ETHICAL CLIMATE IN ORGANIZATION AND EMPLOYEES ACCEPTANCE OF CORRUPTIVE RATIONALIZATIONS

Abstract

"The aim of this research was to examine the relationship between the organizational ethical climate and the level of employees’ acceptance of certain types of corruptive rationalizations. The ethical climate refers to the perception of ethical criteria and practices an organization applies to determine what constitutes acceptable work behavior (Victor & Cullen 1988). Previous studies indicate the link between certain types of organizational ethical climate and employees’ engagement in corruption (Gorsira et al., 2018; Stachowicz-Stanusch and Simha, 2013). Corruptive rationalizations are defined as self-serving attempts to legitimate ethically questionable behavior (Ashforth & Anand, 2003). On an ad hoc sample of 306 employees from different organizations in the Republic of Serbia, an online questionnaire was applied for data collecting on the perception of the organizational ethical climate. ?CQ (Victor & Cullen, 1988) with 36 items was administered to estimate the presence of seven types of ethical climate with Cronbach’s ? ranging between 0.69 to 0.85. Kopter-2 (Majstorovic, 2011; ?= 0.72) with 18 items was applied to measure preference of six corruptive rationalizations measured here – denial illegality, denial responsibility, denial victim, denial injury, social weighting and appeal to higher loyalties. MRA reveals results indicating the perception of an egoistic ethical climate (‘Self-interest’) as a significant predictor of increased preference of four of six types of corruptive rationalizations (denial illegality, denial responsibility, social weighting and appeal to higher loyalties). In addition, increased perception of the ‘Company profit’ climate predicts increased acceptance of the ‘Denial victim’ rationalization. All other types of ethical climate predict either diminished preference for any form of corruptive rationalization or they are unrelated to them. It should be emphasized that ethical climates from the ‘Benevolence’ cluster such as ‘Social responsibility’, ‘Friendship’, and ‘Team interest’ predict rejecting ‘Denial responsibility’, ‘Denial injury’, and ‘Social weighting’ as rationalizations of a corruptive act. It was concluded that some types of ethical climate support corruption. If the typical decision-making criterion in an organization is perceived to be individual and local, and if the dominant ethical criterion is perceived to be egoism, then this organizational context probably generates employees’ acceptance of justification of their corruptive intentions or acts. Results also indicate that ‘Personal morality’ and ‘Organizational rules and regulations’ types of ethical climate are unrelated to the preference of any kind of corruptive rationalization. The importance of organizational interventions, such as promotion of social responsibility, friendship and team interests in the anti-corruption campaign, is discussed."