Moral judgment: a comparison of Latvian and US business persons

Abstract

PurposeGiven system‐wide lapses in moral decision making in large US corporations and the inherited corruption from formerly planned economies, the development of moral reasoning is an important issue for business educators in the USA and Latvia. The purpose of this paper is to present a comparison of Latvian and US business persons.Design/methodology/approachKohlberg's et al., theory of cognitive moral development (CMD), as operationalized by Rest as framework to study the antecedents of moral judgment in both lands. Survey data from 340 employed MBA students as a proxy for current and future business leaders are used. A total of 18 scenarios are reduced to four unique components, which are regressed on measures of CMD, Country of Respondent, and Moral Philosophy to test three hypotheses. Gender and age are added as controls.FindingsCMD and Country of Respondent are strongly associated with increased moral judgment, while Moral Philosophy is less influential. In addition, the positive functional relationship between CMD and moral judgment exists in both countries but at lesser absolute values in Latvia. Findings also suggest that the efficacy of the independent variables varies with the issues at hand. Interestingly, moral dilemmas concerned with marketing strategies appear to be immune from moral reasoning. This indirectly gives support to Jones' concept of moral intensity and future research may wish to continue this line of inquiry as well as expand the comparison to other European Union countries.Originality/valueThe paper is the first to use the defining issues test to study levels of CMD in the Latvian business community.

Entrepreneurial Need for Achievement in China, Latvia, and the USA

“…This should be done both for samples of entrepreneurs as done here and with other occupational groupings Gustainienė and Endriulaitienė, 2009;Kazlauskaite et al, 2006;Scarpello and Carraher, 2008). We believe that similar results should be found across most occupational groups but that there could be large variations across countries and cultures (Smith, 2009;Sullivan et al, 2009). As behavioral patterns and motivators differ (Sullivan et al, 2007;Vadi and Türk, 2009) so might the relationships -which lead into the next area for research.…”

Turnover prediction using attitudes towards benefits, pay, and pay satisfaction among employees and entrepreneurs in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania

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“…A fourth area for research could be to examine what other individual level variables might influence the relationship between compensation/benefits and both employee and organizational turnover. Some possible variables to examine include demographic differences within samples such as racial composition, national culture of the sample, and educational attainment; personality, feedback seeking behaviors, and personal orientation towards being innovative (Banzhaf, 2005;Carraher, 1992;Carraher et al, 2006a, b;Duobienė et al, 2007;Gustainienė and Endriulaitienė, 2009;Harvey et al, 2009;Lilly et al, 2006;Smith, 2009). These have all previously been found to be related to employee turnover and may also be related to organizational turnover for business owners.…”

Does ethical ideology affect software piracy attitude and behaviour? An empirical investigation of computer users in China

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