Selected antecedents and components of ethical decision‐making processes of American and South African marketers – A cross‐cultural analysis

Abstract

Compares the personal ethical ideologies of idealism and relativism of American marketers with their South African counterparts. The perceptions of ethical problems, ethical intentions, and coporate ethical values of the parties are also contrasted. The findings indicate that South Africans were more idealistic and less relativistic than their American counterparts. The hypotheses that there will be no differences between South African and American marketers in terms of their ethical perceptions and intentions were not supported. The results generally indicate that South African marketers are more likely to perceive ethical problems than American marketers. However, the survey results revealed that South African marketers tend to be less ethical in their intentions to resolve an ethical problem than their American counterparts. Corporate citizens of South African firms were found to have slightly higher corporate ethical values than their American counterparts, as hypothesized.

‘An Empirical Investigation of the Relationships among a Consumer’s Personal Values, Ethical Ideology and Ethical Beliefs’

“…Singhapakdi and Vitell, 1993a), and on marketers' professional values and marketing norms (e.g. Rallapalli et al, 2000;Singhapakdi et al, 1995Singhapakdi et al, , 1999a.…”

A cross‐cultural study of the antecedents of the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility

“…Mayo & Marks 1990, Vitell & Hunt 1990, Singhapakdi & Vitell 1990, 1991, Hunt & Vasquez-Parraga 1993, including a number of studies dealing with the antecedents and effects of moral intensity on ethical beliefs, intentions and decisions of managers (e.g. Singhapakdi et al 1996a, 1999a, Karande et al 2000, Paolillo & Vitell 2002, Vitell et al 2003. Nevertheless, relatively little is known about decision-makers' attitudes concerning ethics and social responsibility -particularly regarding how they perceive the importance of ethics and social responsibility as components of business decisions.…”

An Exploratory Comparison of Ethical Perceptions of Mexican and U.S. Marketers

“…The single item measures both, whether one perceives and the degree of that perception. In addition, the singleitem measure has been used in numerous previous studies (e.g., Attia et al, 1999;Barnett and Valentine, 2002;Marta et al, 2003;Rawwas and Singhapakdi, 1998;Singhapakdi et al, 1994Singhapakdi et al, , 1999Singhapakdi et al, , 2000aSinghapakdi et al, , b, 2001, implying strong reliability across many different sample populations. (Several other relationships were explored including independent variables of income and years of education, neither of these or other variables were found to be correlated with PEP, nor were the coefficients or levels of significance of Table III found to vary when these variables were included.)…”