics as ethical leadership and organizational silence, validation of a leadership questionnaire, moral attentiveness and leadership identification, unethical socialization practices in organizations, ethical decision-making in the workplace, leadership in COVID times, ESG and financial disclosure, earnings management, integrated reporting and corporate governance.We thank the contributors from various countries including India, Morrocco, Canada, Vietnam, Denmark, USA, China, Tunisia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Ghana, Chile and Mexico for very interesting articles on burning topics within international research on ethics and systems.We begin with six articles relating to ethical leadership and ethical challenges in organizations.A contribution from India looks at the relation between ethical leadership and organizational silence through unfolding a systematic review of the role of silence of organization in relation to ethical leadership. This review is based on research in the Scopus database where the authors carefully analyze selected articles that were considered relevant for the topic The research shows that employees are more confident in ethical leaders and that individualist employees are more likely to express their opinions directly to leaders. The article is based on qualitative research and represents novelty since few articles have studied the relationship between ethics, leadership and silence in organizations.Researchers from Morrocco and Canada have developed a Wise Leadership Questionnaire (WLQ). They investigate the use of this questionnaire in an article based on studies using quantitative statistical methods in the analysis of leadership in different countries of Canada, China and Morocco. With this the article provides global and cosmopolitan insights in cross-cultural use of the wise leadership approach to understand job performance and job satisfaction in organizations.An article from Vietnam proposes to link ethical leadership with moral reflective attentiveness of leaders in organizations. The research follows quantitative evaluation of employees’ prohibitive voice in the context of leadership. The article demonstrates that ethical leadership influences the prohibitive voice of employees, increasing their moral behavior. Therefore, it is important to increase ethical leadership in organizations to increase moral reflection and awareness of employees.An investigation of lunch practices in organizations from Denmark demonstrates how behavior in relation to lunch can lead to social segregation and exclusion in the workplace. The study is based on qualitative interviews, and it shows how employees behave unethically towards newcomers when they exclude them or isolate them from having lunch together. The study shows the importance of socialization in the workplace and the importance of taking good care of newcomers in organizations to ensure ethical onboarding practices.A study of the relation between culture, integrity and ethical decision-making from USA investigates the challenges of ethics in multinational corporations. The focus of the article is qualitative study of the impact on cultural perspective and moral virtue on decision-making. The research integrates reflections on ethics with the study of the value dimensions of national culture including power distance, individualism and gender dimensions. The article demonstrates that there is a close relation between virtue, culture and integrity in ethical decision-making in multinational corporations.Researchers from USA and China look at the challenges of ethical leadership of nurses during the COVID-19 crisis. They find that nurses were required to make ethical decisions and use ethics do enhance their creativity during the crisis. With qualitative study the authors have investigated the role of ethical decision-making in the leadership practices in health-care organizations. Ethics turned out to be of increasing importance for decision-making.From these studies of ethical leadership, we go to the presentation of four studies relating to financial markets, ESG, earnings management and governance.An article from India investigates the impact on ESG disclosure on financial performance of companies with different degrees of climate sensitivity. ESG-disclosure at the Stock Exchange is the basis for research on the relation between ESG and financial performance. The article demonstrates the importance of ESG-disclosure for stakeholder capitalism in a developing country like India.Research from Tunisia looks at the role of business ethics in relation to earnings management in relation to quantitative research on European firms. The impact of managerial overconfidence on earnings management can be controlled by business ethics awareness. CEO overconfidence is moderated by the focus on business ethics in earnings management. The article makes an important contribution to understand the role of ethics in CEO decision making. In this sense the study implies new research of the relation between CEO overconfidence and earnings management.A contribution from United Arab Emirates researches the relation between corporate governance and earnings management in relation to political connections in Gulf countries. The article demonstrates the role of political connections in earnings management. The study shows how earnings management is influenced by different dimensions and structures of governance of firms. The findings include insights for decision-makers at different levels of society to be aware of the importance of ethical norms for shaping business practices of earnings management.An article with authors from Tunisia and Kuwait investigates the role of integrated reporting in relation to the value of firms. This article is based on quantitative analysis of database sets of international companies. The paper defines integrated reporting following the guidelines of theInternational Integrated Reporting Council. The results of the research are that company transparency benefits significantly from disclosure and that his can increase investor confidence and general legitimacy of the company in society.Finally, we present two articles on poverty and love of money in ethical systems.Authors from Chile and Mexico provide a comprehensive analysis of poverty and minimum wages from the perspective of virtue ethics and natural law theory. The article demonstrates the importance of merit, dignity and participation as well as wage policies and distributive justice for the determination of the justice related to minimum wages in organizations. This research approach emphasizes the importance of just wage policies relation to employee well-being. Indeed, the centrality of virtue ethics and responsibility of employers and organization is key to this development of just wages in organizations.A contribution from Ghana looks at the role of love of money in relation ethics and personality of accounting students. The research is based on quantitative analysis of a sample of accounting students and the findings are that peer influence and personality traits have an impact on unethical behavior and the love of money of the students. Students will have problems in the future as accounting professionals if they continue such practices of opportunism and self-justification of unethical behavior. Therefore, ethical education in business schools is highly important.In conclusion, we are happy to present all these different important perspectives of ethics and systems, and we hope that the reader will appreciate the insights provided by the articles in this issue.
Jacob Dahl Rendtorff (Mon,) studied this question.