The cognitive processes underlying ethical decision making have been object of several studies interested in understanding what motivates executives to make ethically questionable decisions. Negotiation is one of the most interesting activities to study honesty and ethics, since it is central to all human interactions and it poses several ethical dilemmas to the negotiators. This study has the objective to analyze how individual differences in values systems' priorities influence the moral judgment of ethically ambiguous negotiation practices. Using structural equations modeling, the relationships among an individual's personal values, ethical ideology and moral judgment are investigated. The empirical results suggest that the aforementioned dimensions of human individuality influence the moral judgment of ethically ambiguous negotiation tactics. These findings may significantly contribute to the theoretical understanding of ethical decision making processes.
Negotiation; Ethical ideology; Values; Structural equations; Ethics
