Moral Intensity and Ethical Decision Making of Marketing Professionals-A Comparision of American and Taiwanese Marketers

Abstract

This study examined the differences of moral intensity as well as the influence of the moral intensity on ethical decision- making (EDM) between American and Taiwanese marketers. The instrument was adopted from Singhapakdi's [21]. As expected, American marketers got higher mean scores on all the components of moral intensity regarding the perceived potential harm. The components were magnitude of consequence, probability of effect, temporal immediacy, and concentration of effect. Cultural factors developed by difference between two societies. The relationships between the moral intensity to Hofstede [9] were used to explain the ethical perceptions and to ethical intentions were supported both by Singhapakdi [21] and by this research. That implied cultural factors affect people's ethical perception through the effect on their perceived moral intensity.