Will the Ethics of Business Change? A Survey of Future Executives

Abstract

This article reports the results of a study of attitudes of future business executives towards issues of social responsibility and business ethics. The 455 respondents, who were MBA students during 1985 at one dozen schools from various regions in the United States, were asked to respond to a series of open-ended and closed-ended questions. From the responses to the questions the authors were able to conclude that future executives display considerable sensitivity, though to varying degrees, towards ethical issues in business. Women, in particular, tend to evince strong feelings regarding such issues.

Appendix

• 1. The following is a list of ethical issue categories that have been discussed in the popular and/or business press. By checking the appropriate box please indicate how much attention you feel that the business community should give to each of the issue categories.

  	Great deal	Considerable	Some	Little	No
  	Attention	Attention	Attention	Attention	Attention
  a.(1) Product information disclosure to consumers	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  (2) Information disclosure regarding operations to stockholders	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  b.Employment practices:
  (1) Minority hiring/promotions	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  (2) Comparable worth	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  (3) Arbitrary discharges	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  c.Product quality	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  d.Product safety	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  e.Firms’ relations with foreign governments	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  f.Community relations	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  g.Rights of employees to disclose company wrong doing	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  h.Bribery of Government officials	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  i.Executive compensation	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  j.Dealing with apartheid in South Africa	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  k.Plant closures	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  l.Other (please specify)	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]

• 2. How would you compare your own ethical standards to those of:

  	Much	Higher	About the	Lower	Much Lower
  	Higher Than	Than	Same as	Than	Than
  Your fellow MBA students	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  Current business executives	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  Past peers	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  Past supervisors	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
  Current business school faculty members	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]

• 3. Publicly held firms are required by law to give primacy to the financial interests of their stockholders. Below is a list of various corporate constituencies/stakeholder groups. Putting aside the apparent legal mandate, please indicate by ranking the groups the order in which constituency interests ought to be served by the firm. (A rank of 1 indicates first place for the affected group.)

  [ ]	Stockholders
  [ ]	Society-at-large
  [ ]	The local community in which the firm operates
  [ ]	Neighbors in close proximity to the firm’s operations
  [ ]	Customers
  [ ]	Employees
  [ ]	Governmental agencies
  [ ]	Suppliers

• 4. There is good reason to believe that business practices are more ethical today than 10 years ago.

  Strongly agree	Agree	Uncertain	Disagree	Strongly disagree
  [ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]

• 5. There is good reason to believe that business practices are likely to be more ethical 10 years from now compared to today.

  Strongly agree	Agree	Uncertain	Disagree	Strongly disagree
  [ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]

• 6. Do you believe that corporate ethical norms ought to be upgraded?

  [ ]	Yes
  [ ]	No
  [ ]	Uncertain

  If you answered yes, please answer question 7, otherwise move to question 8.

• 7. How would you propose that the upgrading of corporate ethical norms be accomplished?

  Now we are going to ask you to respond to a series of 8 hypothetical situations. Try to place yourself in each of the situations.

• 8. What would you do if…

  … you were told by your superior to pressure a 62 year old employee into early retirement in order to:

  • 1. make room for a younger employee

  • 2. make room for a member of a minority race; or

  • 3. save the firm the cost of full benefits.

  The employee, once productive but now worth considerably less than his salary, has been with the firm for 30 years.

• 9. … as the president of a company in a highly competitive industry, you learn that a competitor has made an important scientific discovery that will substantially reduce, but not eliminate, your profit for about a year? There is a possibility of hiring one of the competitor’s employees who knows the details of the discovery.

• 10. … In the previous situation, the employee, an engineer with 5 years of experience, was asking a guaranteed annual salary of $100 000 for the 5 years.

• 11. Suppose that you, a middle level executive, discovered that one of your company’s executives had given false testimony before a governmental agency and that there appeared to be no action forthcoming by top management to deal with the situation. What action, if any, would you take?

• 12. Suppose that you, (a) as president of the company, (b) as a middle manager, (c) as an entry level manager, discovered an unsuspected flaw in one of your company’s products and that if the product were to be marketed a higher than expected incidence of serious injuries to consumers would result. What action would you take?

• 13. Suppose that a governmental agency ordered your company to withdraw a highly profitable product from the U.S. market because of safety concerns. You, as a middle level manager, learn that top management has decided to sell the product to the government of an African nation. What action would you take?

• 14. Suppose that you as an entry level manager were given access to confidential information that if disclosed would show your company to be engaging in what would obviously be judged by the public as unethical behavior. What action would you take?

• 15. Suppose that as a member of a board of directors you learned that the chairman of the board and CEO had made an illegal contribution of company money to a recent presidential candidate. The contribution appears to have been given in exchange for future government contracts. What would you do?

The following questions are for statistical classification purposes only.

• 16. Age  ______

• 17. Sex: M  ______ F  ______

• 18. Highest education level attained prior to entering M.B.A. program

• BA., B.S._______

• Masters_______

• J.D._______

• Ph.D._______

• Other_______

• 19. Area of concentration in the M.B.A program (please specify)

• 20. Years of full-time work experience _______

• 21. Approximate annual income immediately prior to entering the M.B.A program __________

Thank you for your cooperation in completing the survey.