Psychological correlates of business ethics orientation in executives

Abstract

A specially designed Business Ethics scale was administered to a sample of 111 high-level industrial personnel together with a comprehensive psychological test battery and a situation-specific Managerial Locus of Control scale based on Rotter's (1966) locus of control construct. Objective measures of age, education, and salary were also collected for the sample. Product-moment correlations were calculated between the scores from the Business Ethics scale and the 39 measures from the test battery, the locus of control score, and the 3 objective indices. Some relationships were found between objective measures of personal background data and business ethics orientation. The strongest association with business ethics (in the ethical direction) were obtained for the measure of internal locus of control and the measures of emotional health in the test battery. The three-way relationship between business ethics, internal locus of control, and emotional health is discussed.