Are Workers More Likely to be Deviant than Managers? A Cross-National Analysis

Chung-wen Chen ()

Journal of Business Ethics, 2014, vol. 123, issue 2, 233 pages

Abstract: Using Robert Merton’s perspective on social structure [Social theory and structure. Free Press, New York, 1968], this study tested the individual-level association between job position and ethical reasoning. Anomie theory was employed to examine how country-level factors moderate that individual-level association. The hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) method was used to analyze 22,359 subjects from 28 nations. The statistical results proved that workers are more likely to justify ethically suspect behaviors, and that this individual-level relationship is moderated by the country-level factors of power distance, masculinity, social inequality, and education accessibility. These results imply that Merton’s view of social structure and contemporary anomie theorists’ perspective of anomie [Messner and Rosenfeld (Crime and the American dream. Wadsworth, Belmont, 2001 ); Rosenfeld and Messner (The future of anomie theory. Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1997 )] are mutually complementary rather than exclusive. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Keywords: Anomie theory; Ethical reasoning; Hierarchical linear modeling; Job position; Social structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10551-013-1810-3

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