Positive Job Response and Ethical Job

Performance

Sean ValentinePhilip Varca

Lynn GodkinTim Barnett

ABSTRACT. Although many studies have linked job

attitudes and intentions to aspects of in-role and extra-

role job performance, there has been relatively little

attention given to such job responses in the context of

employees’ ethical/unethical behavior. The purpose of

this study was to investigate a possible relationship

between positive job response (conceptualized as job

satisfaction and intention to stay) and behavioral ethics.

Ninety-two matched manager-employee pairs from a

regional branch of a large financial services and banking

firm completed survey instruments, with each employee

providing information about his or her job attitudes and

intentions and each manager assessing the ethical/uneth-

ical performance of his/her employees. Respondents also

provided additional information required for our analyses.

The results indicated that positive job response among

subordinates was associated with higher supervisory rat-

ings of the subordinates’ ethical job performance. The

managerial implications of the findings for managing

ethical behavior are explored.

KEY WORDS: ethical decision-making, business ethics,

ethical reasoning, ethical judgments, job satisfaction,

intention to stay

Individual ethical decision-making in the work

context has been an important research issue for

some time (Ferrell and Gresham, 1985; Hunt and

Vitell, 1986; Jones, 1991; Rest, 1986; Trevino,

1986), and interest in the topic continues to increase,

given the recent business scandals that have damaged

the reputations of many organizations (Folkes and

Sean Valentine (D.B.A., Louisiana Tech University) is Pro-

fessor of Management in the Department of Management,

College of Business and Public Administration at the Uni-

versity of North Dakota. His research and teaching interests

include business ethics, human resource management, and

organizational behavior. His work has appeared in journals

such as Human Relations, Journal of Personal Selling &

Sales Management, Journal of Business Research,

Behavioral Research in Accounting, and Journal of

Business Ethics.

Philip Varca (Ph.D., Industrial Psychology, Louisiana State

University) is Professor in the Management & Marketing

Department, College of Business, University of Wyoming.

His research and teaching interests are employee selection,

organizational change & services business. His work has

appeared in Journal of Services Marketing, Managing

Service Quality and Personnel Psychology.

Lynn Godkin (Ph.D., University of North Texas) is Professor

of Management in the Department of Management and

Marketing, College of Business at Lamar University in

Beaumont, Texas. His research and teaching interests include

business ethics, organizational learning, and economic devel-

opment. He has published in journals such as Journal of

Business Ethics, British Journal of Management,

Health Care Management Review, Competitiveness

Review, International Journal of Management, Orga-

nizational Analysis, Psychological Reports, Employee

Responsibilities and Rights Journal, Latin American

Business Review, Health Marketing Quarterly, and

International Journal of Public Administration.

Tim Barnett (D.B.A., Mississippi State University) is Professor

of Management and the Richard and Mary Puckett Notable

Scholar in the Department of Management & Information

Systems at Mississippi State University. His research has

appeared in journals such as the Academy of Management

Journal, Personnel Psychology, Entrepreneurship

Theory & Practice, Human Relations, and the Journal

of Business Research, among others.

Journal of Business Ethics (2010) 91:195–206 � Springer 2009DOI 10.1007/s10551-009-0077-1

Whang, 2003). Research indicates that individual

ethical decision-making in the workplace, which is

likely to encompass the recognition of, moral

judgments about, behavioral intentions toward, and

actual behavior regarding ethical dilemmas (Rest,

1986), is influenced by organizational, issue-related,

and individual factors (Trevino et al., 2006). For

example, it is likely that a firm’s ethical climate or

culture and the ethical leadership of top managers

will influence employees’ ethical decisions (Trevino

et al., 1998; Victor and Cullen, 1988). Also, research

shows that an ethical issue’s perceived seriousness or

its ‘‘moral intensity’’ impacts ethical reasoning

(Barnett and Valentine, 2004; Jones, 1991). Finally, a

variety of individual factors such as gender, disposi-

tions, and attitudes has been linked to the ethical

reasoning process (Bergman et al., 2002; Franke

et al., 1997; Trevino and Youngblood, 1990).

Work-related cognitive and/or affective variables

often reflect employees’ perceptions of a company’s

willingness to provide a desirable work environ-

ment, and have been linked to in-role and/or extra-

role job performance (Fernando et al., 2005;

Riketta, 2002; Schleicher et al., 2004). Increasingly,

an employee’s ethical decision-making is regarded as

an aspect of his or her job performance. Yet, rela-

tively little research has considered whether positive

responses to work are associated with this aspect of

job performance. This study attempts to provide an

empirical test of this research question by examining

the relationship between positive job response and

ethical behavior among a group of white-collar

workers in the financial industry.

Background and conceptual development

Job satisfaction is the ‘‘pleasurable or positive emo-

tional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job

and job experience’’ (Locke, 1976, p. 1300). As

indicated by Judge et al. (2001), ‘‘few topics in the

history of industrial-organizational psychology have

captured the attention of researchers more than the

relationship between job satisfaction and job per-

formance’’ (p. 388). Most research tends to suggest a

consistent, although modest, correlation between

job satisfaction and work performance (Cote, 1999;

Iaffaldano and Muchinsky, 1985; Judge et al., 2001;

Schleicher et al., 2004).

One reason why research has generally yielded

modest correlations between job satisfaction and

performance may lie in how job performance is

traditionally defined in terms of ‘‘in-role’’ perfor-

mance measures such as quantity or quality of work

produced. Organ (1977) and Bateman and Organ

(1983) extended the concept of job performance to

include ‘‘extra-role’’ or ‘‘citizenship behaviors’’ that

are cooperative, helping, or altruistic in nature.

Using a social exchange model (Blau, 1964), they

reasoned that workers will ‘‘trade’’ such pro-social

behaviors for job satisfaction. In other words, job

satisfaction may induce positive job behaviors,

although the impact may be greater on extra-role

aspects of job performance than on conventional

in-role performance measures. A number of research-

ers have pursued hypotheses in this area, demon-

strating that job satisfaction correlates with extra-role

performance more strongly than with traditional in-

role performance criteria (Motowidlo, 1984; Puffer,

1987).

What does this conceptual framework offer for

our understanding of ethical work behavior? Taken

as a whole, this line of research suggests that satisfied

workers are not only motivated to expend effort, but

that they are also willing to spend emotional capital

performing acts that might not be specifically out-

lined in their work duties and responsibilities.

Ethical performance, defined in this study as work

conduct that adheres to established standards of

acceptable behavior, falls into this domain. In other

words, we believe that job satisfaction will serve as a

positive work response and enhance an employee’s

ethical job performance.

Employees’ intention to stay/quit is a second job

response with implications for ethical performance.

For years, researchers have recognized that turnover

intentions do indeed relate to job performance

(Jackofsky, 1984; Mathieu and Zajac, 1990), with

meta-analyses yielding negative correlations ranging

from -0.16 to -0.52 (e.g., Bycio et al., 1990;

Williams and Livingston, 1994). This relationship,

however, is not as clean and consistent as it would

intuitively appear. For example, in some cases there

is a positive relationship between performance and

turnover; that is, high performers quit more readily

than do poor performers (Mathieu and Zajac, 1990).

Jackofsky (1984) incorporates this viewpoint into

her curvilinear model of turnover, suggesting that

196 Sean Valentine et al.

both poor performers and high performers are more

likely to leave an organization in comparison to

acceptable performers. Sub-par performers may

leave because they are under duress or dissatisfied

with the lack of rewards that are available only to top

performers, while high performers may be more

mobile because of their performance history and,

thus, may pursue better opportunities with other

employers (Jackofsky et al., 1986; Williams and

Livingston, 1994).

Irrespective of motive, individuals with intentions

to leave may want to maintain at least minimal

performance standards for self-interest purposes.

Thus, it is reasonable to assume that turnover

intentions may not consistently impair traditional

performance measures, as research suggests. On the

other hand, it is also logical to assume that as workers

begin to detach from companies, they are less likely

to embrace the broader responsibilities associated

with good performance, and this is likely to have

implications for the more pro-social forms of per-

formance such as citizenship behavior and ethical

behavior.

Many studies indicate that turnover increases as

workers’ commitment to the organization decreases

(Mathieu and Zajac, 1990). Moreover, incongruity

between individual and organizational values seems

to underlie this lack of commitment (O’Reilly and

Chatman, 1986). Allen and Meyer (1993) argue

further that normative commitment, which involves

a believed moral obligation to a company, is fun-

damental to the overall construct. In the absence of

this type of connection to a company (or work in

the case of job satisfaction), we would expect ethical

performance to decline.

In summary, there is a long-standing empirical

record indicating that the relationship between

positive job response (such as job satisfaction and

intentions to stay) and traditional performance

measures, while consistent, is quite modest in terms

of strength of association. Research in the last 2

decades has begun to demonstrate that these job

attitudes may have a greater impact on extra-role or

pro-social aspects of job performance. We suggest

here that engaging in ethical behaviors in the per-

formance of one’s job is a form of pro-social job

behavior and that positive work responses will lead

to higher levels of ethical job performance.

Research Hypothesis: Positive job response on the part

of employees will influence their level of ethical

job performance, such that employees with more

positive job responses will engage in higher levels

of ethical job performance than employees with

less positive job responses.

Method

Data collection

Data were collected from subordinates and managers

working in a regional branch of a nationwide

financial service and banking organization. Jobs in

this organization involve activities such as developing

relationships with customers, tracking/managing

customer accounts, and educating customers about

services provided. Separate questionnaires were

developed for the employees and their managers.

The survey instrument administered to employees

required them to answer questions about their work

attitudes, intentions, and ethical reasoning, as well as

demographic information. The survey instrument

administered to managers required them to evaluate

an immediate employee’s ethical job performance, as

well as to provide information on their own demo-

graphic characteristics. This data collection strategy

was employed to mitigate the potential problems

associated with common method and social desir-

ability biases. Survey pairs were sent to 120 branch

managers with specific instructions indicating how

the surveys should be completed and returned.

Ninety-two usable survey pairs were secured for an

overall approximate response rate of 77%.

A summary of the sample characteristics for the

managers and employees is presented in Table I.

The managers were about 10 years older than the

employees on average and had twice as much

position tenure as the employees overall. Women

comprised a large majority of both the manager and

employee groups (82% and 71% respectively), and

over 75% of persons in both groups had some col-

lege or a college degree. The employee group was

more racially/ethnically diverse than the manager

group, with minority employees comprising almost

half of the respondents, as opposed to slightly less

Positive Job Response and Ethical Job Performance 197

than 20% of the managerial respondents. ‘‘Retail,’’

‘‘retail banking,’’ or ‘‘retail management’’ were the

most common occupational groups reported.

Measures

Positive job response

Based on employee responses, we assessed two

response variables, job satisfaction and intention to

stay. Three items were used to evaluate job satis-

faction: ‘‘All in all, I’m satisfied with my job,’’ ‘‘In

general, I like working at my company,’’ and ‘‘In

general, I don’t like my job’’ (Cammann et al., 1983;

Rich, 1997). Employees responded on a seven-point

scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). After

reverse coding the third item, higher scores indicated

greater job satisfaction. We also assessed intention to

stay with three items taken from an established

‘‘turnover intentions’’ scale (Cammann et al., 1983;

TABLE I

Sample characteristics

Variable Managers Employees

M SD Freq. Valid % M SD Freq. Valid %

Agea 40.58 10.32 30.61 10.53

Position tenurea 8.61 7.80 4.48 5.44

Sex

Male 16 17.8 26 28.6

Female 74 82.2 65 71.4

Highest level of education

Grade school 0 0.0 1 1.1

Some high school 0 0.0 0 0.0

High school graduate 12 13.2 13 14.1

Some college 44 48.4 49 53.3

College graduate 29 31.9 22 23.9

Some graduate/professional 5 5.5 5 5.4

Graduate/professional degree 1 1.1 2 2.2

Doctoral degree 0 0.0 0 0.0

Marital status

Single 14 15.4 39 43.3

Married 65 71.4 40 44.4

Widowed 1 1.1 0 0.0

Separated, divorced 11 12.1 11 12.2

Race

Black 5 5.6 12 13.2

Hispanic 8 8.9 19 20.9

Asian 3 3.3 10 11.0

White 73 81.1 50 54.9

Other 1 1.1 0 0.0

Professional classification

Human resources 1 1.1 1 1.2

Marketing 0 0.0 1 1.2

Accounting 0 0.0 3 3.7

Finance 25 28.4 13 15.9

Other 62 70.5 64 78.0

aIn years.

198 Sean Valentine et al.

Chen et al., 1998). These items included ‘‘I often

think of leaving the organization,’’ ‘‘It is very pos-

sible that I will look for a new job next year,’’ and

‘‘If I may choose again, I will choose to work for the

current organization.’’ Employees responded on a

seven-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly

agree). The first two items were reverse coded, and

higher scale scores indicated greater intention to stay.

Because previous research suggests that job satis-

faction and intention to stay are highly correlated

(Tett and Meyer, 1993), and in order to facilitate our

analyses, the job satisfaction and intention to stay

measures were combined into a single indicator of

positive job response. This indicator thus should

effectively represent employees’ generalized evalua-

tions of the favorability of their job context.

Ethical job performance

The employees’ ethical job performance was assessed

utilizing a five-item measure developed specifically

for this study. The items included ‘‘In comparison to

other employees you supervise, this individual

demonstrates above average ethical conduct,’’ ‘‘This

employee is above average in his or her ethical

conduct,’’ The employee is an ethical individual in

my view,’’ ‘‘Ethical business practices are a top

priority with this employee,’’ and ‘‘The employee

conducts himself or herself in a socially responsible

manner at work.’’ Each participating employee’s

manager responded to these items on a seven-point

scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). Higher

item values were indicative of higher managerial

appraisals of the employee’s ethicality.

These items asked supervisors to make both

absolute and relative judgments about the ethical/

socially responsible behavior of their subordinates.

Although the scale items were not behaviorally

anchored, formal ethics training and a code of

conduct appeared to be central to this company’s

policy. Employees had received an average of 7.48 h

of ethics training in the last year, and 97.8% of

employees indicated that the company had shared

with them ‘‘an ethics code that governs work con-

duct in the organization.’’ An exploratory ‘‘principal

components’’ factor analysis indicated that one factor

emerged with an eigenvalue of 3.97 and that 79% of

the variance was explained, with factor loadings

ranging from 0.76 to 0.95. The high internal con-

sistency reliability (a = 0.93) and mean of the inter-

item correlations (r = 0.74) further suggested that the

five-item scale consistently measured a single con-

struct, which we labeled ‘‘ethical job performance.’’

Controls

Since ethical decisions are influenced by many

individual and organizational factors, several controls

were included in the analysis. Subjects’ sex, educa-

tion, and position tenure were included as controls.

We also controlled for the number of hours of ethics

training (in the last year) that was reported by each of

the respondents.

Analysis

We followed procedures recommended by Ander-

son and Gerbing (1988) to evaluate the multi-level

latent constructs and ethical work performance

items. Using AMOS software, a second-order con-

firmatory factor analysis (CFA) was first performed

on the items to determine the measurement prop-

erties of scales. In order to specify the model, the

variance of the ‘‘positive job response’’ variable

(second-order factor) was set to a value of ‘‘1,’’ while

the variances of the error terms for the latent con-

structs ‘‘job satisfaction’’ and ‘‘intention to stay’’

were set to be equivalent (see Byrne, 2001). Addi-

tionally, one path for each of the latent first-order

constructs was set to a value of ‘‘1’’ (Arbuckle and

Wothke, 1999). After making necessary adjustments

to the measurement model, finalized composite

measures were calculated by adding together the

items for each construct and dividing by the total

number of items. Variable descriptive statistics,

bivariate correlations, and reliability statistics were

then estimated with SPSS software to determine the

magnitude and internal consistency reliability of

the focal constructs, as well as the relationships

that existed among these variables. Finally, a full

structural model containing the control variables and

focal constructs was initiated in AMOS to test the

proposed relationship between ‘‘positive job re-

sponse’’ (comprised of job satisfaction and intention

to stay) and the dependent variable ‘‘ethical work

performance.’’

Positive Job Response and Ethical Job Performance 199

Results

Confirmatory factor analysis

The initial second-order measurement model indi-

cated reasonably good fit (v2 = 92.09; v2/df =

2.19, CFI = 0.99, NFI = 0.98, and IFI = 0.99;

RMSEA = 0.11) (Arbuckle and Wothke, 1999; Hu

and Bentler, 1999).1 The measurement model (see

Figure 1) showed that the latent variables ‘‘job sat-

isfaction’’ and ‘‘intention to stay’’ were positively

related to the observed items (p < 0.001) and that

the latent variable ‘‘positive job response’’ was highly

related to both job satisfaction and intention to stay

(p < 0.001). All of the standardized path coefficients

were above a benchmark of 0.50, which suggested

that no further model adjustments were necessary.

Reliability was assessed with the standardized path

estimates associated with each of the constructs (Hair

et al., 1998). The composite reliability scores for the

latent variables ‘‘job satisfaction,’’ ‘‘intention to

stay,’’ ‘‘positive job response,’’ and ‘‘ethical job

performance’’ were 0.89, 0.67, 0.90, and 0.94,

respectively, and the variance-extracted estimates

were 0.72, 0.41, 0.82, and 0.75. Consequently, the

second-order CFA indicated that the measures were

generally acceptable (Bagozzi and Yi, 1988; Hair

et al., 1998). A summary of the variable descriptive

statistics, correlations, and reliability estimates is

provided in Table II.

Second-order structural model

In order to fully test the research hypothesis, we

analyzed a second-order structural model including

the primary variables of interest (positive job response

and ethical job performance), as well as the control

Figure 1. Second-order confirmatory factor analysis of scale items (N = 92; *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001; standardized

estimates presented in parentheses).

200 Sean Valentine et al.

variables. The results of this second-order structural

model are presented in Figure 2. The fit statistics

suggest that the path model was parsimonious

(v2 = 136.73; v2/df = 1.75, CFI = 0.99, NFI =

0.97, IFI = 0.99; RMSEA = 0.09). Several key

structural relationships were identified in the path

model. Among the control variables, gender

appeared to impact ethical job performance, as

women were assessed as demonstrating less ethical

job performance than were men (p < 0.05), and

increased education was associated with decreased

ethical job performance (p < 0.01). Years of position

tenure was also associated with decreased ethical job

performance (p < 0.05), and hours of ethics training

was not related to the managers’ assessment of their

employees’ ethicality.

In terms of the primary study variables, positive

job response did indeed appear to impact ethical job

performance. Employees who reported more posi-

tive responses to work were rated as being more

ethical in the performance of their jobs by their

immediate supervisor (p < 0.001), which supports

the major research hypothesis that motivated this

study.

Discussion

This study extended current research by examining

the relationship between positive job response and

ethical job performance, a research question not fully

articulated or pursued in the extant literature. Such

inquiry is relevant from a practical perspective

because an identified link between positive job

response and ethical job performance would provide

yet another focal point for increasing ethical conduct

through the management of employees’ reactions to

the immediate employment environment. More-

over, this study attempted to fill several noteworthy

gaps in the research. While the findings of a handful

of studies demonstrate that organizational ethics do

relate to employee job satisfaction and turnover

intention (Koh and Boo, 2001; Viswesvaran et al.,

1998; Vitell and Davis, 1990), in general, these

studies have not explored the relationship between

job attitudes and individual-level ethical reasoning

(Paolillo and Vitell, 2002). In addition, while studies

have examined different steps of the ethical decision-

making process, such as problem recognition, moral

judgment, and ethical intention (Barnett and Val-

entine, 2004; Paolillo and Vitell, 2002), few have

focused on actual ethical behavior due to bias and

measurement challenges (Trevino et al., 1998).

When ethical behavior is measured, it is often

evaluated with self-report responses to ethical sce-

narios or other simulated exercises (Victor et al.,

1993), which obviously raises questions related to

the adequacy of the research design (see Weber,

1992). In our study, we utilized employees’ self-

reported job satisfaction and intention to stay, but

TABLE II

Variable descriptive statistics, reliability estimates, and correlations

Variable M SD N a 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1. Ethical job performance 6.30 0.85 91 0.93 –

2. Sexa 1.71 0.45 91 – -0.16 –

3. Educationb 4.24 0.92 92 – -0.11 -0.20� –

4. Position tenurec 4.48 5.44 90 – -0.16 0.20� -0.21* –

5. Ethics trainingd 7.48 8.71 71 – 0.09 -0.17 0.04 0.14 –

6. Job satisfaction 6.04 0.99 91 0.88 0.24* 0.21* 0.20� 0.06 0.02 –

7. Intention to stay 5.42 1.38 90 0.68 0.18� 0.15 0.07 0.10 -0.03 0.59*** –

�p < 0.10, *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001.a1 = male, 2 = female.b1 = grade school, 2 = some high school, 3 = high school, 4 = some college, 5 = college graduate, 6 = some graduate/

professional education, 7 = graduate/professional degree, and 8 = doctoral degree.cIn years.dIn hours.

Positive Job Response and Ethical Job Performance 201

also assess their ethical job performance by collecting

data from their immediate managers.

Although job attitudes and intentions have long

been linked to aspects of job performance, there has

been little empirical evidence demonstrating that

positive job response is associated with a higher level

of ethical behavior among employees. The empirical

results we obtained, utilizing a matched-pair sample

of employees and their managers, provide preliminary

evidence that employees’ positive job response are

linked to higher levels of ethical behavior, at least as

judged by the employees’ managers. Significantly, our

study utilized an independent assessment of ethical job

performance, which extends the literature beyond

published studies investigating self-reported ethical

conduct (Bergman et al., 2002; Trevino and

Youngblood, 1990; Victor et al., 1993), and provides

more credible evidence that attitudinal and inten-

tional constructs do relate to ethical behavior. This

result was observed after controlling for several

potentially important variables, including employees’

sex, level of education, position tenure, and annual

hours of ethics training. The relationship was rela-

tively strong and suggests that ethical behavior might

be viewed by managers as a type of pro-social or

citizenship behavior.

The findings may offer a potential management

strategy for influencing ethical behavior through

employee’s responses to their work situation and, in

this sense, have several implications for management

1.08 (.89) JS1

Job .87 (.86) satisfaction JS2 .87 (.92) 1.00(.80) JS3 Positive job response 1.26 (.59)

IS1 .78 (.90) Intention 1.44 (.59) to stay IS2 1.00(.71) IS3

.31 (.41) EP1 1.17 (.91) Sex a -.43 (-.26) 1.20 (.97) EP2 -.27 (-.32) Ethical .99 (.87) job performance EP3 Education b -.03 (-.22) 1.03 (.68) EP4 Position 1.00(.87) tenure c EP5

.00(.03)

Ethics d training

Figure 2. Second-order structural model (N = 92; *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001; a1 = male, 2 = female,b1 = grade school, 2 = some high school, 3 = high school, 4 = some college, 5 = college graduate, 6 = some gradu-

ate/professional education, 7 = graduate/professional degree, and 8 = doctoral degree, cin years, din hours; standard-

ized estimates presented in parentheses.

202 Sean Valentine et al.

practice and for future research. In terms of practice,

the modal management intervention for ensuring an

ethical workplace has centered on institutionalized

programs such as training and codes of conduct. The

present results seem to highlight the potential

importance of positive job attitudes and intentions

for ethical behavior, and suggest that a positive work

context might enhance ethical conduct or possibly

influence the effectiveness of other programs such as

ethics training. Moreover, improvements in this area

could be linked to the broader corporate culture as

ethical obligations of the firm to satisfy individual/

stakeholder interests, which should further streng-

then employees’ beliefs about the organization’s

ethical environment. These perceptions of corporate

ethics are also known to enhance work responses in

the form of organizational commitment, job satis-

faction, and fit (Babin et al., 2000; Hunt et al., 1989;

Sims and Kroeck, 1994; Valentine et al., 2002).

According to the present findings, these positive job

responses should ultimately serve to prompt ethical

behavior in a company.

Related to this, managers may also consider

providing employees with better definitions of the

behaviors considered ethical by the company. The

strength of the association between positive job

response and ethical job performance found in this

study parallels the relationships identified in past

research between job attitudes and pro-social

behavior, which suggests that ethical conduct could

be one manifestation of citizenship behavior. More

unified and institutionalized descriptions of this

type of citizenship behavior may ultimately result

in greater demonstrated employee ethical conduct,

as well as a stronger link between positive work

responses and the ethical performance of work

duties. Managers could provide these descriptions in

the company’s codes of conduct or in training that is

provided to employees to better sensitize them to

the company’s ethical challenges.

Although this research overcame the problem

associated with subjects’ self-reports of ethical con-

duct, there are several limitations to the present

design that also point to the need for further study.

In terms of managerial ratings of employees’ ethical

behaviors, recent research by Reynolds (2008,

p. 1027) suggests that individuals differ in moral

attentiveness (the degree to which one ‘‘chronically

perceives and considers morality and moral elements

in his or her experiences’’) and provides empirical

evidence that such differences affect individuals’

perceptions of others’ ethical or unethical behavior,

although the observed effect sizes were relatively

small. It is possible that managerial ratings of

employees in this study were influenced to some

extent by the managers’ relative level of moral

attentiveness. Thus, future research utilizing ratings

of others’ ethical behavior may need to account for

this construct. Additionally, managers were not

provided a definition of ethical job performance

before evaluating employees on the surveys, and

varying personal definitions of such conduct could

have influenced evaluations of the subordinates.

However, the measures were taken in one organi-

zation and arguably represent a collective view of

ethical job performance in one setting.

No firm conclusions should be made about the

direction of the relationships examined. For example,

it could be argued that ethical job performance results

in positive job attitudes and intentions, although the

literature suggests otherwise. This study did not in-

clude other important work response variables such

as involvement or job design, which limits the scope

of the research and the ability to make broad con-

clusions about the response-ethical performance

linkage. Future research should address these limita-

tions with longitudinal data that establish causal links

between key variables. Also, adding other job atti-

tude variables to our model could produce a more

comprehensive understanding of the relationship

between positive job response and ethical job per-

formance. Based on the results of this study, new

research might be directed at the impact of certain

demographic variables on ethical behavior. In par-

ticular, men were found in the structural model to

perform more ethically than did the women, which is

contrary to most previously published work covering

gender differences in the ethical decision-making

process (see Franke et al., 1997). This result was

potentially caused by the supervisory reported nature

of the ethical performance measure (rather than self-

report), with women being judged more harshly by

management than men, possibly due to individual

stereotyping and other cognitive biases. Additionally,

individual education level and position tenure were

negatively related to the ethical job performance

variable in the structural model, which suggests

that better trained/educated and more seasoned

Positive Job Response and Ethical Job Performance 203

employees operate less ethically at work than do

lower educated and inexperienced workers. Finally,

new research needs to define specifically what is

considered ethical job performance so that respon-

dents will be better prepared to evaluate the work

conduct of other key employees. It seems likely that

such unified definitions will result in a stronger sta-

tistical relationship between positive job response and

ethical job performance.

As noted at the outset, practitioners and

researchers alike have clung to the notion that happy

workers are productive workers for some time. After

50 years, it seems unlikely that one more empirical

study could have something new to say on the

matter, but the present data do suggest another

vector for approaching the question of why a posi-

tive work climate is important. When Brayfield and

Crockett presented their seminal work in 1955,

ethical conduct was not considered an important

aspect of job performance; it is today. The present

data indicate that happy workers who intend to stay

with a firm may behave more ethically. By exam-

ining further the linkages between individual atti-

tudes/intentions and the execution of work, business

ethics research may be able to provide further pre-

scriptive guidance regarding the supervision of em-

ployee ethics.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Jane Chaney and Greg Han-

son for their work with data collection and coding on

this project. This paper was presented at the 2008

Southwest Academy of Management Conference,

Houston, Texas and appeared in the Proceedings.

Note

1 v2/df = relative chi-square, RMSEA = root mean

square error of approximation, CFI = comparative fit

index, NFI = normed fit index, and IFI = incremental

fit index.

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Sean Valentine

Department of Management,

University of North Dakota,

293 Centennial Drive, Mailstop 8377, Grand Forks,

ND 58202-8377, U.S.A.

E-mail: sean.valentine@mail.business.und.edu

Philip Varca

Department of Management and Marketing,

University of Wyoming,

P.O. Box 3275, Laramie,

Wyoming 82070, U.S.A.

E-mail: Philip@uwyo.edu

Lynn Godkin

Department of Management and Marketing,

Lamar University,

P.O. Box 10025, Beaumont,

Texas 77710, U.S.A.

E-mail: Lynn.Godkin@lamar.edu

Tim Barnett

Department of Management and Information Systems,

Mississippi State University,

P.O. Box 9581, Mississippi State,

Mississippi 39762, U.S.A.

E-mail: Tim.barnett@msstate.edu

206 Sean Valentine et al.