| The purpose of this study was to examine whether culture had an effect on the ethical decision-making of sport administrators. Cultures can condition people to react differently to situations because each culture has its own set of values and beliefs (Newman & Nollen, 1996). Values and beliefs are considered to be the basics of ethics, therefore ethics are an outcome of culture (Malloy, Ross, & Zakus, 2000). Sport has become an international phenomenon and, as such, involvement between different nations and cultures is inevitable. The internationalisation of sport creates an integration of all different cultures at events and these different cultures may not agree on ethical decisions. Therefore, due to this internationalisation, sport administrators are faced with ethical dilemmas which may be caused by the differences in cultures. In order to know how to deal with ethical situations, an understanding of different cultures and how they can work together needs to be established. In order to gain this understanding, sport administrators from the Commonwealth Games Canada and the Commonwealth Council for England were selected to verify whether culture had an influence on ethical decision making. Forsyth's (1980) Ethical Positioning Questionnaire along with Hofstede's (1991) dimensions of culture were used to assess ethical ideologies of sport administrators. Between these two groups, there were differences in idealism; however, there were no differences for relativism.;Canadian sport administrators were more group-oriented and caring whereas English sport administrators would accept a degree of harm in pursuit of the greatest good. For relativism both Canadian and English sport administrators were more likely not to follow moral rules and regulations. From these findings, implications for the profession, student and future research were discussed. |
