Abstract
This study represents an improvement in the ethics scales inventory published in a 1988 Journal of Business Ethics article. The article presents the distillation and validation process whereby the original 33 item inventory was reduced to eight items. These eight items comprise the following ethical dimensions: a moral equity dimension, a relativism dimension, and a contractualism dimension. The multidimensional ethics scale demonstrates significant predictive ability.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bayles, Michael D. and Kenneth Henley: 1983, Right Conduct: Theory and Applications (Random House, New York).
Beauchamp, Tom: 1982, Philosophical Ethics (McGraw Hill Book Company, New York).
Beauchamp, Tom L. and Norman E. Bowie: 1983, Ethical Theory and Business, 2nd ed. (Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.).
Brandt, Richard: 1959, Ethical Theory (Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey).
Browning, John and Noel B. Zabriskie: 1983, ‘How Ethical Are Industrial Buyers?’, Journal of Marketing 42 (July), 69–73.
Campbell, Donald T. and Donald W. Fiske: 1959, ‘Convergent and Discriminant Validation by the Multitraitmultimethod Matrix’, Psychological Bulletin 56 (March), 81–105.
Churchill, Gilbert A.: 1979, ‘A Paradigm for Developing Better Measures of Marketing Constructs’, Journal of Marketing Research XVI (February), 64–73.
DeGeorge, Richard R.: 1986, Business Ethics, 2nd ed. (MacMillan Publishing Company, New York).
Donaldson, Thomas and Patricia H. Werhane: 1983, Ethical Issues in Business, 2nd ed. (Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.).
Dornoff, Ronald J. and Clint B. Tankersley: 1975, ‘Perceptual Differences in Market Transactions: A Source of Consumer Frustration’, Journal of Consumer Affairs (Summer), 97–103.
Ferrell, O. C. and Larry G. Gresham: 1985, ‘A Contingency Framework for Understanding Ethical Decision-making in Marketing’, Journal of Marketing 49 (Summer), 87–96.
George, Richard J.: 1985, ‘The Ethical Perceptions of Present and Future Corporate Executives’, Proceedings of the Southwest Marketing Association Conference (March), 143–146.
Harrell, Gilbert D. and Peter D. Bennett: 1974, ‘An Evaluation of the Expectancy Value Model of Attitude Measurement for Physician Prescribing Behavior’, Journal of Marketing Research XI (August), pp. 269–278.
Hawkins, Del I. and Benton Cocanougher: 1972, ‘Student Evaluations of the Ethics of Marketing Practices: The Role of Marketing Education’, Journal of Marketing 36 (April), 54–61.
Heeler, Roger M. and Michael L. Ray: 1972, ‘Measure Validation in Marketing’, Journal of Marketing Research XIII (November), 456–464.
Hoffman, W. Michael and Jennifer Mills Moore: 1984, Business Ethics: Readings and Cases in Corporate Morality (McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York).
Hunt, Shelby D. and Scott Vitell: 1986, ‘A General Theory of Marketing Ethics’, Journal of Macromarketing 6 (Spring), 5–16.
Kant, Immanuel: 1964, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Translation by H. J. Paton (Harper and Row Publishers, New York).
Kerlinger, Fred N.: 1986, Foundations of Behavioral Research, 3rd ed. (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York).
Kohlberg, Lawrence: 1964, ‘Development of Moral Character and Moral Ideology’, Review of Child Development Research, L. W. Hoffman, ed. (Russell Sage Foundation, N.Y.).
Kohlberg, Lawrence: 1976, ‘Moral Stages and Moralization: The Cognitive Development Approach’, in Moral Development and Behavior: Theory Research and Social Issues, Thomas Lickona, ed. (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, N.Y.).
Kristol, Irving: 1978, ‘A Capitalist Conception of Justice’, in Ethics, Free Enterprise and Public Policy: Original Essays on Moral Issues in Business, Richard T. DeGeorge and Joseph A. Pichler, eds. (Oxford University Press, Oxford, England).
Krugman, Dean M. and O. C. Ferrell: 1981, ‘The Organizational Ethics of Advertising: Corporate and Agency Views’, Journal of Advertising 10, No. 1, 21–30, 48.
Nozick, Robert: 1974, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Basic Books, Inc., New York).
Nunnally, Jum C.: 1967, Psychometric Methods (McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York).
Rawls, John: 1971, A Theory of Justice (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.).
Reidenbach, R. Eric and Donald P. Robin: 1988, ‘Some Initial Steps Toward Improving the Measurement of Ethical Evaluations of Marketing Activities’, Journal of Business Ethics 7, 871–879.
Rest, James R.: 1979, In Judging Moral Issues (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis).
Robertson, Thomas S. and James H. Meyers: 1969, ‘Personality Correlation of Opinion Leadership and Innovation Buying Behavior’, Journal of Marketing Research VI (May), 164–168.
Robin, Donald P. and R. Eric Reidenbach: 1987, ‘Social Responsibility, Ethics, and Marketing Strategy: Closing the Gap Between Concept and Application’, Journal of Marketing 51 (January), 44–58.
Ross, William: 1930, The Right and Good (Clarendon Press, Oxford).
Sartorios, Rolf E.: 1975, Individual Conduct and Social Norms: A Utilitarian Account of Social Union and Rule of Law (Dickenson Publishing, Belmont, California).
Singer, Peter: 1976, ‘Freedom and Utility in the Distribution of Health Care’, in Ethics and Health Policy, R. Veatch and R. Bronson, eds. (Boelinger Publishing, Cambridge, Mass.).
Smart, J. J. C.: 1973, ‘Distribution, Justice and Utilitarianism’, in Justice and Economic Distribution, John Arthur and William H. Shaw, eds. (Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey).
Stace, W. T.: 1937, The Concept of Morals (The MacMillan Company, New York).
Trevino, Linda Klebe: 1986, ‘Ethical Decision Making in Organizations: A Person-situation Interactionist Model’, Academy of Management Review 11, 601–617.
Wilson, David T., H. Lee Mathews and James W. Harvey: 1975, ‘An Empirical Test of the Fishbein Behavioral Intention Model’, Journal of Consumer Research 1 (March), 39–48.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Dr Reidenbach is the Director of the Center for Business Development and Research and Professor of Marketing at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is the co-author of two books on business ethics and has contributed numerous articles on ethics to various academic and applied business journals.
Dr Donald P. Robin, Professor of Business Ethics and Professor of Marketing, is co-author with Dr R. Eric Reidenbach of two recent books (1989) on business ethics. Both books, Business Ethics: Where Profits Meet Value Systems and Ethics and Profits: A Convergence of Corporate America's Economic and Social Responsibilities were published by Prentice-Hall. Dr Robin is a frequent lecturer on business ethics and has written several articles on the subject for both ethics and business journals.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Reidenbach, R.E., Robin, D.P. Toward the development of a multidimensional scale for improving evaluations of Business Ethics. J Bus Ethics 9, 639–653 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00383391
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00383391