A Comparison of American and Thai Managers on Some Important Marketing Ethics Variables

Abstract

In the present era of globalization, while many aspects of business practices throughout the world have pretty much been standardized, this has not been true for the principles and practices of business ethics (Vogel 1993). Variations in ethical attitudes and behavior among marketing and other business managers from different nations are evidenced in many empirical studies conducted in the last decade (e.g., Graham 1985; Becker and Fritzsche 1987; Dubinsky et al. 1991; Singhapakdi et al. 1994). This study compares American business managers with Thai business managers in terms of corporate ethical values (Hunt, Wood and Chonko 1989), personal moral philosophies (Forsyth 1980,1992), perceptions of ethical problem and moral intensity (Jones 1991) in marketing, and perceptions regarding the importance of ethics and social responsibility (Singhapakdi, Kraft, Vitell, and Rallapalli 1995). A self–administered questionnaire was used as the data collection method Managers enrolled in executive MBA or special MBA programs from public and private universities throughout Thailand were selected as target respondents for the Thai group. For the American group, a mailing list of US practitioner members of the American Marketing Association (AMA) was used as the sampling frame. In order to have more balanced samples between the two cultures, a sample of part–time MBA students from a Mid–Atlantic US university was included with the American group.