Corruption in organizations is a well-studied systemic phenomenon that may be approached in different ways. One of these is through the perspective adopted in compliance literature, understood as a reflection about the causes and the mitigation of corruption, as well the tools to promote an ethical environment. The basis of compliance is the moral perception of the person when exposed to ethical dilemmas. The purpose of this work is determine the relative relevance of education, age, and gender in the moral perception of businesses. Our statistical analysis is based on secondary data provided by ICTS Global, an international company specializing in the reduction of risks involving human life, business goals, assets, information, and reputation. We carried out an exploratory statistical analysis on data concerning variable indicators of the index of analyses of adherence to enterprise ethics (AAEE) from ICTS Global. Our research was based on a non-probabilistic by convenience sample composed of interviews carried out between 2004 and 2008 with employees and candidates from 74 Brazilian private enterprises. The final number of people interviewed totaled 7,574. The results indicate that the education variable exerts more influence on the moral perception indicators: the lower the level of education, the lower the perception of wrongdoing. On the other hand, more detailed analyses of the indicators of moral perception show interesting differences related to the profile of the professionals as well as the variables analyzed (gender, age, and education).
compliance; organizational ethics; governance
