An empirical investigation of the impact of environment on individual ethical analysis by corporate accountants and human resource managers

This study investigates whether a relationship exists between the ethical climate of an organization and the ways in which individuals analyze ethical situations within a business context. The model developed proposes that the type of ethical climate (deontological or rules-based versus teleological or outcome-based) has a direct impact on the type of ethical framework (deontological versus teleological) employed to make ethical judgments. Level of self-monitoring behavior and level of identification with an external profession are proposed as moderators of the main relationship. Two groups of management-level employees were selected to participate in the study. Corporate accountants and human resource managers were sent a questionnaire consisting of ethical climate questions, responses to business ethics vignettes, demographics questions, and measures of level of professional identification and level of self-monitoring. Climates and vignette responses were classified as deontological or teleological via factor analysis.; Hypotheses were tested using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and t-tests for difference of means. Results indicated marginal statistical significance for ethical analysis scores between climate categories, although not in the direction hypothesized. It was found that higher deontological (teleological) ethical analysis scores were present in telelological (deontological) climates. Results did not support the presence of self-monitoring as a moderator of the relationship. Also counter to hypothesis, human resource managers scored statistically significantly higher on level of professional identification than did corporate accountants. Finally, regarding the role of professional identification as a moderator, results indicated very little difference in ethical analysis scores between high and low professional identification categories within teleological climates, but a highly significant difference in ethical analysis score between high and low professional identification categories within deontological climates.; From the results, it appears that the difference in ethical analysis scores between deontological and teleological ethical climates is driven by level of professional identification. A more thorough investigation of the professional identification construct and of the impact of professional identification on ethical analysis is needed. However, the findings support the conclusion that a high level of professional identification encourages individuals within deontological or rules-based climates to go beyond deontological ethical analysis when making ethical judgments.