Ethical Attitudes in Small Businesses and Large Corporations: Theory and Empirical Findings from a Tracking Study Spanning Three Decades

Abstract

This study offers a theoretical framework of ethical behavior and a comparative analysis of ethical perceptions of managers of large, mostly publicly traded corporations (those with 1,000 or more employees) and the owners and managers of smaller companies (those with fewer than 100 employees) across 17 years. The primary research provides basic data on the changing standards of ethics as perceived by leaders of large and small businesses where the cultures frequently fall into sharp contrast. Our findings reveal the extent to which the message of business integrity is gaining or losing ground within large and small companies. It does this by means of respondents' judgments of acceptable responses to 16 scenarios profiling common business situations with questionable ethical dimensions. Based on responses from over 5,000 managers and employees (from firms of all sizes) to our scenarios at three points in time (1985, 1993, 2001), we tested two research questions. First, for firms of all sizes, have business ethics improved or declined between the years 1985 and 2001? Second, comparing responses of large and small firm executives across the 1985-2001 time frame, is there a discernible difference in their ethical standards?Our results suggest that business leaders are making somewhat more ethical decisions in recent years. We also found that small business owner-managers offered less ethical responses to scenarios in 1993 but that no significant differences existed with large firm managers in 1985 and 2001.

Ethical Antecedents of Dysfunctional Behaviour in Performance Measurement and Control System

“…EA refers to the perceived rightness or wrongness of a situation which might reflect a favourable, unfavourable, or neutral view, and subsequently affect one's decision whether to commit a behaviour (Kantor, & Weisberg, 2002). However, it is highly personal and relative (Longenecker et al, 2006;Trevino, & Nelson, 2004), hence, many employees would not view information manipulation in the PMCS with the same sense of morality (Argyris, 1990;Fisher, & Downes, 2008), with some might even view it as ethical especially if it is encouraged by management and anticipated by subordinates (Flamholtz, 1996). Hence, it makes this variable as very interesting and highly relevant in explaining the occurrence of DB.…”

“…Under personal ethics, ethical attitudes (EA) has been suggested as the best predictor of employees' unethical behaviour (Izraeli, 1988) and has attracted a profound concern as evidenced by the large number of studies published (like Ghosh, & Crain, 1995;Izraeli, 1988;Kantor, & Weisberg, 2002;Longenecker, McKinney, & Moore, 2003;Longenecker, Moore, Petty, Palich, & McKinney, 2006;Medlin, & Green, 2003;Reckers, Sanders, & Roark, 1994;Wong, 2008;Zabid, & Alsagoff, 1993). EA refers to the perceived rightness or wrongness of a situation which might reflect a favourable, unfavourable, or neutral view, and subsequently affect one's decision whether to commit a behaviour (Kantor, & Weisberg, 2002).…”

Difficulties Experienced during Implementation of an Adapted Quality Management System in Incubated Companies

“…For the first criterion, in particular, these authors present examples of European enterprises from the knowledge and information sector that turnover millions in business and have global significance with only a small team. Longenecker et al, (2013) also consider difficult to define a single criterion for classification of micro and small enterprises. For these authors, a variety of criteria and references obeys conditions as purpose of the user or interested organ, region and analysed country, stage of economic development and structure of the enterprise.…”

Making Sense of the Diversity of Ethical Decision Making in Business: An Illustration of the Indian Context

“…From this perspective, business ethical values, like other aspects of business, are seen as dependent on national culture or national origin (Vitell and Hidalgo, 2006;Ringov and Zollo, 2007;Alas, 2006 etc. ), gender (McCabe et al 2006), individual value systems (see Steenhaut & Kenhove, 2006), size of the employing firm (Longenecker et al, 2006) and other similar criteria.…”