Multiplicity of Cognitive Frameworks for Ethical Decision Making: Variability across Gender and Age Groups

Bhal, Kanika T

Abstract

A moral judgment is a considered opinion of what ought to be done (i.e., a decision about the morally right thing to do) when confronted with an ethical dilemma Ethical ideologies or frameworks have been studied to identify the underlying reasoning of an individual in making decisions in a situation of ethical dilemma. Western philosophers and thinkers have identified a variety of frameworks that have been explored in the context of business. The present work explores some of the ethical ideologies/frameworks identified in the Indian philosophical systems along with western frameworks, and tests their use by the Indian managers. Three hundred and nineteen managers formed the sample for the study. Two ethical ideologies (Moksh and Karma) rooted in Indian ethical philosophies were juxtaposed with other more universal ones. Further, difference in the use of these frameworks was tested for the two genders and two age groups. Results indicate that Indian managers use both, the Indian as well as the universal (western) philosophies. There were some gender and age-group related differences in the use of tlie. frameworks. Implications of the findings are discussed. The results indicate flexibility in the use of these multiple frameworks.

Keywords: ethics, ethical frameworks, gender, justice, karma, moksh

Introduction

The Oxford Dictionary defines 'ethics' as the "science of morals or morality" and operationally it may be treated as an "....inquiry into the nature and background of morality, where the term morality is taken to mean moral judgments, standards and rules of conduct" (Taylor, 1975). Thus, the subject matter of ethics is morals or morality, which are the individual or group standards of right and wrong or good and bad. Ethics, then, involves an examination of these morals used by individuals and groups and their applicability in real life situations. Hence, it is the individual's or the group's logic, norms or principles used in decision-making, which is at the heart of ethical behaviour.

Over time, the individual develops an ethical decision history. Through a repeated process of decision-making, ethical philosophies and decision ideologies become relatively stable. The content of one's ethical system, the network of ethical norms and principles one holds, constitute a person's ethical philosophy, which is referred to as ethical framework in the present work. Social scientists have contended for years that these normative structures influence the decisions made by individuals (Hogan 1973, Fritzche and Becker 1984, Premeaux and Mondy 1993, Stead, Worrell and Stead 1990).

Flexibility in ethical decision frameworks implies a use of multiple cognitive frameworks and variability in their use as per the situations as well as actor. In an earlier study (Bhal, 2000), flexibility in the use of frameworks in different situations found support. In this paper, we focus on actor related flexibility and variability.

Philosophical Roots of Ethical Frameworks

For the purpose of understanding individual ethical philosophy and behaviour, it is important to know about the prevailing theories in the field of ethics. At the outset, the ethical theories may be divided into two fundamental types, Ideological and deontological. These two approaches entail different conclusions about what ought to be done.

Teleological theories emphasize the importance of consequences of the actions or practices. According to these theorists, the consequences of an action or practice determine its moral worth. The most widely studied Ideological theory is Utilitarianism. According to utilitarianism, an action or practice is right if it leads to the greatest possible balance of good consequences or to the least possible balance of bad consequences for all the people involved (Bayles, 1968).

Deontologists (derived from the Greek word for "duty"), on the other hand, emphasize that actions are not justified only by their consequences and the concept of duty is independent of the concept of good. Besides good outcome, there are other factors as well like fairness of a distribution process, keeping a promise etc., which determine the rightness of an action. Deontological "duties" are from this perspective, an undeniable feature of business ethics. One of the most popular deontological theories is 'Categorical imperative' given by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) an eighteenth century philosopher. He emphasized on the performance of one's duty for the sake of duty and not for any other reason and insisted that all persons should act not only in accordance with duty but also for the sake of duty (Sullivan, 1989). The other popular deontology theories are related to the notion of justice and right. The theory of justice requires the decision-maker to be guided by the concepts of equity, fairness, and impartiality (Rawls, 1971) and a theory of right asserts that human beings have certain fundamental rights or entitlements that should be respected in all decisions (White, 1984). Thus, whereas utilitarians focus on ends, deontologists are more concerned with the means.

Besides Ideological and deontological bases, one obvious source of morality might be taken to lie in religion. God, is the best authority on deciding what is right and what is not. Thus for a Christian the ethical rulebook is the 'Bible;' for a Muslim (following Islam) it is the 'Quran', for Jews it is the 'Torah' (the first five books of the Christian's old testament interpreted by Talmud) and for Hindus the various scripts from 'Upnishads to Bhagvad Gita:

Indian Ethical Philosophy

Although Indian ethics does not exist as a separate subject, but the ethical aspect of Indian philosophy is thousands of centuries old and is referred to in historical as well as contemporary literature. Bhagvad Gita, an ancient scripture elucidating the ethical principles in governance is seen as a source of ethical philosophy by modern day thinkers and practitioners (Chakravarty, 1987). Two principles propounded in Gita that may be considered relevant in the context of business are the philosophy of Karma (Duty) and Moksh (Salvation).

The Karma Theory

Preaching of Bhagvad Gita advocates that one has a choice in one's action, but never in results. The results are determined the moment the action is performed. One cannot avoid the fruit of action. The results of action are governed by laws, which are not under our control. Therefore, individuals should only concentrate on their actions without worrying about the results (Swami Dayanand, 1999). Thus, Karma gives a metaphysical orientation to the concept of duty by saying that there is another superior force that controls the outcomes of an action.

The Doctrine of Moksh (Salvation)

All the Indian systems agree in believing that an action done by an individual leaves behind it some sort of potency, which has the power to ordain for him joy or sorrow in the future accordingly (depending upon whether it is good or bad). When the fruits of the action are such that they cannot be enjoyed in the present life or human life, the individual has to take another birth as a man or any other being in order to suffer them. It was believed that the unseen potency of the action generally required some time before it could be fit for giving the doer the merited punishment or enjoyment, which results in cycles of birth and rebirth.The ultimate aim of this life then is to free oneself from this cycle of birth and rebirth and attain salvation or Moksh.

Thus, in this ideology, every action is to be seen in a futuristic perspective. The long-term impact of an action has to be kept in mind without getting too swayed by the present. As might be expected, all Indian systems agree upon the general principles of ethical conduct that must be followed for the attainment of salvation or freedom from this cycle of birth and rebirth. That all passions are to be controlled, no injury to life in any form should be done, and that all desire for pleasures should be checked, are principles which are almost universally acknowledged. (Dasgupta 1957, Sharma 1965).

There are management teachers and trainers who have used these prescriptions to bring about organizational change. They have focused on these values as normative goals and their efforts have largely been towards transforming managers. However, there is no study in the Indian context that identifies the actual use of these frameworks by Indian managers. Thus, there is a possibility of the use of multiple frameworks rooted in different philosophical traditions. Though, the frameworks rooted in Indian ethical philosophy have not been operationalised and studied in the context of business ethics, there are other frameworks, mentioned in the earlier sections, that have been. A brief review of the literature on the use of ethical frameworks in business is as follows.

Ethical Frameworks in Business: Previous Literature

Arthur (1984) has provided an extensive list of frameworks of moral reasoning which include: Hedonism - extreme selfishness, Utilitarianism - the greatest good for greatest number, Pragmatism - whatever minimizes conflict, Salvation (a) - good works to earn redemption, Salvation (b) - isolation, mediation and devotion, Golden Rule - based on faith, charity and reciprocity, Divine Right - maintenance of the "peckingorder", Egalitarianism - push down the rich, push up the poor, and Paternalism - nature is sacred.

While suggesting a contingency model of ethical decisionmaking Ferrell and Gresham (1985) talked about ethical frameworks as individual variable factor. They followed the classification of ethical framework based upon the basic Ideological and deontological philosophies, where Ideological included Utilitarin philosophy and deontological philosophies included Rights and Justice principle.

Some of the other frameworks studied more directly in the context of business include the

* doctrine of the means - seeking the means or moderate course of action between the extreme behaviors,

* intuition ethics - being guided by simply what people feel or understand to be the right course of action,

* conventionalist ethics - it is assumed that business is like a game and therefore has its own set of rules, supporting the statement that it's all fair in love, war and business (Steiner and Steiner, 1988),

* professional ethics -taking only those actions, which would be viewed as proper by a panel of professionals or colleagues, and

* TV test- acting in such a way that one would be comfortable explaining his/her action on TV to the general public (Laczniak and Murphy 1991).

In an exploratory study, McDonald and Pak (1996) studied the use of self-interest, utilitarianism, cate-gorical imperative, duty, justice, neutralization, religious conviction and light of the day frameworks.

It is evident that a set of frameworks has been used by researchers in the Western countries. There are theorists that prescribe the use of Indian philosophy but there is little empirical work that studies the actual use of these philosophies by Indian managers.

Thus, our first objective is to assess the cognitive frameworks of Indian managers for decision-making in situations of ethical dilemma and our proposition is as follows:

Proposition: Indian managers would show a use of ethical frameworks based on Indian ethical philosophies along with the other Western frameworks.

Determinants of Ethical Frameworks

Understanding how individuals make decisions in situations of ethical dilemma, has been a concern of the researchers primarily in the area of psychology. The researchers have focused on the individual, the situation and the interaction of the two. Major focus of the individual approach is to identify characteristics of the moral individual. Studies emphasizing individual factors influencing ethical decisionmaking have shown a number of variables to be significant determinants of ethical or unethical behaviour. Researchers have identified age and gender as two variables which may affect ethical decision-making, hence gender and age were taken as important variables in the study. They were also used as a test of the differentiating power of the measure of ethical frameworks emerging in the study.

Gender and Ethics

Whether males and females are different in their perception of ethical dilemma and social issues has been a matter of much debate in the literature on gender issues. Gilligan (1982) suggested that male and female have distinctly different moral orientations and argued that whereas women think of moral questions as problem of care involving empathy and compassion, men appear to conceptualize them as problems of right, justice and fairness. Lyons (1983) expands on this theme suggesting that the focus of men's and women's sense of what is or is not moral is not the only difference. She hypothesizes that the fundamental processes by which men and women make moral choices are different, in that men are more immersed in an ongoing ethical consciousness not limited to discrete events and situations.

Gender related differences in the use of ethical frameworks were also reported by Harris (1989) in his study of four ethical maxims. The model responses of male showed a decisive preference for egoist (self interest) based decision approach. Females, in contrast, professed the use of utilitarian approach. The findings were supported by a replication study in which Galbraith and Stephenson (1993) used the same ethical maxims as Harris.

However, men and women have also been found not to differ in the use of ethical frameworks, e.g. Schminke (1997) studied gender differences among seventy-five managers in ethical decision-making. He used Brady's (1990) classification of ethical framework i.e. formalist and utilitarianism. Survey of Ethical Theoretic Aptitudes (SETA) (Brady, 1990) along with three vignettes (each one rated as neutral, utilitarian and formalist by trained raters) was used in this study. Results of the study showed that men and women did not differ on the ethical models to which they personally subscribed. There is a strong body of literature suggesting that there is no difference between men and women in their ethical behaviour (Fritzsche 1988, Hegarty and Sims 1978, Singhpakdi and Vittell 1990); no difference in their moral reasoning (Derry 1989, Lifton 1985, Walker 1984); no difference in their ethical perception (Davis and Welton 1991, Kidwell Steven and Bethke 1987); no difference in their ethical attitudes and values (Shukla and Costa 1994); no difference in the ethical beliefs and ethical judgments (McNichols and Zimmerer 1985, Stanga and Turpen 1991, Tsalikis and Oritz-Buonafma 1990).

In the Indian context, the social roles are such that women are expected to perform the religious rituals and use religious guidelines in their day-to-day life.

Thus, the study aimed to test whether Indian male and female managers differ in their use of ethical frameworks identified in the Indian context The Indian women, though have come out to work, but they are still seen as primarily responsible for carrying on the religious traditions and care for the family (Jolly-Wadhwa 2000, Mathur and Mathur 2001), our first hypothesis, then states.

H1: Women are likely to show a greater use of ethical frameworks based in Indian philosophy as compared to men.

Age and Ethics

A number of past studies have compared the ethical value measures of students and practitioners to analyze the effect of age and experience on ethical behaviour. There are some studies that report no age related differences. For Glover, et al (1997) age was not a predictor of ethical decision-making. Callan (1992), too, in a study of 226 state employees found that age did not significantly influence the attitude of respondents towards ethics.

However, majority of these studies (Arlow and Ulrich 1980, Bellizzi and Kite 1989, Kreitner and Reif 1980, Singhapakdi, 1990) show business professionals to be significantly less tolerant of questionable business practices than students. Barnett and Karson's (1989) study of 513 executives analyzed decision involving ethics, relationship and results. Career stage was viewed as a surrogate for age in this study. Early career stage respondents acted significantly less ethically than later career stage respondents. Ruegger and Ernest (1992) found that students falling in the range of 40-plus year age group were most ethical, followed in order by the 31-40 group, the 22-30 group and those 21 years of age and under. Serwienk (1992) in a sample of small insurance agencies found that older workers had stricter interpretation of ethical standards in two of four indices used in the study. Premeaux and Mondy (1993) found that segments of the group who were five years or less from retirement were much more likely to act in accordance with a "rule" or "right" philosophy.

Age is a potential determining factor for commenting upon the ethical standards of an individual and needs to be explored for the Indian managers too. Thus, the study also aimed to test and compare the use of frameworks for young and old managers. In the Indian context, older generation is seen as more religious with mythic cosmic orientation. The other view, particularly relevant in the Indian context could be the changing value systems of the young and the old. Young and old mangers have shown to have different orientations and values systems (Bhal, 1997). Hence, our second hypothesis is as follows:

H2: Older managers are more likely to use frameworks based in the Indian ethical philosophies as compared to younger managers.

Methodology

Research Site

The study was carried out in 10 organizations-five from the public sector and five from the private sector organisations.

Participants

Altogether 316 executives from 10 different organizations constituted the sample for the study. Care was taken to include participants from different divisions of the organizations like production, accounts, sales, personnel, etc. Care was also taken to include the respondents from all the three levels i.e. lower, middle and higher managerial levels. Because of less number of women working in the managerial posts, only a small number of women executives could be included in the sample. Women respondents constitute around 8% of the sample, which is close to the actual constitution of the population. Table 1 lists age -group (Young and Old) and gender -wise split of the sample. Mean age of the Young respondents was 33.24 years with in sd of 6.38, whereas the mean age of the old respondents was 51.81 years with an sd of 3.43. Mean age of the male respondents was 40.90 years with an sd of 10.53, and mean age of the female respondents was 34.24 years with an sd of 8.84.

Instruments Used

Based on literature six frameworks were used in the study, to begin with. Of these, three were from traditional Western literature and models. Definitions of these frameworks are based on Velasquez (1998) and Hosmer (1987). The items were based on McDonald & Pak (1996) and Sharma and Bhal (In press).

The definitions of the Indian frameworks of Moksh and Karma are based on the discussion above. Their operational definitions are given below.

Utilitarianism

When the decision is taken under this framework, the emphasis is on balancing the costs and benefits, or good and bad in an effort to maximize utility. Utilitarianism asserts that the decision-maker should always act so as to produce the greatest ratio of good over bad for every one. The focus of the decision- maker in this framework is on the consequences of his or her decision and the impact of these consequences on those concerned with the decision.

Categorical Imperative

This framework is based on the principle that an action is either morally right or wrong regardless of the consequences. This framework comprises of two formulations, which are simplistically referred to as the universal and the means-end rules. The universal rule is concerned with the question: would the decision-maker be willing to have others act in this way to him or her? The means-end rule is concerned with the question: are the individuals concerned being treated as 'end' in themselves, i.e. respected and in possession of rights, or are they being treated as 'means' and utilized purely for the sole achievement of a specific objective?

Justice

This framework is concerned with 'fairness' of the decision, and whether there has been a just distribution of benefits and burdens among all those concerned with the decision, despite their age, sex, religion, interests, income, personal characteristics, social and occupational positions. It is based on the pre-existing notion of freedom, equality and concern for disadvantaged, although it has been suggested that most adult individuals do possess an intuitive sense of fairness based on natural justice.

Religious Conviction

Under the ethical framework of religious conviction, the decision-maker will refer to their religious convictions and the decision is based on the directions of one's faith.

Moksh

This framework is based on the belief that present life is a block in the cycle of birth and rebirth. The individual wants to obtain moksh (liberation which is eternal happiness) from the cycle of birth and rebirth. The present life is an outcome of the actions in one's previous life and actions in the present life will decide your next life, i.e. activities in this life will determine the fate of our next life. Hence, every action is judged in terms of its impact on next life. Therefore, all activities, which lead to liberation from this cycle of birth and rebirth, or improving our next life, should be indulged in.

Karma

In this framework, the decision-maker considers every action as his duty- without any attachment to the fruits of action. He believes that his jurisdiction is restricted to performing or not performing an action/duty or performing that in a different way, the results of the action do not fall in his/her jurisdiction. Karma emphasizes on action that is detached from the results that it may yield.

Respondents were presented with two situations involving an ethical dilemma and they were asked to make a decision. This was followed by a set of items on ethical frameworks. Respondents were asked to rate 21 items (on a 5-point scale) as their reasons for making the decision (see Appendix I). These 21 items covered the six frameworks-Utilitarianism (3 items), Categorical Imperative (3 items), Justice (3 items), Religious Belief (3 items), Moksh (5 items) and Karma (4 items).

Results and Discussion

Conceptualization of the Frameworks

To check the match between the proposed frameworks and the managers'cognitive conceptualization of the frameworks, factor analysis was conducted. Results of the factor analysis are given in Appendix II A.

Factors with eigen- values more than or equal to one were retained. Also, only, those factors were included where more than two items could be retained. An item was retained in a factor when it had a loading of .5 or more and cross loading of .40 or less. On the basis of these criteria, factor analysis yielded three neat factors (Appendix II A).

The first factor explaining the maximum variance consisted of 5 items. All these items were initially conceptualized as the items constituting the Moksh framework This is a framework based in Indian ethical philosophy and may be linked to religious beliefs of Indian managers.

The second factor also consisted of 5 items. Of these, two items were originally from Justice dimension and three were from Karma. Thus, this second dimension as perceived by the respondents did not match the theoretically conceptualized dimensions.

The third factor consisted of three items, all of which were originally conceptualized as constituting the framework of Religious Belief.

The nature of factors reveals that two of the originally conceptualized frameworks emerged as it is and both these had a philosophical or transcendental element, not rooted in here and now. These two frameworks of Moksh and Religious Belief had an element of faith, which the Indian managers clearly identified. There seems to be some faith in the philosophical or religious frameworks for ethics. The second dimension had elements of Karma (duty) and Justice. Justice is a universal framework rooted in logic and here and now experiences but Karma is conceptualized as consisting of two components- duty and detachment from the results. Though, as per our definition (and subsequent framing up of the items), it had a transcendental element but it seems it was not perceived to be so by the managers as they clubbed these items with the concept of justice. Many people often interpret karma as duty and it is possible that managers perceived it to be so. This factor was termed as Duty and Fairness.

In essence, then our results indicate use of the philosophy of Moksh in particular, religious philosophy (Religious Belief) in general and a practical framework-Fairness of Action. This provides support for the use of multiple frameworks for ethical decision- making. For all subsequent analyses, these three frameworks are considered as they also show high reliability (Cronbach's coefficient alpha) coefficients.

Use of Ethical Frameworks-Variability Across Age-Croups and Gender

Our next objective was to assess whether the use of these frameworks varies across gender to test for flexibility related to actors To assess these differences t-test was conducted. Results of the t-test for male and female responses are given in Appendix II B.

The results indicate differences on two of the three ethical frameworks, viz. Moksh and Religious Belief. Men use both these frameworks more often than women. Our second hypothesis thus is not supported in the right direction. Though, men and women do differ on the use of frameworks, the differences are just the reverse of the hypothesised relationship. Traditionally, women have been associated more with religion and a mythic orientation to life in India. Most of the rituals related to religion (like fasting etc.) have been associated with women but our results indicate that women use these frameworks less often as compared to men. Self-selection theories as stated by Dobbins and Platz (1986) assert that those who choose business career have traits different from those typical of their gender. This proposition could account for observed differences in ethical attitude or behaviour of women in the general population compared to those in the work environment and there is no difference in the behaviour of men and women at their work place. Also, differences between the sexes due to early socialization may get overridden in the work environment by the perceived costs and rewards associated with occupational goals; thus, while women may enter business career with values different from men, they may respond similarly to the same training and occupational environment and become more like men in their actions and perceptions (Derry, 1989). Also, it is possible that the differences in gender related behaviour may vary from situation to situation, thus, there may be situations where women have more religious orientation (like home and family) but these differences do not exist in workplaces. Thus situational variations may be possible in gender related differences (Barnett and Karson 1989, Tansey et al 1994). The underlying causes for these variations may be explored in subsequent studies providing deeper insights into gender related differences in ethics.

Differences between the young and old managers too were tested as the second test for flexibility related to actors using t-test. Results are given in Appendix II C.

Results indicate older managers use Moksh more frequently as an ethical ideology as compared to younger managers. Even though, there is no significant difference in the use of the other two frameworks, the trends indicate that older managers use Religious Belief and Moksh more as compared to the younger managers. Whereas younger managers use more Duty and Justice as compared to older managers. Thus, our third hypothesis finds support in this study. The literature suggests that age or career stage is a factor in determining values, as younger managers tend to assign less importance to trust and honor, and more importance to money and advancement than older executives (Johnson, Neelankavil & Jadhav, 1986). The view is mixed as ethical position changes with age, but no single factor can be identified as causing this change. College freshmen and juniors, for example, were found to be more justice oriented (fairness and equality) than MBA's who tended to be more utilitarian (maximize benefit/minimize costs) in their approach to ethical dilemmas (Borkowski & Ugras, 1992). The authors concluded that this difference might be due to idealism on the part of the former group, and experience from the employment for the latter. It is possible that as one matures there is less emphasis on selfish interest and an increase in concern for others. It is not certain however, whether it is age or the accumulating work experience associated with age, which causes individuals to modify their ethical positions as they move from different stages of life.

Our results clearly indicate a variability in the use of frameworks amply supporting the flexibility thesis in the use of ethical frameworks, which has significant implications for the design and implementation of softer systems within the organizations.

Implications

The study primarily addresses the issues with a view to contribute to theoretical development, however it has practical implications too. To begin with, the kind of issues that would have significant moral implications would be substantially determined by the frameworks under use. As a variety of frameworks are being used, it is likely that different situations would involve different criteria for ethical evaluation. Hence, first of all, if the organisation attempts to institutionalize any system of imbibing organisational values, the system will have to be flexible to incorporate the variations in the ethical ideologies or framework This, however, should not be taken to mean a compromise on values or a flexible use of values themselves but a flexible implementation of the values in the light of the variety of frameworks being used as the moral intensity of different issues is going to vary substantially.

Work in the field of normative ethics has focused largely on utilitarian, justice and other frameworks. However, little effort has been made to use religious and other prescriptions for studying the ethical decision -making. Our results indicate that not only do the mangers use a combination of western and Indian ideologies, these ideologies also vary across gender and age group. This places demands on the organisation to design systems that respond to these varying demands. The formation of cliques, and political entities are likely to center around these ethical ideologies.

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Kanika T. Bhal

Assistant Professor

Department of Management Studies

Indian Institute of technology

New Delhi-110016. India

Poonam Sharma

Scientist

Division of Agricultural Extension

Indian Agricultural Research Institute

Pusa Road, New Delhi-110012, India

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