The influence of organizational ethical climate, religiosity and knowledge of ethics on ethical judgments

The public has been dismayed and angered by the catastrophic collapse of giant corporations throughout the world such as Enron, Xerox, WorldCom, Parmalat, Tyco and Barings Bank, which resulted from a succession of fmancial scandals. Such unfortunate scandals have also happened in Malaysia, such as those involving Transmile Group, Perwaja, Southern Bank and Technology Resources Berhad. The fact that these scandals are becoming more frequent these days has spurred interest in studies of ethics to investigate the underlying factors of ethical judgments. Though there may be many factors which can affect ethical judgments, this study focused on three, namely organizational ethical climate, religiosity and knowledge of ethics. Three hypothesized relationships were tested using a sample of 260 UiTM Kelantan accounting students. The results derived from the regression analyses indicated that only knowledge of ethics and religiosity are strongly associated with ethical judgments. The findings of this study provide insights on the importance of knowledge of ethics and religiosity in enhancing ethical judgments.