The Importance Of Ethics And Social Responsibility:the Determinants Of Marketers’Perception

Most research on ethical conduct of business practitioners, including marketing practitioners, concentrate on decision-making process of them in situations having an ethical content. However, still little research considers how marketing practitioners perceive the importance of the role of ethics and social responsibility in the success of business organization even though it is considered as a prerequisite for ethical decision-making process. Further, those relatively few researches, that focused on the importance of the ethics and social responsibility, are just limited to a relatively few factors that may affect on the marketing practitioners’ perception towards the importance of the ethics and social responsibility in business success. Moreover, most of studies on the perceived importance of the role of ethics and social responsibility in the business success are also concentrated on western developed countries rather than Asian developing countries. However, It seems to be a bad trend in the ethics research. As the world is being globalized day-by-day, ethical concerns in Asian country context are also an important requirement. As such, any imbalance in ethical concerns may badly affect the other part of the world, as it is already evident in some notable incidents, as if recent world financial crises occurred because of unethical conducts. Thus, the purpose of this research is to investigate how ethical perception of marketing practitioners towards the importance of ethics and social responsibility in the success of business organizations is influenced by individual and organization related factors with respect to a south Asian country, namely Sri Lanka. Firstly, a conceptual framework of the structure of factors that might be associated with the marketing practitioners ethical perception towards the importance of the role of ethical social responsibility in the success of business organizations were synthesized from ethical decision making literature. Then, two hundred and fifty marketing practitioners, working in private business enterprises listed in the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) in Sri Lanka, were surveyed about the effect of various factors that are likely to influence on their perception towards the importance of the ethical and socially responsible behaviors towards the business success. Those250respondents, selected for the sample, represent150listed firms in CSE, where105firms belong to manufacturing sector and45firms belong to service industry sector. Consequently, the sampling technique called, stratified random sampling, was used in selecting respondents so that those categories of industries are represented. Basically, statistical techniques, namely, correlation and regression analyses were used to analyze the data. Results of the analysis provided support for the conceptual framework, with the emphasis on the contributions of each factor on the perceived importance of the role of ethics and socially responsible behavior in business success. Consequently, a comprehensive model for perceived importance (by marketing practitioners) of the role of ethics and social responsibility in business success was developed with special reference to Sri Lankan context as the main result of the study. Based on the results, important implications for marketing practitioners, business enterprises and academics are discussed. Future research directions are also highlighted.