Ethics Principles, Personal Values, And Ethical Judgment

Abstract

Researchers have conducted various studies in an attempt to gain insights into the ethics of business leaders to postulate possible reasons for unethical behavior. Recent scandals such as Enron, Worldcom, and Adelphia indicate an ethical problem still exists in the business community. Business ethics are typically discussed at length in university business programs, sometimes with one or more courses devoted to the topic. Very often students are used as surrogates for business leaders. One such study by Ahmad and Fadzly (A & F, 2004) posited that when a person observes what they consider to be an unethical act they will try to explain (ethical judgment) why the individual acted unethically. The person would then either endorse the action as acceptable in the circumstances or reject it as unacceptable. Their ethics principles and personal values would supposedly influence that decision. Additionally, the authors suggest that the perceived consequences of the unethical act would have an influence. This study is an attempt to replicate the A & F study, using accounting and business students in the United States (their study was conducted with Malaysian students). Ahmad and Fadzly’s questionnaire was modified and administered to 418 university business and accounting students. The questionnaire contained 19 questions, randomly arranged, that related to five factors. Respondents in the present study indicated a high level of ethics principles and personal values, and females displayed higher level personal values. The ethical judgment scale reflects the level of acceptance of (making excuses for) unethical acts and less than 20% of the participants in the present study indicated that they would agree that the unethical acts contained in the scale were acceptable in the environment described. Almost 60% of the respondents in the present study believed that they would experience positive consequences from unethical actions and a similar number, 56.13%, believed that they would experience negative consequences from unethical actions.