Religiosity, Ethical Judgments and Malaysian Muslim Students

Abstract

Culture is often cited as one of the powerful determinants in shaping the personality and behaviour of individuals. Religion, being an important element of culture, is seen as playing an important role in determining how people behave in certain situations. Various authors have suggested religion as an important dimension in Malaysian ethical behaviour studies especially for the Malays. Yet this construct is generally ignored or incorporated into other constructs. This study investigates the influence of religious education on the perceptions of unethical business practices among final year students in one of the local universities in Malaysia. In particular, this study examines the impact of education stream on the level of religious commitment among Malay Muslim students and how these two variables influence their ethical judgment. It was found that the level of religiosity is negative and significantly related to the level of tolerant towards unethical business practices. The findings also establish that more students from the religious education stream are found to be more religious and consequently, are less tolerance towards unethical business practices.