Linking Ethical Positions and Organizational Commitment: The Mediating Role of Job Satisfaction

INTRODUCTIONEthical behavior in the workplace is expected to be influenced by individual differences in moral judgment, which further depends upon the ethical position (idealism and relativism) of individuals. This has garnered the attention of many researchers and practitioners. Past studies have shown the impact of individuals' ideology or the personal ethical beliefs on their attitude towards ethical judgments and taking decisions (Barnett, Bass, and Brown, 1994; and Whitcomb, Erdener, and Li, 1998). Akaah and Riordan (1989), studied the ethical judgments of marketing professionals and found exhibition of unethical behavior by marketing professionals was more prevalent in organizations whose top management did not act against unethical behavior as compared to those where proper measures were taken. In other words, the role of top management and supervisors, i.e., individuals who occupy a higher position in organization significantly impact the unethical behavior of the subordinates.This study explores the ethical behavior and its impact at the individual level arising out of the difference in ethical ideology with reference to idealism and relativism. Barnett, Bass and Brown (1994), studied the effect of ideology on ethical judgments in the context of business and found that ethical judgments are influenced by individuals' ethical ideology. Every individual tends to vary in moral judgments at the workplace and thus demonstrate different behaviors. This variation in ethical behavior of individuals at the workplace has been attributed to two main factors involved in moral judgments which are derived from deontological and teleological theories of moral philosophy (Schlenker and Forsyth, 1977). Relativism and idealism are considered as two key concepts supposedly describing the individual difference in moral philosophy (Forsyth, 1980). Relativism dimension reflects the extent to which the individual disagree with the moral rules that are seen as universal. Individuals high on relativism are likely to question the value of existing universal moral principles and ignore these rules while making ethical judgments as compared to individual low on relativism. Individuals low on relativism firmly believe in universal rules that direct their ethical behavior in all situations. They always strive for the welfare of individuals and the organization. Therefore, it can be construed that ethical decision-making and organizational ethics are influenced by individual differences (Ferrell and Gresham, 1985; and Jones, 1991). Existing literature suggested some facets of ethical ideology that differ among cultures and nations (Singhapakdi, Kraft, Vitell, and Rallapalli, 1995; and Jackson, David, Deshpande, Jones, Joseph, Lau and Piorunowska, 2000) e.g., South Africans were found to be high on idealistic and less on relativistic scores as compared to Americans (Singhapakdi, Higgs-Kleyn, and Rao, 1999). Therefore, it is crucial to include the cultural context while studying the ethical position of individuals in any country. Studies have shown that some concepts, their relationships, and the theoretical underpinnings that are widely accepted in other countries to be different in Indian samples (Pandey and Singh, 2015a and 2015c). Therefore, this study has been conducted in Indian context.Existing studies have shown that individual's job satisfaction connected with how organizational climate is perceived by them (Pierce, Hazel, and Mion, 1996; and Johnson and McIntye, 1998). Ethical climate has a significant part in the growth of work environment (Trevino, Butterfield, and McCabe, 1998) and existing studies have examined the connection amid job satisfaction and organizational ethics (Koh and El'Fred, 2001; Tsai and Huang, 2008). Research indicated that the organizational ethical climate is one among other variables that might have an influence on the ethical behavior of personnel (Sinclair, 1993). The relationship of ethical positions of an individual and organizational commitment is not yet fully explored. …