The effects of social and moral integration on ethical standards: A comparison of American and Ukrainian business students

This paper examines levels of similarity in ethical outlooks in countries where economic and sociocultural values may differ markedly. We compared students from a capitalist country, the United States, with students from Ukraine, a country experiencing dramatic ideological confusion and economic change. We tested the hypothesis that greater social and moral integration, as operationalized by a lack of alienation and by religiousness, will directly affect one's willingness to engage in unethical business practices. The sample was composed of business students in both Ukraine and the United States. The survey instrument consisted of widely used scales for measuring alienation and religiousness. The measure of ethical standards was a vignette-based quasi-projective technique. Results showed that, for the sample as a whole, willingness to engage in unethical business behavior was related to higher levels of alienation and lower levels of religiousness. The Ukrainians were also much more willing to engage in unethical behavior than were the Americans. The explanation for this difference is unclear, however. For the Ukrainians, religiousness and alienation did not explain the patterns in unethical behavior, and relationships were very weak for the Americans. There may be some unmeasured factor, such as economic exigency, that is influencing the results. It simply may be that people choose to behave more ethically when they have the luxury to do so.