Individual Ethical Orientations and the Perceived Acceptability of Questionable Finance Ethics Decisions

Finance is an area that, in practice, is plagued by accusations of unethical activity; the study of finance had adopted a largely nonbehavioral approach to business ethics research. We address this gap in by assessing whether individual ethical orientations (moral identity, idealism, relativism, integrity, Machiavellianism) predict the acceptability of questionable decisions about financial issues. Results show that individual ethical orientations are associated with different levels of acceptability of questionable decisions about financial issues, though the pattern of these differences varies across individual ethical orientations assessed. These results represent evidence that ethical individual differences are associated with the acceptability of questionable finance decisions and are discussed in terms of methodological limitations and future directions in finance ethics research.