A multidimensional scale for measuring business ethics: A purification and refinement

Many researchers in the field of business ethics have attempted to develop methods to determine and evaluate the ethics of a variety of different classes of people, including students, professionals, and mixed samples of students and professionals. Unfortunately, most of these studies were disjunctive, simply adding confusion to an already unfocused area of research. However, Reidenbach and Robin (1988, 1990), have changed this trend by attempting to quantify the various ethical philosophies into a multi-dimensional scale of business ethics. This paper examines the background of the Reidenbach and Robin (1988, 1990) scale — including the authors' findings, empirically tests the scale, and concludes that the scale needs further refinement. A promising result is a model with four dimensions: a broadbased ethical judgment dimension, a deontological judgment dimension, a teleological judgment dimension, and a social contract dimension.Randall S. Hansen is ABD at Florida State University, where his major is marketing and his support area is strategic management. His research interests are directed toward the applied areas of managerial and consumer ethical decision-making as well as strategic issues in social responsibility. He has published in theProceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science, Proceedings of the Southern Marketing Association, andProceedings of the Southern Management Association.