Observers’ Impressions of Unethical Persons and Whistleblowers

Since there have been many recent occurrences of alleged wrongdoing by business persons and other professionals, it seems additional ethics research is needed to obtain knowledge that will impact real-world behavior. An empirical study assessed business students’ impressions of hypothetical wrongdoe...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Decker, Wayne H. (Author) ; Calo, Thomas J. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer 2007
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2007, Volume: 76, Issue: 3, Pages: 309-318
Further subjects:B Attributions
B decision-making bias
B ethical judgments
B Whistle-blowing
B Moral Intensity
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Description
Summary:Since there have been many recent occurrences of alleged wrongdoing by business persons and other professionals, it seems additional ethics research is needed to obtain knowledge that will impact real-world behavior. An empirical study assessed business students’ impressions of hypothetical wrongdoers and whistleblowers. To some extent, impressions of an unethical executive and a whistleblower were influenced by the same variables and in opposite directions. Female respondents judged the unethical executive less favorably and the whistleblower more favorably than did males. The executive was rated less favorably and the whistleblower more favorably when the executive sought a small gain than when the goal was a large gain or prevention of a loss of either magnitude. Some manipulations, however, impacted impressions of one actor, but not the other. Perhaps ethics training can make students aware that issue␣framing and moral intensity components may bias decisions.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-006-9283-2