Machiavellianism, Profit, and the Dimensions of Ethical Judgment: A Study of Impact

Research by Reidenbach and Robin (1990) provides a means to study the differential impact of three dimensions of attitude toward ethics: moral equity, relativism, and contractualism. It is hypothesized that moral equity will be the most significant predictor of ethical judgment and intent to act. It is also hypothesized that Machiavellianism and profit will affect relativism and contractualism dimensions, but not moral equity. Additionally, it is hypothesized that Machiavellianism will interact with profit to affect intent to act. Moral equity was found to be the only predictor of ethical judgment, and moral equity and contractualism were predictors of intent to act. Machiavellianism impacted contractualism, but not relativism. Corporate profit did not affect either ethical judgment or intent to act, and did not interact with Machiavellianism. Implications for business ethics education and training are discussed.     

Studying Ethical Judgments and Behavioral Intentions Using Structural Equations: Evidence from the Multidimensional Ethics Scale*

The linkage between ethical judgment and ethical behavioral intention was investigated. The Multidimensional Ethics Scale (MES) was used to measure ethical judgment ratings of hypothetical behaviors in retail, sales, and automobile repair scenarios. Confirmatory factor analysis on a sample of 300 undergraduate business students showed that a model with three latent variables representing three correlated ethical dimensions of moral equity, relativism, and contractualism, three correlated scenario latent variables, and correlated residuals presented a good fit to the data. Further, structural models of the relationship of ethical judgment to behavioral intentions revealed that behavioral intentions were more highly related to the scenario factors than to the ethical dimensions across three scenarios. Adding a method factor to the model improved goodness-of-fit and changed some structural model conclusions.

Ethical Awareness of Seller’s Behavior in Consumer-to-Consumer Electronic Commerce: Applying the Multidimensional Ethics Scale

Consumer-to-consumer electronic commerce (C2C e-commerce) has opened the possibility of consumers completing more transactions with each other. It has also introduced the ability for consumers to behave unethically. This study examines an individual’s ethical awareness of a seller’s behavior in C2C e-commerce situations by applying the multidimensional ethics scale (with measures for moral equity, relativism, egoism, utilitarianism, and contractualism). The study surveys undergraduate business students in four different C2C e-commerce situations and finds relativism to influence ethical awareness in all scenarios. Egoism is found to influence ethical awareness in three scenarios and contractualism in one scenario, and utilitarianism is not found to be an influence in any scenario. The findings from this study suggest that sellers in C2C e-commerce should conduct transactions based on what is culturally and socially acceptable (i.e., relativism), but also consider the importance of one’s reputation (i.e., egoism), and written or perceived contracts (i.e., contractualism).     

Ethical judgments and intentions: a multinational study of marketing professionals

A multinational study of marketing professionals was conducted in the US, England, Spain and Turkey. Respondents from these countries were compared on various ethics-related constructs such as idealism, relativism, moral intensity and corporate ethical values. Analyses of variance indicated that moral intensity had a signi ?cant impact on both ethical judgments and behavioral intentions. However, corporate ethical values, an idealistic ethical perspective and a relativistic ethical perspective only partially impacted ethical judgments and intentions. Country differences showed that the US was highest in terms of corporate ethical values while being the lowest in terms of relativism and signi?cantly lower than Spain and Turkey in terms of idealism. Turkey was the highest in terms of both idealism and relativism yet lowest in terms of corporate ethical values. Country differences in terms of moral intensity tended to be situation-speci?c. One managerial implication, for ?rms in all four countries, is that a clear set of corporate policies concerning ethics can positively in?uence the behavioral intentions of employees. It is important that employees do not misinterpret the desires of top management where ethical issues are involved.     

Ethical Evaluations of Business Activities and Personal Religiousness

The study examines the relationship betweenmoral judgments of a business situation with ethicalcontent and personal religiousness. The findingssuggest that ethical interest and behaviour arerelated to religiousness. However, only the ethicalphilosophy of contractualism was found to be relatedto religiousness, while moral equity and relativismwere not.     

An Exploration of Ethical Decision-making Processes in the United States and Egypt

In this comparative survey of 191 Egyptian and 92 U.S. executives, we explore the relationship between national culture and ethical decision-making within the context of business. Using Reidenbach and Robin’s (1988) multi-criteria ethics instrument, we examine how differences on two of Hofstede’s national culture dimensions, individualism/collectivism, and power distance, are related to the manner in which business practitioners make ethical decisions. Egypt and the U.S. provide an interesting comparison because of the extreme differences in their economies and related business development. Our results indicate that respondents from the U.S, individualistic and low in power distance, were likely to view the decision making outcome in ethics scenarios as more unethical than the more collectivistic and high power distance Egyptians, when applying ethical criteria based on justice, utilitarianism, relativism, and (contrary to our predictions) egoism. However, we also found that both Egyptians and Americans rely on justice, utilitarianism, and relativism in predicting their intentions to behave ethically, and that Americans substitute egoism for justice, when the behavioral intentions of peers are examined.     

Toward the development of a multidimensional scale for improving evaluations of Business Ethics

This study represents an improvement in the ethics scales inventory published in a 1988 Journal of Business Ethics article. The article presents the distillation and validation process whereby the original 33 item inventory was reduced to eight items. These eight items comprise the following ethical dimensions: a moral equity dimension, a relativism dimension, and a contractualism dimension. The multidimensional ethics scale demonstrates significant predictive ability.Dr Reidenbach is the Director of the Center for Business Development and Research and Professor of Marketing at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is the co-author of two books on business ethics and has contributed numerous articles on ethics to various academic and applied business journals. Dr Donald P. Robin, Professor of Business Ethics and Professor of Marketing, is co-author with Dr R. Eric Reidenbach of two recent books (1989) on business ethics. Both books, Business Ethics: Where Profits Meet Value Systems and Ethics and Profits: A Convergence of Corporate America's Economic and Social Responsibilities were published by Prentice-Hall. Dr Robin is a frequent lecturer on business ethics and has written several articles on the subject for both ethics and business journals.     

Measuring Ethical Sensitivity and Evaluation

Measures of student ethical sensitivity and their increases help to answer questions such as whether accounting ethics should be taught at all. We investigate different sensitivity measures and alternatives to the well-established Defining Issues Test (DIT-2, Rest, J. R. et al. [1999, Postconventional Moral Thinking: A Neo-Kohlbergian Approach (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ]), frequently used to measure the effects of undergraduate accounting ethics education. Because the DIT measures cognitive development, which increases with age, the DIT scores for younger accounting students are typically lower, have limited range, and are not likely to vary sufficiently with corresponding choices in ethical dilemmas. Since the DIT measures only the moral judgment component of ethical decision-making, we consider the multidimensional ethical scale (MES) to allow respondents to provide explanations for their moral and other judgments. The MES has been used to measure attitudes related to justice, utility, contractualism, egoism, and relativism. Unfortunately, the MES is not comparable in one-dimension to the DIT, and unlike the DIT, the MES has no theoretical or objective base. Therefore, we construct a comparable one-dimensional relative measure, a Composite MES Score, obtained from previous research on practicing accountants. We compare the reliability of this measure to the DIT in explaining the ethical choices of 54 specially chosen, somewhat homogeneous students, whose ages range from 18 to 19, and who are taking a second semester freshman accounting course at a private, religion-affiliated university. These particular students are relatively untrained in the formal use of questionable accounting choices. These students are less likely to recognize the dilemmas of the MES and are also less likely to demonstrate sufficient variation in their DIT scores, traditionally low for freshmen students. As freshmen, they are recent graduates of high school and more likely guided by other ethical influences including friends, family, or contractual obligations (some of the MES constructs) rather than higher cognitive development. This study confirms suspicions. We find the DIT scores do not vary sufficiently to explain the moral reasoning of freshmen. For eight dilemmas and 24 choices we find the DIT score correlates with only three choices, whereas the MES regression models have at least one significant construct for 23 out of 24 ethical choices. The Composite MES Score (a relative measure) also explains 23 out of 24 choices and is statistically related to the DIT in only one of the choices. Unlike the DIT, the Composite MES permits pretest and retesting with different dilemmas to evaluate changes in ethical sensitivity. These results argue for relative rather than absolute measures of sensitivity and guides beyond cognitive development (the DIT-score) to explain undergraduate student sensitivity.     

Rules,standards, and ethics: Relativism predicts cross-national differences in the codification of moral standards

This research examines the relationship between the code of ethics adopted by businesses in a country and the ethics positions of the inhabitants of that country. Ethics Position Theory (EPT) maintains that individuals’ personal moral philosophies influence their ethical judgments, actions, and emotions. The theory, when describing individual differences in moral philosophies, stresses two dimensions: relativism (skepticism with regards to inviolate moral principles) and idealism (concern for positive outcomes). Extending previous research that identified differences in relativism and idealism between residents of different countries and world regions, we examined the relationship between relativism, idealism, and the regulatory standards governing commercial activities of firms headquartered in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Spain, the UK, and the US. The results indicated that the level of relativism of a nation's populace predicted degree of ethical codification of commerce in that nation. These findings suggest that the ethical conduct of business will be more closely regulated in countries where relativism is low (e.g., Australia, Canada) but less closely regulated in countries where the residents are more ethically relativistic (e.g., Hong Kong, Spain).     

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Deliberative Reasoning of Canadian and Chinese Accounting Students

Absract  Using Hofstede’s culture theory (1980, 2001, Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviours, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nation. Sage, NewYork), the current study incorporates the moral development (e.g. Thorne, 2000; Thorne and Magnan, 2000; Thorne et al., 2003) and multidimensional ethics scale (e.g. Cohen et al., 1993; Cohen et al., 1996b; Cohen et al., 2001; Flory et al., 1992) approaches to compare the ethical reasoning and decisions of Canadian and Mainland Chinese final year undergraduate accounting students. The results indicate that Canadian accounting students’ formulation of an intention to act on a particular ethical dilemma (deliberative reasoning) as measured by the moral development approach (Thorne, 2000) was higher than Mainland Chinese accounting students. The current study proposes that the five factors identified by the multidimensional ethics scale (MES), as being relevant to ethical decision making can be placed into␣the three levels of ethical reasoning identified by Kohlberg’s (1958, The Development of Modes of Moral Thinking and Choice in the Years Ten to Sixteen. University of Chicago, Doctoral dissertation) theory of cognitive moral development. Canadian accounting students used post-conventional MES factors (moral equity, contractualism, and utilitarianism) more frequently and made more ethical audit decisions than Chinese accounting students. Lin Ge is an accountant at Guest-tek Interactive Entertainment Ltd. Her research interest includes ethics and judgment of accountants and auditors, cross-cultural studies and international business. Stuart Thomas, Ph.D., is associate professor of accounting in the Faculty of Management at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. He has published in the Journal of Business Ethics, Business and Society, Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting, Advances in Management Accounting and the Journal of Accounting Case Research. His research interests focus on ethical decision making and the effects of pay schemes on performance and standard setting.     

Issue-Contingent Effects on Ethical Decision Making: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

This experiment examined the effects of three elements comprising Jones' (1991) moral intensity construct, (social consensus, personal proximity, and magnitude of consequences) in a cross-cultural comparison of ethical decision making within a human resource management (HRM) context. Results indicated social consensus had the most potent effect on judgments of moral concern and judgments of immorality. An analysis of American, Eastern European, and Indonesian responses also indicted socio-cultural differences were moderated by the type of HRM ethical issue. In addition, individual differences in personal ethical ideology (relativism and idealism) varied reliably with moral judgments after controlling for issue characteristics and socio-cultural background.     

The Moderating Effect of Individuals' Perceptions of Ethical Work Climate on Ethical Judgments and Behavioral Intentions

Dimensions of the ethical work climate, as conceptualized by Victor and Cullen (1988), are potentially important influences on individual ethical decision-making in the organizational context. The present study examined the direct and indirect effects of individuals' perceptions of work climate on their ethical judgments and behavioral intentions regarding an ethical dilemma. A national sample of marketers was surveyed in a scenario-based research study. The results indicated that, although perceived climate dimensions did not have a direct effect on behavioral intentions, there were significant moderating effects. Climates perceived as emphasizing social responsibility and rules/codes moderated the individual ethical judgment-behavioral intentions relationship such that individuals were less likely to say that they would engage in a questionable selling practice even when they themselves did not believe the practice to be unethical. Respondents were somewhat more likely to form intentions consistent with their judgment that the questionable practice was morally acceptable when the ethical climate was characterized by an emphasis on team/friendship.     

Do You Need a Receipt? Exploring Consumer Participation in Consumption Tax Evasion as an Ethical Dilemma

The paper focuses on the consumer side of consumption tax evasion (CTE), a subcategory of the shadow economy. The ethical dimensions of tax evasion have been effectively captured by the existent literature on tax morale, yet it fails to address the role consumers can play in CTE. Further, there is a shortage of tax morale studies that explore ethical decision making as a process composed of multiple steps and determinants. To bridge these gaps, we turned to the consumer ethics literature and Jones’ issue-contingent model of ethical decision making. We developed the conceptual model of consumer ethical decision making for CTE by incorporating four key elements from the issue-contingent model, i.e. moral recognition, moral judgement, moral intention and moral intensity, while personal moral philosophies were introduced as an antecedent to the consumer ethical decision-making process. The study was conducted on a sample of consumers from Slovenia, where CTE is a widespread phenomenon. The findings confirm that consumers’ recognition of CTE as a moral issue is influenced by their moral philosophy and perceptions regarding the magnitude of CTE’s consequences, their visibility, probability, and temporal immediacy. These perceptions also play an important role in determining consumers’ moral judgements and intentions regarding CTE. Moreover, through the process of moral recognition and moral judgement, consumers form intentions to participate in, or avoid CTE. The study holds important implications for public policy makers who are trying to reduce the tax gap in times of economic instability and fiscal crisis.     

The Ethics of Food Advertising Targeted Toward Children: Parental Viewpoint

The children’s market has become significantly more important to marketers in recent years. They have been spending increasing amounts on advertising, particularly of food and beverages, to reach this segment. At the same time, there is a critical debate among parents, government agencies, and industry experts as to the ethics of food advertising practices aimed toward children. The␣present study examines parents’ ethical views of food advertising targeting children. Findings indicate that parents’ beliefs concerning at least some dimensions of moral intensity are significantly related to their ethical judgments and behavioral intentions of food advertising targeting children as well as the perceived moral intensity of the situation.     

Personal Characteristics Underlying Ethical Decisions in Marketing Situations: A Survey of Small Business Managers*

This study analyzes the marketing ethics decision‐making process of small business managers. In particular, it examines the relative influences of ethical perceptions, personal moral philosophies, and gender on ethical intentions of small business managers. The sample of this study consists of professional members of the American Marketing Association working in companies with 500 employees or fewer. The results reveal that perceived ethical problem is a positive factor of a small business manager's ethical intention. The results generally support our hypothesis that female managers tend to be more ethical in their intention than their male counterparts. However, the results indicate that neither dimension of personal moral philosophy—idealism and relativism—is a significant predictor of a manager's ethical intention.     

The Effect of Organizational Culture and Ethical Orientation on Accountants' Ethical Judgments

This paper examines the relationship between organizational ethical culture in two large international CPA firms, auditors' personal values and the ethical orientation that those values dictate, and judgments in ethical dilemmas typical of those that accountants face. Using an experimental task consisting of multiple judgments designed to vary in "moral intensity" (Jones, 1991), and unique as well as tried-and-true approaches to variable measurements, this study examined the judgments of more than three hundred participants in our study. ANCOVA and path analysis results indicate that: (1) Ethical judgments in situations of high moral intensity are affected by personal values and by environmental variables, such as the professional code of conduct (direct and indirect effects) and previous ethics instruction (direct effect only). (2) Corporate ethical culture, and a relatively strong firm rules-orientation, affect auditors' idealism but not relativism, and therefore indirectly affect ethical judgments. Jones' (1991) moral intensity argument is supported: differences in the characteristics of specific judgment tasks apparently result in different decision processes.     

Measuring Ethical Ideology in Business Ethics: A Critical Analysis of the Ethics Position Questionnaire

Individual differences in ethical ideology are believed to play a key role in ethical decision making. Forsyths (1980) Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ) is designed to measure ethical ideology along two dimensions, relativism and idealism. This study extends the work of Forsyth by examining the construct validity of the EPQ. Confirmatory factor analyses conducted with independent samples indicated three factors – idealism, relativism, and veracity – account for the relationships among EPQ items. In order to provide further evidence of the instruments nomological and convergent validity, correlations among the EPQ subscales, dogmatism, empathy, and individual differences in the use of moral rationales were examined. The relationship between EPQ measures of idealism and moral judgments demonstrated modest predictive validity, but the appreciably weaker influence of relativism and the emergence of a veracity factor raise questions about the utility of the EPQ typology.     

When idealists evade taxes: the influence of personal moral philosophy on attitudes to tax evasion – a Lebanese study

This paper explores attitudes regarding tax evasion and the relationship between personal moral philosophy and such attitudes in a weak tax environment. The results confirm the multidimensionality of tax evasion attitudes. Idealism was negatively related to self‐interest tax evasion attitudes while relativism was positively related to such attitudes. Idealism was also positively related to tax evasion attitudes stemming from concerns about the justice of the tax system. Idealists in a weak tax environment seemingly go through a cognitive reframing process where they recognize that the tax system is unfair, and accordingly tax evasion is a way to serve a different moral absolute, that is of equity, rather than another different moral absolute, which is fulfilling obligations to governments. The results are also explained in light of the suggested low moral intensity of tax evasion among respondents. Policy implications are presented.     

Managers’ Moral Decision-Making Patterns Over Time: A Multidimensional Approach

Taking multidimensional ethics scale approach, this article describes an empirical survey of top managers’ moral decision-making patterns and their change from 1994 to 2004 during morally problematic situations in the Finnish context. The survey questionnaire consisted of four moral dilemmas and a multidimensional scale with six ethical dimensions: justice, deontology, relativism, utilitarianism, egoism and female ethics. The managers evaluated their decision-making in the problems using the multidimensional ethics scale. Altogether 880 questionnaires were analysed statistically. It is concluded that relying on the utilitarian principles is a core ethical evaluation criterion amongst top business managers in Finland. This study proves that managers’ moral decision-making patterns change over time. According to the results of this research, managers’ moral decision-making became more multidimensional during the study period. The change is explained by (1) the inclusion of female ethics items in the scale which allows managers to show more diversity in their decision- making, (2) the change in the Finnish economic context from depression to economic prosperity and growth during the study period, which is conducive to the spread of post materialist values, such as the importance of social relations and (3) the increasing public discussion of the importance ethical issues in business.     

Ethical Ideology and Ethical Judgments in the Portuguese Accounting Profession

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.