Ethics/Virtues and Consequences: An Exploratory Study of Regional Small Businesses in Developed and Emerging Countries

Samanthala Hettihewa, Lori S. Kopp and Christopher S. Wright
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Samanthala Hettihewa: Federation Business School, Federation University, Australia
Lori S. Kopp: Dhillon School of Business, University of Lethbridge, Canada
Christopher S. Wright: The Institute of International Studies, Australia

International Journal of Business and Economics, 2019, vol. 18, issue 1, 17-40

Abstract: This research examines the ethics of Australian, Canadian, and Sri Lankan regional small businesses (Regional-SBs) in terms of how they perceive their duties to society, customers, employees, and the environment. A questionnaire compares the stated ethics of Regional-SB entrepreneurs with their preferences and with firm and entrepreneur attributes. We then analzye the long-term effects of ethics by regressing firm ethics and key attributes against the perceived level of financial difficulty and firm age. The lack of clear divides in East-West or gender ethics may be an artefact of the education system. A key finding of this study is that, while Regional-SBs in Australia, Canada, and Sri Lanka have a strong, consistent understanding of civic duties and duties to customers, they appear to have a poor and uneven understanding of duty to employees and of environmental duty. Future research can extend this topic by evaluating what influences Regional-SB ethical choices.

Keywords: ethics; virtues; small business; developed and emerging countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Y9 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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