Based on Kolhberg's theory of moral development, an assessment of managers' responses to three moral dilemmas was explored. The findings indicate that managers typically reason at moral reasoning stages 3 or 4, similar to most adults in Western, urban societies or other business managers. However, differences were discovered when the organizational size of the managers' employer and type of moral issue were considered. Managers employed by large to medium-sized organizations tended to reason at lower moral reasoning stages than managers who work in small firms or were self-employed. Moral reasoning exhibited when the dilemmas were placed in a business context was significantly lower than for a dilemma in a non-business context. Implications from these findings are discussed.

A growing number of researchers in the business ethics field have used scenarios as a data gathering technique in their empirical investigations of ethical issues. This paper offers a review and critique of 26 studies that have utilized scenarios to elicit inferences of ethical reasoning, decision making, and/or intended behavior from managerial or student populations. The use of a theoretical foundation, the development of hypotheses, various characteristics germane to the use of scenarios, population and sampling issues, and the use of statistical measures are explored and assessed. In the interest of improving scenario-based research, ten recommendations are presented to guide future scenario research.

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Organizational values and beliefs significantly influence employee decision making and behavior and manifest themselves as multiple climates existing within a single organization. A subset of organizational climate is an ethical climate, embodying normative values and beliefs involving moral issues shared by the employees of the organization. Researchers have found multiple ethical climates present in an organization. This research explores a plausible explanation for the discovery of multiple ethical climates, or subclimates, within an organization. Specifically, the research tests the assumptions that the departmental task and stakeholder relationships influence and differentiate the ethical decision-making framework used by employees and the resulting ethical subclimate. Categories developed by Thompson (Thompson, J. D. 1967. Organizations in Action. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York.) are extended to identify distinct departmental tasks and stakeholder relationships in order to assess their influence upon the employees’ ethical decision-making process and departmental ethical subclimate. In order to uncover the various ethical subclimates within each workgroup, the Ethical Climate Questionnaire, developed by Victor and Cullen (Victor, B., J. B. Cullen. 1987. A theory and measure of ethical climate in organizations. W. C. Frederick, ed. Research in Corporate Social Performance and Policy: Empirical Studies of Business Ethics and Values, Vol. 9. JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, 51–71; Victor, B., J. B. Cullen. 1988. The organizational basis of ethical work climates. Admin. Sci. Quart. 33(1) 101–125.), was used in a modified form. The original instrument required the subjects to rate, on a Likert scale, the relevance of each ethical climate statement. In this project, a ranking of the statements was performed by the subjects, which minimizes the social desirability bias in the subjects’ responses. This research found that the departmental task and stakeholder relationships so strongly influence employee decision making in all three department types that the ethical subclimate was also affected. Employees in a technical core department tend to use an individual locus of analysis and an egoistic criterion for decisions, emphasizing an instrumental ethical climate type. Buffer department employees exhibit a mix of ethical decision characteristics, but clearly manifest a caring ethical climate type. Employees in boundary spanning departments show a preference toward a cosmopolitan perspective and principle ethical reasoning, as well as a law and code ethical climate type.

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