Undergraduate Male and Female Ethical Attitudes: A Generation Later.

• Author: Malinowski, Carl

INTRODUCTION

As H. Fisk Johnson (2017) wrote, "According to an annual survey done by Edelman almost half of the country's population distrusts business to do the right thing...in just the last five years close to 5% of the top 2,500 public company CEO's were pushed out for questionable behavior...That level of behavior is bad for business" (p. 6). Are some public or private company CEOs more likely to behave unethically than others? For instance, is there a difference in moral attitudes between male and female executives?

Men and women are America's two biggest groups of employees. Actually they are the two largest sets of workers in the world. Therefore, both domestic and multi-national employers should be interested in gender differences in ethical attitudes that could affect managerial decisions. Organizations that are better than other companies at understanding how males and females view moral dilemmas that could affect professional behavior may enjoy a global competitive advantage in marketing their products. In fact, D'Aquilo, Bean and Procario-Foley (2004) found that "females (significantly) more strongly believe that ethical standards strengthen a company's competitive position" (p. 161).

PRIOR RESEARCH RELATING BUSINESS ETHICS AND GENDER

Prior to 1996, Betz, O'Connell and Shepard (1989) found that men were more willing than women to behave unethically by using insider securities information. Kidwell, Stevens and Bethke (1987) found that females regarded concealing one's errors as more unethical than males did. Beltramini, Peterson and Kozmetsky (1984) and Peterson, Beltramini and Kozmetsky (1991) found females to be more concerned than males about whether ethical standards meet the needs of society. Arlow (1991) found that women were less positive than men about the ends justify the means.

1996: Malinowski and Berger asked male and female undergraduates to respond attitudinally (cognitively, affectively and behaviorally) to nine hypothetical marketing moral dilemmas. Twenty-three of the twenty-seven ANOVAS were statistically "significant and, in each case, females responded more morally than males did" (p.528).

After 1996: Mason and Mudrack (1997) found that, compared to men, women studying business were more likely to disagree that someone had the right to make employees "deviate from...ethical principles held by the person" (p. 101). In Eynon, Hill and Stevens (1997), U.S. women had significantly higher principled moral reasoning scores on the shortened version of James Rest's Defining Issues Test (DIT) than men did.

In Reiss and Mitra (1998), male college students thought staying at the most expensive hotel on a company business trip more acceptable than females did. Haswell, Jubb and Wearing (1999) found that female accounting students in Australia, South Africa and the UK were significantly less likely than males to accept money to cheat.

Studying business students in New Zealand and Canada, Fisher, Taylor and Fullerton (1999) found females more critical than males "of breaches in ethical behavior" (p. 166). Coleman and Mahaffey (2000) found that "females are less tolerant of academic dishonesty than males" (p. 129).

In Abdolmohammadi and Reeves (2000), women studying business had significantly higher principled moral reasoning scores than men did. O'Leary and Radich (2001) found Australian undergraduate male accounting students to be four times as likely as females to accept a bribe and fifty percent more likely than females to cheat on am exam.

At four mid-western universities, Elm, Kennedy and Layton (2001) found that "women's moral reasoning is significantly higher than that of men" (p. 225). In Smith and Davis (2004), undergraduate men were significantly more likely than women to cheat and to help another person cheat.

Forte (2004) gave the short form of the DIT to Fortune 500 management level employees: "women exhibited.higher (more principled) mean...scores than men" (p. 315). In Adkins and Radtke (2004), women perceived "ethics in accounting education to be more important than men" did (p. 284). Compared to males Elias (2004) found that females "perceived social responsibility to be more important in profitability and long term success" (p. 275).

Henle, Giacalone and Jurkiewicz (2005) asked employed MBA students how often they engaged in deviant behavior at their jobs. Compared to females, "males were (significantly) more likely to be deviant" (p. 224). In computer ethics scenarios Cronan, Leonard and Kreie (2005) found males to react less ethically than females in areas of privacy, accuracy and property. 2006: Berger and Malinowski asked male and female undergraduates to respond attitudinally (cognitively, affectively and behaviorally) to the same nine hypothetical marketing moral dilemmas presented by them ten years earlier. This time thirteen of the twenty-seven ANOVAS were statistically significant. As in 1996, in each case "women responded more ethically than men did" (p. 283).

After 2006: Alleyne, Devonish, Allmon, Charles-Soverall and Marshall (2010) and Joseph, Berry and Deshpanade (2010) found undergraduate women giving more ethical responses than undergraduate men did.

2014: Although not the focus of the present investigation, Malinowski asked male and female graduate students to respond attitudinally to the same nine hypothetical marketing moral dilemmas he presented to undergraduates in 1996 and 2006 working with Berger. Again, women gave more ethical responses than men did on all twelve ANOVAS that were statistically significant.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The following combination of features distinguishes the current paper from previous research in the area of gender and business ethics: (1) cognition, affect and behavior tendency (the tri-component model) will all be examined...