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

Is It this Way? (HOWITIS)
– Coefficient alpha = 0.72
Good ethics is good business.
There is a direct relationship between social responsibility of a firm and its profit performance.
When a firm does not act ethically, it will be punished by reduced profits.
It is necessary to be ethical to be a successful manager.
The success of the free market and democratic institutions depend upon managers acting ethically.
A firm needs to be ethical to be admired.
Should It be This Way? (SHOULDBE)
– Coefficient alpha = 0.78
Good ethics is good business.
When a firm does not act ethically, it will be punished by reduced profits. 
It is necessary to be ethical to be a successful manager.
At times, firms must practice price discrimination, collusion, bribery and dishonesty in advertising or contracts
in order to survive (REVERSE CODED).
Most firms respond to ethical concerns by drafting and enforcing a code of ethics.
Firms tend to use unethical behavior when they are faced with excessive competition.
Firms tend to use unethical behavior when they are faced with little competition.
The success of the free market and democratic institutions depend upon managers acting ethically.
A firm needs to be ethical to be admired.

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cation of the subject (freshmen or senior), and
whether the student had familiarity with ethical
issues (taken a course in which ethics was covered
or never taken a course in which ethics was
covered) come under Kerlinger’s definition.
Cook and Campbell (1979), on the other hand,
are a bit more liberal and willing to label a treat-
ment “attending a particular training program,
even where the program was a permanent
institution and where the researcher did not
manipulate anything” (p. 279). Because of the
controlled nature of the data collection including
features such as random selection and virtually a
100% response rate we feel this design can
appropriately be labeled a “controlled investiga-
tion” (see, Kish, 1975, p. 2).
Instrument administration and data collection
The data was collected over the 1992–93
academic year in both the fall and spring semes-
ters in a college of business. The population of
interest was all the freshmen enrolled in an
introduction to business course and all the seniors
enrolled in a capstone business policy class. Using
a stratified sampling approach, 691 business
majors were selected randomly from a popula-
tion of approximately 1,100 business students to