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)

Using undergraduate students from the Waikato University in New Zealand as a sample, this study compared the ethical positions of students of different field of study and demographic characteristics. It was found that the ethical standard of business students are not significantly different from that of non-business students. The findings also suggest that female students are more ethical than male students, and senior students are more ethical than junior students.Besides sex and year of study, other variables studied were parents' occupation, (...) religiosity and household income of the students. All these variables were found to have no significant impact on the ethical position of the students. Furthermore, all the interaction effects between the variables studied and the students' major field of study were nonsignificant. (shrink)

Using a scenario approach involving hypothetical moral decisions, the study aims to (1) compare managerial professionals' ethicality judgments with those made by the general public, and (2) ascertain the roles of perceived intensity (Jones, 1991) as well as perceived fairness of the moral issue in judgments of ethicality. While the two respondent groups made similar ratings on variables of moral intensity, fairness, and ethicality; the evaluation processes underlying their ethicality judgments were different. Empirically, the study has also established a link (...) between judgments of fairness and judgments of ethicality. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explicate the idea of egoism in the context of marketing. The idea of egoism is reviewed and contextualized into a framework for interpreting different marketer types. Marketers’ potential trade-offs with consumers and competitors are examined. Four types of marketers are explicated: extremely egoistic marketer, moderately egoistic marketer, moderately altruistic marketer, and extremely altruistic marketer. The framework offered in the paper is of relevance to marketers, media, and agencies rewarding marketing performance. The framework may (...) help in assessing the ethical quotient in marketers’ preferences and behaviors. Studies recognizing the pertinence of egoism in marketing are scarce, and the typological framework discussed in the paper is a contribution to the marketing ethics literature. (shrink)

Cross-national studies of business-related ethicality frequently have concluded that Americans possess higher ethical standards than non-Americans. These conclusions have generally been based on survey responses of relatively small convenience samples of individuals in a very limited number of countries. This article reports a study of the relationship between nationality and business-related ethicality based on survey responses from more than 6300 business students attending 120 colleges and universities in 36 countries. Two well-documented determinants of business ethics (gender and religiosity) were investigated (...) as moderators of the nationality–business ethicality relationship. The major research finding is that, while statistically significant differences were found between the business-related ethicality of American survey participants and the business-related ethicality of the non-American survey participants, the magnitudes of the differences were not substantial. The results of the study suggest that (i) more empirical cross-cultural/national research is required on business-related ethicality and (ii) previous explanations for cross-cultural/national differences in ethics need to be reconsidered before further generalizations are warranted. (shrink)

The study uses a dataset from Ghana to test for differential features regarding ethical orientation, among students based on eight categorisations. Data was collected by a questionnaire. The respondents were business students within Ghanaian universities and the number of useable responses was 79, out of a possible 100 students contacted, from an online survey. The results are mixed but substantially align with earlier studies except for a few deviations and a synthesis of the literature is used to explain the findings (...) emanating from this study. This study hypothesises new relationships regarding the impact of kinship systems on ethical orientation hence adding to the literature. (shrink)

Most of research on fostering ethical behavior among students has taken place in US and Europe. This paper seeks to provide additional information to both educators and organizations about the ethical perceptions of Iranian students by investigating the effect of gender on students’ ethical behavior. The authors developed and administered a quantitative questionnaire to a sample of 203 individuals currently pursuing accredited degrees at one of the public universities in Iran. Statistical analysis revealed that male students have a significantly less (...) ethical behavior in three factors (selfishness, academic cheating and computer ethics) than female students. While the topic of students’ ethical behavior and its relationship with gender has been extensively studied before, there have been contrasting findings by different researchers. This paper is among the very few first researches conducted among Iranian university students to investigate the effects of gender on students’ ethical behavior under the four categories of violation of school regulations, selfishness, academic cheating, and computer ethics, hence making an important contribution to the ethics literature on the developing countries, since the study was conducted in Iran. (shrink)

In an effort to build on the current knowledge of ethical behaviour in Asia this paper proposes to replicate existing ethical research and to investigate specific questions relating to intra-cultural differences in Hong Kong. Four major conclusions were derived from this descriptive empirical study. A statistically significant correlation exists between age and ethical beliefs, with older employees less likely to express agreement to an unethical action than younger employees. In contrast to many previous studies no statistically significant differences in ethical (...) beliefs were found in relation to gender, level in the organisation, company size, and whether the respondent worked in a multinational or local company. Significant differences in responses to ethical dilemmas were identified between local and expatriate personnel with expatriate respondents indicating a lower level of agreement to unethical actions. For local respondents, of Hong Kong origin, there was no significant correlation between level of education, religiosity, years of business experience, functional origin and their ethical responses. (shrink)

The development of effective means to enhance research integrity by universities requires baseline measures of individual, programmatic, and institutional factors known to contribute to ethical decision making and behavior. In the present study, master’s thesis and Ph.D. students in the fields of biological, health and social sciences at a research extensive university completed a field appropriate measure of research ethical decision making and rated the seriousness of the research issue and importance for implementing the selection response. In addition they were (...) asked to rate their perceptions of the institutional and departmental research climate and to complete a measure of utilitarian and formalistic predisposition. Female students were found to be more ethical in their decision making compared to male students. The research ethical decision measure was found to be related to participants’ ethical predisposition and overall perception of organizational and departmental research climate; however, formalism was the only individual predictor to reach statistical significance and none of the individual subscales of the research climate measure were significantly correlated to ethicality. Participants’ ratings of the seriousness of the issue were correlated with their ratings of the importance of carrying out their selected response but neither was significantly predictive of the ethicality of their responses. The implications of these findings for the development of more effective training programs and environments for graduate students in research ethics and integrity are discussed. (shrink)

The self-interest paradigm predicts that unethical behavior occurs when such behavior benefits the actor. A recent model of lying behavior, however, predicts that lying behavior results from an individual''s inability to meet conflicting role demands. The need to reconcile the self-interest and role conflict theories prompted the present study, which orthogonally manipulated the benefit from lying and the conflicting role demands. A model integrating the two theories predicts the results, which showed that both elements — self benefit and role conflict (...) — influenced lying, separately and interactively. Additionally, the relative strength of the roles in conflict affected their level of influence. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Although the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct emphasizes the importance of education in ethics, very little is known about how and when the Code and the topic of ethics can be presented to enhance the effectiveness of ethics-oriented education. The purpose of this research was to provide preliminary evidence about the ethical development of students prior to, and immediately following, such courses. We found that: (1) accounting students, after taking an auditing course which emphasized the AICPA Code, reasoned at higher (...) levels than students who had not taken the course; (2) there were no differences in moral reasoning levels when accounting and non-accounting majors were compared prior to an auditing course; and (3) there was a significant relationship between the Seniors' levels of ethical development and the choice of an ethical versus unethical action. It was concluded that an auditing course emphasizing the 'spirit' of the Code can have a positive impact on the ethical behaviour of some of the future members of the accounting profession. (shrink)

A travel management programme allows an organisation to manage corporate travel expenditure, and through a well-formulated travel policy, to control its travel expenses. However, traveller non-compliance of the travel policy is an increasing area of concern with surveys conducted amongst travellers showing various reasons for non-compliance, both deliberate and unknowing. The purpose of this article is to look beyond the reasons and identify the underlying factors that influence travel policy compliance. Two broad categories of factors that lead to non-compliance are (...) distinguished: those related to the corporate travel policy as formulated and communicated by the organisation, referred to as corporate-related factors and including issues of corporate culture and business ethics; and those related to the person of the corporate traveller, referred as personal-related factors and including issues of personal ethics. This article makes a first attempt at identifying factors that have not previously been recognised in those industry or academic studies done on non-compliance or violation of the corporate travel policy. (shrink)

In 1999, the Journal of Business Ethics published its 1 500th article. This article commemorates the journal's quest "to improve the human condition" (Michalos, 1988, p. 1) with a summary and assessment of the first eighteen volumes. The first part provides an overview of JBE, highlighting the journal's growth, types of methodologies published, and the breadth of the field. The second part provides a detailed account of the quantitative research findings. Major research topics include (1) prevalence of ethical behavior, (2) (...) ethical sensitivities, (3) ethics codes and programs, (4) corporate social performance and policies, (5) human resource practices and policies, and (6) professions – accounting, marketing/sales, and finance/strategy. Much remains to be done. (shrink)

Due in part to a growing realization of the importance of the role that retailing plays in the marketing channel, and to the increasing numbers of college graduates being employed by retailers, growing attention is being placed on business students'' ethical perceptions of retailing practices. This study continues this focus by examining the ethical perceptions of collegiate business students attending two different universities which likely represent two different microcultures — conservative evangelical Protestant and secular.The results suggest that ethical perceptions may (...) vary between the students attending two universities which likely represent differing microcultures. The students attending the conservative evangelical Protestant university appear to possess ethical perceptions which are significantly more ethical than those of students attending the public university. Evidence was observed, therefore, which suggests that ethical perceptions may vary across students from differing microcultures. (shrink)

Given the proliferation of research regarding the ethical development of students in general, and business students in particular, it is difficult to draw conclusions from the contradictory results of many studies. In this meta-analysis of empirical studies from 1985 through 1994, the relationships of gender, age and undergraduate major to the ethical attitudes and behavior of business students are analyzed. The results indicate that female students exhibit stronger ethical attitudes than males. The same is also true for older versus younger (...) students. However, the relationship with undergraduate major is still difficult to interpret. (shrink)

This study provides an evaluation of ethical business perception of busIness students from three countries: Australia, Taiwan and the United States. Although statistically significant differences do exist there is significant agreement with the way students perceive ethical/unethical practices in business. The findings of this paper indicate a universality of business ethical perceptions.