Ethical perspectives of MBA graduates, ethics education, and managerial experience: A hierarchical multiple regression analysis

The research employed a quantitative, correlational, nonexperimental survey design to examine the relationship between business ethics education and the ethical perspectives of MBA graduates while controlling for managerial experience, gender, age and the total length of work experience. The research focused on business programs graduates with some practical experience to further existing research, which studied current business students. Employed MBA graduates were determined to be the best for the study because of the probability they had attended business ethics courses and had some practical experience. The survey instrument, the Attitudes Towards Business Ethics Questionnaire (ATBEQ) was administered to collect data on the ethical perspectives of respondents in the context of business practice (Neumann & Reichel, 1987). Responses were collected from a sample of 255 employed MBA graduates to test the hypotheses and answer the research questions. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was used to examine the variance in ethical perspectives attributed to ethics education. The results indicated that statistically significant relationships existed between the ethical perspectives and business ethics education, managerial experience, gender, and age. These findings suggested business ethics coursework and ethics training completed after earning an MBA had a continued benefit in relation to the ethical perspectives of business professionals, with implied value for business organizations.