Dilemmas, Conspiracies, and Sophie’s Choice: Vignette Themes and Ethical Judgments

Barnett et al. (1996) used a nine-point semantic differential scale for respondents to record their reactions to the observer informing the professor about the apparent cheating. Ethical judgments were assessed with the eight items from the Multidimensional Ethics Scale (Reidenbach and Robin 1990). The left anchor descriptor included, for example, the labels fair and just, while the corresponding right anchor labels were unfair and unjust (p. 1171). Although the paper did not address the precise meaning of higher or lower ethical judgments scores, higher scores on these two items, and four others, thus suggested that respondents interpreted the reporting as ethically inappropriate (i.e., this was unfair). However, for two of the eight items, the right anchor descriptors were does not violate an unwritten contract and does not violate an unspoken promise which implies viewing the activity as ethically appropriate. The matching left anchors involved violations of unwritten contracts and unspoken promises, which correspond with regarding the action as unfair and unjust. The paper, however, did not specify whether any alterations were made to the scoring protocol on the “unspoken promise” and “unwritten contract” items. Scores on the eight items are not interpretable if these were simply combined or averaged without reversing the scoring on these two. See Mudrack and Mason (2012, Appendix) for additional discussion about ambiguities in many published reports concerning the precise meaning and implications of high (or low) scores on ethical judgments measures and the obvious need for clarity here.

The vignette used by Cherry et al. (2003) appears to lack “real world” validity. In an actual bribery situation, bribe recipients would obviously be unaware of how much money Barnett et al.’s (1998) protagonists would be willing to pay ($500,000). However, access to a large market is potentially highly lucrative, and a considerable sum of money would have to change hands for such access realistically to be attained. How likely is it that employee protagonists would even have such funds at their disposal or believe that any possible personal rewards arising from closing this deal (e.g., bonuses, promotions) would exceed the amount of money that definitely would have to be spent? Bribe recipients seem unlikely to be swayed by relatively small sums of money (e.g., fifty, five hundred, or even five thousand dollars or Euros) that employees might be able to raise from personal funds, and employees would seem unable or unwilling to furnish larger sums. Respondent ethical judgments in the context of this vignette may have been influenced by the improbability of the situation.