A Quest for Ethical Decision Making: Searching for the Holy Grail, and Finding the Sacred Trinity in Ethical Decision‐Making by Managers

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify what ethical framework(s) small business managers use in making decisions, and whether they differ from those drawn on by the wider community? Design/methodology/approach - A scale for managerial ethical decision‐making has been used, targeting small business people and academics and students in Australia. This scale was piloted in a geographical test community in Queensland Australia. Targeted respondents were asked to fill in the self‐assessment survey (MEP). A quantitative evaluation of the results was carried out by measuring variance between eight ethical variables by ANOVA (analysis of variance). Findings - This study found statistically significant differences in the ethical decision‐making profile of business and non‐business decision makers. Contrary to expectations, small business people do not hold economical return as the most important factor in making managerial decisions to the exclusion of other more ethical criteria. There are, however, significant differences between small business people and academics and students in relation to which ethical principles are the most important when making a decision. Originality/value - A new scale has been developed and validated to profile the ethical style of managers. From this tools can be further developed for self‐assessment or by organizations wanting to profile the ethical styles of their managers.