After a brief review of the ethical judgment research, the Potter Box, a four‐step ethical judgment tool used primarily in media ethics, is introduced. The paper proposes that the Potter Box's usefulness for evaluating ethical dilemmas could be improved by re‐sequencing the steps, by incorporating philosophical intuitionism as a mechanism for structuring its inherent pluralism and by adding a post‐decision, pre‐action reflective step. The resulting modified Potter Box has five steps – analyze the situation, identify stakeholders, specify duties, weigh obligations (...) and check for universalizability – and should provide a useful structure for analyzing difficult ethical dilemmas and for creating transparency in the judgment process that accommodates improved discussion. (shrink)

This is a study of the effects of a number of background variables on ethical perceptions of Mexican and U.S. marketers. This research investigates how a marketer's personal religiousness, relativism, and the ethical values influence in perceptions of the degree of ethical problems in hypothetical marketing scenarios. It also examines differences between Mexican and U.S. marketers on these variables. The results show significant differences in perception between the countries, and we discuss the implications of these differences for cross-cultural business activities.

Hunt and Vitell''s General Theory (1992) is used in a cross-cultural comparison of U.S. and Taiwanese business practitioners. Results indicate that Taiwanese practitioners exhibit lower perceptions of an ethical issue in a scenario based on bribery, as well as milder deontological evaluations and ethical judgments relative to their U.S. counterparts. In addition, Taiwan respondents showed higher likelihood of making the payment. Several of the paths between variables in the theory are confirmed in both U.S. and Taiwan samples, with summary data (...) suggesting the Hunt and Vitell theory performs well in both U.S. and Taiwan. Some unanticipated linkages within the model were uncovered in the samples. Results and implications are discussed. (shrink)

We revisit religiosity, gender, age, ethics education and experience as drivers of ethicality, while expanding prior research from Anglo-Saxon and Asiatic/Euro-Asiatic countries to a Latin European country, Portugal. We apply the Merchant instrument of attitudes towards earnings management, in a sample of Portuguese accounting students and alumni. We find no significant evidence of a positive association between religiosity and accountants’ judgments on earnings management. However, gender, age, education and experience are significant predictors of accountants’ judgments. The results are unchanged when (...) we control for the intent of earnings management. Females, older individuals and alumni judge accounting earnings management more harshly than males, younger individuals, and students. A higher level of accounting work experience induces accountants to judge accounting earnings management as a less ethically questionable practice. This finding is theoretically relevant because it underscores the necessity of taking people’s constraints in the workplace into consideration when studying ethical behavior in business contexts. The results are also practically relevant, as they highlight the importance of a systematic ethics education throughout the accountant’s life. (shrink)

Religion has always been argued as a cultural factor that influences behavior. Similarly, previous studies had shown that demographic factors such as age, gender, education level, and work experience were linked to behavior. This present study examined if demographic factors and religiosity dimensions could predict ethical behavior, specifically Islamic ethical work behavior, in Brunei. This study used an existing data set, which had been employed with a different approach and research questions. A total of 370 respondents were analyzed. Model analysis (...) involved the use of binomial logistic regression. It correctly classified 77% of cases. The result showed that demographic factors were not significant predictors of Islamic ethical work behavior. However, all religiosity dimensions were significant predictors of Islamic ethical work behavior, providing support for religion influencing behavior in the workplace—to a certain extent, in the society—although the degree of effects varied, suggesting opportunities for further research. The findings were discussed, and limitations and recommendations were then presented. (shrink)

The objective of this study was to employ the theory of planned behavior in examining the inclusion of Islamic religiosity in predicting Islamic ethical work behavior. Islamic religiosity was included as Islam plays a dominant role in Brunei’s society. Participants consisted of 370 Malay Muslim teachers. Structural equation modeling was used to test three proposed models. While Model 1 was based on the theory of planned behavior, it does not take into consideration the distinctive Islamic context of the Bruneian society. (...) Hence, Model 2 was proposed to include Islamic religiosity. To better reflect the population, a model with Islamic religiosity was further augmented leading to Model 3. Results showed support for only two models: Model 1 and Model 3. Model 3 was revised by removing non-significant paths. Model comparison indicated that the revised Model 3 (AIC = 100.82; BIC = 103.55) is a better model than Model 1 (AIC = 141.88; BIC = 143.98). This suggests that the predictive power of the theory of planned behavior can be improved by including dominant cultural factors, such as religiosity, that affect a person’s belief. In conclusion, it can be said that religion is indispensable in exploring and understanding how the people in Brunei think and behave in their workplace and society. (shrink)

The present study attempts to investigate the effect of emotional intelligence, corporate ethical values, and ethical climates on the ethical judgment of auditors in Malaysia. The study used a questionnaire survey comprising instruments on emotional intelligence, 483, 2004), corporate ethical values, 339–359, 1985), ethical climate, and ethical vignettes related to the auditors’ job, 287–306, 1971 and Cohen et al. 1994). A total 263 usable responses were obtained and analyzed using statistical tests of mean score, standard deviation, correlation, and multiple regression. (...) The results reveal that emotional intelligence and corporate ethical values significantly influenced the ethical judgment of auditors. Likewise, instrumental and independence ethical climates have significant effect on ethical judgment of auditors in Malaysia. (shrink)

Forsyth’s (1980) Ethics Position Questionnaire and Hunt et al.’s (1989) Corporate Ethical Value Questionnaire are used to examine the ethical ideologies of senior managers from organizations listed in the Australian Stock Exchange. The results indicate how corporate ethical values, religion, gender, and age are related to the idealism and relativism of senior Australian managers. After discussing the results, limitations of the study are offered. Finally, managerial implications are provided and recommendations for future research are given.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether there is a relationship between a person's degree of religiousness and corporate social responsibility orientation. A total of 411 managers and 506 students from seven universities were surveyed. The statistical analysis showed that religiousness does influence students' orientation toward the economic, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities of business. It does not, however, have a significant impact upon the managers' attitudes. When the "low religiousness" students and managers were compared, differences were found with (...) respect to the economic, ethical, and philanthropic components of corporate social responsibility. Similar results were obtained when the "high religiousness" students and managers were compared. The implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

This study investigates how Islamic religiosity affects ethical decision making. The study was conducted in the Malaysian workforce across the public and private sectors with a sample of N = 160. Five factors are tested to determine if they mediate the relationship between Islamic religiosity and ethical intention. These factors are: perceived importance of the ethical issue, moral judgment, ego strength, spiritual intention, and conscience. A parallel mediation design was chosen to test six hypotheses derived from the theoretical literature. The (...) findings indicate that only the variable conscience mediates the relationship between religiosity and ethical intention. This study gives insights into the role of Islam in ethical decision-making, especially for Muslims in Malaysia, an area which has limited exploration. More generally, it contributes to the ongoing discussion in the literature on the relationship between religiosity and ethical decision-making. (shrink)

Role conflict occurs when a job possesses inconsistent expectations incongruent with individual beliefs, a situation that precipitates considerable frustration and other negative work outcomes. Increasing interest in processes that reduce role conflict is, therefore, witnessed. With the help of information collected from a large sample of individuals employed at an education-based healthcare institution, this study identified several factors that might decrease role conflict, namely mindfulness and organizational ethics. In particular, the results indicated that mindfulness was associated with decreased role conflict, (...) and that perceived ethical values and a shared ethics code were associated with decreased role conflict and increased mindfulness. Despite the study's limitations, these findings imply that companies might better manage role conflict through the development of mindfulness and organizational ethics. (shrink)

The aim of our research is to analyze how different religions influence business ethics. We develop an index of practices in the field of business ethics, made up of 19 items containing practices related to workers, consumers, products, human rights, management of ethical conflicts, and crime prevention. Also, we consider a wide range of religion affiliations. To undertake this research, we use a panel data sample composed of 11,956 firm‐year observations from 18 countries. Drawing on stakeholder theory, we posit some (...) hypotheses based on the religions considered. The results obtained show that a higher percentage of religious adherents in the country where a company does business usually involve the implementation of more ethical practices in the corporate field. These findings are obtained for Christian, Islamic, Jewish, and Hindu religions. In contrast, this does not stand for Buddhist and folk religions. Also, countries where there is no predominant religion do not show a confluence between religion and ethical corporate practices. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this study is to link the effects of consumer personality traits on green buying intention via the mediating variable of consumer ethical beliefs so as to extend the context of green buying intentions with consumer ethics literatures. Based on a survey of 545 Taiwanese respondents, consumer personality traits were found to significantly affect consumer ethical beliefs. The results also indicate that some dimensions of consumer ethical beliefs significantly predict consumer intention to buy green products. Generally speaking, (...) this study enhances our knowledge of consumers’ ethical decision-making in the context of green consumption behaviors. Theoretical and managerial implications, limitations, and future research are also provided. (shrink)

In 1949 Culliton noted that "... religion has something to offer business" (Culliton, 1949, p. 265). While religion definitely does have something to offer business, especially business ethics, it is only recently that empirical research linking religiosity and business ethics has been conducted. Indeed, religiosity affords a background, against which the ethical nature of business, including marketing and consumer behavior, can be interpreted. This article offers a descriptive, rather than normative, perspective in reviewing articles linking religion to business and consumer (...) ethics. The main objective of the article being both to present some of the most significant empirical findings to date and also to encourage researchers to pursue further research in this relatively under researched area. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

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.

A study of 612 CPAs employed in four separate regions of the People’s Republic of China shows that they exhibit ethical orientations that are not significantly different from one another and that they do not, as a group identify with the Subjectivist description provided in the Forsyth et al. (Journal of Business Ethics 8(83):813–833, 2008) meta-analytic international study involving the Ethical Position Questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analysis did however establish the validity of the instrument as a measure of idealistic and relativistic (...) tendencies. It was established that the ethical tone within local accounting firms plays a significant role in forming ethical positions and that these variables together work to influence ethical judgement making with respect to issues involving independence and objectivity. The constructs of relativism and idealism act as reliable predictors of moral choice, but need to be carefully interpreted in the context of field research. The study highlights concerns about the ethicality of a fledgling group of professionals having to cope with the exigencies associated with the world’s fastest developing economy. (shrink)

Individuals are downloading copyrighted materials at escalating rates (Hill 2007; Siwek 2007). Since most materials shared within these networks are copyrighted works, providing, exchanging, or downloading files is considered to be piracy and a violation of intellectual property rights (Shang et al. 2008). Previous research indicates that personal moral philosophies rooted in moral absolutism together with social context may impact decision making in ethical dilemmas; however, it is yet unclear which motivations and norms contextually impact moral awareness in a peer-to-peer (...) (P2P) file sharing context (Shang et al. 2008). In sum, factors affecting the decision to share copyrighted material require further clarification and investigation (Shang et al. 2008). The purpose of this study was to use a consumer-based scenario and multiple ethics measures to explore how idealism, formalism, and perceived social consensus impact users’ propensity to recognize that the sharing of copyrighted media through P2P networks was an ethical issue and their subsequent ethical intentions. Results showed that high levels of idealism and formalism were associated with an increased recognition that file sharing was an ethical issue, but neither construct had a direct effect on ethical intention. Strong social consensus among respondents that other people consider file sharing to be unethical was also positively related to the recognition that file sharing was an ethical issue, and ethical recognition was a moderate predictor of intention not to engage in file sharing. Finally, a post hoc mediation analysis indicated that idealism, formalism, and social consensus operated through recognition of an ethical issue to impact ethical intention (indirect-only mediation). (shrink)

Previous work suggests that moral intensity and the perceived importance of an ethical issue can influence individual ethical decision making. However, prior research has not explored how the various dimensions of moral intensity might differentially affect PIE, or how moral intensity might function together with (or in the presence of) PIE to influence ethical decision making. In addition, prior work has also not adequately investigated how the operational context of an organization, which may embody conditions or practices that create barriers (...) to ethical decision making, may differ from other functional areas of an organization. Consequently, this study investigated the relationships among moral intensity, perceived ethical issue importance, and three stages of the ethical reasoning process: recognition of an ethical issue, ethical judgment, and ethical intention. Using an internet-based, self-report survey containing two operations management scenarios and various ethics measures, information was collected from business professionals working for a Midwestern financial services organization. The hierarchical regression results indicated that some dimensions of moral intensity were positively related to PIE, ethical issue recognition, and ethical judgment, and that PIE was associated with increased ethical issue recognition and ethical judgment. The steps of ethical reasoning were also positively interrelated. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this study was to explore the indirect effect of intrinsic religiosity and extrinsic religiosity on ethical intention through ethical judgment. A review of the literature shows the need for more research at the intersection of religiosity and ethics, especially in non-Western, highly religious contexts. This research, therefore, addresses the research question: Do intrinsic religiosity and extrinsic religiosity indirectly impact ethical intention through influencing the ethical judgment of management professionals? Data were gathered from members of the Management (...) Association of Pakistan through a questionnaire. Pearson correlation results show the overall trend between the constructs of interest. Multiple regression results show that both intrinsic religiosity and extrinsic religiosity are significant positive predictors of ethical judgment. Ethical judgment was also found to be a significant, positive predictor of ethical intention. The main contribution of the study is evidence that ethical judgment acts as a mediator between religiosity (whether intrinsic or extrinsic) and ethical intention in a non-Western highly religious context. This research also found that intrinsic religiosity impacts ethical intention directly as well as indirectly through ethical judgment, but extrinsic religiosity influences ethical intention only through its effect on ethical judgment. We discuss our results along with practical and research implications, and limitations of this research are highlighted to guide future research. (shrink)

This study compares the ethical decision-making processes of Turkish, Thai, and American businesspeople, considering perceived moral intensity (PMI), corporate ethical values (CEV), and perceived importance of ethics (PIE). PMI describes the ethical decision making at the individual level, CEV assesses the influences of the organization’s ethical culture on the decisions of the individual, and PIE reveals what the businesspeople believe about the relationships among business, ethics, and long-run profitability. The survey respondents are professional marketers and businesspeople currently enrolled in or (...) graduated from MBA programs in Turkey (n = 416), Thailand (n = 605), and US (n = 446). The ANOVA results reveal that American businesspeople are more likely to perceive the unethical marketing behaviors as more serious than their counterparts in Turkey and Thailand. American and Turkish organizations are found to have higher CEV than Thai organizations. On the other hand, Thai and American businesspeople perceived ethics to be more important for business success than Turkish businesspeople. The understanding of the differences and similarities in ethical perceptions of the businesspeople from various countries is valuable for a successful and harmonious working together when engaging in global marketing activities. This study is thus believed to be useful for people who plan to invest or manage businesses in these countries, and many of the implications are thought to be valuable in international business arena. (shrink)

Faced with an ever-growing number of ethical marketing issues and uncertainty about the impact of specialized ethics journals, researchers are struggling to keep abreast of developments in the field. In order to address these challenges, our paper provides a comprehensive review of the literature on marketing ethics over almost 50 years, offers a citation analysis and develops a unique marketing ethics impact factor (MEIF). We contribute to the field in three important ways. First, we present a state-of-the-art picture of marketing (...) ethics research. This provides an account of the research focus in each decade, assesses the importance of specific topics in the debate and identifies existing research gaps. Second, we identify the most influential papers and researchers in the marketing ethics area. Third, we evaluate the most important journals in terms of their impact on marketing ethics. To this end, we have developed an MEIF. This improves our ability to judge a journal's influence on this particular sub-discipline. (shrink)

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)

This study examines social desirability bias in the context of ethical decision-making by accountants. It hypothesizes a negative relation between social desirability bias and ethical evaluation. It also predicts an interaction effect between religiousness and gender on social desirability bias. An experiment using five general business vignettes was carried out on 121 accountants (63 males and 58 females). The results show that social desirability bias is higher (lower) when the situation encountered is more (less) unethical. The bias has religiousness and (...) gender main effects as well as an interaction effect between these two independent variables. Women who were more religious recorded the highest bias scores relative to less religious women and men regardless of their religiousness. (shrink)

This study assesses the relationships among unethical corporate values, bullying experiences, psychopathy, and selling professionals’ ethical evaluations of bullying. Information was collected from national/regional samples of selling professionals. Results indicated that unethical values, bullying, and psychopathy were positively interrelated. Psychopathy and unethical values were negatively associated with moral intensity, while moral intensity was positively related to ethical issue importance. Psychopathy and unethical values were negatively related to issue importance, and issue importance and moral intensity were positively related to ethical judgment. (...) Finally, ethical judgment and moral intensity were positively linked to ethical intention; psychopathy was negatively associated with ethical intention. (shrink)

This paper examines the impact of Chinese business managers’ moral philosophies on the perception of corrupt payments such as bribery, kickbacks and gift giving. Business managers from Mainland China were selected as target respondents. As hypothesized the survey results generally indicate that moral relativism is a significant predictor of Chinese business managers’ favorable perception of bribery and kickbacks. In examining the attitude toward gift giving, the survey showed that an individual’s attitude toward gift giving was neither affected by their moral (...) relativism nor by their moral idealism, which implies that gift giving is widely accepted as legal practice in business in Chinese cultural society. (shrink)

The extent and mechanisms through which religion intertwines with decision-making processes in family firms remain inadequately understood. Family firm owners, driven by their commitment to ethical business practices and the safeguarding of their socioemotional wealth, actively seek cues to inform their decision-making processes. This research demonstrates that, among these guiding cues, top-level executives’ perceived religiosity emerges as a relevant factor. Building upon the socioemotional wealth perspective and conducting a longitudinal analysis based on listed family firms between 2009 and 2018, our (...) findings reveal a positive association between family voting rights and the presence of board members perceived to be religious. Furthermore, this relationship is less pronounced if family firms operate in industries with high research and development intensity. Our study confirms that boards with high shares of religiously perceived directors are positively associated with the appointment of chief executive officers perceived to be religious during succession events. We thereby present a unique perspective that acknowledges perceived religiosity as a micro-level constituent shaping board membership and successor selection. This investigation captures the intricate interplay between religion and family firms under a socioemotional wealth umbrella, offering important insights to the family business ethics discourse. Our research also offers practical implications for board and leadership diversity management in family firms. (shrink)

In this study, we propose and test a model of the effects of organizational ethical culture and organizational architecture on the perceived unethical behavior of employees towards customers. This study also examines the relationship between organizational ethical culture and moral acceptability judgment, hypothesizing that moral acceptability judgment is an important stage in the ethical decision-making process. Based on a field study in one of the largest financial institutions in Europe, we found that organizational ethical culture was significantly related to the (...) perceived frequency of unethical behavior towards customers and to the moral acceptability judgment of this type of unethical behavior. No support was found for the claim that features of organizational architecture are associated with the perceived frequency of unethical behavior towards customers. This is the first study to document the differential effects of organizational architecture and organizational ethical culture on perceived unethical behavior of employees towards customers, in wholesale banking. Implications for managers and future research are discussed. (shrink)

Our research’s aim is to assess the effect of cultural factors on business ethical decision-making process in a Western cultural context and in a non-Western cultural context. Specifically, this study investigates ethical perceptions, religiosity, personal moral philosophies, corporate ethical values, gender, and ethical intentions of U.S. and Moroccan business managers. The findings demonstrate that significant differences do exist between the two countries in idealism and relativism. Moroccan managers tend to be more idealistic than the U.S. managers. There is a strong (...) positive relationship between religiosity and idealism. There were mixed findings in examining the correlates of religiosity and various components of ethical intentions. Moroccan managers were more homogenous in their corporate ethical values than were the U.S. managers. The results demonstrate that (in general) idealism is a good predictor of ethical intentions and behaviors. Additionally, managers from the two countries differed in the degree of relationship between perceptions and intentions in three of the four scenarios. This study’s results confirm other research findings that, in general, female business managers have higher ethical sensitivity in terms of their ethical judgment than their male counterparts. Managerial implications are also discussed. (shrink)

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)

Previous research indicates that ethical ideologies, issue-contingencies, and social context can impact ethical reasoning in different business situations. However, the manner in which these constructs work together to shape different steps of the ethical decision-making process is not always clear. The purpose of this study was to address these issues by exploring the influence of idealism and relativism, perceived moral intensity in a decision-making situation, and social context on the recognition of an ethical issue and ethical intention. Utilizing a sales-based (...) scenario and multiple ethics measures included on a self-report questionnaire, data were collected from a regional sample of business students, most of whom had modest work experience. The results indicated that perceived moral intensity was associated with increased ethical issue recognition and ethical intention. Idealism was also associated with increased ethical issue recognition, and relativism was associated with decreased ethical intention. Social consensus was positively related to ethical issue recognition and intention, while competitive context was inversely related to ethical intention. Finally, ethical issue recognition was associated with increased ethical intention. Idealism, moral intensity, social consensus, and work experience worked together as predictors of ethical issue recognition, whereas recognition of an ethical issue, relativism, moral intensity, social consensus, and competitive context worked together to predict ethical intention. (shrink)

This study provides a comparison of the ethical perceptions of managers and non-managers, including professionals, teachers, sales persons and clerks, as well as technical and plant workers. Data of working individuals were collected in Hong Kong in the form of questionnaires which contain vignettes of questionable ethical issues. Factor analysis was used to identify the major ethical dimensions which were then used as the basis of comparison. Regression analyses were used to study the effect of various variables on ethical perceptions (...) in terms of the identified dimensions. Our study reviews that managers tend to possess deontological views that are more ethical than that found in other occupations. The gap between managers and professionals in perceiving unethical behavior is narrower compared to that between the former and individuals in other occupations. The acceptability of unethical behavior tends to decline with income. Besides, there are indications that people working in non-profit organizations tend to have higher ethical standards. Based on our results, recommendations are made to improve the ethical culture of organizations. (shrink)

Building on an existing framework concerning ethical intention, this research explores how Thai business people perceive the importance of ethics in various scenarios. This study investigates the relative influences of personal characteristics and the organizational environment underlying the Thai business people’s ethical perception. Corporate ethical values and idealism are shown to positively influence a Thai manager’s perceptions about the importance of ethics. While their ability to perceive the existence of an ethical problem is negatively influenced by relativism, it is positively (...) impacted by their existing perceptions about the importance of ethics. Results also suggest positive relationships between perceived importance of ethics and perceived ethical problems with ethical intention. These results extend research in understanding the relationship between the antecedents and consequences of perceived importance of ethics within an economically growing non-Western culture. (shrink)

The goals of this study are to test a pattern of ethical decision making that predicts ethical intentions of individuals within corporations based primarily on the ethical values embedded in corporate culture, and to see whether that model is generally stable across countries. The survey instrument used scales to measure the effects of corporate ethical values, idealism, and relativism on ethical intentions of Turkish, Thai, and American businesspeople. The samples include practitioner members of the American Marketing Association in the U.S., (...) and full-time businesspeople enrolled in executive MBA programs in Thailand and Turkey. The study is positioned within a fairly new stream that assesses patterns across countries, rather than differences between them, in a way that might be called “culture free.” The results show a generally positive influence between cultural ethical values and ethical intentions. The results also indicate that the positive effect of corporate ethical values on ethical intentions is greater for managers with low idealism and high relativism. We also discuss the implications of our results for managers of international businesses. (shrink)

Using Robert Merton’s perspective on social structure [Social theory and structure. Free Press, New York, 1968], this study tested the individual-level association between job position and ethical reasoning. Anomie theory was employed to examine how country-level factors moderate that individual-level association. The hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) method was used to analyze 22,359 subjects from 28 nations. The statistical results proved that workers are more likely to justify ethically suspect behaviors, and that this individual-level relationship is moderated by the country-level factors (...) of power distance, masculinity, social inequality, and education accessibility. These results imply that Merton’s view of social structure and contemporary anomie theorists’ perspective of anomie [Messner and Rosenfeld (Crime and the American dream. Wadsworth, Belmont, 2001); Rosenfeld and Messner (The future of anomie theory. Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1997)] are mutually complementary rather than exclusive. (shrink)

Consensus around what constitutes researcher conflicts of interest (COIs) and awareness of their influence on our research are two critical steps in ensuring the integrity of our science. In this research, data were collected from individual scholars via 2 surveys 5 years apart and from journals and associations to examine the level of social consensus and moral awareness among scholars, journals, and associations regarding researcher COIs. Although we observed increases in level of social consensus and moral awareness between 2012 and (...) 2017, results still revealed limited agreement about what relationships constitute a COI and limited awareness about the presence of and the ethical issues surrounding COIs. Although all journals and associations we examined supported COI disclosure, most did not provide researchers with detailed COI-related information, guidance, or disclosure tools. Limited social consensus and moral awareness regarding COIs is problematic because it inhibits the recognition, disclosure, and management of COIs and limits ethical decision making. We need to continue and enhance discussions about COIs and aim to create consensus and awareness where we do not have it with the goal of reducing potential scientific misconduct related to COIs. (shrink)