Attitudes toward business ethics: Empirical investigation on different moral philosophies among business students in Vietnam

The purpose of this study is to investigate the attitudes toward business ethics of Vietnamese business students based on the five moral philosophies including Machiavellianism, Moral objectivism, legalism, ethical relativism and social Darwinism. Using the 30-item attitudes towards business ethics questionnaire (ATBEQ) developed by Neumann and Reichel (1987) based on the work of Stevens (1979), the authors examined the attitudes toward business ethics of 282 business students at a public university in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. It appeared that there was a significant difference between all five philosophies except legalism. Legalism was found only significantly different from moral objectivism. The respondents scored highest for moral objectivism, followed by ethical relativism, social Darwinism, legalism and Machiavellianism. We found a significant difference between male and female business students for Machiavellianism and ethical relativism, and a partially significant difference for legalism. Finally, we found that code of ethics only made a significant difference for only Machiavellianism and social Darwinism.