Ethical judgments and intentions: a multinational study of marketing professionals

Abstract

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.

Moral Schemas and Business Practices: The Ethics of Guangzhou Migrant Marketers

“…Given the scenarios adopted are examples of marketing behaviors that are generally considered to be unethical, high scores indicated a greater intention to behave unethically. This interpretation is consistent with past marketing ethics research (Marta et al, 2004;Schwepker, 1999;Vitell et al, 2003), which indicates that most marketers disagreed with the actions taken in the scenarios and believed them to be unethical. The coefficient alpha for this measure was .95.…”

Prophets vs. profits: How market competition influences leaders' disciplining behavior towards ethical transgressions

“…When leaders react to employees' moral transgressions using a moral frame, it implies that leaders base their response on considerations like the moral intensity of the act (Vitell et al, 2003) and the extent to which the act was deliberate (Cushman, 2008). In contrast, when the context activates an instrumental decision frame, decision makers are likely to view their decisions in terms of instrumental concerns and engage in rational economically oriented reasoning: in terms of the costs and benefits for the organization.…”

Ethical Judgments: What Do We Know, Where Do We Go?

“…However, there is no way for any respondent to ascertain whether an organization would actually experience such outcomes, and thus this measure's construct validity seems doubtful in that it does not assess "magnitude (or even probability) of organizational effect", and certainly not in the way intended by Jones (1991); that is, as objective attributes of situations. Similarly, there seems no way for any individual to provide meaningful estimates concerning the likelihood of formal sanctions or other outcomes (Smith et al, 2007, p. 646), the extent of perceived "moral intensity" (a composite of Jones' situational characteristics as determined by respondents; e.g., Chen, Pan, and Pan, 2009;Valentine and Fleischman, 2003;Valentine, Fleischman, Sprague, and Godkin, 2010;Valentine and Bateman, 2011;Vitell, Bakir, Paolillo, Hidalgo, Al-Khatib, and Rawwas, 2003), or any component characteristic such as "temporal immediacy" (whether anticipated consequences of the questionable action in the vignette would occur immediately or much later) or "proximity" (to what extent are those affected by questionable actions similar to respondents themselves).…”