Ethical Quandaries in Business: A Study of Ethical Judgment and Ethical Intentions Through the Lens of Rest’s (1979) Ethical Reasoning Process

Abstract

There is some empirical evidence to understand what managers would actually do when faced with ethical conundrums in the workplace, especially when complex business transactions are involved (Fleischman & Stephenson, 2012; Johnson et al. 2012; Latan, Chiappetta Jabbour, & Lopes de Sousa Jabbour, 2019; Valentine, Fleischman, & Godkin, 2018).

The current study expands upon this research by investigating how certain predictor variables influence the ethical reasoning process of accountants, specifically, Ethics Education, Moral Intensity, Teleological Ethical Orientation, Social Desirability Bias, and Perceived Importance of an Ethical Issue (PIE). The dependent variables are ethical judgement and ethical intent (Jones et al. 2003; Johnson et al. 2012).

The results show that having a teleological ethical orientation and greater PIE are both strongly associated with ethical judgment and weakly associated with ethical intention. Additionally, greater moral intensity is weakly associated with ethical judgment and moderately associated with ethical intention. Our participants show nominal social desirability bias when exercising ethical judgment, but a great deal when indicating an ethical intention. Finally, Ethics education does not significantly influence ethical judgement, but it does moderately influence ethical intention.