Does job position moderate the relationship between gender and ethics?: a cross-cultural analysis

Abstract

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between gender and ethics, the interaction of job position and gender on ethics, and the three-way interacting effects of cultural values, job position, and gender on ethics.Design/methodology/approach– The individual-level data were from the 2005-2008 wave of World Values Survey data set and the cultural values were from the GLOBE study. The research contained 26,639 subjects from 30 nations and used HLM to conduct data analysis.Findings– Results showed that men are more likely than women to justify ethically suspect behaviors. In addition, under high in-group collectivism, the ethical difference between genders tends to decrease at high job positions and under high performance orientation, the ethical difference between genders tends to increase at high job positions.Research limitations/implications– This research depends on secondary data; it is therefore impossible for the author to control the data collection process, which could be an issue for discussion. In addition, because of limited available studies to refer to, the formation of the individual-level moderator, job position, might cause some attention.Practical implications– Corporate education and training in regards to ethical issues becomes even more vital, especially for men, since the statistical results showed that men are more likely than women to be deviant. Meanwhile, organizations can help themselves by recruiting a greater number of females, as this study shows that females are seen to make more ethically sound decisions than males. Furthermore, under the contexts of high in-group collectivism and low performance orientation, both genders in higher job positions tend to be more unethical than people in lower positions. Since people in higher positions have the right and the power to set the ethical tone for the organization (Clinard, 1983; Posner and Schmidt, 1992), it becomes particularly essential for firms to pay close attention to ethical issues in higher job positions.Originality/value– The study proved that the relationship between gender and ethics is more complicated than expected; job position, and cultural values can jointly influence the individual-level relationship. In addition, since human behavior is complicated, employing multilevel method to investigate humane behaviors in the field of management becomes necessary in the future.