Investigating the influence of gender and religiosity on attitudes towards business ethics

This paper studies the impact of gender and religiosity on the attitudes towards business ethics of a sample of 437 Italian business students. Data were collected through a survey analysis in March-April 2013. We grouped our 18 items into four key areas of analysis and calculate an index that estimates business students’ overall attitude towards ethics for each area and for the overall questionnaire. Results for the whole sample show that our respondents consider ethics in business to be crucial in all four areas. Females seem to have a stronger sense of ethics in business than males. Students who are atheists scored lower than those who have faith in three out of the four areas of our survey. Our results show no significant difference between students who practice their religion and those who do not, underlying a not statistically significant link between religious commitment and attitudes toward business ethics.