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Corporate Ethics

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Corporate Ethics
J Bus Ethics (2012) 106:229–241 DOI 10.1007/s10551-011-0992-9

The Effects of Corporate Ethical Values and Personal Moral Philosophies on Ethical Intentions in Selling Situations: Evidence from Turkish, Thai, and American Businesspeople
Janet Marta • Anusorn Singhapakdi • Dong-Jin Lee • Sebnem Burnaz • Y. Ilker Topcu M. G. Serap Atakan • Tugrul Ozkaracalar


Received: 19 December 2010 / Accepted: 3 August 2011 / Published online: 21 August 2011 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract The goals of this study are to test a pattern of ethical decision making that predicts ethical intentions of individuals within corporations based primarily on the ethical values embedded in corporate culture, and to see whether that model is generally stable across countries. The survey instrument used scales to measure the effects of corporate ethical values, idealism, and relativism on ethical intentions of Turkish, Thai, and American businesspeople. The samples include practitioner members of the American Marketing Association in the U.S., and full-time businesspeople enrolled in executive MBA programs in Thailand and Turkey. The study is positioned within a fairly new stream that assesses patterns across countries, rather than differences between them, in a way that might be called ‘‘culture free.’’ The results show a generally positive influence between cultural ethical
J. Marta Department of Marketing & Management, Northwest Missouri State University, Maryville, MO, USA A. Singhapakdi (&) College of Business & Public Administration, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA e-mail: asinghap@odu.edu D.-J. Lee Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea S. Burnaz Á Y. Ilker Topcu Faculty of Management, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey M. G. Serap Atakan Department of Business Administration, Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey T. Ozkaracalar Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Isik University, Istanbul, Turkey

values and ethical



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