Investigating the influence of profession, position and organizational climate on ethical attitudes in the private sector

This study investigates three attributes and their relationship to ethical attitudes in the management within the private sector. It is an extension of the work done by Dr. Diane Wild, who examined the determinants of ethical behavior of public administrators. This exploratory study, like Wilde's study, examines the relationship among private sector organizational attributes---the independent variables of profession, position, and organizational climate, and dependent variables reflecting the six categories of ethical attitudes of private sector administrators based on York Wilbern's analysis of morality. Victor and Cullen's five types of ethical climates and the Likert-type scale methodology are also used to investigate the relationship between an organization's ethical climate and ethical attitudes among administrators in the private sector. A questionnaire based on Wilbern's six levels of morality, viz., basic honesty and conformity, conflicts of interest, service orientation and procedural fairness, ethic of democratic responsibility, ethic of policy determination and ethic of compromise and social integration, was used to determine the attitudes of respondents. The results from this study were then compared to Dr. Wilde's findings.;Based on ANOVA tests done on three hypotheses and twenty-four sub-hypotheses, ten null hypotheses are rejected. This research found that position in hierarchy and organizational climate have statistically significant influence on ethical attitudes among the respondents. Supervisors are more supportive of certain ethical attitudes than personnel in higher managerial positions. In addition, the five types of organizational climate have statistical significance on the ethical attitudes of the respondents from the private sector. However, profession does not seem to have a statistically significant impact on ethical attitudes. Replication of this study is recommended in the way of further research to deal with internal and external validity questions.;In addition to the importance of understanding ethical decision making in the private sector, this study may contribute toward gaining an insight into the differences that may exist between the ethic of public and private sector administration.