Perception of What the Ethical Climate is and What it Should be: The Role of Gender, Academic Status, and Ethical Education

part of well known public figures, and question-
able legal and ethical practices in organizations
have become quite common.
Many critics have suggested that a lack of
ethical education in business curriculums may be
responsible for turning out managers with little
sense of social responsibility and that education
can be a powerful tool in shaping assumptions by
which people judge what is right or wrong.
(Kohlberg, 1984; Rest, 1988). In response, the
American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of
Business (AACSB) has suggested that ethics be
taught in business schools. Others have argued
that by the time an individual reaches adoles-
cence, his or her ethical personality and character
have been formed and cannot be changed by
education (Rohatynn, 1988). Sex of the person
has also been offered as an explanatory variable
to explain ethical attitudes and behaviors (Betz
et al., 1989; Borkowski and Ugras, 1992). Clearly,
the need to do integrative multivariate research
on whether ethical education works, whether it
works in the same way for men and women of
different ages and backgrounds, and the extent
to which it can change ethical positions and
attitudes is critical.
The current paper contributes to this stream
of research and analyzes the responses of over 650
undergraduate students (freshmen and seniors) to
a survey on ethical attitudes that assessed the
perceived relationship between ethical behaviors
and organizational outcomes on two separate
dimensions. One part of the survey tapped per-
ceptions of the current ethical climate, whereas
the second part was meant to assess what the
ideal ethical climate ought to be. Several research
questions were examined including: Are there
differences in ethical positions (1) between
freshmen and seniors, (2) between males and
females, and (3) between those who had taken a
course in which ethics was integrated into the
overall design and those who did not take such
a course?
The literature
Gender and ethical attitudes
Whether males and females are different in their
perception of ethical climate and social issues has
been a matter of much debate in the literature.
Yankelovich (1972) found that while male
college students were cynical and pessimistic
about the present state of society and its institu-
tions, women had a “greater sense of commit-
ment to doing things for others” (p. 48). Gilligan
(1982) suggested that males and females have
distinctly different moral orientations and argued
that whereas women think of moral questions as
problems of care involving empathy and com-
passion, men appear to conceptualize them as
problems of rights, justice, and fairness. Both
Langdale (1983) and Lyons (1983) have supported
Gilligan’s thesis that these two distinct moral
206
H. K. Luthar et al.

---

orientations are significantly related to gender.
The authors found that a “care” orientation pre-
dominated in female thinking while a “justice”
orientation was dominant in male thinking.
Similarly, in a study of over 400 MBA students,
a larger number of women participants indicated
a willingness to take action against unethical
business practices than did their male counter-