Gender Differences in Ethical Sensitivity in the Indian Business Context

Abstract

Ethical businesses can bring prosperity to society without creating harm to people or environment. Most of the huge corporate scams and frauds involve men in comparison to women. Many studies have found that women at the top management positions in businesses are more ethical than their male counterparts. In the context of growing number of women entering into the corporate world and decisionmaking positions of businesses, this study explores the question whether the ethical sensitivity of women is higher than that of men in the Indian context. Sample consists of 258 MBA students from 6 different business schools in the city of Bangalore. Study has used an adapted version of business ethical vignettes created by Longenecker, J. G., McKinney, J. A., & Moore, C. W. (1989). The results showed that the self-reported score of ethical sensitivity of female students is higher than that of their male counterparts. The study has significant implications in terms of promoting more women to the top positions of businesses which might result in more ethical business environment and probably a better and sustainable future for our country.

Ethical Perceptions of Tax Avoidance and Spiritual Balance Dimensions

“…The relationship between ethical and gender decisions is expressed by [15] that a woman shows an honest attitude if she opposes tax evasion behaviour compared to men. [7], there are findings that there are differences in perceptions between genders in ethical and unethical conduct. Ethical sensitivity scores reported by female students were higher than male students.…”