I comment on some mistakes made my Dhamija and Rai in their paper “Role of retaliation and value orientation in whistleblowing intentions.” They fail to correctly interpret the overall model statistics, the F-test, which shows that some of their models have no explanatory power. I explain and give examples to readers on how to avoid this in the future. In addition, I give some suggestions on improving on this, additional issues, as well as an alternative means to interpret the results.

The decline of empirical research on ethical decision-making based on ethical theories might imply a tacit consensus has been reached. However, the exclusion of virtue ethics, one of the three main normative ethical theories, from this stream of literature calls this potential consensus into question. This article investigates the role of all three normative ethical theories—deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics—in ethical decision-making of corporate executives. It uses virtue ethics as a dependent variable thus studying the interconnectivity of all three normative (...) ethical theories in specific circumstances. We find that managers use different ethical theories in different circumstances (business vs. private life, formal vs informal ethical leadership, etc.). A predictive model of ethical decision-making, however, cannot be established. We also find that only a limited number of variables influence the choice of ethical theory, which leans business ethics towards postmodern management paradigm. We suggest that moral pragmatism could provide the answer to ethical decision-making. (shrink)