Ethical Attitudes in Small Businesses and Large Corporations: Theory and Empirical Findings from a Tracking Study Spanning Three Decades

This study offers a theoretical framework of ethical behavior and a comparative analysis of ethical perceptions of managers of large, mostly publicly traded corporations (those with 1,000 or more employees) and the owners and managers of smaller companies (those with fewer than 100 employees) across 17 years. The primary research provides basic data on the changing standards of ethics as perceived by leaders of large and small businesses where the cultures frequently fall into sharp contrast. Our findings reveal the extent to which the message of business integrity is gaining or losing ground within large and small companies. It does this by means of respondents’ judgments of acceptable responses to 16 scenarios profiling common business situations with questionable ethical dimensions. Based on responses from over 5,000 managers and employees (from firms of all sizes) to our scenarios at three points in time (1985, 1993, 2001), we tested two research questions. First, for firms of all sizes, have business ethics improved or declined between the years 1985 and 2001? Second, comparing responses of large and small firm executives across the 1985–2001 time frame, is there a discernible difference in their ethical standards? Our results suggest that business leaders are making somewhat more ethical decisions in recent years. We also found that small business owner–managers offered less ethical responses to scenarios in 1993 but that no significant differences existed with large firm managers in 1985 and 2001. Implications of our findings are discussed.