The ethical profile of global marketing negotiators

Research suggests a direct negative relationship between peers’ unethical behavior and employees’ ethical intention. But several possible mechanisms might explain this relationship in more detail. For example, Machiavellianism is a personality trait characterized by interpersonal manipulation and the use of unethical means to achieve certain self‐interested ends, whether useful or pleasant. This article adopts an Aristotelian understanding of philia, related to three goods on which human relationships rest: useful, pleasant, and honest. We propose that Machiavellianism, a self‐interested, pragmatic personality orientation, might explicate the relationship between peers’ unethical behavior and ethical intention. The results of a structural equation model applied to a sample of 436 banking employees in Spain reveals that Machiavellianism partially mediates the relationship between peers’ unethical behavior and employees’ ethical intention. We also find that with a greater level of peers’ unethical behavior, the negative effect of Machiavellianism on ethical intention increases, and that when peers’ unethical behavior is nonexistent, the negative effect of Machiavellianism on ethical intention disappears. These findings advance current literature by revealing that unethical peers can indirectly influence ethical intention, through shaping Machiavellianism. Our study is also the first to show that pairing high Machiavellians with ethical peers can help to cancel out the negative influence of Machiavellianism on ethical intention.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of peers’ unethical behavior on employees’ ethical intention: Moderated mediation by Machiavellian orientation

Ruíz-Palomino

Bañón-Gomis

Linuesa-Langreo

2018

“…A variety of approaches have been used in the literature employing the Mach IV scale. Many studies have not subjected the items to factor analysis, but simply assumed the scale is unidimensional and tested its internal reliability based on coefficient alpha (e.g., Al‐Khatib, Al‐Habib, Bogari, & Salamah, ). Other studies have used abbreviated versions of the scale that have high correlations with the full scale to reduce the length of their research instruments (Valentine & Fleischman, ; Zagenczyk et al, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… As a supplemental test, we conducted three alternative mediation analyses using the PROCESS macro in SPSS (Hayes, ) based on the full 20‐item measure of Machiavellianism as well as the 10‐ and 4‐item versions of the scale. We tested the full 20‐item scale because much prior research has assumed the Machiavellianism scale is unidimensional (e.g., Al‐Khatib et al, ). All substantive results and conclusions based on these three models were consistent with our SEM results and fully supported the research hypotheses.…”

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confidence: 99%

Machiavellianism, stakeholder orientation, and support for sustainability reporting

Shafer¹,

Lucianetti²

2018

This study investigates the relations among Machiavellianism, the stakeholder orientation, and Italian managers' support for corporate social and environmental reporting (SER). These relationships have not previously been investigated among a sample of experienced managers but have important implications. As anticipated, Machiavellianism had a strong negative association with the support for SER. Machiavellianism was also negatively related to the stakeholder orientation, which in turn was positively correlated with the support for SER. Support for the stakeholder orientation partially mediated the association between Machiavellianism and SER. The findings advance our understanding of the motivations for sustainability reporting by documenting that managers' fundamental personality traits and economic ideologies are closely associated and are important determinants of normative support for social and environmental disclosures. We further suggest that the results support the case for mandated compliance‐with‐standard sustainability reports coupled with a requirement that such reports be independently audited.

“… Researchers have administered the EPQ in what seems an unusually broad array of countries and cultural contexts such as Morocco (Oumlil & Balloun ), Lebanon (Sidani, Ghanem, & Rawwas, ), Brunei (Cui, Mitchell, Schlegelmilch, & Cornwell, ), China, Spain (Vitell & Patwardhan, ), Japan (Rawwas et al ), Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Russia (Al‐Khatib, Al‐Habib, Bogari, & Salamah, ). A potential complicating factor in comparing and contrasting results from different countries and cultural contexts, however, is that the EPQ may not possess measurement equivalence in different countries (Cui et al ). …”

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confidence: 99%

A relativistic approach to moral judgment in individuals: Review and reinterpretation

Mudrack

Mason

2020

In Ethics Position Theory, relativism is the degree to which people believe that universal moral rules should not always be applied unwaveringly. Researchers often predict that highly relativistic individuals are characterized by questionable ethics given their ostensible self‐interested “anything goes” approach. Corroborating evidence for such predictions, however, remains elusive. This paper suggested that high relativists are perhaps not unethical, and reviewed four decades of relevant literature in order to clarify the meaning and implications of the relativism construct. The portrait of relativism that emerged is often contrary to prevalent expectations. Relativistic individuals seem tolerant of ambiguity, open to experience, non‐authoritarian, accepting of others with different backgrounds and lifestyles, and troubled by injustice. No persuasive evidence of questionable ethics is available. These findings have profound implications for managerial practice and suggest that highly relativistic employees may be among the most valuable. Future research grounded in an understanding of what relativism is rather than what it should be has the potential to allow a deeper understanding of this important construct to emerge. We also explore possible reasons why an inaccurate narrative about relativistic orientations may have emerged and persisted among both researchers and people generally.