Exploring Ethical Organizational Culture: Validation of Measurement Instrument in Lithuania ¬リニ

Ethical organizational culture as a social phenomenon has drawn scholars and organizations’ attention after the global economic crisis in 2008 which, once again, proved the importance of the ethical component of organizational culture as a phenomena potentially accounting for organizational failures. A practical need for management of ethics in organizational culture calls for robust measurement instruments which could help to diagnose potential ethical risks and improve ethical dimensions of organizational culture. The paper presents results of explorative validation analysis of a measurement instrument for ethical organizational culture or the corporate ethical virtues model that was originally developed by Kaptein (2008). The model encompasses 8 virtues, i.e. clarity, congruency of supervisors, congruency of management, transparency, feasibility, discussability, supportability and sanctionability, by 58 item scale. Drawing on the argument that self-reported and ethics-related measurements can be highly sensitive to a socio-cultural context, we assume that a measurement instrument tested in a Dutch company may be differently handled in Lithuania. The results of validation by accomplishing factor analysis in a sample of 757 respondents in Lithuanian public organization show that the overall fit of the model is quite high; although some additional conclusions potentially describing socio-cultural context can be formulated. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the Kaunas University of Technology.