BRIC' s ethical business cultures

In spite of a proliferation of research on managers’ and students’ ethical business culture perceptions, no extensive research in this field has been conducted for the BRIC countries. In this study, the perceptions of both graduate business students and in-the-market professionals have been analyzed, individually and jointly, in the context of these four emerging economies. Specific hypotheses have been developed to investigate similarities and differences within and between students’ and professionals’ ethical perceptions. A non-parametric statistical test was run thanks to a newly acquired data set. The analysis showed that BRIC students share a very similar level of specific ethical perceptions, which when benchmarked against those of professionals, reveal both idiosyncrasies and similarities. It has been suggested that globalization and international experiences push students towards certain standardized ethical perceptions, while job market exposure is one factor in changing those perceptions in the direction of those held by in-the-market managers.