An Analysis of the Ethical Predisposition of Australian and Malaysian Business Students Towards Consumer Issues: Do Ideological Differences Exist?

Abstract

When developing and justifying courses of study in business ethics the designer will be interested in setting benchmarks reflecting his/her understanding or appreciation of the moral views of participating members. Such considerations are often complicated by the fact, relevant in many Australian institutions of higher learning, that most of the cohorts contain overseas students from a variety of Asian countries. If insights into the ethical perceptions of students with differing ethnic origins could be measured in some objective fashion, then curriculum planners might take such matters into account when developing strategies for courses involving business ethics. This paper reports the findings of a questionnaire survey that examined the ethical perceptions of 407 second and third year students completing business courses at two Western Australian universities. Two country groupings, Australian and Malaysian students, were identified and their responses examined to ascertain whether relevant demographic factors relating to age and gender could be used to explain the strong differences in perceptions which were noted with respect to issues involving questionable practices involving consumers. Demographic factors failed to explain observed differences and a subsequent examination of the underlying constructs, using factor and cluster analyses, resulted in the realisation that the two groups demonstrated significantly variant patterns of ethical predisposition.