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This study examined the hypothesis that the moral personality is one in which moral knowledge structures are chronically accessible. A spontaneous trait inference cued-recall paradigm was employed. It was expected that those with chronically accessible moral knowledge structures (N = 61) would spontaneously encode virtue-content information differently than those with less chronically accessible moral knowledge structures (N = 77). High and low moral chronic accessibility participants were instructed to memorize sentences that contained virtue-content implications. Sentence recall was then cued by either virtuous dispositional terms or by words that were linked semantically to the sentences. Within the spontaneous processing condition, dispositional cues prompted twice as much recall as semantic cues among participants with high moral chronic accessibility whereas semantic cues prompted twice as much recall as dispositional cues among participants with low moral chronic accessibility. As predicted, within the deliberate processing conditions, there were no high/low moral chronic accessibility differences. These findings support the claim that the moral personality is usefully conceptualized in terms of the chronic accessibility of moral knowledge structures. / Department of Educational Psychology

Using organizational theory, this research study examines whether a firm's business strategy influences the ethical culture and climate within the organization, and thus explains why a firm's business strategy may ultimately contribute toward an increased risk of financial misreporting. This study develops from recent research which finds that companies following an innovative, risk-oriented Prospector business strategy are significantly more likely to experience financial reporting irregularities, despite increased audit effort levels. To examine the research question, both survey and archival methods are employed. Using a large-scale research survey, I find two subset groups of Prospector firms where a smaller (larger) group is significantly associated with a less (more) ethical culture and climate, which offer insights into why companies following a Prospector business strategy continue to experience irregularities despite auditors' efforts. Results suggest auditors may not be able to distinguish between the two sets of Prospectors and thus may direct higher audit efforts too generally at Prospector firms rather than at the smaller set of firms with less ethical cultures and climates?i.e., firms more prone to rationalizing less ethical behavior. I also find that firms pursing a second type of strategy, a transitory Reactor strategy, are consistently associated with a negative ethical culture and climate. For a subset of public companies which can be linked to archival data, I find evidence to suggest that companies with less (more) ethical climates are associated with an increased (reduced) risk of financial misreporting while controlling for incentive and opportunity factors. I continue to find evidence that companies following a Prospector business strategy are associated with greater risks of misreporting, confirming prior research. Altogether, my findings suggest several antecedents for firms experiencing greater risk of financial statement misreporting and provide evidence regarding the third leg of the auditing fraud triangle (rationalization).

Ethical considerations have become more important in our environment, since all humans are moral agents and we can not avoid the involvement of ethical issues in every activity that we take part in. Ethical issues are vital, and it seems that it has become a burning question. This study presents the results of a survey of how Chief Executive Officers (CEO) in five IT-companies considers and work with attitudes toward ethical issues. The survey indicated that ethics in IT-companies has much to do with relations, relations between employees, relations between company and customer, and the importance of creating long-term relationships with customers. The survey also indicated the individual view of ethics. Finally, suggestions for further examination in this area are made.

This study was conducted to determine the relationship between managers' ethical positions and their intended behavior.

I begin by examining Moore's notion of common sense because it is my contention that his work is not neatly separated; rather, his ethical and non-ethical philosophy have common sense as an underlying theme. For Moore, common sense was not reducible to indubitable, cracker-barrel wisdom; it is popularized science, what would be a matter of common sense if we were to take the trouble to learn. Moore's allegiance to science is the cord that connects his ethical and non-ethical work. In Principia Ethica, he attempts to introduce the spirit of scientific investigation into ethics. The 'naturalistic fallacy', to which special attention is given, is shown to be a guide to avoiding the error of essentialism, that is, of presuming that there is a unique good-making property or quality, common to all good things. Essentialism is rejected because it leads away from the open investigation characteristic of science, toward dogmatism. From this perspective, several popular criticisms of Moore's ethics are shown to be misguided. In the last chapter, an interpretation of Moore's non-naturalism based on my understanding of the naturalistic fallacy is given, that is quite different from the one most commonly accepted. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

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Two studies analyzed the factor structure of the 8-item Multidimensional Ethics Scale (MES) (Reidenbach and Robin, 1988, 1990), a 30-item MES (the 30 items used to develop the 8-item measure), and a Perceived Moral Intensity Scale. Factor analyses supported a 3-factor structure for the 8-item MES, marginally supported a 5-factor structure (but more strongly suggested a 1-factor structure) for the 30-item MES, and supported a 3-factor structure for the Perceived Moral Intensity Scale. These scales were then used in a third study that examined the effect of manipulated and perceived moral intensity (Jones, 1991) on participants' ethical judgment of actions taken in 18 scenarios of an arguably ethical nature. A within-subject design found that manipulated moral intensity had a significant effect on ethical judgment, but perceived moral intensity did not. When ethical judgment (as measured by the three factors of the 8-item MES) was regressed on age, gender, major, perceived moral intensity factors, and interactions between age, gender, major and perceived moral intensity factors, the variance accounted for (R2) was significant for each of the three ethical judgment factors in both high and low intensity conditions using a between-subjects design, but was only significant for one of the ethical judgment factors (Moral Equity), and this only for low intensity scenarios, using a within-subject design. One explanation for the difference in effect appears to be that the means for the three perceived moral intensity factors were significantly different for the low versus high intensity condition using the between-subjects design, but the means of two of the three factors were not significantly different using the within-subject design. Three explanations for this were suggested: perceived moral intensity may not have reached a necessary threshold due to explicit referents for comparison; cognitive demand may have been greater when two versions of a single scenario were being evaluated; and, the online administration of the study may have introduced greater error variance than the in-person paper-pencil administration. Ethical judgment was found to be a more robust predictor of intention than perceived moral intensity using a within-subject design. Suggestions were made for future research. / Ph. D.

This two-phase, sequential mixed methods study explored how student affairs professionals resolved professional ethical dilemmas. A student affairs professional was defined as an individual whose educational background and work experience are in student affairs. An ethical dilemma is defined as a situation in which two ethical principles are at odds rather than a simple matter of right versus wrong (Kitchener, 1985). A professional ethical dilemma is an ethical dilemma in the context of a person's work-related experience. The first phase of the study was a qualitative exploration of how representatives of the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) resolve professional ethical dilemmas by interviewing the representatives. The second phase of this study was confirmatory. An online questionnaire was designed and administered to members of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) who held positions similar to those held by the phase one sample. The questionnaire was designed to confirm the findings from phase one about ethical dilemma resolution. The study found that professional ethical dilemmas are very complex, involving multiple ethical principles, multiple roles of the person facing the dilemma, and multiple constituent groups involved in the dilemma. Despite this complexity, student affairs professionals use a relatively simple resolution process of serious reflection and conferring with others. Considerations of self (e.g. role in dilemma and impact on self) and the wider organization (e.g. legal implications and political implications) were used in the resolution process. The study also found that student affairs professionals' personal values helped them prioritize the vying ethical principles involved in the dilemma so that they could make a decision that they believed was ethical. / Ph. D.