Business Training, Reasoning Skills, and Philosophical Orientation: Correlates of Ethical Decision-Making

In today’s business world it is essential that managers/employees engage in ethical thinking and behavior in making the decisions that are part-and-parcel of operating a successful business. Therefore, it would benefit businesses to understand, as much as possible, the various characteristics, influences, or factors which induce or predict ethical decision-making. This paper describes a study in which students at a mid-south USA university were used as proxies for business-trained persons versus non-business trained persons, to explore the issue of whether a business background, i.e., training, makes a difference in the ethical decision-making of persons engaged in business situations. The major finding of the study is that yes, in some instances, business-trained versus non-business trained persons do render statistically significant different decisions in business-oriented scenario. Reasoning skills and philosophical orientation were also examined as co-variates. Although the statistical evidence was not as strong, results indicated that reasoning skills and philosophical orientation also explain some of the variation observed in ethical decisions/judgments in business-oriented scenarios.