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WCOB Faculty Publications Jack Welch College of Business
8-2003
Corporate and Individual Influences on Managers'Social OrientationJoachim W. Marz
Thomas L. Powers
Thomas QueisserSacred Heart University
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Recommended CitationMarz, J.W., Powers, T.L., Queisser, T. (2003). Corporate and individual influences on managers' social orientation. Journal of BusinessEthics 46(1), 1-11.
Corporate and IndividualInfluences on Managers'Social Orientation
Joachim W. MarzThomas L. Powers
Thomas Queisser
ABSTRACT. This paper reports research on theinfluence of corporate and individual characteristicson managers' social orientation in Germany. Theresults indicate that mid-level managers expressed asignificantly lower social orientation than low-levelmanagers, and that job activity did not impact socialorientation. Female respondents expressed a highersocial orientation than male respondents. No impactof the political system origin (former East Germanyversus former West Germany) on social orientationwas shown. Overall, corporate position had a signif-icantly higher impact on social orientation than didthe characteristics of the individuals surveyed.
KEY WORDS: corporate and individual character-istics, gender, hierarchy, political system origin, pro-fessional activity, social orientation
Joachim Marz currently works as IT director of the foto-finishing group CeWe Color at Oldenburg, Germany.He holds a doctor of business administration degree fromNova South-eastern University, Ft. Lauderdale, a masterof science degree from Boston University and a diplomain electrotechnics from the University of the Armed Forcesin Hamburg. In former positions, he has worked as man-agement consultant in various fields of business admin-istration. His research interest comprises the field businessand society as well as the information society.
Thomas L. Powers is the Research Professor of Marketingin the Graduate School of Management at the Universityof .Alabama at Birmingham. He received his Ph.D.
from Michigan State University and has published innumerous journals including Management Inter-national Review, Journal of Business Research,Journal of Business Logistics, The Journal ofMacromarketing, Industrial Marketing Manage-ment, The Journal of Personal Selling andSales Management, Production and InventoryManagement Journal, The Journal of Health CareMarketing, and Health Care Management Review.
Introduction
Social orientation has been defined as the impor-tance an individual assigns to the social respon-sibilities of the firm (Carroll, 1979; Aupperle etal., 1985). The research reported in this paperextends the literature on corporate social orien-tation by developing a framework of corporateand individual characteristics that influence thesocial orientation of individual managers. Theindividual manager's social orientation is impor-tant to the firm as it is an indicator for the firm'scorporate social performance (Carroll, 2000).The research further extends the research in thearea by examining the impact of political systemorigin on social orientation.
The research is based on a survey of 382employees at the Berlin office of a large inter-national accounting and consulting firm. Thecity where the sample was surveyed provides aunique opportunity to study political systemorienbtion. Berlin was a divided city between1945 and 1989 when Germany was divided intothe East German state German DemocraticRepublic (GDR) and the West German stateFederal Republic of Germany (FRG). Specifichypotheses were developed that examined the
Thomas Queisser is Director, Academic Programs at SacredHeart University at Luxembourg. He directs graduateprograms in business (MBA), information technologyand eCommerce. He is a member of the management
faculty, teaching in marketing and organizationalbehavior. His areas of professional interest include inter-national marketing as it relates to logistics, electroniccommerce, supply chain management, and organization.He earned his Ph.D. at Northwestern University,Evanston, Illinois (U.S.A.).
Journal of Business Ethics 46: 1-11, 2003.© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
Joachim W Marz et al.
impact of the individual's level in the organiza-tion, professional activity type. Political systemorigin, and gender on social orientation.
The results indicate that junior managementhad a higher social orientation than more seniormanagement. No differences were found in socialorientation between individuals that had differenttypes of professional positions. It was found thatthe respondents' political system origin did notimpact their social orientation. It is reported thatfemale respondents expressed a higher socialorientation than did male respondents.
Review of the literature
The question of to what extent a corporationhas other than economic responsibilities isthousands ofyears old (Lowy et al., 1996). Thedevelopment of corporate social responsibility asan academic field, however, is contemporary(Carroll, 1979). There are two characteristics thatmay influence the level of social orientation thatan individual exhibits within an organization. Thefirst consists of corporate characteristics. Theseinclude the hierarchy level the individual hasreached and the individual's professional occu-pation. The second group contains individualcharacteristics. These comprise the individual'sgender as well as the individual's socio-culturalbackground including their political systemorigin.
Corporate characteristics
Corporate characteristics comprise the factorsthat are related to the organization in which anindividual works and are comprised of hierarchylevel and professional activity.
Hierarchy level. Hierarchy level can be definedas the level an individual has reached in thecorporation's organizational structure. Previousresearch by Ostlund (1977) examined the impactof the respondents' hierarchy level in the orga-nization, operationalized as top versus middle, onsocial orientation. The study did not revealsignificant differences between the two groups.
Lusch and Laczniak (1987) hypothesized that topmanagers show a higher level of ethical orienta-tion than the layer below top management asanything that takes away from profit, includingethical behavior, is perceived by lower levelmanagement as an impediment to organizationaladvancement and recognition.
Izraeli (1988) reported no significant impactof organizational level on management behavior.The same study tested for a possible impact ofage on ethical perceptions, but did not find asignificant correlation. Ravlin and Meglino(1987) examined the impact of status in thefirm (supervisor versus nonsupervisor) and otherdemographic variables on individuals' valuesystems. In terms of hierarchy level impact, thestudy revealed that supervisors were morelikely to express achievement orientation in theirresponses than nonsupervisors, and were lesslikely to help others. Other research also reportsvalue differences among top, middle and lowerlevel managers (Posner and Schmidt, 1984).
Professional activity. An individual's professionalactivity is the type of task that individual carriesout at his or her workplace. Differences in socialvalues between salespeople selling industrialproducts and service salespeople have beenreported (Dubinsky et al., 1985). Frederick andWeber (1987) found significantly stronger differ-ences between executives, union members, andcommunity activists than within these groups inranking terminal values and instrumental values.
Ibrahim and Angelidis (1995) examined dif-ferences in the social orientation of inside andoutside directors, using a sample of 429 boarddirectors. The results indicated that outsiderswere less economically oriented than insiders andmore sensitive to philanthropic endeavors. Lowyet al. (1996) examined whether directors ofdifferent types of organizations show differentlevels of social orientation. The study revealedthat concern for economic issues declined as theorganization type moves from for-profit to non-profit, while concern for social responsibilityincreased when going from for-profit to non-profit.
Corporate and Individual Influences on Managers' Social Orientation 3
Individual characteristics
Individual characteristics are those demographicfactors that may be linked to an individual'sperceptions of social responsibility. They includegender, age, education and work experience,nationality, and religion (Loe et al., 2000).Gender is one of the mostly analyzed individualfactors (Collins, 2000; Ford and Richardson,1994; Robin and Babin, 1997), however, it wasincluded in this study to facilitate comparisonsto other research. An individual's national back-ground as one form of socio-cultural backgroundhas been identified as an important factor(Collins, 2000; Maignan, 2001). The individual'ssocial and cultural backgrounds may in turninfluence their attitudes and behavior. Thepresent research examines the impact of the polit-ical system origin as important part of the indi-vidual's social-cultural background that influencessocial orientation.
Political system origin. Political system origin refersto the governmental organization form of thestate an individual originates from. Major typesare the Western mixed free-market democraticsystem and the communist/socialist system thatprevailed in the Soviet Union and its relatedstates until the late 198O's. The political systema person lives in or originates from is part of theoverall socio-cultural background of that indi-vidual. It has been recognized as important forindividuals' value systems (e.g. Donaldson, 1982;Clarkson, 1988). Cross-cultural studies have beenconducted to analyze the impact of the respon-dents' socio-cultural background on ethicalbeliefs (Kelley and Whatley, 1987; Izraeli, 1988;Husted et al., 1996; Maignan, 2001). Differencesin value systems have been reported in the liter-ature. Ravlin and Meglino (1987) report differ-ences in the preferences of ethics-related valuesbased on the geographic origin of respondentswithin regions of a country. The socio-culturalbackground of a country is not static, but changesover time. Holmes (1976) reported significantchanges over time towards higher levels of socialorientation as time passed by.
An interesting basis for the research of socio-cultural and political system impact on individual
values is the case of Germany. Germany wasdivided into two separate states between 1949and 1989. In 1949, the Federal Republic ofGermany (FRG) was founded in the occupationzones of the Western allies, and the GermanDemocratic Republic (GDR) was founded inthe Soviet occupation zone. That cut was deep,as the two German states belonged to differentpolitical systems, and contacts were stringentlyrestricted. The separation came to an end defacto in 1989 and de jure on October 3,1990 when the reunification came into force.Differences in values still are significant (Noelle-Neumann, 1993, Pollack, 1997; Veen, 1997).The research institute "Institut fur Demoskopiein Allensbach" (1998) reported that two thirds ofEast Germans dislike West Germany's socialmarket system "Soziale Marktwirtschaft" andprefer a system located between socialism and thefree market system.
The literature supports the position that thereis an impact of socio-cultural background, or,more narrowly, political system background onpersonal values such as social orientation.
Cender. The impact of gender on value systemshas been tested in numerous studies. However,it is not clear what impact gender has on socialorientation. The impact of gender and typeof moral reasoning was examined by Derry(1987) and there was found to be no significantrelation between gender and type of moral rea-soning. The impact of gender and other demo-graphic variables on ethical perceptions has beenexamined (Kidwell et al., 1987; Ford andRichardson, 1994; Robin and Babin, 1997). Thestudies differed in their results (see Collins, 2000).The Kidwell et al. study for instance concludedthat male and female managers did not differ intheir perception of what is ethical and what isunethical. An interesting finding of the study wasthat each gender viewed the opposite sex as moreunethical than their own.
Ibrahim and Angelidis (1994) analyzed theeffect of board members' gender on socialorientation. Their study found that femaledirectors exhibited a stronger orientation towardthe discretionary [philanthropic] component ofcorporate responsibility. Male board members
4 Joachim W. Marz et al.
were more concerned about economic perfor-mance. No significant differences between thetwo groups were observed with respect to boththe legal and ethical dimensions.
Research objective and method
The objective of this research was to examine theimpact of the corporate characteristics (hierarchylevel and professional activity) and individualcharacteristics (political system origin andgender), on social orientation. A further objec-tive of the research was to determine whethercorporate or individual characteristics have ahigher overaD impact on social orientation. Theresearch framework is seen in Figure 1.
Hierarchy level and social orientation. It was hypoth-esized that there is an inverse correlation betweenhierarchy level and social orientation.
HI: Junior management members have asignificantly higher level of social orien-tation than senior management members.
Professional activity and social orientation. It washypothesized that professional activity does notimpact social orientation. This study setup cate-gorized professional activity into auditors, taxconsultants and management consultants.
H2: The level of social orientation is statisti-cally the same across professional activitytype.
Political system origin and social orientation. It washypothesized that the political system from whichthe respondent originates has an impact onhis/her social orientation and that persons orig-inating from a socialist system have a higher socialorientation than persons originating from amixed/free market system.
H3: Individuals from a socialist system have asignificantly higher level of social orien-tation than individuals from a mixed/freemarket system.
Cender and social orientation. It was hypothesizedthat gender impacts the level of social orienta-
(0
oLU
oo<o
(0
o
Q LU
§2
o
HIERARCHY LEVEL• senior management• junior management
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY• auditor• tax consultant• management consultant
POLITICAL SYSTEM ORIGIN• free market system• socialist system
GENDER• female• male
H i
H2
H3
H4
H5
SOCIALORIENTATION• legal component• ethical component• discretionary
(philanthropic)component
Figure 1. Research design.
Corporate and Individual Influences on Managers' Social Orientation
tion and that that female respondents possess ahigher level of social orientation than malerespondents.
H4: Female individuals have a significantlyhigher level of social orientation thanmale individuals.
Corporate versus individual characteristics. It washypothesized that individual characteristics havea stronger impact on social orientation than cor-porate characteristics.
H5: Individual characteristics have a signifi-cantly stronger impact on social orienta-tion than corporate characteristics.
Sampling frame and method. The sample was takenfrom the Berlin ofHce of a large internationalaudit and consulting firm. The cover letter andquestionnaire was distributed to employees' mail-boxes. Of 382 questionnaires distributed, 112completed questionnaires were returned for aresponse rate of 29.3%. Although the responserate was considered adequate, non-responsebias can affect research that is related to businessethics (Babbie, 1992; Randall and Gibson, 1990;Trevino, 1986). It is interesting to note that fourquestionnaires (above the 112 returned com-pletely filled out) were returned with missingpolitical orientation data, indicating that thisremains a sensitive point to the respondents.This may have also influenced the overallresponse rate. Non-response bias was tested usingANOVA. No difference was found betweenresults on social orientation for early and latequestionnaires. Details of the survey administra-tion are contained in Appendix A.
Results and findings
112 valid questionnaires that were returnedcorresponding to a response rate of 29.3%.This response rate is in consistent with priorresearch and was deemed acceptable. The resultsand findings are presented on a hypothesis-by-hypothesis basis. For hypotheses 1 through 4,ANOVAs were performed to test the hypotheses,and additionally MANOVAs were conducted for
every independent variable to analyze its impacton each of the social orientation categories legalorientation {LO), ethical orientation {EO), and dis-cretionary orientation {DO). Table I presents anoverview of the results.
HI: Junior management members have a sig-nificantly higher level of social orienta-tion than senior management members.
The results of ANOVA reveal a significancelevel of 0.003; therefore the null hypothesis isrejected. The hypotheses that junior managementmembers do express a higher social orientationthan senior management members is supported.The MANOVA carried out to examine howsenior and junior management differ in the socialorientation categories revealed that junior man-agement's legal orientation does not differ fromsenior management's legal orientation (alpha LO= 0.487) and that junior managers express ahigher ethical and discretionary orientation thansenior managers (alpha EO = 0.087, alpha DO= 0.001).
H2: The level of social orientation is statisti-cally the same across professional activitytype.
Based on the ANOVA, the significance levelfor different levels of social orientation amongthe three groups was 0.38 indicating that thereis no statistically significant difference in socialorientation among the three professional activitygroups of auditor, tax consultant, and manage-ment consultant. Neither did the groups differ inany of the social orientation components (therespective significance levels for the categorieswere alpha LO = 0.152, alpha EO = 0.741 andalpha DO = 0.85). Therefore the findingssupport the hypothesis.
H3: Individuals from a socialist system have asignificantly higher level of social orien-tation than individuals from a free marketsystem.
The ANOVA indicated a significance level of0.82, indicating that there was no significant rela-tionship between political system origin andsocial orientation. Therefore, the hypothesis wasnot supported. The MANOVA carried out to
Joachim W. Marz et al.
TABLE IFindings overview
Hypothesis Social orientation(SO) hypothesized
Results hy hypotheses Results on SOcategories (legal,ethical and discretionary-r LO, EO, DO)
HI Hierarchy
H2 Professionalactivity
H3 Politicalsystem origin
H4 Gender
H5 Individualversus corporatecharacteristics
Seniormanagement's SO >juniormanagement's SO
Auditors' SO = taxconsultants' SO =managementconsultants' SO
Socialist systemorigin SO > freemarket systemorigin SO
Females' SO >males' SO
Impact of individualcharacteristics >impact of corporatecharacteristics
Senior management'sSO > juniormanagement's SO(Expectation confirmed,alpha = 0.003)
No significantdifferences hetweenauditors' SO,tax consultants' SOand managementconsultants' SO(Expectation confirmed,alpha for differentSOs = 0.38)
No correlationhetween politicalsystem origin andSO (alpha for hypconfirmation = 0,82)
Females' SO >males' SO(Expectation confirmed,alpha = 0.04)
Impact of individualcharacteristics <impact of corporatecharacteristics (at0.05 significance levelobserved power for corp.factor = 0.796, forindiv = 0.381)
No significantdifferences in seniormgt and junior mgtLO (alpha = 0.487)senior mgt's EO >junior mgt's EO(alpha = 0.087)senior mgt's DO >junior mgt's DO(alpha = 0.001)
No significantdifferences betweenauditors', taxconsultants' andmanagementconsultants' LO,EO, and DO(alpha LO = 0.850alpha EO = 0.741alpha DO = 0.152)
No significantdifferences hetweensocialist system andfree market systemorigin LO, EO, and DO(alpha LO = 0.671alpha EO = 0.975alpha DO = 0.829)
No significantdifferences in females'and males' LO and EO(alpha LO = 0.549alpha EO = 0.708)Females' DO > males'DO (alpha = 0.015)
Corporate and Individual Influences on Managers' Social Orientation
examine the categories' contributions revealedthat no one category could be isolated as thesingle primary factor for the overall level of socialorientation: the respective significance levels fordifferences in legal, ethical, and discretionaryorientation were alpha LO = 0.671, alpha EO= 0.975, and alpha DO = 0.829.
H4: Females have a significantly higher levelof social orientation than males.
The ANOVA results indicated a significancelevel of 0.04 supporting the hypothesis thatfemale respondents have a higher social orienta-tion than male respondents. The MANOVAreveals that as in the hierarchy-based differencesin social orientation, orientation toward the dis-cretionary (philanthropic) responsibilities of thefirm contributes most to the difference. Therewere no significant differences in the levels oflegal orientation and of ethical orientation (alphaLO = 0.549, alpha EO = 0.708), but femalerespondents expressed a significantly higher dis-cretionary orientation than male respondents(alpha DO = 0.015).
H5: Individual characteristics have a signifi-cantly stronger impact on social orienta-tion than corporate characteristics.
Factorial ANOVAS for the combined indi-vidual factor (comprising gender and politicalsystem origin) and the combined corporate factor(comprising hierarchy level and professionalactivity) revealed significance levels of 0.225 and0.112, respectively. We failed to reject the nullhypothesis; the individual characteristics analyzedin our study do not have a stronger impact onsocial orientation than the corporate character-istics analyzed.
Discussion
The results are summarized and discussed by theareas examined in the hypotheses:
Hierarchy level. Between senior management andjunior management, the findings were consistentwith the existing literature. Kram et al. (1989)observed that the ethical perceptions of managers
vary systematically by organizational level, due tothe "unique priorities, pressures and norms char-acterizing each management level". It is entirelypossible that these finding can be generalized tomany other firms where lower level managerspossess a higher social orientation than middlemanagement.
Professional activity. The hypothesis that profes-sional activity does not impact social orientationwas confirmed in this study. There was, however,a higher legal orientation among auditors and taxconsultants, which may be directly linked to thehigher visibility of the legal system for thesetwo groups. This difference was not significant,however. Since the literature suggests that thecloser the professional activities are to eachother, the smaller the possible differences in socialorientation (Dubinsky et al., 1985; Frederick andWeber, 1987), it can be inferred that thejobs performed by respondents are similar. Thissupports the sample firm's "one firm" approachthat offers integrated service covering a widerange of the client's audit and consulting needs.
Political system origin. Contrary to the study'shypothesis, there was no impact of the politicalsystem origin on social orientation. While allopinion polls show significant differencesbetween East Germans and West Germans, inthis sample it did not matter from which samplea respondent originates. It may be that the cir-cumstances in which a person lives currentlyoutweigh the past circumstances in which therespondent lived, especially in the global white-collar culture of professional services. It may beinferred that the German reunification process,in terms of value systems, is closer to completionthan it appears from present opinion polls andthat differences in value systems can be con-tributed more to present life circumstances andless to the impact of the political system fromwhich an individual originates.
Gender. As hypothesized based the review ofthe literature, female respondents expressed asignificantly higher social orientation than malerespondents. The difference mostly is driven bythe component "discretionary orientation" that
Joachim W. Marz et al.
comprises mostly philanthropic activities. Thisresult is consistent with the Ravlin and Meglino(1987) study in which female respondents haveexpressed a higher orientation toward "helping"than male respondents, and also is consistent withthe Ibrahim and Angelidis (1994) study ongender-related differences in social orientation,not only in terms of social orientation as a wholebut also in terms of the social orientation cate-gories. In both studies, female respondents exhib-ited a significantly stronger social orientationthan male respondents and a significantly strongerdiscretionary (philanthropic) orientation.
Corporate versus individual characteristics. Overall,corporate characteristics had a stronger impacton social orientation than individual character-istics. The ranking in terms of statisticalsignificance was hierarchy, followed by gender,followed by professional activity, and followedby political system origin. The relatively highimportance of corporate factors may be an indi-cation of cultures that are developed in the orga-nization; therefore it is likely that the resultscannot be generalized to other organizations.
Social orientation. The study has demonstratedthere is an impact of corporate as well as indi-vidual characteristics on social orientation. Basedon the study results, it can be implied that allcategories of social orientation have their own,independent meanings: in the differences relatedto professional activities, the legal category hasthe highest impact; in gender-related differences,the discretionary category is the driving factor;and in university degree type (used as controlvariable) differences, the ethical category is thedriving factor. The level of the three categories'values varies significantly among the respondentsgroups analyzed.
Limitations of the study. As with all empiricalstudies, the sample size drives the generalizabilityof the findings. With 112 valid questionnaires,the sample size appears sound enough to supportthe findings as presented in this study; however,generalization of the findings must be made withcare, due to the limitations imposed by thelimited sample size.
The sampling frame was very similar to con-sulting firms around the globe, but rather dif-ferent from other firm types, which form themajority of the business community, such as pro-duction and trade companies. The operational-ization of variables for hierarchy level andprofessional activity cannot easily be translatedinto other business environments. Furthermore,the sample firm's top management, be it onnational or on international scale, was not con-tained in the sample.
Summary and conclusions
The research reported in this paper extendsthe literature on social orientation by developinga framework of variables into corporate andindividual characteristics as well as examiningthe impact of the political system an individualoriginates from on corporate social orientation.Social orientation of individuals within corpo-rate environments is an important element ofan individual's managerial perspective and maypredict actual business behavior. This papercontributes to the field of social orientationby reporting that managers with a socialistsystem origin did not differ in their social ori-entation from managers with a free marketorigin. This was an unexpected and interestingfinding.
There are several areas that warrant futureresearch on social orientation. It would be inter-esting to compare junior management's socialorientation to senior management's social orien-tation in other study settings, possibly in otherbusiness types in the private sector, includingproduction or trade organizations. As the oper-ationalization of professional activity was ratherspecific, it would be interesting to extendresearch in professional activity impact on socialorientation with other operationalizations inother study settings. Regarding political systemorigin, there was a great gap between commonlyheld expectations, as formed by recent andcurrent public opinion polls and the study results.Clearly, this aspect of the research should bereplicated in other settings. The impact of cor-porate versus individual characteristics on an
Corporate and Individual Influences on Managers' Social Orientation
individual's social orientation is also worthy offurther research.
Appendix A
Survey administration
Operationalization of variables. Hierarchy level isoperationalized in two levels. The first level com-prises partners, senior managers and managers,and the second level comprises junior-level indi-viduals. Level 1 to 5 is the junior level, with titlesvarying with the department (assistant auditor,auditor [audit], assistant tax consultant, tax con-sultant [tax], consultant/senior consultant [man-agement consultants]). Colleagues at this levelwork as project staff and assume some responsi-bility for subprojects or small projects. Managersand senior managers are responsible for theacquisition and execution of projects. Thepartners also acquire projects, direct client rela-tionships, and participate in strategic develop-ments, modifications in service portfolio, andsimilar higher level tasks.
Professional activity was operationalized asaudit, tax consulting, and management con-sulting. Audit comprises the auditing services asdefined by the law plus such audit-related con-sulting services as the reorganization of financeand administration departments. Tax consultingfocuses on tax burden minimization and legalconstructions. Only some of the services offeredby the management consulting branch are audit-or tax-related. Services cbange significantly overtime, with a tendency toward more technically-oriented services, as new business fields evolveon a continuous basis (e.g. software process opti-mization, electronic commerce, and ERP imple-mentation).
Political system origin was operationalized associalist system origin versus free market systemorigin. In the Iron Curtain period which lastedde facto from 1945 to 1989, Germany wasdivided into the East German state, the GermanDemocratic Republic (GDR), which belongedto the socialist block and the West German state,and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),which belonged to the free-market block. The
Berlin office of an international firm is an idealpopulation for a test of these attributes. Duringthe separation, Berlin was divided into WestBerlin, with about 2 million inhabitants, and EastBerlin, with about 1.5 million inhabitants.Geographically, Berlin is situated in EastGermany. In no other city is the "blending" ofpeople originating from the respective blockshigher.
Gender was operationalized as female andmale. As the ratio male/female is about two toone in the population studied, statistically sig-nificant findings were possible in the analysis.
Social orientation measures respondents' ori-entation toward the social responsibilities of thefirm. The social orientation is the sum of theorientation toward the legal, the ethical and thediscretionary responsibilities of the firm. Socialorientation is measured using a questionnairedeveloped by Aupperle (1985) which consists ofseveral sets of four statements, each of whichreflects the fulfillment of one of the four com-ponents. The questionnaire contains 15 sets offour statements, each of whicb reflects one ofCarroll's social responsibility components. Theorientation toward economic performance islabeled "concern for economic performance",and the overall orientation toward the otherthree components is labeled "social orientation".Social orientation is also called "concern forsociety" or "corporate social responsibility ori-entation" (CSRO). Respondents must give aweight to each statement, scoring the relativevalue respectively importance they assign to thestatement.
Instrument translation and pretest. The Aupperlequestionnaire that has been used as the instru-ment in this study had to be translated for usein Germany. The translation process followed tbeprocedure recommended by Brislin (1970). Acommittee was set up that consisted of threenative Germans who are fiuent in English. Tbecommittee members translated the instrumentseparately. In a committee meeting tbe threeversions were synchronized and one commonversion agreed upon. This German version wasthen given to three native English speakingpersons who, separately, translated the German
10 Joachim W Marz et al.
version into English. In a second committeemeeting the three English versions were com-pared to the original instrument. Only minorchanges to were necessary. This updated versionand the original English Aupperle instrumentwere sent to 20 bilingual persons. The respon-dents were asked to fill out the questionnaire inone language and to fill it out in the otherlanguage one week later, without referring to theanswers of the first response. Sixteen personsreturned the questionnaires. Evaluation of theEnglish questionnaire showed Cronbach alphas of0.98 (economic), 0.97 (legal), 0.92 (ethical), and0.95 (discretionary orientation). The Germanquestionnaire led to Cronbach alphas of 0.97(economic), 0.95 (legal), 0.93 (ethical), and0.92(discretionary orientation). These CronbachAlphas were judged adequate to insure that theGerman instrument reflected the original EnglishAupperle questionnaire accurately.
Reliability and validity. Reliability was tested usingCronbach alpha. The alpha values calculated were0.92 for the economic category, 0.91 for the legalcategory, 0.89 for the ethical category and 0.91for the disct-etionary category. These levels areindicative of a good reliability indicator (Cortina,1993). Validity was examined using a four-wayANOVA; this ANOVA calculated the observedpower as an indication for this extent. At the 0.05significance level, this observed power is 0.986,indicating that the independent variables selectedexplain most of the variation.
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Joachim W. MarzCeWe Color AG & Co OHC,
26133 Oldenburg,Cermany
E-mail: [email protected]
Thomas L. PowersCraduate School of Management,
University of Alabama at Birmingham,Birmingham, Alabama 35294,
U.S.A.E-mail: [email protected]
Thomas QueisserSacred Heart University at Luxembourg,
L-2449 LuxembourgE-mail: [email protected]
