While major religions espouse moral values encouraging prosocial behavior, the empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of religious influence on such behavior, as proposed by the religious pro-sociality hypothesis, remains inconclusive. To explore this further, we conducted two studies to test this hypothesis in Pakistan, a Muslim-majority Asian nation, focusing on whistleblowing as a prosocial behavior. The first study gathered cross-sectional data from 323 undergraduate business students in Karachi, Pakistan, utilizing hypothetical scenarios of academic cheating and bank embezzlement. Participants completed a (...) scenario-based questionnaire assessing intrinsic religiosity, personality traits, and whistleblowing intentions. Measures were adapted for the Muslim context, with intrinsic religiosity assessed using the Age Universal Intrinsic-Extrinsic (AUIE) scale and personality traits measured using the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) scale. Regression analysis of these data revealed that while intrinsic religiosity significantly predicted whistleblowing intentions in the academic cheating scenario, it did not do so in the bank embezzlement scenario. Furthermore, multiple regression modeling to test moderating effects of personality traits did not yield significant results for either scenario. The second study employed an experimental design to observe actual whistleblowing behavior among 85 undergraduate business students in Karachi, Pakistan. Participants were randomly assigned to either a religious or a neutral condition, aiming to assess the impact of intrinsic religiosity on whistleblowing behavior. The experiment used a cover story which involved a confederate cheating during an intelligence quotient (IQ) test. The purpose of this design was to examine whether the participant, acting as the sole witness to wrongdoing, would intervene and blow the whistle. Data analysis using logistic regression indicated that intrinsic religiosity did not significantly predict whistleblowing behavior across both the experimental and control conditions. These contrasting results highlight the complexity of whistleblowing, emphasizing its subjective nature and the influence of social dynamics on behavior. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Individuals’ implicit theories that people’s character is fixed versus malleable are associated with their holding beliefs that morality is primarily determined by fulfilling prescribed duties versus upholding basic rights of others, respectively. Three studies provide evidence that the ability to recognize that a situation can legitimately be considered from a moral point of view is interactively dependent upon the nature of perceivers’ implicit theories and the extent to which the issue involves a violation that emphasizes a failure to fulfill a (...) prescribed duty versus a failure to uphold a fundamental right of others. The studies experimentally manipulated the characteristics of a hypothetical business situation to involve either a duty-based violation or a rights-based violation or no behavioral violation. In addition, Study 1 experimentally manipulated subjects’ implicit theories, while Studies 2 and 3 measured subjects’ chronically held implicit theories. Collectively, the studies provide consistent evidence that entity theorists have greater moral awareness than incremental theorists when considering situations involving duty-based violations, while incremental theorists have greater moral awareness than entity theorists when considering situations involving rights-based violations, and moral awareness is not significantly different for perceivers who are neither strongly entity nor incremental theorists, when considering situations involving duty- versus rights-based violations. Study 3 also found evidence of a moderated-mediated association between violation type and moral intentions, through moral awareness as a mediator, moderated by perceivers’ implicit theories. (shrink)

Reoccurring instances of unethical employee behavior raises the question of the effectiveness of organization’s employee ethics training programs. This research seeks to examine employee ethics training programs among US-based global organizations by asking members of the Ethics and Compliance Officer Association to describe various elements of their organizations’ ethics training programs. This investigation and assessment reveal that there are some effective aspects of ethics training but five serious concerns are identified and discussed as potential contributions to the lack of ethics (...) among business organizations’ employees. (shrink)

While a number of studies have examined the impact of gender/sex on ethical decision-making, the findings of this body of research do not provide consistent answers. Furthermore, very few of these studies have incorporated cross-cultural samples. Consequently, this study of 222 American and Spanish business executives explored sex differences in ethical judgments and intentions to act ethically. While no significant differences between males and females were found with respect to ethical judgments, females exhibited higher intentions to act more ethically than (...) males. This difference was true of both U.S. and Spanish executives. Further research is warranted to develop a clearer understanding of the linkage between ethical judgment and intention to act in an ethical manner. These findings have implications for global firms, particularly regarding codes of conduct and ethics training. (shrink)

While a number of studies have examined the impact of gender/sex on ethical decision-making, the findings of this body of research do not provide consistent answers. Furthermore, very few of these studies have incorporated cross-cultural samples. Consequently, this study of 222 American and Spanish business executives explored sex differences in ethical judgments and intentions to act ethically. While no significant differences between males and females were found with respect to ethical judgments, females exhibited higher intentions to act more ethically than (...) males. This difference was true of both U.S. and Spanish executives. Further research is warranted to develop a clearer understanding of the linkage between ethical judgment and intention to act in an ethical manner. These findings have implications for global firms, particularly regarding codes of conduct and ethics training. (shrink)

More ethics research needs to explore the global differences in ethical evaluations. This study explored the relationships among nationality, teleological evaluations, ethical judgments, and ethical intentions using a sample of 222 American and Spanish business professionals. The path analysis indicated that teleological evaluations were related to ethical judgments and that both ethical judgments and teleological evaluations were related to ethical intentions. Executive nationality was related to teleological evaluations and ethical intentions with American individuals having higher teleological assessments and intentions to (...) act ethically than the Spanish individuals. These findings have implications for global companies, which are presented along with the study's limitations and future research suggestions. (shrink)

Although many studies have linked job attitudes and intentions to aspects of in-role and extra-role job performance, there has been relatively little attention given to such job responses in the context of employees’ ethical/unethical behavior. The purpose of this study was to investigate a possible relationship between positive job response (conceptualized as job satisfaction and intention to stay) and behavioral ethics. Ninety-two matched manager-employee pairs from a regional branch of a large financial services and banking firm completed survey instruments, with (...) each employee providing information about his or her job attitudes and intentions and each manager assessing the ethical/unethical performance of his/her employees. Respondents also provided additional information required for our analyses. The results indicated that positive job response among subordinates was associated with higher supervisory ratings of the subordinates’ ethical job performance. The managerial implications of the findings for managing ethical behavior are explored. (shrink)

Previous work suggests that gender attitudes are associated with different individual and organizational factors. At the same time, ethics research suggests that many of these same variables can influence ethical reasoning in companies. In this study, we sought to combine these streams of research to investigate whether individual skepticism of women’s employment is related to ethical reasoning in a gender-based ethical situation. The results of the hierarchical regression analysis indicated that skepticism of women’s employment was negatively related to the recognition (...) that the gender-based dilemma involved an ethical problem, and that skepticism was also negatively related to judgments that the situation was unethical. These findings imply that companies should advance policies that increase tolerance for women’s employment, such as diversity training codes of conduct, and ethics training. (shrink)

This study assessed the relationship between ethical reasoning and the decision to grant equitable relief using an innocent spouse vignette where a wife had partial knowledge of her husband''s tax fraud. A path model derived from various ethics theories was tested using a sample of 357 accounting, legal, and human resource professionals, and after careful examination of the measurement and structural relationships in the path model, the results provided partial support for the study''s hypotheses. Moral intensity was marginally associated with (...) an increased recognition of an ethical issue and positively related ethical judgments made in an innocent spouse situation, and moral intensity was also negatively related to the decision to grant relief. The ethical judgment variable was positively related to the decision to grant relief, while ethical issue awareness was marginally associated with the decision to deny relief. The implications of these findings are discussed, along with the limitations of the study and suggestions for future research. (shrink)

Successful psychopaths, defined as individuals in the general population who nevertheless possess some degree of psychopathic traits, are receiving increasing amounts of empirical attention. To date, little is known about such individuals, specifically with regard to how they respond to ethical dilemmas in business contexts. This study investigated this relationship, proposing a mediated model in which the positive relationship between psychopathy and unethical decision-making is explained through the process of moral disengagement, defined as a cognitive orientation that facilitates unethical choice. (...) The results of the study supported this model, and implications for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

A two stage model was developed and tested to explain how ethical leadership relates to followers’ ethical judgment in an organizational context. Drawing on social learning theory, ethical leadership was hypothesized to promote followers’ self-leadership focused on ethics. It was found that followers’ perceived accountability fully accounts for this relationship. In stage two, the relationship between self-leadership focused on ethics and moral judgment in a dual decision-making system was described and tested. Self-leadership focused on ethics was only related to moral (...) judgment when followers use active judgment as opposed to their intuition. This provides support that a deliberate application of self-leadership focused on ethics leads to higher moral judgment. Theoretical and practical implications as well as future research opportunities are discussed. (shrink)

This study explores the direct and interactive effects of individual differences in interpersonal trust and negotiation style on ethical decision-making processes across commonly faced negotiation situations. Individual differences influence basic ideas about legitimate negotiating behaviors, affect behavioral intentions directly, and interact with the favorability of negotiating situations, resulting in direct, indirect, and interactive effects on ethical decision-making processes. Using a sample of 298 participants in executive education workshops, the study analyzes the relationship between interpersonal trust, competitiveness, moral judgment, and behavioral (...) intentions in different negotiating conditions through a series of structural equation models and regression analyses. Our results suggest that individual difference variables exert a significant influence not only on how managers assess the morality of ethically ambiguous negotiation practices but also directly on their behavioral intentions, and that this effect changed across specific negotiation situations. We discuss these results in terms of their usefulness in explaining ethical decision-making processes in negotiations. (shrink)

In business ethics, there is a large body of literature focusing on the conditions, factors, and influences in the ethical decision-making processes. This work builds upon the past critical reviews by updating and extending the literature review found in Craft’s :221–259, 2013) study, extending her literature review to include a total of 141 articles. Since past reviews have focused on categorizing results based upon various independent variables, we instead synthesize and look at the trends of these based upon the four (...) ethical decision making categories: Awareness, Behavior, Judgment, and Intention. We focus on the moderation and mediation effects found within these studies and provide an in-depth analysis of future trends. Furthermore, we also highlight key statistical and methodological concerns, outline overarching trends, and directions of future research in empirical ethical decision making. (shrink)

Towards the general goal of generating a normative-empirical dialogue about ethics and justice, the present study explored three issues: (1) the extent to which the normative criteria of ethics and justice prescribed by moral philosophers are indeed reflected in managerial professionals' subjective beliefs of what ethical and just work behaviour ought to be, (2) the relationship between people's ought beliefs and their perceptions of actual ethical and just work behaviour, and (3) the relationship between the notions of ethics and justice. (...) To do so, a review of the normative and positive theories of ethics was carried out which revealed the key normative criteria of ethics (i.e., utility, rights, justice, principle and care) and justice (i.e., due procedure and due outcome). Using both the interview and the repertory grid procedures, key determinants of ethical and just work behaviour as perceived by the managerial professionals were generated. These determinants were used to construct the questionnaires for the assessment of people's subjective ought beliefs, and their is judgements, of ethical and just work behaviour. There were three respondent samples: managerial professionals, general public and university students. Results showed that (1) people's subjective ought beliefs closely reflected the normative standards of ethics and justice, (2) there were significant discrepancies between people's subjective ought beliefs and their perceptions of actual ethical and just work behaviour, (3) individual differences in ought beliefs had some influence on is judgements, (4) both the ought beliefs and is judgements pertaining to the notion of justice could be accounted for by measures of the other four criteria of ethics and in particular, the notion of rights. The implications of the findings for normative theories of ethics and for ethics education are discussed. (shrink)

Employee counterproductive work behavior is costly to organizations and those who work within them. Evidence suggests that employees are motivated to engage in CWB because they believe that these behaviors will make them feel better in response to negative workplace events. However, research has yet to consider the situational and individual factors that shape the extent to which employees view CWB in such a manner. In order to provide insight into the decision-making process surrounding the use of CWB as a (...) coping strategy, this study leverages coping theory to examine the factors that contribute to employees’ beliefs that CWBs will be instrumental for emotion regulation aims in response to workplace stressors. In a repeated measures scenario-based study of 297 employees, we found that individuals’ perceived coping instrumentalities for CWBs are a function of the controllability and source of the stressor as well as a more stable learned response to stressful situations at work. (shrink)

This article examines how business students route themselves through the process of cognitive moral development (CMD) to arrive at a more autonomous level of CMD when there is an impetus to do so. In this study, two groups were given Rest’s Defining Issues Test; half the test 1 week and half three weeks later. In between, one group viewed a film of Milgram’s obedience study as a stimulus towards a more autonomous level of CMD. The results of the analysis indicate (...) that viewing the Milgram study produced a positive response regarding subjects’ level of autonomous CMD. However, the response was not uniform across the subject pool. Females showed a greater consistent significant positive response to viewing Milgram while male subjects varied their response contingent upon their functional area of study. While subjects’ functional area of study alone made little difference in the results, when taken in conjunction with gender, significant differences were found between groups. Thus, researchers should take care when investigating differences between subjects’ area of study since gender differences may be present even within an apparently homogenous population-like business students. (shrink)

The moral ideology of banking and insurance employees in Spain was examined along with supervisor role modeling and ethics-related policies and procedures for their association with ethical behavioral intent. In addition to main effects, we found evidence supporting that the person–situation interactionist perspective in supervisor role modeling had a stronger positive relationship with ethical intention among employees with relativist moral ideology. Also as hypothesized, formal ethical polices and procedures were positively related to ethical intention among those with universal beliefs, but (...) the relationship was much weaker among relativists. Thus, firms wishing to optimally promote ethical attitudes and behavior must tailor their organization-based initiatives to the individual characteristics of their employees. (shrink)

This paper considers future directions of empirical research in business ethics and presents a series of recommendations. Greater emphasis should be placed on the normative basis of empirical studies, behavior (rather than attitudes) should be established as the key dependent variable, theoretical models of ethical decision making should be tested, and empirical studies need to focus on theory-building. Extensions of methodology and the unit of analysis are proposed together with recommendations concerning the need for replication and validity, and building links (...) to managerial and public policy applications. (shrink)

Transparency is important in today’s business environment. The use of euphemisms decreases transparency yet is increasing in business and business education. This study examines the effects of euphemism on people’s attitudes toward actions and their intentions to perform those actions. It also measures the effect of oversight on attitudes and behavioral intentions. Using a 2 × 2 experimental design, we measured participants’ attitudes by employing a semantic differential scale and behavioral intentions by using a simple yes/no question regarding the action (...) described. A questionnaire with 20 brief scenarios provided the euphemistic versus non-euphemistic condition. Oversight versus non-oversight conditions were manipulated through instructions to participants. Hypotheses regarding the effects of euphemism were supported; participants were both more likely to rate an action as appropriate and to indicate they would take that action when stated euphemistically. Oversight did not have a significant effect on attitude toward the action, but did significantly affect participants’ intentions to take that action. Findings suggest both managerial and ethical implications for businesses. Greater transparency includes more straight talk and less euphemism and is recommended to ensure employees’ understanding and implementation of ethical business actions. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory is widely recognized as a management theory, yet very little research has considered its implications for individual managerial decision-making. In the two studies reported here, we used stakeholder theory to examine managerial decisions about balancing stakeholder interests. Results of Study 1 suggest that indivisible resources and unequal levels of stakeholder saliency constrain managers’ efforts to balance stakeholder interests. Resource divisibility also influenced whether managers used a within-decision or an across-decision approach to balance stakeholder interests. In Study 2 we (...) examined instrumental and normative implications of these two approaches. We conclude by considering the contributions of this research. (shrink)

The evidence from the recent financial crisis in the USA indicates the importance of ethical decision making in the banking and finance industry. This study surveyed 90 banking and finance professionals and students in Vietnam to examine the differences in their ethical decision making. The questionnaire consisted of eight vignettes describing practical ethical dilemmas which banking and finance professionals may face in their daily work. We found significant differences in ethical decision making between these two groups in their overall ethical (...) scores and in four out of eight vignettes. We also conducted a 3-h ethics training programme for these professionals and students and found that teaching ethics was more effective for students than working adults in the banking and finance industry. These findings are important as they show how banking and financial institutions can make workplace environments more conducive to ethical decision-making by enhancing ethics education for both newcomers and existing professionals. (shrink)

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore students’ reactions to a case involving peer rating. We asked undergraduate and graduate students at a Midwestern liberal arts university to rate the performance of a close friend. To explore how role might impact the students’ decisions, we randomly assigned participants to one of two rating scenarios. In the first scenario, students rated a fellow student who had not completed his or her fair share of a group project. In the second (...) scenario, students were asked to play the role of a professor who had to rate a peer. We found significant differences in the overall quantitative ratings assigned by participants in the two scenarios. Participants’ answers also involved more justice considerations in the professor scenario than in the student scenario. The results suggest that students may have difficulty in being honest during peer evaluation processes. (shrink)

The need to fill three gaps in ethics research in a business context sparked the current study. First, the distinction between the concepts of “ethical” and “legal” needs to be incorporated into theory building and empiricism. Second, a unifying theory is needed that can explain the variables that influence managers to emphasize ethics and legality in their judgments. Third, empirical evidence is needed to confirm the predictive power of the unifying theory, the discernable influence of personal and organizational variables, and (...) the importance of the issue to the managers in determining their emphasis on the ethical and legal values of their judgments. Focused on these needs, the current research combines social identity theory with empirical findings from business ethics research. This theory building initiative framed hypothesis-driven research to investigate the influences on managers’ emphasis on ethical and legal values in making business judgments. An empirical research study was conducted involving 252 practicing managers who judged 12 newsworthy business events. Data was collected on the managers’ individual factors, on the groups that influence their judgments, and on the importance that the managers place on ethics and legality in judging the 12 scenarios. The research findings contribute to theory development (1) By successfully utilizing a blended extension of social identity and issue-contingent theories to understand managers’ judgments, and (2) By providing evidence on the relationships between the perceived importance of an issue and the emphases managers place on ethical and legal values in their judgments. The analysis of the data was extended to provide insights on the needs of employers to tailor management training on legal and ethical decision-making. The participating managers were clustered according to their emphases on Ethical Importance and Legal Importance in judging business situations. Analysis of Variance was then combined with Scheffé Multiple Comparison Tests to assess whether the factors derived from a blended extension of social identity and issue-contingent theories were significantly different across the clusters. The product of this analysis is unique sets of attributes that describe each cluster of managers, and provide an empirical basis for determining training priorities. Finally, the carefully constructed and thoroughly tested 12 research scenarios that form the core of the survey instrument enable their redeployment in subsequent research and their use by practicing executives who wish to compare data provided by their managers to results from the study participants. (shrink)

This review summarizes and critiques the empirical ethical decision-making literature from 1996-2003. One hundred and seventy-four articles were published in top business journals during this period. Tables are included that summarize the findings by dependent variable - awareness, judgment, intent, and behavior. We compare this review with past reviews in order to draw conclusions regarding trends in the ethical decision-making literature and to surface directions for future research.

This review summarizes and critiques the empirical ethical decision-making literature from 1996–2003. One hundred and seventy-four articles were published in top business journals during this period. Tables are included that summarize the findings by dependent variable – awareness, judgment, intent, and behavior. We compare this review with past reviews in order to draw conclusions regarding trends in the ethical decision-making literature and to surface directions for future research.

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical (...) recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world. (shrink)

The study examines the research methodology of more than 200 empirical investigations of ethics in personal selling and sales management between 1980 and 2010. The review discusses the sources and authorship of the sales ethics research. To better understand the drivers of empirical sales ethics research, the foundations used in business, marketing, and sales ethics are compared. The use of hypotheses, operationalization, measurement, population and sampling decisions, research design, and statistical analysis techniques were examined as part of theory development and (...) testing. The review establishes a benchmark, assesses the status and direction of the sales ethics research methodology, and helps inform researchers who need to deal with increasing amounts of empirical research. The investigation identified changing sources of publication with the Journal of Business Ethics and the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management maintaining their position as the main conduit of high quality empirical sales ethics research. The results suggest that despite the use of theoretical models for empirical testing, a greater variety of moral frameworks and wider use of marketing exchange theory is needed. The review highlights many sound aspects about the empirical sales ethics research statistical methodology but also raises concerns about several areas. Ways in which these concerns might be addressed and recommendations for researchers are provided. (shrink)

This research on the ethics of meaningful work examined how types of job-related harm and their magnitude of consequences influenced components of ethical decision-making. The research also investigated the moderating effects of individual differences on the relation between the MOC and the ethical decision-making elements for each type of harm. Using a sample of 185 Chinese professionals, a between-subjects, fully crossed experimental scenario design revealed that physical and economic job-related harm were recognized as moral issues to a greater extent than (...) cognitive or emotional harm. Second, physical job-related harm stimulated a higher level of moral evaluations than economic and cognitive harm. Third, individuals intended to act ethically when MOC was high versus low. Finally, experience with layoffs and IMO helped explain the relations between MOC and moral evaluations for economic and cognitive job-related harm, respectively. Implications for research and management are discussed. (shrink)

The purpose of the present study is to examine the attitudes of Portuguese chartered accountants with respect to questions of ethical nature that can arise in their professional activity. Respondents were asked to respond to the Ethics Position Questionnaire developed by Forsyth (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39(1), 175–184, 1980), in order to determine their idealism and relativism levels. Subsequently, they answered questions about five scenarios related to accounting practices, with the objective of measuring their ethical judgments. Based on (...) the idealism and relativism levels of our respondents, they were classified into one of four groups, representing different ethical ideologies (absolutism, exceptionism, subjectivism, and situationism). The results indicated that age was the major determinant of relativism. Contrary to previous research, older respondents revealed themselves significantly more relativistic than younger ones. Gender seems to be the most important determinant of ethical judgments; against expectations, men evidenced significantly stricter judgments than women in two of the five scenarios. Findings also indicated that respondents’ ethical judgments did not differ significantly based on their ethical ideology, supporting the idea that ethical ideology is not an important determinant of ethical judgments. (shrink)

A growing body of theory has focused on privacy as being contextually defined, where individuals have highly particularized judgments about the appropriateness of what, why, how, and to whom information flows within a specific context. Such a social contract understanding of privacy could produce more practical guidance for organizations and managers who have employees, users, and future customers all with possibly different conceptions of privacy across contexts. However, this theoretical suggestion, while intuitively appealing, has not been empirically examined. This study (...) validates a social contract approach to privacy by examining whether and how privacy norms vary across communities and contractors. The findings from this theoretical examination support the use of contractual business ethics to understand privacy in research and in practice. As predicted, insiders to a community had significantly different understandings of privacy norms as compared to outsiders. In addition, all respondents held different privacy norms across hypothetical contexts, thereby suggesting privacy norms are contextually understood within a particular community of individuals. The findings support two conclusions. First, individuals hold different privacy norms without necessarily having diminished expectations of privacy. Individuals differed on the factors they considered important in calculating privacy expectations, yet all groups had robust privacy expectations across contexts. Second, outsiders have difficulty in understanding the privacy norms of a particular community. For managers and scholars, this renders privacy expectations more difficult to identify at a distance or in deductive research. The findings speak directly to the needs of organizations to manage a diverse set of privacy issues across stakeholder groups. (shrink)

Debate exists as to the timing of student exposure to business ethics modules, and the degree to which business ethics education is integrated throughout business school curricula. The argument for an integrated model of business ethics education is well documented, however, such arguments do not stem from an empirical basis. Much of the debate about when and how business ethics should be taught rests on assumptions regarding the stage of moral awareness of business students. The research reported here adds to (...) this debate by attempting to empirically gauge students'' levels of moral awareness in order to explore the implications for the teaching of business ethics, specifically in terms of presenting the case for the importance of an integrated business ethics curriculum. (shrink)

Recent allegations of unethical decision-making by leaders in prominent business organizations have jeopardized the world's confidence in American business. The purpose of this research was to develop a measure of managerial moral judgment that can be used in future research and managerial assessment. The measure was patterned after the Defining Issues Test, a widely used general measure of moral judgment. With content validity as the goal, we aimed to sample the domain of managerial ethical situations by establishing links to dimensions (...) of managerial performance, as well as to the types of organizational justice issues managers encounter. Proposed scenarios were evaluated for realism by ethics officers and human resource managers. Results indicated that the new measure is reliable and correlates with a number of relevant variables in the hypothesized manner, demonstrating evidence of construct validity. Implications for future research and for human resources management are discussed. (shrink)

Recent allegations of unethical decision-making by leaders in prominent business organizations have jeopardized the world’s confidence in American business. The purpose of this research was to develop a measure of managerial moral judgment that can be used in future research and managerial assessment. The measure was patterned after the Defining Issues Test, a widely used general measure of moral judgment. With content validity as the goal, we aimed to sample the domain of managerial ethical situations by establishing links to dimensions (...) of managerial performance, as well as to the types of organizational justice issues managers encounter. Proposed scenarios were evaluated for realism by ethics officers and human resource managers. Results indicated that the new measure is reliable and correlates with a number of relevant variables in the hypothesized manner, demonstrating evidence of construct validity. Implications for future research and for human resources management are discussed. (shrink)

The possible relationship between widespread unauthorized copying of microcomputer software (also known as software piracy) and level of moral judgment is examined through analysis of over 350 survey questionnaires that included the Defining Issues Test as a measure of moral development. It is hypothesized that the higher one''s level of moral judgment, the less likely that one will approve of or engage in unauthorized copying. Analysis of the data indicate a high level of tolerance toward unauthorized copying and limited support (...) for the hypothesis. The most plausible explanation for these findings is that software copying is perceived as an issue of low moral intensity. This study calls into question the software industry''s strategy of concentrating exclusively on institutional compliance with copyright rules, rather than working to raise the perceived moral intensity about software piracy at the individual level. As long as the issue remains low in moral intensity, the industry cannot expect significant shifts in copying behaviors. Individuals must become more aware of and concerned about the nature and magnitude of harm to society and to the rightful copyright owners from unauthorized copying before their attitudes and behaviors come to reflect higher levels of moral judgment. (shrink)

Couched in positive agency theory, it is shown that the straight-commission compensation system (SCCS) creates a conflict of interest between the agent''s and the client''s self-interests. Based on this, it is hypothesized that the SCCS will encourage agents to intend to act unethically towards their clients. Two hundred and forty five insurance agents in the U.S. were surveyed, with 59% responding. The results suggest that the SCCS does not significantly affect agents'' ethical intentions, positively or negatively. This lack of empirical (...) evidence may be due to the unique nature of the sample. Indeed, the company which enabled this sample appears to have found a practical solution to temper the potential negative effects of the SCCS in its commitment to selective hiring and marketing products which benefit both the client and the agent. (shrink)

We examine how recruiting managers cope with communal norms and expectations of favoritism during recruitment and selection processes. Combining insights from institutional theory and network research, we develop a communal perspective on favoritism that presents favoritism as a social expectation to be managed. We subsequently hypothesize that the communal ties between job applicants and managers affect the strategies that managers employ to cope with this expectation. We test these ideas using a factorial survey of the effects of clan ties on (...) recruitment and selection processes in Kazakhstan. The results confirm communal ties as antecedents to the strategies managers use to cope with communal favoritism. Surprisingly, the results also show that these coping strategies are relatively decoupled from managers’ recruitment decisions. The findings contribute to favoritism research by drawing attention to the mitigating work of managers in societies in which favoritism is common. (shrink)

We conducted an international survey of 211 scholars with expertise in business ethics. Each respondent was asked to identify the three most important issues that business ethics academia will face in the coming decade. Using content analytic procedures, responses were categorized and analyzed for commonalities. The results suggest that the most important issues facing business ethics academia in the future will be the following: issues relating to business ethics education such as curriculum, pedagogy, faculty, and accreditation the credibility of the (...) business ethics field, environmental issues, issues relating to business ethics research such as research tools and quality of business ethics research the decline of ethical behavior in society and organizations, corporate social responsibility, globalization, and the institutionalization of ethics into business. We maintain that these issues have important teaching and research implications for the future sustainability of the business ethics discipline. (shrink)

We present two studies investigating the impact of causal perceptions and the moral emotions of anger, shame, and guilt on the justification of deviant workplace behavior. Study 1 tests our conceptual framework using a sample of undergraduate business students; Study 2 examines a population of practicing physicians. Results varied significantly between the two samples, suggesting that individual and contextual factors play an important role in shaping the perceptual and emotional processes by which individuals form reactions to undesirable affective workplace events. (...) Implications of these findings for the study of ethics, emotions, and attributions, as well as for promoting ethical behavior, are discussed. (shrink)

Empirical studies in business ethics often rely on self-reported data, but this reliance is open to criticism. Responses to questionnaires and interviews may be influenced by the subject's view of what the researcher might want to hear, by a reluctance to talk about sensitive ethical issues, and by imperfect recall. This paper reviews the extent to which published research in business ethics relies on interviews and questionnaires, and then explores the possibilities of using secondary data, such as company documents and (...) newspaper reports, as a source for empirical studies in applied ethics. A specific example is then discussed, describing the source material, the method, the development of the research questions, and the way in which reliability and validity were established. In the example, content analysis was used to examine the extent to which the executive virtue of courage was observed or called for in items published in four international daily newspapers, and to explore the meaning which was attributed to "courage" in the papers. (shrink)

This article addresses one of the more disturbing questions raised by the major financial failures of the recent past; namely, how it could be that professionals, highly trained both in ethics and technical disciplines, should apparently collude with management in corporate misbehaviour. The article builds on evidence suggesting that professionals in employment contexts find ways of adapting in order to minimise perceived or actual conflict between their professional and organizational obligations and that this, in turn, may affect the way in (...) which they exercise professional judgment. It uses identity theory to propose that professionals may adopt modified identities when employed and that these identities may be expressed, in part, in the way in which they resolve ethical dilemmas. The article reports on the results of a qualitative study in which corporate counsel showed evidence of adopting these identities. The findings suggest that this line of research offers insight into a far more complex world of employed professionals than that traditionally hypothesised and that the popular approach of regulators and others to monitoring corporate governance by appointing professionals as gate-keepers within the organization is perhaps problematic. (shrink)

Gender discrimination continues to plague organizations. While the advent of the Internet and the digitization of commerce have provided both a mechanism by which goods and services can be exchanged, as well as an efficient way for consumers to voice their opinions about retailers (i.e., via online rating systems), recent work has begun to uncover significant biases that manifest during the review process. In particular, it has been suggested that the gig-economy’s elimination of previously anonymous arm’s-length transactions may re-introduce bias (...) into perceptions of quality. In this work, we build upon research that has identified biases based on ascriptive characteristics in rating systems of ridesharing platforms. In doing so, we conduct an online experiment using a series of factorial vignettes to consider not only willingness to transact but post-transaction perceptions of quality. Findings suggest that female drivers are not penalized ex ante for taking on gender incongruent roles, i.e., driving, and experience no penalty when a rider reports a high-quality experience. However, conditional upon a lower quality experience, there is a disproportionate penalty for female drivers. Strikingly, we also observe that historic high quality does not serve as a buffer against such penalties, as prior literature would suggest. These findings underscore the challenges platforms face in ensuring their participants are being evaluated in a fair and impartial way, and highlight the difficulties present when non-employees (customers) are rating non-employees (drivers) of the firm. (shrink)

A growth in consumer and media ethical consciousness has resulted in the need for organizations to ensure that members understand, share and project an approved and unified set of ethics. Thus understanding which variables are related to sharing and variation of ethical reasoning and moral intent, and the relative strength of these variables is critical. While past research has examined individual (attitudes, values, etc.), social (peers, significant others, etc.) and organizational (codes of conduct, senior management, etc.) variables, it has focused (...) on their influence on the individual – and not on their role in relation to patterns of group sharing and variation in an organization. Introduced as a new methodology to study ethics, microcultural analysis stipulates that to explain patterns of sharing and variation, one must understand how individual, social and organizational variables influence sharing and variation. Key hypotheses predict that managers who share in individual, social or organizational determinants will be more likely to share in ethical reasoning and moral intent. Qualitative and quantitative research supports the key hypotheses, finding social ties, personal moral intensity, Machiavellianism, locus of control and codes of ethics as significant determinants. Individuals who share in these determinants are more likely to share in ethical reasoning and moral intent. Additionally, regression analysis reveals social ties and personal moral intensity to be the strongest determinants. Based on these results, managerial recommendations focus on a holistic approach, manipulating these three determinants to cultivate a unified code of ethics within an organization. (shrink)

Despite an extensive amount of research studying the influence of significant others on an individual's ethical behavior, researchers have not examined this variable in the context of organizational group boundaries. This study tests actual and perceptual sharing and variation in ethical reasoning and moral intent within and across functional groups in an organization. Integrating theory on ethical behavior, group dynamics, and culture, it is proposed that organizational structure affects cognitive structure. Departmental boundaries create stronger social ties within the group as (...) well as intergroup biases between the groups. Thus individuals will be more likely to share in ethical reasoning and moral intent with members of their own functional group (in-group) than with members of other functional groups (out-group). Additionally, they will perceive that they are more likely to share in ethical reasoning and moral intent with in-group members than with out-group members. Responding to two versions of two ethical scenarios, respondents contrasted their own ethical behavior to their expected ethical behavior of in-group and out-group members. Empirical results confirmed the hypotheses. Organizational group boundaries create actual as well as perceptual sharing and variation in ethical reasoning and moral intent. Furthermore, when comparing perceptual sharing to actual sharing, results show that individuals understate their sharing of ethical reasoning and moral intent with out-group members and overstate their sharing with in-group members. As organizational boundaries can create actual and perceived differences between groups that could lead to inter-group conflict, suggestions for management focus on removing or blurring inter-group boundaries. (shrink)

The study sought to determine whether impression management tactics by an employee could effectively lessen the recommended punishment for an ethical rule infraction by this individual. Subjects read a vignette in which an employee violated the confidentiality of personnel records. The employee was presented as either having had a history of previous infractions or no such historical information was provided. Additionally, the employee was described as using either no impression management tactics, an apology, or a justification for his behavior. Result (...) show that in the case of a history of multiple offenses, the employee''s use of justifications effectively mitigated others'' judgments of the wrongfulness of the employee''s action, while apologies did not. Similarly, the justification appeared to lessen respondent recommendations for punishment, prevention of promotion, and demotion/firing, but only when there is a history of multiple offenses. In most cases, apologies tended to exacerbate the problem when previous offenses had been committed. The data are discussed in terms of their implications for the study of employee use of impression management tactics. (shrink)

This study used a national sample of professionals and a questionnaire containing equitable relief vignettes to explore whether the new equitable relief subset of the revised innocent spouse rules is helpful to the IRS when making relief decisions. The study also addressed the ethical and gender issues associated with equitable relief innocent spouse cases. The results suggested that several equitable relief factors are useful as discriminators in the relief decision. The results also demonstrated that the recognition of an ethical issue (...) and perceptions of moral intensity affected the decision to grant relief in innocent spouse situations. Finally, women subjects were more ethical and more sympathetic toward the victim in an innocent spouse situation than were their male counterparts. These findings have numerous personal and societal implications for businesses, IRS agents, CPAs, and attorneys, as well as other nations wishing to reform their tax structures while assessing the tradeoff between equity and tax revenue generation. (shrink)

The topics of ethical conduct and governance in academic research in the business field have attracted scientific and public attention. The concern is that research misconduct in organizations such as business schools and universities might result in practitioners, policymakers, and researchers grounding their decisions on biased research results. This study addresses ethical research misconduct by investigating whether the ethical orientation of business researchers is related to the likelihood of research misconduct, such as selective reporting of research findings. We distinguish between (...) deontological and consequentialist ethical orientations and the competition between researchers and investigate the moderating role of their perceived autonomy. Based on global data collected from 1031 business scholars, we find that researchers with a strong deontological ethical orientation are less prone to misconduct. This effect is robust against different levels of perceived autonomy and competition. In contrast, researchers having a consequentialist ethical orientation is positively associated with misconduct in business research. High levels of competition in the research environment reinforce this effect. Our results reveal a potentially toxic combination comprising researchers with a strong consequentialist orientation who are embedded in highly competitive research environments. Our research calls for the development of ethical orientations grounded on maxims rather than anticipated consequences among researchers. We conclude that measures for ethical governance in business schools should consider the ethical orientation that underlies researchers’ decision-making and the organizational and institutional environment in which business researchers are embedded. (shrink)

This article synthesizes insights from deterrence theory and social psychology literature on retributive justice to develop and test a theoretical model which predicts how and why observers’ tax compliance intentions are influenced by knowledge of the punitive outcomes faced by individuals found guilty of tax fraud. We test our model experimentally on a sample of Canadian taxpayers and manipulate perceived responsibility for a fraud and whether a fraud perpetrator is punished. We show that observers’ tax compliance increases when a fraud (...) perpetrator is punished only when the perpetrator is perceived as blameworthy. The psychological process through which this positive influence operates is relatively complex, as it includes perceptions of punishment deservingness and affect. We also find that tax compliance decreases when a tax fraud perpetrator is unpunished, regardless of perceived blameworthiness. Our results are robust when we control for economic determinants known to influence fraud. The article concludes by discussing our findings’ implications for fraud research and policy. (shrink)