A Cross-national Study of personality traits’ effects on Business Students’ Ethical Decisions: Quantitative research on the ethical impact of cross-cultural and personality differences

Abstract

International business literature, during these decades, has been increasingly focusing on the ethical side of doing business and on the results that derive from it. As a result, numerous studies and frameworks on ethical behavior have been produced, even embedding relationships with personality traits and characteristics of specific national cultures. However, very few studies have been conducted to evaluate the interactions between personality traits, ethical behavior, and cultural dimensions, even less with quantitative analysis on a cross-national sample. This thesis tests the effects of three personality traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience), measured according to the character test provided by the Big Five Identity model (BFI-10), on ethical behavior in hypothetical business scenarios. These effects will also be moderated, subsequently, by national variables retrieved from the GLOBE study (assertiveness, humane and performance orientation, and institutional collectivism), a cross-national study including 62 different national societies. The data collection was conducted at the means of a questionnaire administered through an online survey, and the statistical sample includes more than 100 responses from business students from 15 different countries. The quantitative statistical analysis is developed through Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM), and a total of 6 regression models were computed to find statistical relationships between all the variables – dependent, independent, control, and moderating. The results of the thesis demonstrate various and valuable relationships between ethical behavior and personality traits, with the addition of significant moderation by the national GLOBE cultural dimensions. Furthermore, conscientiousness and agreeableness are found to be positively related to ethical behavior, while openness to experience is slightly negatively related. In conclusion, the thesis analyzes the findings and provides implications and suggestions for related future research.