The Impact of Ethical Ideology on Modifiers of Ethical Decisions and Suggested Punishment for Ethical Infractions Robert A. Giacalone Scott Fricker Jon W. Beard ABSTRACT. The present study sought to determine the extent to which individuals' ethical ideologies, as measured by Forsyth's (1980) Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ), impacted the degree of pun- ishment they advocated for differing ethical infrac- tions, as well as their selection of non-ethics related variables that might be used to modify judgments of disciplinary action. The data revealed that individual ideology does impact both advocated punishment and choice of non-ethics related variables, but only in some measures. The data are discussed in terms of potential moderating variables that could be examined in future studies. Robert A. Giacalone is the author of over 40 management articles, as well as two books, Impression Management in the Organization and Applied Impression Management, and the Editor of a Special Issue of the Journal of Business Ethics on "Behavioral Aspects of Business Ethics." In 1992, Sage Publications named him the Editor of the Sage Series in Business Ethics, a book series dedicated to ethics education for students and practitioners. Dr. Giacalone is currently Associate Professor of Management Systems at the E. Claiborne Robins School of Business, University of Richmond. Scott Fricker is currently a doctoral student in the social psychology program at the University of California-Santa Barbara. The research described herein reflects, in part, research done as a psychology undergraduate at the University of Richmond. Jon W.. Beard is currently Assistant Professor of Management Systems in the E. Claiborne Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond. His work primarily concerns behavioral and organizational issues related to the management of technology. He is currently editing a book titled Impression Management and Information Technology for Greenwood Press. In recent years, there has been much attention to ethical decision making in organizations. Highly publicized banking scandals (e.g., Lincoln Savings) environmental accidents (e.g., Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez, Bhopal, Love Canal), and instances of corporate fraud and neglect (E. E Hutton, General Electric) have given rise to mounting public scorn of business. Scholars have made a number of attempts to explain and predict ethical reasoning at work (see, for example, Payne and Giacalone, 1990; Trevino, 1986). Understanding the process of ethical decision making, however, is by nature complex and dynamic. When examining an individual's response to an ethical issue, researchers must take into account a complex matrix involving situa- tional uncertainties (see Payne and Giacalone, 1990; Trevino, 1986), interpersonal conflicts of interest and/or values (see, for example, Boatright, 1993), and an individual's concern about the consequences or perceptions of their actions (e.g., Szwajkowski, 1992). But the process of ethical inquiry is further complicated by individual variance in the content and the consequence(s) of moral deliberations. People with apparently similar values and beliefs who judge the same dilemma or person, can reach opposite conclusions (Forsyth, 1980), while apparent consensus on the resolution of a dilemma may actually be based on very different thought processes (Blake and Carroll, 1989), even when similar ideologies may exist. The problem to date, however, has been that no distinct measured has been used to provide insight into how an individual's ideology may impact their ethical decision making at work. Research by Forsyth (1980) offers a taxonomic Journal of Business Ethics 14: 497-510, 1995. © 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.