Czech Students’ Perceptions of Ethical Behavior in Business and Entrepreneurship

Dennis Barber Iii,John H Batchelo,Timothy Hatten,Shanan G Gibson,Ladislav Rolínek

doi:10.21272/bel.4(1).80-91.2020

Abstract

The central notion of business culture and communication with stakeholders consists in the ethical standards regarding the behaviour of corporation owners and managers, which, on the one hand, form an essential element of successful business activities and partnerships, and on the other hand, are complicated in terms of measuring and managing the phenomenon. This study uses agency and stakeholder theories to compare the ethical standards in the behaviour of businessmen and managers. These theories influence freedom of decision-making and behaviour in entrepreneurial activity based on the personal ethical considerations and individuals’ interests, regardless of the size of their share in the business. The article analyzes data regarding differences in perceptions of business owners and managers by Czech students; the differences between ethical standards of behaviour of Czech and American entrepreneurs and managers; gender peculiarities of Czech students’ perception of different business representatives. A methodological tool for the study of ethical perception by youth at the University of the Czech Republic was the Bucar and Hisrich model, and the basis to define the statistical significance of testing the hypothesis ̶ even and odd T-tests. The object of the study contains representatives of small and medium-sized businesses in the Czech Republic, as a country that offers an appealing microcosm for research thanks to the recent transition to a market economy with rapid changes in policy and market activity perceptions. 73% of respondents previously worked in a small business, almost 44% had family members who owned or have a small business and 9.5% owned the business. The sample age structure consisted of 53% of women and 47% of men, on average, under 22 years old, 8% of whom were married. The results of the research revealed that there were no significant differences between the Czech students’ ethical perception of managers and businessmen and the lack of influence on the respondents’ previous experience in doing business. A study of gender-based sampling revealed that Czech female students are more likely to evaluate entrepreneurs less ethically than men do. Keywords: Agency Theory, Czech Republic, Entrepreneurs, Ethics, Managers, Stakeholder Theory.

Highlights

Ethical perceptions vary from country to country (Ardichvili, Jondle, Kowske, Cornachione, and Thakadipuram, 2012), the ethics of business managers and entrepreneurs are perceived to vary (Batchelor, Harris, Gibson, & Simpson, 2011; Barber III, Ghouse, Batchelor, Chaher, Harris, & Gibson, 2012; Ghouse, Batchelor, Barber III, Gibson, & Harris, 2020) and ethical differences do exist between the genders (Bucar & Hisrich, 2001; Marta, Singhapakdi, & Kraft, 2008; Smyth, Davis, & Kroncke, 2009)
After a Shapiro-Wilk test for normality, we failed to reject that the overall measures for the ethical perceptions of managers (p=0.685) and entrepreneurs (p=0.708) were normally distributed, and the p-values from the t-tests are powerful enough for hypothesis testing
There was no overall difference between how students perceived the ethics of managers versus the ethics of entrepreneurs

Summary

Introduction

Ethical perceptions vary from country to country (Ardichvili, Jondle, Kowske, Cornachione, and Thakadipuram, 2012), the ethics of business managers and entrepreneurs are perceived to vary (Batchelor, Harris, Gibson, & Simpson, 2011; Barber III, Ghouse, Batchelor, Chaher, Harris, & Gibson, 2012; Ghouse, Batchelor, Barber III, Gibson, & Harris, 2020) and ethical differences do exist between the genders (Bucar & Hisrich, 2001; Marta, Singhapakdi, & Kraft, 2008; Smyth, Davis, & Kroncke, 2009). Especially in the Czech Republic, entrepreneurs were associated more with corrupt politicians and powerful elite than with the working-class citizen trying to make a living, but those perceptions have not been stable. Theory suggests that these perceptions are subject to gender differences where females are more likely to believe that entrepreneurs are more likely to have control of decision making and behave more ethically. This study empirically tests three categorizations related to ethics using a Czech and U.S sample of business students including differences between countries, gender differences and differences based on previous exposure to entrepreneurial activities. The paper ends with a presentation of future research questions which were motivated by the completion of this study

Literature Review

Methodology

Results