Ethical Threshold Adjustment for Local Employee in Multinational Company Work Pressure
Chun-Hsi Vivian Chen, Julian Ming-Sung Cheng, and Setyabudi Indartono
Department of Business Administration
No. 300,
Email : cvchen@mgt.ncu.edu.tw
Email : mingsungcheng@yahoo.com
Email : 964401605@cc.ncu.edu.tw
Abstract: This paper investigated local employee behavior on their ethical attitude adjustment in work pressure situation of Multinational Company. Previous study indicated adjusting behavior of local employee of multinational company based on their own gender, age, geographical location and getting changed as long as their career opportunities. This study found that Employee not just only career aspect that influence their ethical adjustment, but influence also with their perceived of work pressure and ethical aspect in their each work group. Different tenure and level of occupation was also found as moderator of adjustment conditions. Implication for research and practice are discussed.
Keywords: Personal Ethical threshold, Work Pressure, Tenure, Occupational, Multinational Company
Biographical notes:
Chun-Hsi Vivian Chen is an assistant professor in the Department of Business Administration,
Julian Ming-Sung Cheng is an associate Professor of Marketing Business Administration Department Management School National Central University. He received his PhD in PhD, in Marketing,
Setyabudi Indartono is a Doctoral Student in Department of Business Administration,
1. Introduction
Global interaction in globalization context has facilitated cross-border business activities and the interacted of people from diverse cultures. As more firms now operate internationally, ethical issues tend to increase, and thus managers nowadays face more complicated situations that challenge their ability to reason morally. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) have increasingly realized that different ethical standards across countries and cultures may cause the failure of their international operations. Understanding such differences and thus enabling global firms to prepare their expatriate managers for overseas assignments is of critical importance in cross-cultural contexts (Huang, 2006). In order to this situation, both of MNEs has realized to develop win-win situation face on these challenges. When operating abroad, the MNEs decision process is further complicated by cultural and ethical differences between the home country and the host country, because of this interaction brings people of one company origin culture and their ethical norms in contact with those of different society with different local cultural and ethical norms. MNE’s which is not familiar with the cultural and ethical differences in the foreign country will not work effectively with the divers groups, and will likely find that their success in the foreign country does not meet their expectation (Barker 2000). These processes and streams in society i.e. a process towards the local/regional and a process towards the global/universal was called Glocalization. The streams are simultaneously evident and respectively strengthen each other (Kristensson, 2002). This phenomenon has been addressed in other disciplines, e.g. from a sociological, geographical and political point of view (Svensson 2001, Pries 2005, Robertson, 1995). Interpretation of society gives an interesting sense making perspective on business networks, ethics codes and values (Kristensson, 2002). As exemplification, any studies show clear signs of the glocal development. It is important for this firm that local sites develop own concrete ways of management which suit the local society well. Such management is to be in line with the global ethical initiatives (Lindfelt, 2006). Ethical issues in international business are very complicated issues. Firms operate in many geographical regions, each of which has it own culture and a related set of ethical standards. This ethical element must be included in the relations between a MNE and a host country (Donaldson, 1992), thus MNE must accommodate the differences ethics when they develop code of ethical standards that will apply to business practices both at home or host country (Barker 2000).
We suggest that, these processes of cultural and ethical adjustment should be base on understanding of their ethical threshold, both at personally or group level. This study used personal ethical threshold (PET) as an instrument to explain ethical adjustment of local MNE employee’s within their work interactions in the Global and their own ethics. The PET also represents an individual’s susceptibility to situational pressure in his or her organization that makes moral behavior more personally difficult. Further, the PET varies according to the moral intensity of the issue at hand, such that individuals are less vulnerable to situational pressure for issues of high moral intensity, i.e., those with greater consequences for others. A higher PET reflects an individual’s greater likelihood of adhering to the morally correct path, even in the face of high situational pressures (personal costs) and low moral intensity (collective importance) (Debra, 2008). The specific situations of this study represent as a work pressure situation both physically, mentally and work injuries opportunities. Deep interview based on Swanson’s theory of caring was conducted in this information collection study.
2. Literature Review of PET
Personal ethical threshold (PET) concept may helps explaining the why individuals’ moral behavior does not always follow their moral judgment and offers an initial step for developing employee’s moral courage in those work situations in which they discern morally appropriate behavior but are concerned about the personal consequences of such behavior (Comer and Vega, 2005). This individual’s PET represents how vulnerable the individual is to situational factors in his or her organization. Someone with a lower PET was predicted more susceptible to situational forces that may exact costs on one’s job or career than is someone with a higher PET (Debra, 2008). Situational pressures that cause someone to act at odds with his or her moral compass do not necessarily entail dodging negative outcomes. Situational pressures include the positive consequences for individuals of crossing their ethical line, as well as the negative consequences for them of not crossing it.
The notion of the personal ethical threshold is related to moral courage, i.e., ‘‘the courage to make the difficult decision to do the right thing even in the face of serious threats or dangers...to one’s career or one’s well-being’’ (Solomon, 1999, p. 83; see also Comte-Sponville, 2001). Similarly, Roussouw (2002) defined moral courage as ‘‘the resolve to act on moral convictions even when it is not comfortable or self-serving to do so’’ (p. 414). He observed, further: ‘‘Organizations can...make moral behavior much more difficult’’ (p. 415). Indeed, a person may abandon moral values and standards ‘‘in the face of persuasions, from the subtle to the violent, that make us want to turn tail and run’’ (Kidder, 2005, p. 72). The PET concept does not speak to why some individuals have lower moral awareness, use flawed ethical reasoning processes, and/or subordinate ethical values to other criteria. Instead, it aims to help make sense of when and why people who are morally sensitive, have intact moral judgment, and want to behave morally still do not always do what they believe is right. The concept can also begin to elucidate why some people are sometimes able to withstand great situational pressures to act in accordance with their morals, whereas others, at other times, fold in the face of slighter external forces. Even for the same person, the PET may vary according to the issue. Specifically, for a given amount of situational pressure (i.e., inducement to misbehave), that person will more likely abide by his or her moral standards to the extent that the issue has greater moral intensity (i.e., it has greater consequences for others, Jones, 1991; see also Frey, 2000; Kelley and Elm, 2003; Marshall and Dewe, 1997; May and Pauli, 2002; McDevitt and Van Hise, 2002; Morris and McDonald, 1995; Weber and Wasieleski, 2001).
Figure 1
Moral intensity
To the extent, then, that a given moral issue is more intense, the individual will be more likely to overcome situational pressure (Roberts, 1984). As Figure 1 illustrates, the slope of the line for an issue of higher moral intensity is less steep than is that of an issue of lower moral intensity, indicating that when the impact of one’s action on others is more substantial, one is less vulnerable to situational pressures, which are withstood as one acts in accordance with moral standards. In other words, for a given individual, the PET will be higher for an issue of greater moral intensity. The person will be more apt to act in accordance with his or her own beliefs, even at personal expense. The moral intensity of an issue represents an individual’s perception of its collective importance, whereas the situational pressure represents the individual’s own interests. Indeed, Baumeister and Exline (1999), depicting morality as a set of cultural adaptations designed to allow people to live together, underscore that individuals at times must subordinate their own needs and interests to those of their larger societal unit. When deciding whether or not to follow what they perceive and value as the moral course of action, individuals may weigh the costs and benefits to themselves (situational pressures) and others (personal moral intensity) that their (un)ethical behavior will likely elicit – and how strongly they feel about these outcomes (Vroom, 1964).
When individuals violate their personal standards: Processes that resolve intrapersonal conflict Dissonance reduction A cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) interpretation can make sense of behavior that defies an individual’s personal ethical standards (see Olson and Stone, 2005, for a comprehensive review of research stemming from Festinger’s original formulation of dissonance theory). Indeed, cognitive dissonance stems from a discrepancy between one’s perception of oneself as good and decent and the knowledge that one has committed a bad deed (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993), and many of the scores of cognitive dissonance experiments involved the breach of moral principles or values (Kelman and Baron, 1968; 1974). Ordinarily, an individual behaves in accordance with his or her values to avoid self-censure (Bandura, 2002). Situational pressures influenced an individual to act in opposition to personal ethical standards, the individual experiences inconsistency between his or her behavior and attitudes. To reduce the inconsistency, the individual must either lower his or her standards, i.e., alter his or her attitude as to what constitutes (un)ethical behavior; or reconstrue the issue as less morally intense, and therefore perceive his or her own behavior as inoffensive. The latter case involves ‘‘trivialization’’, a mode of dissonance reduction in which an individual lessens the importance of one or more of the dissonant elements (Simon et al., 1995). Individuals may convince themselves that behaving at odds with their moral values does not matter much because the moral intensity of the issue at hand is low. So, for instance, it is possible to maintain the attitude that stealing is wrong by rationalizing that one’s employer will not be any worse for wear if one fails to report that a few of one’s co-workers occasionally take home company merchandise. When an individual behaves in an identitydiscrepant way (e.g., violating his or her moral standards) as a result of hefty situational pressure, dissonance is not aroused because the behavior is attributable to these conditions (Perloff, 2003; Zimbardo and Leippe, 1991).2 In contrast, once an individual has violated moral standards after experiencing relatively minimal situational pressure, the lack of external justification – and (at least implicit or de facto) concomitant acceptance of responsibility – for the identity-discrepant behavior engender cognitive dissonance (Aronson, 1999; Cooper and Fazio, 1984). Somewhat ironically, then, individuals bowing in the face of considerable situational pressures feel less need to justify their unethical behavior to themselves than do individuals succumbing to slighter pressures. Indeed, even business ethicists have argued that an individual’s moral responsibility is reduced when the consequences of his or her behavior are mild or organizational pressures to behave unethically are high (Jones and Ryan, 1997) or when acting morally would impose a heavy burden (Velasquez, 1992). It is as if we let one another off the proverbial hook in those cases when exigencies are high, invoking a legalistic reasonable person’s standard to interpret moral behavior. Unfortunately, as recent research suggests, a focus on rules and legal solutions tends to minimize ethical decision-making skills (Michael, 2006).
We put forth that one’s PET is higher for issues of greater moral intensity. However, we acknowledge that with the accrual of occasions on which an individual crosses his or her ethical threshold, thereby violating personal moral standards in response to situational pressures, he or she may gradually become inured to such substandard behavior and desensitized to the intensity of moral encounters. Just as virtuous character develops through habitual good acts, non virtuous character may develop as individuals habituate to performing immoral deeds of incrementally greater intensity (Aristotle, 1962). Crossing one’s line for an issue of relatively low moral intensity may make it more likely, at some point in the future, that one will cross the line for an issue of somewhat greater intensity, until, ultimately, an act formerly deemed egregious seems acceptable. As Bok (1978) explains, ‘‘Those who begin with white lies can come to resort to more frequent and more serious ones’’ (p. 60). Likewise, ‘‘Once you start stretching the truth, it’s easy to forget where to stop’’ (Shellenbarger, 2005). There is a ‘‘progressive disengagement of self-censure...People may not even recognize the changes they have undergone as a moral self’’ (Bandura, 2002). In other words, through (a process of) desensitization, we grow accustomed to performing not-quite-morally stainless acts (see Luban, 2003). From there, we proceed to behaving badly even when issues are of relatively high moral intensity and/or when situational pressures are relatively low. Some what analogously, Moynihan (1993) argued that as a national culture, we have grown accustomed to levels of crime and deviancy that would have engendered outrage and alarm in earlier times. Collectively, our moral standards have dropped. By extension, then, our organizations’ moral standards have also fallen. Indeed, in describing the ‘‘mere exposure effect’’, Weeks et al. (2005) found that those who have personally witnessed a particular ethical issue are more likely to adopt a tolerant view about the acceptability of questionable behavior regarding that issue. Measuring the personal ethical threshold
Thus we predict
Hypothesis (H1) : Work Pressure related positively to PET
Individual-level factors that may affect on PET, could be related to respondents’ demographic characteristics. Research indicates an association between ethical behavior and both age and gender (Borkowski and Ugras, 1998; Peterson et al., 2001; Ruegger and King, 1992; Trevin˜o, 1986). Borkowski and Ugras’s (1998) meta-analysis of 47 individual previous studies on gender and 35 studies on age conducted from 1985 to1994 found consistent links between each factor and ethical behavior. Attitudes and behavior became more ethical as people aged, and women demonstrated more ethical attitudes and behaviors than men. According to Peterson et al.’s (2001) study of business professionals, women’s ethical attitudes develop at a younger age and are less affected by workplace situations, peers, and supervisors than are men’s ethical attitudes. There is no argument in the literature that age is unrelated to ethical behavior. Traditionally and classically, wisdom is associated with age, and current research offers little to change this perception (Serwinek, 1992), with the exception of a recent study of moral reasoning in business managers, which found that age played little, if any, role in ethical behavior (Forte, 2004).
There may also be a relationship between PET and Occupation and tenure. Although we have not found no empirical research that examined geographic region with occupational ethical behavior, there is a study found that region is significant in certain situations (Serwinek, 1992). We also expect PET to be lower in more densely populated geographical areas. Crowding has deleterious effects on human behavior. It tends to suborn our more civilized behaviors and provide an opportunity for us to display our very worst conduct, i.e., negative verbal behavior (Emiley, 1975), aggressive activities (Hinde, 1971), and fight or flight responses (Regoeczi, 2002). People tend to withdraw from and take less interest in the community when they are overcrowded.
Thus we predict,
Hypothesis (H2) : PET related positively to occupation and tenure
Hypothesis (H3) : Occupation and tenure were differently moderated between work pressure and PET
3. Method
In order to highlight to employee’s how organizational pressures can divert them from upholding their moral standards, the PET instrument developed to gauge their PET. Insofar as a higher PET represents adherence to moral judgments in the face of mounting situation pressures, and, further, even for issues of lesser moral intensity, the assessment inventory involves responding to scenarios that reflect incidents of varying levels of situational pressure and varying levels of moral intensity. Scenarios are useful in empirical ethical research because they provide richly textured background material for respondents (Fritzsche and Becker, 1982; see also Alexander and Becker, 1978). Individuals respond to scenarios reflecting issues of varying intensity, by indicating the situational pressures under which they would perform in a morally distasteful way; and to scenarios reflecting situations of varying pressure, indicating the types of issues for which they would succumb to these pressures. Pre-testing the questionnaire with view samples of employees represent a lot of group and occupations, we identified and eliminated questions with confusing wording or difficult response formats. Responses are scored such that higher numbers denote higher PET.
To administer the PET questionnaire, we distributed it to employee at each of different occupational. Respondents were asked to read the scenarios carefully and respond to the questions as accurately as they could. Random crosscheck interview was undertaken to several participants to investigate and participated engage in a dialogic process that often evokes stories and memories that are remembered and reconstituted in ways that otherwise would not occur (Eide, 2008). This interviews performed as Swanson’s theory of caring. Firstly a maintaining belief processes, represent a fundamentally social practice and performance that involves interpersonal contact and dialog that may lead to a different type and level of meaning for the participant that he or she would not have discovered with personal reflection only. Secondly as knowing involves striving to understand what an experience means from within the perspective of the person. Third as being with, refers to being authentically present with others in order to convey that their experiences are important. Fourth as doing for, encompasses the use of therapeutic communication to help facilitate the other’s self-healing, and fifth as enabling, addresses the activities of validating, informing and supporting participants, giving feedback, and helping them to focus and generate alternatives (Swanson, 1991).
3.1. Sampling
Participants were collected from mining industry job site employees. Data collected by Researcher by sent research participation request to company leader, collecting participant by agreement of their HR section. Participant fills on the Perceive work pressure questionnaire of Independent and PET dependent variables. Random crosscheck interview was undertaken to several participants (Eide, 2008).
3.2. Measurement
1. Developed based on 10 items Ethical Threshold (Comer 2008)
2. 5 items Perceive of Work pressure (Loyd, 1981) à
v role conflict (kahn 1964): presence of two or more work demands which are incompatible
v role ambiguity (kahn 1964): absence of clear or adequate information regarding the role one must perform
v role over load (kahn 1964): absence of adequate resources to perform in an adequate manner
v role preparedness (MacKinnon 1978): stress due to feeling a lack of competency or preparation to perform adequately in a given role
v non participation (beehr, walsh and taber 1976, vroom 1963): not being directly involved in decision making process about issues which directly affect one’s job
3.3. Analysis and Hypothesis testing
- Factor analysis as a confirmatory analysis if the questionnaire items are constructed by previous researchers, and as an exploratory analysis when constructing questionnaire items by ourselves. Cronbach’s coefficient will be used as the test of questionnaire reliability. à All dimensions
- Canonical Correlation Analysis to measure the linear relationship between multiple independent and multiple dependent variables. à (group of) Demographic Characteristic (DC) and PET
- Cluster Analysis and Discriminate Analysis to classify objects according to characteristic observations (verify difference of construct under different level of Perceive) àPET in term of each dimensions of DC
- Multiple analysis of Variance (MANOVA) is used to tell the main and interaction effects of categorical variables on multiple dependent interval variables à PET, Perceive of work pressure
- Multiple Regression Analysis, to analyze the relationships between a single dependent variable and several independent variables à interrelationship of each DC dimension
- Multiple regression analysis and stepwise regression analysis are used to analyze the cross-product term for testing the moderating effect of moderators on the relationships between a single dependent variable and several independent variables. àall of DC moderate on Perceive of pressure and PET
- Structural Equation Model (LISREAL), to test the interrelationships of all the variables in the entire model à Full model for interrelationship of overall model
- Multilevel Method (HLM6), to measure different of groups response
4. Result
Table ___ reports the means for all 10 items in the PET questionnaire. All 10 PET questions had answers spanning the entire range, from the minimum of one to the maximum of four. The 10 PET items were factor analyzed using maximum likelihood extraction (Costello and Osbourne, 2005; Fabrigar et al., 1999). The scree plot, with a clear break after the first factor, suggested a one-factor solution (Costello and Osbourne, 2005).
Moreover, this first factor, with an Eigenvalue of _____, accounted for _____% of the variance; in comparison, the next five factors had Eigenvalues ranging from_____ to _____, with each accounting for an additional _____ to _____ of the variance. A two-factor solution was also attempted (as per the Eigenvalue >1 criterion), using an oblique rotation (Costello and Osbourne, 2005).
Table II displays the results of both the one- and two-factor solutions. The two-factor solution suggests a moral intensity factor (q1, q3, and q5) and a situational pressure factor (q7, q8, and q10). However, in light of Tabachnick and Fidell’s (2001) recommendation to employ a criterion of 0.32 as the minimum loading for keeping an item in a scale, the clearer one-factor structure consisting of q1, q5, q7, q8, q9, and q10 is used in all analyses. The coefficient alpha for the PET scale suggested by the one-factor structure is _____ Although Nunnally’s (1978) 0.70 is the oft-cited ‘‘magic number’’ for scale reliability, he initially stated, ‘‘In the early stages of research on predictor tests or hypothesized measures of a construct, one saves time and energy by working with instruments that have reliability for which purpose reliabilities of _____ or _____ will suffice’’ (Nunnally, 1967, p. 226). In any event, we would have had greater confidence in a scale with a higher reliability coefficient, but given that a primary purpose of our scale is pedagogical, it still has merit.
Perceived of Work Pressure
As table III display the result of relationship between Perceived of Work Pressure and PET. Analysis of variance indicates that the F value for the this correlation scale is ____ (____ df), significant at p <>
Tenure and occupational
As Table IV indicates, tenure is positively/negatively correlated with PET scores. That is, longer employee length of service was more likely to give responses indicating that they would behave morally, in spite of high situational pressure or low moral intensity. Occupation is positively/negatively correlated with PET scores. These findings partly correspond to previous research in the field. Geographic region PET also appears to vary according to geographical region (see Table V). Analysis of variance indicates that the F value for the PET scale is ____ (____ df), significant at p <>
4.1. Discussion
§ Present study versus Hossam M. Abu Elanain (2007) study
§
4.2. Managerial Implication
§ Perceive organizational Supports moderation
§
4.3 Limitation and Future Research Direction
This study was not differentiated the organization or business size, sector, unique, country cultural, and organizational performance level, in order to collecting data samples. It may affect different bias of result on a specifics condition.
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Perceive of Work pressure (Loyd, 1981) by 5 likert system:
1. I feel pressure on work if presence of two or more work demands which are incompatible
2. I feel pressure on work if there were not clear or adequate information regarding the role one must perform
3. I feel pressure on work if there were not adequate resources to perform in an adequate manner
4. I feel stress on pressure of work if I have a lack of competency or preparation to perform adequately in a given role
5. I feel pressure on work if I am not being directly involved in decision making process about issues which directly affect one’s job
Ethical Threshold (comer, 2008)
Questions in which moral intensity varies, while situational pressures are constant
1. You are an associate management consultant who has just completed an expensive and comprehensive project for a client company. You know you can offer no more service of value to this client and that any further research would be unnecessary and a waste of the client’s time and money. However, your superiors, the partners of the consulting firm, insist That this thriving company can afford more research. You believe it would be wrong to undertake any additional research for this client, but the partners, who are very strong willed, are pressuring you. Under what conditions would you voice your objections?
To the partners?
I would voice my objections to the partners if they asked me to conduct ____________.
1 ___ as many studies as this deep-pocket company can afford
2 ___ one more major project
3 ___ one more minor project
4 ___ any additional project, no matter how small
2. You believe that lying is wrong, but understand that telling the truth sometimes has unpleasant personal consequences. Nonetheless, there are some lies you would find so objectionable that you’d avoid telling them regardless of the consequences you’d have to face.
What would you avoid?
I would avoid __________________________.
1 ___ complying with my boss’s instructions to conceal a product flaw that could, under certain circumstances, cause injuries
2 ___ going along with my boss’s instructions to falsify a financial document
3 ___ calling in sick (when I was feeling fine) because I had already used up all of my personal days for the year
4 ___ telling my boss, if she asked, that I admired the new (and, in my opinion, hideous)
Carpet in her office
3. You are a junior partner at Fields and
I would express my feelings if Terry _________________.
1 ___told me, at the conclusion of a series of group interviews of candidates for summer
Associate positions, that the real reason she had argued against hiring the candidate whose
credentials I considered most impressive is that it is always a mistake to hire someone
from that candidate’s racioethnic group
2 ___commented that she didn’t like working with people of a particular racioethnic group
because they were so lazy
3 ___made a racist remark about a well-known individual
4 ___told me a racist joke she had just heard from a friend at her old firm
4. You are a local chef, teaching a cooking class in the adult education program at the high school in your community. The pay is nominal, but you are teaching the class primarily because you enjoy sharing your love of cooking with others. Your class meets every Wednesday for eight weeks, from 7:00 to 10:00 PM. While sipping a cup of coffee before class one evening, you overhear the students enrolled in the adult literacy class across the hall. They are complaining loudly and bitterly, commiserating about how their instructor cuts their class short every week. You have noticed yourself that the instructor has been leaving early each week. You think it is unfair for this instructor to shortchange his students and the school district, but you recognize it would be
easier for you to act as if you knew nothing about the early dismissals. This instructor is scheduled to teach the same course the following season. Under what conditions would you say something about the early dismissals?
I would say something if he dismissed his students ___________ before the end of each three-hour class every week.
1 ___ 1 ½ hours
2 ___ 1 hour
3 ___ 30 minutes
4 ___ 15 minutes
5. You are a salesperson at a small fitness club for women. You found out just last week that the gym’s owners have been losing money for some time and have decided to close within the next few weeks. The members have no clue; in fact, the locker room has just been renovated. You’ve been instructed to continue signing up any new members and renewing current memberships, in order to conceal the imminent closing and to generate cash. You do not want to alienate the owners, who are well connected and have already arranged for you to get a job at a larger club. On the other hand, you know it is not right to deceive people and sell them worthless memberships. Under what conditions would you tell the truth to someone asking to purchase a new or renewed membership? I would tell the truth to someone who asked to purchase ______________________.
1 ___ an annual membership for $750
2 ___ a six-month membership for $400
3 ___ a three-month membership for $250
4 ___ a one-month membership for $100
Questions in which situational pressure varies, while moral intensity is constant
6. You are completing your MBA while working full time. During the past few weeks, you have been consumed by a complex and highly involving group project at work, which is in the home stretch. You are exhausted from the 60+ hours per week you have been working. While driving home from work, you suddenly remember that a 20-page research paper on the work-life balance challenges of part-time students is due tomorrow evening for your human resources class. Unless you earn at least a B in this course you will not qualify for your company’s tuition remission program – and will have to pay a few thousand dollars for the course out of your own pocket. The professor has an unyielding policy against granting extensions, and you know that even if you stayed up all night to do your own research on the internet, you would be submitting a paper that would fall short of your best
work. You won’t have the time you’d like to devote to this paper unless you call in sick and take tomorrow off from work, but you know that bailing out on your colleagues would be wrong. Would you call in sick and take a day off from work tomorrow, even though the other members of your project group would have to work much harder in your absence, so that you could have the whole day to prepare a decent paper?
1 ___ Yes. I’d call in sick, even if the paper were worth only 10% of my course grade.
2 ___ Yes. I’d call in sick, but only if the paper were worth 25% of my course grade.
3 ___ Yes. I’d call in sick, but only if the paper were worth 40% of my course grade.
4 ___ No. No matter how much the paper were worth, I would go to work.
7. You are anxious about an upcoming interview for a managerial position within your company. The new position would be a real break, with exciting challenges and a substantial salary increase. Your qualifications are very strong, but you face tough competition from Sam Warren, your chief rival for the position. Sam, whom you find unbearably arrogant, is much less competent than you, but more skilled at flattering people in high places. Early on the morning of the interviews, you find a note on Sam’s desk, indicating that his interview has been moved up by one hour. You believe it would be wrong to destroy the note. But you know that the interviewer, who takes pride in being a real stickler for punctuality and has no patience for excuses, would hold it against Sam in a big way if he missed the interview. This would help clinch the job for you. The office is empty, so nobody would ever know if you took the note.
What would you do?
1 ___ I’d destroy the note to increase my chances of getting this great job.
2 ___ I’d destroy the note, but only if I needed the salary increase to pay for home renovations.
3 ___ I’d destroy the note, but only if I needed the salary increase because one of my family
members had been laid off unexpectedly and we needed to pay off mounting household bills.
4 ___ I’d leave the note where I found it, no matter what.
8. You are the newest junior analyst at Kesnero Securities, covering the automobile industry. With a double-major in finance and economics and a passion for cars, you couldn’t be happier with your job. After conducting a thorough analysis of a major automobile manufacturer, you report that customer orders have been softening and recommend a ‘‘hold’’ rating on the company’s stock. An executive from the automobile manufacturer phones you to complain about your neutral rating. He tells you that if you don’t upgrade it to something more favorable, he will thwart your future attempts to do research at his company. Lying would go against your value system, but, on the other hand, you don’t want to anger your boss, who prefers analysts who don’t make waves. Would you upgrade your rating?
1 ___ Yes. I’d upgrade my rating.
2 ___ No. I wouldn’t upgrade my rating, even if it meant angering my boss for losing access
to a company.
3 ___ No. I wouldn’t upgrade my rating, even if it meant my performance ratings would suffer enough to jeopardize my year-end bonus.
4 ___ No. I wouldn’t upgrade my rating, even if it meant I’d end up being fired.
9. You have applied to graduate school to work toward your master’s degree in engineering. The faculty member heading the admissions committee calls to congratulate you upon your acceptance. She invites you to consider pursuing your Ph.D. Your plan is to acquire your master’s, then go to law school, and become a patent attorney. You have absolutely no interest in or use for a doctorate in engineering. However, as a doctoral student, your tuition would be waived, and you would even receive a small stipend, whereas you would have to
pay full tuition as a student in the terminal one-year master’s program to which you applied. You could enter the doctoral program and leave after completing your master’s, but you know this would be deceitful and wrong. Still, this would save you several thousands of dollars. Would you accept the offer to enter the doctoral program, and then leave after completing your master’s?
1 ___ Yes. In order to save the cost of tuition I’d accept the offer to enter the doctoral program
and leave after finishing my master’s degree. Taking an opportunity to save money is
good common sense.
2 ___ Yes. I would accept the offer, if I had to repay thousands of dollars of outstanding student loans I’d accumulated to go to college.
3 ___ Yes. I would accept the offer, if I had to repay thousands of dollars of outstanding student loans I’d accumulated to go to college and I planned to borrow more money to go to law school after completing my master’s.
4 ___ No. I would sincerely thank the admissions committee for the offer, but I’d tell them that a Ph.D. doesn’t fit my career goals.
10. You are a scientist at a major pharmaceutical concern. The clinical trials research you have just completed provides compelling evidence that a new diet medication may cause severe liver problems in a substantial percentage of patients. Because sale of the medication promises to generate handsome revenues for your company, the head of your division has asked you to massage your data. You know that it is wrong to keep a dangerous product on the market, especially when many of the individuals taking the diet medication are only moderately overweight; they do not have life-threatening obesity and would most likely be better off changing their diets and exercising. What would you do?
1 ___ I’d falsify the data. At times it’s necessary to go along to get along at work.
2 ___ I would not falsify the data even if it meant getting on my boss’s bad side.
3 ___ I would not falsify the data even if it meant being passed over for a deserved promotion.
4 ___ I would not falsify the data even if it meant losing my job.
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