Business Ethics Decision-Making: Examining Partial Reflective Awareness

Abstract

The aim of this research was to examine partial reflective awareness in ethical business choices in Croatia. The ethical decision-making is interlinked with sustainable practices, but it is also its prerequisite. Thus, better understanding of business ethics decision-making provides a basis for designing and implementing sustainability in a corporate setting. The research was done on student populations who will soon carry important roles and make important decisions for individuals, organizations, and society. The field research was conducted using Kohlberg’s scenarios. The results reveal that the process of decision-making goes through the lenses of respondents’ own preferred ethics. However, the reflective awareness of respondents’ preferred ethics is skewed and regularities in that deviations point out to the relevance of the context characteristics and arousal factors. In addition, the individuals do not use all available information in the assessment process. The revealed partial reflective awareness contributes to explanation of why people have problems with justifying their choices. As there are many examples of unethical behavior in the environment that remain unpunished, it is necessary to raise awareness of the issue. Improvement in reflective awareness would contribute to more sustainable ethical choices and reveal a possibility of an intervention design within the higher education framework.