Ethical Conduct in Business Organisations: The Opinion of Management Students in Gauteng

Geoff Goldman () and Maria Bounds
Additional contact information
Geoff Goldman: University of Johannesburg
Maria Bounds: University of Johannesburg

Entrepreneurial Business and Economics Review, 2015, vol. 3, issue 1, 9-27

Abstract: This study investigates the perceptions that business and management students have towards ethical practices of businesses organisations in terms of the environment, their employees, community, regulators and competition. This study employed an exploratory survey design to collect primary data via a self-administered questionnaire. Data were collected from251 business and management students at a national university in Gauteng, South Africa. Apart from reliability statistics and descriptive statistics, one sample t-tests were employed to test stated hypotheses. The findings showed that students perceived certain aspects of organisations’ ethical conduct in a relatively negative light. As the study concluded that business and management student perceived the ethical conduct of business organisations in a somewhat negative light, organisations should take heed and better outwardly promote the interests of all stakeholders. As more than 75% of the students surveyed working experience, they represent also the opinion of people in the working world. This study reiterates the fact that what whilst organisations profess to act ethically, this does not necessarily seem to be the case. As more research on this issue reaches the same conclusion, this groundswell should effect change in due course.

Keywords: business ethics; corporate citizenship; exploratory research; ethical conduct; stakeholder theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 L26 M21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eber.uek.krakow.pl/index.php/eber/article/download/66/78 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:krk:eberjl:v:3:y:2015:i:1:p:9-27

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this article

Entrepreneurial Business and Economics Review is currently edited by Krzysztof Wach, PhD, hab.

More articles in Entrepreneurial Business and Economics Review from Centre for Strategic and International Entrepreneurship at the Cracow University of Economics. EBER Journal Cracow University of Economics Faculty of Economics and International Relations Centre for Strategic and International Entrepreneurship ul. Rakowicka 27 31-510 Krakow Poland. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Piotr Stanek, PhD. ().