Perceptions of College Students and Attitudes of Private and Public Employees towards Business Ethics

This empirical study aims to contribute to the limited number of comparative studies in the business ethics literature by contrasting business ethics perceptions of undergraduate students with ethical practices of business and public sector employees. Based on the deontological theory of ethics, a survey was designed, and conducted with 135 undergraduate students, 148 private and 117 public sector employees mostly located in Istanbul. Statistical analysis of independent t-test and descriptive statistics indicated that ethical attitudes of private and public sector employees significantly different that students ethical perceptions, while there is no significant difference of ethical attitudes between private and public sector employees. The difference on perceptions is more evident in students-private sector employees' case while there are significant dispersions over the private and public sector employees over the role of civil servants, according to the results.