Business Ethical Sensitivity Of Insurance Agents

The insurance industry, as an important industry for the national economy and for the risk management of the market, has made remarkable achievements since China’s reform and government de-regulation. However, the social image of the insurance industry in China is not positive. As many episodes of corporate misconduct originate from employees’distortion of commercial behavior for their own purposes, the poor social image arising from insurance agents’unethical behavior impacts the normal operation of the insurance company and decreases insurance applicants’confidence.Business ethical sensitivity is the ability to recognize that a work situation has ethical content when it is encountered, and awareness of the ethical issues of various work situations is the first of four components involved in making an ethical decision and taking an ethical action. Without recognizing the ethical aspects of a situation, it is impossible to solve any ethical problem. The severity of the current situation has made the study of business ethical sensitivity of insurance agents an urgent matter.This study adopted literature analysis and questionnaire investigation for theoretical research and empirical test. Based on systematically analyzing related literature, this study reviewed research results on ethical decision-making and ethical sensitivity. On the base of the reviews, the study explored the content structure impacting factors of business ethical sensitivity of insurance agents, and its influence on ethical decision-making as well. Then, this study put forward the theoretical model and hypotheses on relationship between the variables.This study surveyed insurance agents at work, and1180valid responses were analyzed using SPSS18.0and AMOS17.0statistical software. Through the structural equation model and hierarchical regression analysis, statistical analyses for testing the reliability and validity of scale, the main effect, mediation effect and moderation effect of variables were carried on. The conclusions are as follows:1. The four dimensions of business ethical sensitivity of insurance agents contained cheating the company, misleading customers, providing false information and launching personal attacks. The results of reliability and validity tests showed that the psychometric qualities of the scale are satisfactory.2. The findings indicated that as two dimensions of ethical orientation, idealism is significantly and directly related to business ethical sensitivity, and besides the significantly positive effect on business ethical sensitivity, relativism has an interaction effect with moral intensity on business ethical sensitivity. In addition, the results showed that empathy has a full mediation effect in the relationship between moral intensity and business ethical sensitivity. Gender affected business ethical sensitivity significantly, and female insurance agents had higher levels of business ethical sensitivity compared to males. Education level and over-claiming had positive impact on business ethical sensitivity as well.3. It is found that ethical climate has a partial mediation effect in the relationship between ethical leadership and business ethical sensitivity. In addition, moral intensity moderates organizational ethical climate and business ethical sensitivity.4. The findings indicated that there is a significant positive correlation between dispositional business ethical sensitivity and contextual ethical sensitivity. Both dispositional and contextual ethical sensitivity, ethical judgement had positive impact on ethical intension. Dispositional business ethical sensitivity had positive impact on ethical judgement, but contextual ethical sensitivity had negative impact on ethical judgement. Ethical judgement had a partial mediation effect in the relationship between dispositional business ethical sensitivity and ethical intension, and had a suppressing effect in the relationship between contextual ethical sensitivity and ethical intension. In the experimental study, there was no significant correlation between ethical intension and ethical behavior.As the first management research on business ethical sensitivity of insurance agents in our country, this research makes a limited attempt to explore its content structure,impacting factors and its influence on ethical decision-making. The findings expand the research range of business ethics and do a great theoretical contribution to thestudy on ethical decision-making, and more important, it has a great practical significance in standardizingthe code of professional ethicsin insurance industryand promoting the construction of socialist ethics.