Based on the research purpose and questions of the study, this last chapter provides the reader with conclusions of this research from the results and discussion in the previous chapter. It also contains implications, suggestions for further study and the limitations of the study. The main purpose of the research was to explore the effect of gender, age, income, status, and religiosity on attitudes towards business ethics as well as well as the effect on the sub dimensions (business philosophies) as contained in the ATBEQ. The conclusions of the study have been summarized into the following three sub headings: Attitudes towards business ethics, Effect of the factors on ethical attitudes and the significance of the business philosophies.
Conclusion Attitude towards Business Ethics
One of the main questions of the study was to find out what the ethical attitudes were of the sample groups. The results revealed there was significant difference in ethical attitudes of employees and students; however both groups overall exhibited ethical attitudes. This answers the first two research questions. Gender was significant in predicting attitudes of students while household income and interpersonal religiosity was significant in predicting ethical attitudes of employees. This suggests that although both sample groups exhibited ethical attitudes, three different factors had a significant impact in predicting these attitudes. One can therefore conclude that ethicality goes beyond status and that people from different groups can exhibit ethicality albeit at varying levels.
Effect of Factors on Ethical Attitudes
One of the main purposes of the study was to investigate the effect of factors on attitudes towards business ethics. The effects of the factors in this study in a way highlight the differences in the two sample groups surveyed. Gender played a significant role in predicting ethical attitudes for students whereas household income and interpersonal religiosity played a significant role for employees. For students, gender was the most significant factor and interpersonal religiosity was the least significant factor. For employees on the other hand, household income
was the most significant factor and age was the least significant. The conclusion drawn here is that different factors play a role in ethicality as people mature and move from being unemployed full time students into the employment field. The effect of the factors become less or more significant as individuals are faced with different choices when their status changes from student to employee. This may perhaps be the reason why the effect of status (student /employee) on ethical attitude was significant. Status, statistically, had the highest significance of all the factors tested.
Of all the factors tested, we found age to be the only factor which did not have an effect on predicting ethical attitudes nor did it have an effect in predicting business philosophy preferences. The insignificance of age in the study suggests that perhaps in the case of the student sample it could be argued that because most of the students belong to one age group and with the relatively small spread in age differences that perhaps could have played a role. For employees it could be argued that being older and having the experience of gainful employment, makes age less significant. This is a surprising result seeing that the two sample groups basically belong to two different generational groups. Gender, household income and interpersonal religiosity all had a significant impact in predicting ethical attitudes for at least one of the sample groups. Added to aforementioned factors, intrapersonal religiosity included, all had a significant impact in predicting philosophy preference for at least one of the sample groups. This answers the third research question about the effect of the factors in predicting ethical attitudes.
The correlation results also showed that for employees, household income and interpersonal religiosity had a negative relationship to ethical attitudes. We can conclude based on this result that household income and interpersonal religiosity has a significant impact on what the employees believe to be right and wrong or what is morally acceptable or not.
Significance of the Business Philosophies
The correlation results showed that for students, both measures of religiosity had a positive relationship with Moral Objectivism and Legalism. Therefore the conclusion drawn here is that for students religion has a positive impact on those philosophies considered moral. On the other hand, intrapersonal religiosity for students and interpersonal religiosity for employees both had a negative relationship with Social Darwinism. The conclusion drawn here is that persons
who subscribe to Social Darwinism would not have a high level of interpersonal religiosity or that these persons would not be very involved in religious activities. Social Darwinism was seen as the most popular philosophy subscribed by both sample groups. We also found for students, that males subscribed to Machiavellianism and Social Darwinism while females to Legalism. All factors with the exception of age in some way had a significant impact on at least one philosophy. Machiavellianism and Social Darwinism as described as amoral philosophies and the fact that males students who were found to be less ethical than their female counterpart had a stronger preference for these two philosophies suggests that these two philosophies have a negative impact on ethicality. Females who were found to have a greater preference for legalism suggest that legalism has a positive impact on ethicality. This answers the final research question concerning the effect that the factors have in predicting the business philosophies and the preferences held by the sample groups. We can therefore conclude that Machiavellianism and Social Darwinism have a negative impact on ethicality and Moral Objectivism and Legalism have a positive impact.
Implications
The implications of this study for the family unit and wider society
The significance of gender on ethical attitudes brings to mind the potential role of the socialization argument mentioned above in the literature review section of this study. If girls and boys belonging to the same society are being presented with different ideals of what is acceptable for each gender then this can have a wider impact of the kind of men and women who will be left entrusted to be the future leaders of tomorrow which can impact family life, business, governments and the wider society.
The Implications of this Study for Academia
The impact of programmes offered at the educational institutions in terms of preparing young minds for the business sector will have to be addressed as the gender differences and their preferences for the business philosophies would need to be addressed in the curriculum. This is necessary in preparing the minds of the future business leaders.
The Implications of this Study as regards the Business Sector and Civil Society
The role of gender in the work place becomes important in the recruiting and selection policies and HR professionals must be aware of finding the best organizational fit when making these decisions.
The study showed that household income had a significant effect of ethical attitudes. HR professionals must therefore be aware of this when formulation compensation packages in their various organizations. We saw that persons at the lowest income levels displayed lower levels of ethicality and therefore these employees are therefore more likely to engage in business practices that may prove detrimental to the organizations success in meeting its goals. Persons at the lowest income levels may be more likely to engage unethical practices.
The study also found interpersonal religiosity to have a significant effect on ethical attitudes. This also can play a role in recruiting and selection policies. It also provides information to the religious institutions on the role they play in nurturing attitudes and serve as guidance for the activities they provide for their members. This also has an effect on the wider society as well and for the religious policies set forth by the state in terms of the role of religion.
Suggestions for Further Study Future direction
This study provides information for decision makers in terms of the impact that the variables in this study have on attitudes towards business ethics. One can seek to determine whether ethical attitudes of the students will influence their ethical behavior in the future when they do get into the working world or perhaps will those attitudes remain the same or change with work experience. In this study we saw that different factors played a role in ethical attitudes of both sample groups. Will the factors that played a role in the students’ attitude now, be the same in the future when they become employees? The fact that different factors played a role highlights in a way the differences of the sample groups. This study does not reveal such a conclusion and therefore such a conclusion can be obtained from longitudinal studies. With respect to the gender effect, it may be useful to investigate the causes as to why so many studies show that females are more ethical; perhaps the socialization concept mentioned in the literature review can be examined. Also a cross national comparison with other Caribbean countries will lend further insight. With respect to religiosity, most of the respondents in this study belonged to the Christian religion, perhaps a comparison of other Caribbean islands where there exist significant numbers of other religious groupings outside of Christianity can also provide further insight.
Although the impact of the business curriculum was not a focus of this study there is a need for this kind of study as there are no business ethics courses being offered to the students at the institution where this study was conducted. The impact of gender on the various business philosophies can also be a point of consideration. In the future qualitative approaches can be used to fully understand the underlying reasons for ethical attitudes.
This study focused on employees from the business sector only. A suggestion would be to do a comparative study with employees in the public sector to provide further insight into the ethical attitudes of a wider cross section of the St Lucia workforce. It is a common belief in St Lucia that public sector employees are not very productive and have been known to participate in unethical behavior. This has been discussed in the news media and as mentioned in the literature review section, even persons in ministerial positions have been associated with such behavior.
Therefore such a comparison would prove to be very constructive. Another suggestion also, is to conduct a comparative study of employees in different business sectors. The participants in this survey were from the financial and telecommunications sectors only.
Research Limitations
The limitations of this study represent the conditions that cannot be controlled by the researcher. Due to the distance between the researcher and the participants, the sample was gathered through convenience sampling method and as a result the sample was not random.
Some of the participants did not complete the questionnaires and so these questionnaires were not included in the study. A total of seven questionnaires were rejected. Another limitation is that the study was based on business students at one educational institution and employees from only two sub sectors of the private sector. St Lucia is a predominantly Christian society and as such all participants of the study belonged to the Christian religion and so the findings of this study is limited to the views held by one religious group.
This purpose of this research was to study the effects that various factors had on attitudes towards business ethics. Despite the limitations mentioned above, the findings of this research can provide useful information to the institutions where the surveys were conducted. For the College, it can provide information for guidance in curriculum development for the business programmes. For the business sector it offers the management of these organizations insight into the attitudes of the employees. In terms of strategic importance, this research provides information to guide corporate human resource strategy in private and public sectors, information to academia and also to the wider society to aid in decision making for the advancement of the St Lucian society and by extension the wider Caribbean.
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