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This study aims to examine the relationships among senior managers’ reports of bribery practices, ethical awareness and firm productivity in Thailand. Bribery pervasiveness is examined as moderating the relationship between bribery practices and ethical awareness. Ethical awareness is examined as a mediating effect of bribery practices and managerial perceptions of firm productivity.

This study uses a mixed-method approach consisting of interviews with more than 20 senior managers and surveys collected from more than 200 senior managers in Thailand’s manufacturing and construction industries. Hierarchical regression is used to test the hypotheses.

Senior managers report that their firms are more likely to flout ethical principles when they perceive that their industries feature widespread bribery practices. However, the tests fail to support the hypothesis that the flouting of ethical principles leads to less productivity.

This study contributes to transaction cost economics theory by extending the concept of illegal transaction cost minimization to managerial perceptions of firm productivity. This study also integrates research on bribery rationalization by considering how managerial rationalization and justification of bribery practices impact managerial perceptions of firm productivity and ethical awareness. This research provides managers with an understanding of how attitudes toward ethical conduct and unethical actions impact perceptions of firm productivity.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the social cognitive theory and social learning theory to examine the different mechanisms through which entrepreneurs’ moral awareness and ethical behavior affect the product innovation of new ventures.

The authors collected survey data from 150 founders and 389 founding team members of new ventures in China in 2015. The final sample contained 113 questionnaires from entrepreneurs and 246 questionnaires from their founding team members. Regression analyses were used to test direct effects, and Preacher and Hayes’ (2004) formal mediation test approach with bootstrapping method was used to evaluate the mediation effects.

The findings indicate that the ethical levels of entrepreneurs can affect the product innovation of a new venture through two paths: entrepreneurs with low levels of moral awareness tend to be more individually creative, which facilitates product innovation, and entrepreneurs with high levels of ethical behavior can make founding teams more creative, which also promotes product innovation.

The findings of this study suggest that entrepreneurs are not negatively affected by their low moral awareness as long as they exhibit high ethical behavior with founding team members. But such low moral awareness has to be genuine. The best way to promote product innovation in the long run is to create an organizational culture of ethical behavior rather than to ignore moral issues in decision-making.

This study challenges the assumption that moral awareness and ethical behavior are always consistent. It takes an initial step to resolve the contradiction in the current literature regarding the relationship between the ethical levels of entrepreneurs and product innovation in the context of founders and founding teams in new ventures.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how experience and gender relate to the auditors’ moral awareness.

Hypotheses are informed by a neurocognitive approach to ethical decision-making and tested using survey data from 191 auditors of a Big Four audit firm in The Netherlands.

The main findings indicate that more experienced auditors (i.e. those with more years of work experience, a higher rank and a higher age) show higher levels of moral awareness. This positive relationship is stronger for morally questionable situations related to accounting and auditing, compared to general business moral dilemmas. In addition, the results support the expectation that on average, female auditors have higher moral awareness than their male counterparts.

To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first study that considers a neurocognitive approach to inform hypotheses about the antecedents of auditors’ moral awareness. The findings suggest that the involvement of experienced auditors in ethical decision-making processes may be beneficial given their enhanced ability to identify ethically disputable situations as such. Furthermore, increasing the number of women in senior positions may positively affect ethical decision-making in audit firms. Finally, this paper presents directions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test the scale of auditors’ awareness of the profession’s reputation for independence, defined as the degree to which auditors recognise the importance of the reputation for independence and acknowledge the impact of their judgements and decisions on that reputation, and to provide preliminary evidence of an association between auditors’ awareness of the profession’s reputation and auditors’ ethical judgement.

A seven-item scale was developed to measure auditors’ awareness of the profession’s reputation for independence, and an auditing case was used to measure auditors’ ethical judgement. A survey questionnaire of practising auditors working in auditing firms in Indonesia provides data for testing the validity and reliability of the new scale and proposed hypothesis.

The findings show that the scale is unidimensional and has satisfied reliability and validity. Moreover, the preliminary evidence of a positive association between the new scale and auditors’ ethical judgement is provided.

Further studies should test the validity and reliability of the scale of awareness of the profession’s reputation for independence with larger data and in different settings. Investigation of the antecedent factors of auditors’ awareness of the profession’s reputation for independence is suggested.

This paper develops a new measure, namely, the awareness of the profession’s reputation for independence. Preliminary evidence to establish an association between that awareness and auditor ethical judgement is provided.

This study aims to investigate the influence of ethical theories, religiosity and seniority on the ethical awareness of accountants.

The data were collected by using a questionnaire survey completed by 219 accountants located in various locations in Turkey. To investigate the relationship between constructs, the partial least square structural equation model was implemented.

The findings indicated that seniority in the profession and religiosity have a positive influence on ethical awareness. Within the theoretical approaches, deontology has a positive influence on ethical awareness, whereas egoism has a negative one.

The study has some implications regarding enhancing the ethical awareness of accountants: accountants who are in the early stages of their career development should be made aware of the ethical issues they face in their professional life; accountants should be taught laws and regulations of accountancy profession from the entry level throughout their working life; through professional associations, some initiatives may be taken to involve accountants in social responsibility programs to curb selfish behavior and improve empathy. However, a questionnaire survey does not permit an investigation from a qualitative perspective (the whys and hows of the answers); thus, further case studies might be necessary to make detailed investigations.

This study is unique in that it tries to answer what factors comprehensively influence the ethical awareness of accountants in an emerging market context.

The theory of planned behavior was used as a guiding framework to explore how undergraduate business students, employed full-time, perceived the influence of their first class in business ethics on ethical awareness and ethical behavior in the workplace.

In this qualitative study, the perceived influence of ethics education on ethical awareness and ethical behavior in the workplace was explored. The sample consisted of eight concurrently employed undergraduate business students at a university in the Southwestern US.

Inductive analysis of primary data collected in the study suggests that ethics education increased ethical awareness. The increased desire to correct unethical behavior is another step toward ethical behavior. However, the participants in the current study did not report an increase in actual ethical behavior despite their increased ethical awareness and intent. Ethical awareness is only one component in the multidimensional process of ethical decision-making, and the increase in ethical awareness alone may not increase ethical behavior. Instead, attitude toward ethical behavior and perceived behavioral control needs to be considered as well.

The literature indicates that ethics education increases awareness of ethical norms and cognitive moral development. However, the question remains about how ethics education transfers to ethical behavior at the workplace. This study sought to investigate this question.

The aim of this paper is to provide insights into how information (IS) practitioners can develop further their awareness on ethical issues. In the context of the paper, awareness means able to identify and deal with issues of ethics in activities of information systems planning, development and use. The paper begins by presenting two areas which IS practitioners can initially explore to develop their ethical awareness. These areas are: (1) IS Methodologies and (2) Codes. The first area emphasises ethical awareness by using methodologies. The second element aims to encourage ethical awareness by following principles. In both areas, self‐reflection is identified as a key element for awareness. Using Foucault’s ideas on power and ethics, a critical understanding of ethical awareness based on self‐reflection is presented to complement ethical awareness developments. This understanding is defined in terms of two elements of inquiry: (a) Power relations analysis and (b) ways of being ethical. With these two elements, the paper argues that IS practitioners can exert their critical thinking and create their own ethics, while still following IS methodologies and codes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the moral awareness and ethical virtue of current university students with a view to identifying whether there are any gender differences.

The study analysed undergraduate responses from final year honours student cohorts, one from a degree in accounting and finance (n=51), the other from a programme in business studies (n=79), to a series of value statements and a number of academic and business‐related scenarios. The study employed a Kantian approach to ethics.

Accounting students who had been exposed to ethical educational interventions do not display a higher level of moral awareness or ethical intention than their business counterparts. Whilst gender differences were apparent, this was only evident for moral awareness not ethical virtue and only the case for business students, thus suggesting that gender id may have more explanatory power than biological gender.

The sample size was small as the study was restricted to relevant class populations and hence may not be generalisable. In addition, a gap may exist between what students state they would do in a situation and their actual behaviour.

Further work is required which concentrates on gender id rather than biological gender and examines why feminine moral awareness would appear to be higher than the masculine but converges for ethical intention.

The study presents a comparative analysis of two different student cohorts which enables a more detailed investigation of gender differences, initially for moral awareness and then ethical virtue.

This aim of this paper was to highlight the awareness of ethical issues across the group of information systems (IS) professionals from a range of geographical regions.

An initial survey was conducted that informed in-depth interviews with 26 IS professionals from across the globe. The study identified that around 70 per cent of the sample were over 50 years old. This provided an opportunity to consider age-related differences in perception regarding ethical awareness of both current and emerging technologies.

The project revealed that the more mature IS professionals had a significantly higher level of awareness and perceived understanding regarding the importance of ethical issues than the younger IS professionals.

The research was limited to IS professionals and so the findings do not generalise further. Future research would be beneficial to find out if the higher level of ethical awareness is also evident across older people in general or whether it is specific to technology professionals.

IS professionals need to be exposed to high standards and expectations of ethical behaviour from senior colleagues, as well as embedding this within technical education.

Caution with regards to youth culture and youthitisation of the workforce needs to be exerted to avoid rash decision-making and short-termism, which could undermine progress and development. A change in the view of employers to older workers will also require a change in attitudes across Western society, particularly as demographics continue to skew towards an aging population.

This paper provides new insight into the ethical awareness of older employees and goes some way to dispel the myths surrounding stereotypes of older workers as being fearful of technology and resistant to change.

This paper aims to understand employees’ propensity to blow the whistle in two East African countries. This study develops a model of ethical decision-making (EDM) to assist management in predicting the probability of whistleblowing in Kenya and Uganda. It also seeks to find the moderating effect of perceived retaliation on whistleblowing intention.

This study administers a standardized questionnaire to employees in Kenya and Uganda to measure their perceptions about whistleblowing in their organizations. This study uses partial least square structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses. This study uses four constructs, namely, awareness, judgment, retaliation and likelihood, of blowing the whistle. These constructs are measured with multiple-item scales.

The results show that ethical awareness and judgment significantly increase willingness to engage in whistleblowing in East Africa. However, this study does not find a significant retaliation effect on whistleblowing intention. Instead, this study finds that awareness and judgment mediate between retaliation and willingness to engage in whistleblowing.

This study contributes to EDM topics. It advances the understanding of the whistleblowing concept, the retaliation effect and the reasons to encourage blowing the whistle in Africa. However, this study did not consider cultural factors, such as nationality, patriotism and ethnicity. Moreover, the results are only based on data from Uganda and Kenya and may not apply to other sub-Saharan nations.

These findings are particularly significant for managers and policymakers in East Africa, where fear of retaliation and lack of awareness are the main barriers to whistleblowing. The results may help managers develop human resource practices to include policies to support moral behavior. It may also provide insights to the policymakers to understand the factors that facilitate whistleblowing practices and help them to adopt new strategies or policies to stimulate whistleblowing culture.

This study is one of the initial empirical studies in the East Africa context to explore the EDM predictors and the impact of retaliation on the whistleblowing intention.