The Effect of Ethical Climate and Ethical Ideology on Developing Moral Judgment of Management Students (Case Study: Lorestan Univesity)

Given the importance of ethics in business success, management students need to understand ethics and moral judgment to deal with ethical issues and they should become familiar with individual and organizational factors affecting it. Among these factors, ethical climate and ethical ideology can affect moral judgment and cause it to chang. In fact, organization ethic principles are the cornerstone for people’s lifestyle that affects their moral judgment in challenging situations. These effects can be different according to ethical ideology. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effect of ethical climate on moral judgment and investigates the mediating role of moral ideology (idealism and relativism). Research sample was 309 business students in Lorestan University. Data collected using questionnaires and scenario were analyzed using structural equation modeling technique. Results show that the ethical climate both directly and indirectly through idealism positively affects the moral judgment, but this effect was not moderated by relativism. In addition, ethical climate has a positive effect on idealism and negative effect on relativism. Likewise, Idealism and relativism have a positive and negative effect on moral judgments respectively. This study focuses on the different role of ethical ideology in moral judgments especially among management students as its innovation aspect which has not been considered by researchers, and can have a major contribution in the field of management.