Personal Business Ethics Perceptions Across Cultures: An Empirical Investigation Among Business Students in the U.S. And in Vietnam

The Personal Business Ethics Scores (PBES) measure developed by Clark and Clark (1966) was used to compare the level of ethical maturity of business students in the U.S. and Vietnam based on gender, business law course taken, code of conduct, and ethics training. Using univariate analysis of variance method, this research analyzed 546 business students (286 American students and 260 Vietnamese students) to examine their PBES. It appears that American students had higher PBES scores than Vietnamese students. Gender, business law course taken, and ethics training, workshops or seminars seem to make a significant difference in respondents’ PBES. Keywords business ethics; business law course; business students; code of conducts; ethical maturity; ethics training; gender; U.S.; Vietnam