A Study on Indian and Omani Business Management Undergraduate Students Attitude towards Business Ethics

The study examines the differences in the attitude of Indian and Omani Undergraduate Business Studies students towards business ethics about gender, parents’ occupation, and nationality. The pre-validated scale of Attitudes towards Business Ethics Questionnaire (ATBEQ) has been used as a measurement instrument. The primary data has been collected from 237 respondents using the convenience sampling technique. Factor analysis revealed seven factors consisting of 21 variables. The study found significant differences in attitudes towards business ethics about gender, nationality, and parents’ occupation.


Introduction
Business ethics in recent times has gained strategic significance for business (Rossouw, 2004). Corporate scandals involving Corporate giants like Enron and Worldcom have invited the world's attention towards the pressing need to adhere to the ethical behavior of firms. According to the findings of a corporate survey conducted in 2012 by Labaton Suchrow LLP, it was found that about one-fourth of executives studied believed that breaking the rules was mandatory to achieve success. About a third accepted that it was necessary to violate rules to gain compensation plans, and 16 % were ready to commit insider trading if they wouldn't be caught. According to Bageac et al. (2011) and Sims & Gegez (2004), integration of ethical business practices across diverse cultural contexts has become a challenge due to the global expansion of international firms. Differences of opinion exist among people that ethics cannot be combined with business as it does not accrue profits to the businesses.
They believe that the benefits and chances offered by the business environment cannot be capitalized by a perfectly ethical company. The convergence of diverse business practices across different cultural contexts resulting from globalization could further catalyze conflicts of ethical judgments. The neglect of business ethics constitutes a high-risk behavior that can cost companies dearly in terms of both reputational and financial damage. However, there is a growing interest in business ethics, as a strategic component lies in the perceived benefit to the stakeholders from the ethical conduct of the business (Freeman, 1999;Frederick, Post and Davix, 1992;Donaldson and Preston, 1995;Carroll and Shabana, 2010).

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International Journal of Management s h a n l a x # S I N C E 1 9 9 0 Cultural differences also have an impact on the attitudes of people towards business ethics (Ahmed et al., 2003). It has been observed in the study conducted by (Sigma-Mugan et al. 2005) that complex interactions among variables like gender, cultural background, and educational level are responsible for making ethical judgments. Gill's (2009) study proved that females are believed to be more ethical than men. Students of business management schools will eventually be managers (Felton and Sims, 2005). As a result, business ethics has found a significant place in the curriculum of top business management schools. The present study focuses on the need to learn the attitude and orientation of business management student's towards business ethics in different geographic and cultural arenas, especially when they will be taking over management positions shortly. Therefore, educational institutions should proactively involve in shaping the ethical behavior of their graduates.
The present study has been conducted on undergraduate business management students from Hyderabad city of India and Muscat, the capital city of the Sultanate of Oman. These papers study business ethics across two culturally and institutionally diverse countries based on ethical perceptions, judgments, and moral philosophies.

Review of Literature
The ATBEQ questionnaire by Preble & Reichel (1988) consisted of thirty statements on Likert's fivepoint scale from "Strongly Disagree" to "Strongly Agree." The scale ranging from 1 to 5. "Business ethics refers to a study of situations, actions and decisions related to business which primarily intends to address issues which are either appropriate or inappropriate in nature" (Crane and Matten,2007). However, according to Preble and Reichel (1988), business ethics is an individual assessment based onpremises made up of different philosophies.
A comparison of undergraduate business student samples from the United States of America and Israel revealed that Americans were less apprehensive than students from Israel. Significant differences, and a considerable number of similarities, were found among the samples from both the countries. Both groups revealed fairly high moral standards (Preble and Reichel, 1988). Small (1992), in his study of 179 business students from Western Australia, concluded that the students from the United States of America, Israel and Western Australia shared common views concerning business ethics and added that the business practices and perception towards ethics in businesses are related throughout the Western world. Ruegger and Kind (1992), through their study, intended to test the impact of gender and age on the business ethics of the students. Their findings revealed that gender has a significant role to play on the attitude towards business ethics, as females exhibited possessing higher ethics values compared to males. Kum-Lung and Teck-Chai (2010), to study the influence of level of education, sex and religion on attitude towards business ethics studied 130 undergraduate business studies belonging to a private university in Malaysia. Intrapersonal religiosity strongly indicated an important determinant to attitude towards business ethics; however, interpersonal religiosity did not show any such indication. The difference in gender exhibited no significant impact on the attitude towards business ethics. However, level of education was found to have considerable effect on the attitude towards business ethics. Ford and Richardson (1994) through their metaanalysis of fourteen studies on attitude towards business ethics, found female's to be more ethical than males in seven studies, however, in the remaining seven studies no significant differences were found among the genders in their ethical behavior.
The meta-analysis of 47 studies conducted by Borkowski and Ugras (1998) to study the difference in males and females attitude towards ethical behavior concluded 49% significant differences between males and females, 34% displayed no significance, and 17% gave mixed results. Sauerbrey (2010) conducted a study on business students comprising of 606 German students, 451 American students, and 214 Danish students revealed that students were against the idea that ends justify the means for profits in running businesses. German and American students displayed higher ethical inclination due to their course in business ethics.

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International Journal of Management s h a n l a x # S I N C E 1 9 9 0 A study by Miesing and Preble (1985) found older and veteran people displayed higher ethical values compared to students.
Lin compared the data collected from Taiwanese undergraduate business and engineering students with the student samples of American and Israel students from the study of Preble and Reichel (1988) and Australian students from the sample of Small (1992). The findings revealed significant similarities as well as significant differences among the student samples. American, Israel, Australian, and South African student samples from previous studies were compared with student samples from Turkey by Sims and Gegez (2004) and found significant differences and similar views towards business ethics.
Bageac, Furrer and Reynaud's (2010) study intended to understand the difference in acuity of French and Romanian management students towards business ethics. Their research was aimed to test the theory by making use of the confirmatory approach.

Need for the Study and Research Gap
The above section reveals the existence of a large amount of literature on the area under discussion on student's attitudes towards business ethics. However, no study has been undertaken to compare the undergraduate business management students of India and Oman. According to the National Centre for Statistics and Information (2018), there are 654,812 Indians living and working in Oman. With Oman being one of the top destinations of the Indian diaspora, it would be interesting to note if Indians and Omanis attitude towards business ethics is the same or will have any variations.

Objective
To study the attitude towards business ethics of Indian and Omani undergraduate students of business studies.

Hypotheses Of The Study
H1: There is a significant difference between male and female students in terms of attitude towards business ethics.
H2: There is a significant difference between Indian and Omani student samples regarding attitude towards business ethics.

H3:
There is a significant difference between students with parents belonging to business and salaried backgrounds in terms of attitude towards business ethics.

Research Design
The study used the exploratory research design as it explores and compares the attitude towards Business Ethics of Omani undergraduate business students studying in college run by the Ministry of Manpower in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman, and Indian undergraduate business students from a Business Management college situation in Hyderabad, State of Telangana, India.
The study was confined to the Ministry of Manpower sponsored college from the capital city of Sultanate of Oman and private business management college from Hyderabad, India.
A convenience sampling technique has been used to collect primary data from the target respondents. The primary data had been collected from 237 respondents.  Table 1 shows the sociodemographic characteristics of the study population. The gender distribution of the respondents was almost equal. The majority of the students (89.2%) were below 24 years of age. The representation of Indian students Shanlax International Journal of Management s h a n l a x # S I N C E 1 9 9 0 was slightly more (51.5%) compared to the Omani students. A little less than two thirds (60.3%) of the students came from a business background.

Tests for reliability and adequacy of sample size
Thirty items of the questionnaire were tested for reliability using Cronbach's alpha coefficient, which was 0.78. Furthermore, KMO and Barlett's Test of Sphericity conducted revealed 0.741, suggesting the sample size was adequate for the study. In Table 2, the communalities for 26 items are above ranged between (0.5-0.72) and communalities for 4 items ranged between (0.454 -0.495). A value above 0.5 is considered to be ideal. However, communality value (<0.5) is found to be contributing to a well-defined factor, though loading is low.
The extraction value tells us the proportion of variance of each variable that can be explained by the factors.

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International Journal of Management s h a n l a x # S I N C E 1 9 9 0 The scree plot revealed seven meaningful factors with an eigen value of 1.0 and above.
The Principal Component Analysis indicated seven uncorrelated variables with an Eigen value of 1.0 or greater. The seven factors accounted for 55% of the discrepancy seen in the responses where a higher cumulative contribution would have been a stronger result.
The Promax factor analysis was conducted for seven factors. The Promax factor analysis rendered an improved model by associating each variable strongly with one or a few factors and having each factor comprised of a small number of variables. The factor analysis with only 21 variables contributing meaningfully to the seven factors. By raising the price of a product and marking it "on sale" is a good business strategy.

0.828
True morality lies in selfinterest. 0.600 The ATBEQ items were rated on a 5 point Likert scale. The demographic variables were gender, parent's occupation and nationality and the sample size was limited to the undergraduate students of business studies department from India and Oman. The sample was considered as the students were the most capable of differentiating between accepting wisdom between ethics and morality, comprehending the intricate structures of business life. A factor analysis of the questionnaire indicated seven factors and the comparisons were conducted on factors emerged through factor analysis.
Different studies established no assured relationship between female and male students and their attitude towards ethical behavior (Burkowki and Urgas, 1992;Miesling and Preble, 1985; Betz Shanlax International Journal of Management s h a n l a x # S I N C E 1 9 9 0 et. al, 1989;Kum Lung and Tech Chai, 2010;Ruegger and King, 1992). Thus, we hypothesize: H1: There is significant difference between male and female student samples in terms of attitude towards business ethics.
The mean values of male students from Table  5 for all factors except factor 6 are higher than female students indicating that males possess higher ethical values compared to females. The mean value (7.91) of factor 6 for female sample is higher than the mean value (7.46) for male sample.  Table 6 indicates that except for factor 6, all other factors show no difference in business ethics among male and female students of India and Oman. The p-value (0.027) of factor 6 is lesser than 0.05, indicating accepting alternate hypothesis, thereby accepting H1, indicating a difference of attitude towards business ethics exists among the genders. However, the findings of the current study contradict with findings of Ruegger and Kind (1992) and Ford and Richardson (1994), which claimed females exhibited higher ethical values than males. The current study does not conform with Kum-Lung and Teck-Chai (2010) that no relationship exists between gender and their ethical orientation. Borkowski and Ugras (1998) concluded 49% of significant differences in males' and females' attitudes towards ethical behavior, 34% not significant and 17% were found to be inconclusive.
The two statements which comprise of factor 6, i.e., Shareholders are interested in maximum returns on their investment only and laws and morals cite no significant difference between male and female sample.

H2:
There is a significant difference between the population means of Omani and Indian students regarding attitude towards business ethics. The mean values of the Indian sample from Table  7 for all factors except factor 6 are slightly above the mean values of the Omani sample. However, the difference can be concluded as negligible as it varies only in 0.02 for factor 1, 0.01 for factor 2, 0.03 for factor 3, 0.19 for factor 4, 0.27 for factor 5, and 0.46 for factor 7. The mean value (8.01) of Omani samples is higher than the Indian sample's mean value.
In Table 8, except for factor's 6 and 8, Indian and Omani student's attitude towards business ethics is not significantly different from one another. As reflected in Table 8 significance value for factors (1,2,3,4,5) is greater than 0.05, indicating no meaningful difference for student samples, but factors (6 & 7) need further evaluation and interpretation as the significance value is less than 0.05. The two country sample for factors 6 & 7 suggests that there is a difference in the attitude towards business ethics providing basis that H2 is accepted.

H3:
There is a difference between students with parents belonging to business and salaried background in terms of attitude towards business ethics in various factors.
The mean values from Table 10 of factors (1,2,3,4,5 &6) show a slight difference among the students belonging to families from business and service background. For the Factors ranging from 1 to 6, the mean values of students belonging to service background families are higher than business families, indicating that students belonging to parents doing service displayed a slightly higher attitude towards business ethics. However, students belonging to business families showed conformity with factor 7 more than students from a service background. The P-value of factors (1,2,3,4,5 & 7) from Table 11 is greater than 0.05, indicating no difference in attitude towards business ethics among the students Shanlax International Journal of Management s h a n l a x # S I N C E 1 9 9 0 belonging to business families and whose parents come from a service background. However, the p-value of factor 6 is less than 0.05, indicating a difference in attitude towards business ethics exists among the students hailing from business and service background, indicating that H3 cannot be rejected.

Discussion
The present research investigates whether the attitude towards business ethics differs between Indian and Omani undergraduate business management students. The pre-validated scale of Attitudes towards Business Ethics Questionnaire (ATBEQ) with Likert's 5 point scale has been used as a measurement instrument. The validated 30 item scale was developed by Preble & Reichel (1988). The result of the study indicates subtle differences exist between the attitude of Indian and Omani undergraduate students of business management towards business ethics for the independent variables like gender, nationality, and parent's occupation.
The results, more or less comply with the existing literature on business student's attitudes towards business ethics. Preble and Reichels' (1998) study of US and Israeli students showed significant differences in their attitude towards business ethics, where Americans were less concerned than Israeli students; Sims and Gegez (2004) study which compared samples from Turkey with the previous samples from the US, Israel, Australia, and South Africa showed significant differences between Turkish and other samples. The present samples are taken from two different countries with different religions, different languages, and different types of governance, showed only slight differences in a couple of factors in dependent variables for all of the demographic variables. This can be attributed to geographical proximity, high cultural compatibility due to the existence of trade and commerce among both countries since the third century BC, and a very high degree of ethical values followed by two countries. However, the present study also has limitations. It can't be ascertained how representative our sample was of the greater population of undergraduate business students of two countries. This study is confined to an Undergraduate business management college from Hyderabad, India and Ministry sponsored college from Muscat, Sultanate of Oman only. It will be necessary to investigate if it is possible to generalize the findings of the present study to other colleges of India and Oman.

Conclusion
The present study attempted to explore the attitude of undergraduate business management students of India and Oman towards business ethics. The findings of the study revealed that differences exist in attitudes towards business ethics about the nationality and parent's occupation and gender.
Student's attitudes towards business ethics can be reshaped by developing awareness through business ethics education. Punitive action on students indulging in unethical behaviors like academic dishonesty will make them realize the serious implications of unethical conduct. Parents and governments should initiate measures to promote ethical behaviors. Business ethics should be accorded the highest priority as fraud, cheating; corruption is widely reported in the world of business.

Limitations of the Study
The sample taken for the current study does not in any way be representative of the larger populations of India and Oman, and larger sample size would have further strengthened the results. However, the Shanlax International Journal of Management s h a n l a x # S I N C E 1 9 9 0 student population is comparatively homogenous to make cross country comparison and is similar to the previous studies.

Scope for future research
As students lack managerial experience, the attitudes of managers might be different from the students. Research in various sectors like manufacturing, fast-moving consumer goods, services, etc. can also be conducted to test items in different contexts for professionals.