Factors Influencing Management Students' Perception on Ethics: An Empirical Study in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar

Rationale - The basic training in ethics is believed to be imparted by family and educational institutes, but the end result (execution of ethical practices) is a combination of inherent values and external environment. Also, there is a dearth of studies trying to find out the factors influencing ethical perceptions in management students, especially in the state of Gujarat, India. Thus, the study is an effort to diagnose the significant factors influencing ethical practices of students, aspiring to become managers.

Purpose - The study indicates the factors which influence the ethical perception of management students. The study also examines whether these factors have any relation with the CGPA (Cumulative Grade Point Average) of the students, parents' monthly income and specialization selected by the students.

Design/Methodology/Approach - The data is collected using a self-administered questionnaire. The sample for this study is MBA final year students in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar districts of Gujarat. The sample size for the study is 195 respondents. Analysis has been done by using multivariate techniques like Factor Analysis followed by Analysis of Variance (ANOVA).

Findings - The factors driving the ethical perceptions of students are influence of education/ instructor on ethics, influence of technology, attitude related to cheating, ethical climate on campus and priority towards ethics. It has been found that there exists a relationship between the following: (i) ethical climate on campus and CGPA (ii) attitude towards cheating and parents' monthly income (iii) priority towards ethics and specialization of students.

Research Limitations/Implications - A key limitation of this study is the sampling frame. Future studies should replicate this study in different contexts.