International Journal of Business and Economics Volume 18, No. 1 June, 2019

Ethics/Virtues and Consequences: An Exploratory Study of Regional Small Businesses in Developed and Emerging Countries

Samanthala Hettihewa

Federation Business School, Federation University, Australia

Lori S. Kopp

Dhillon School of Business, University of Lethbridge, Canada

Christopher S. Wright

The Institute of International Studies, Australia

Abstract

This research examines the ethics of Australian, Canadian, and Sri Lankan regional small businesses (Regional-SBs) in terms of how they perceive their duties to society, customers, employees, and the environment. A questionnaire compares the stated ethics of Regional-SB entrepreneurs with their preferences and with firm and entrepreneur attributes. We then analzye the long-term effects of ethics by regressing firm ethics and key attributes against the perceived level of financial difficulty and firm age. The lack of clear divides in East-West or gender ethics may be an artefact of the education system. A key finding of this study is that, while Regional-SBs in Australia, Canada, and Sri Lanka have a strong, consistent understanding of civic duties and duties to customers, they appear to have a poor and uneven understanding of duty to employees and of environmental duty. Future research can extend this topic by evaluating what influences Regional-SB ethical choices.

Keywords：ethics, virtues, small business, developed and emerging countries.

JEL Classifications：Y9.

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