Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility Scale

Abstract

The Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility Scale (PRESOR) is a 13-item instrument designed to quantify an individual’s perception regarding the importance of business ethics and social responsibility within the context of organizational performance and effectiveness. Developed by Singhapakdi et al. (1996), the scale assesses whether these ethical considerations are viewed as critical components of overall organizational effectiveness, particularly when compared against traditional success metrics such as profitability, competitiveness, and survival.

The instrument is rooted in the “organizational effectiveness menu” proposed by Kraft and Junch (1992) and consists of statements reflecting the importance of ethics relative to output quality, profitability, and competitiveness. The PRESOR scale is versatile and various versions have been adapted for studies across different countries and professional settings.

Keywords

Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility Scale, PRESOR, Business Ethics, Social Responsibility, Organizational Effectiveness, Corporate Social Responsibility, Profitability, Organizational Competitiveness, Scale Development.

Authors

Anusorn Singhapakdi, Scott J. Vitell, Kenneth L. Kraft, J. B. Junch.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the PRESOR scale is to measure the extent to which individuals, particularly business professionals and students, perceive ethics and social responsibility as integral components of an organization’s success and overall functioning. It seeks to move beyond the assumption that ethical considerations are secondary to purely financial metrics.

Specifically, the scale aims to determine the relative importance assigned to ethical behavior and social accountability when weighed against established measures of organizational success, such as maximizing output quality, ensuring short-term profitability, maintaining market competitiveness, and guaranteeing long-term survival. The results provide insight into the ethical climate perceived by respondents.

Construct

The PRESOR measures the psychological construct defined as the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility in achieving organizational effectiveness. This construct is multidimensional, reflecting how an individual integrates ethical concerns into their overall assessment of organizational performance.

The scale operationalizes this construct across three distinct dimensions identified through factor analysis: Social Responsibility and Profitability, Long-Term Gains, and Short-Term Gains. These dimensions capture differing beliefs about how ethics influence financial outcomes, employee morale, and long-term organizational viability versus immediate efficiency and shareholder satisfaction.

Validity

The validity of the original PRESOR Scale was established through assessments of content validity, face validity, and predictive validity.

Content Validity was established by submitting the scale items to a panel of expert judges, including graduate marketing students and marketing professors. This panel reviewed the items for clarity, ambiguity, sensible construction, and relevance to the target construct. The experts concluded that the scale items adequately represented the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility in organizational effectiveness. Face Validity was confirmed by asking the expert judges what they believed the scale was measuring; their responses consistently included concepts such as ethics, values, the importance of ethics for the organization, and social responsibility.

Predictive Validity was supported through correlation and multiple regression analyses. The PRESOR dimensions were successfully predicted by independent variables such as socially responsible attitude (Hunt, Kiecker, and Chonko 1990) and ethical ideologies, specifically idealism and relativism (Forsyth 1980). The significant predictive relationships found between these variables and at least one dimension of PRESOR provided strong evidence for the scale’s ability to predict related ethical attitudes in a business context.

Reliability

Scale reliability was assessed using Coefficient alpha (Cronbach’s Alpha) for the overall scale and its identified subscales. Reliability analysis was performed separately for each of the three dimensions resulting from the exploratory factor analysis.

The reliability coefficients observed across the subscales were deemed acceptable, particularly for the early stages of research, as suggested by Nunnally (1978). The subscale reliabilities ranged from 0.71 for the Social Responsibility and Profitability factor, down to 0.57 for the Long-Term Gains factor. The third subscale, Short-Term Gains, demonstrated a coefficient alpha of 0.64. These values confirm the internal consistency of the PRESOR instrument, satisfying the standard that an alpha between 0.5 and 0.6 is sufficient during initial research phases.

Factor Analysis

The dimensionality of the Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility Scale was determined using principal components exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation. The analysis revealed that the 13 items load onto three distinct, underlying dimensions:

• Social Responsibility and Profitability: This four-item factor describes the belief that ethical conduct and social accountability are compatible with and essential for improving profitability and organizational competitiveness. High scorers believe ethics play a very important role in improving these outcomes.
• Long-Term Gains: This six-item factor measures the importance of ethics and social responsibility in achieving enduring success, including long-term financial health, overall firm effectiveness, and employee morale. High scorers prioritize ethics for the long-term viability of the firm.
• Short-Term Gains: This three-item factor measures the perceived role of ethics relative to immediate organizational concerns, such as firm efficiency, stockholders’ happiness, and making profits by any means. High scorers believe ethics are important even when focusing on achieving short-term objectives.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report questionnaire / Academic Scale

Format: 13 items measured on a 9-point disagree-agree Likert scale (1 = Disagree, 9 = Agree). Scoring involves reverse-scoring specific items (Items 2 and 4 of Factor 1).

Language Available: English (Original), adapted versions available internationally (e.g., Spanish perspective studied by Vitell, Ramos, and Nishihara, 2010).

Population Group: Business Students and Professionals.

Age Group: Adults (Senior and Master’s level students).

Population Details: The initial sample consisted of 153 students enrolled in senior and master’s level evening classes across three distinct U.S. business schools (one from the Midwest, one from the mid-Atlantic region, and one from the South).

Test Methodology: Data collection utilized self-administered questionnaires.

Keywords

PRESOR, Business Management, Corporate Social Responsibility, Likert Scale, Predictive Validity, Cronbach’s Alpha, Organizational Effectiveness, Ethical Ideologies.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A (Not provided in original source)

Affiliation Email addresses: N/A (Not provided in original source)

Correspondence Address: N/A (Contact through the Journal of Business Ethics, 1996 publication)

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Test Year: 1996

Permissions and Fee: Information on specific commercial licensing fees is not provided in the original scale development article. Researchers typically require permission from the copyright holder (often the publisher, Springer, for the Journal of Business Ethics) for large-scale or commercial use. The scale is widely cited in academic literature for research purposes.

Reference’s

The development of the Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility Scale (PRESOR) is detailed in:

• Singhapakdi, A., Vitell, S. J., & Kraft, K. L. (1996). The perceived role of ethics and social responsibility: A scale development. Journal of Business Ethics, 15(11), 1131–1140.

Related conceptual and validation references include:

• Forsyth, D. R. (1980). A taxonomy of ethical ideologies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 175–184.
• Hunt, S. D., Kiecker, P. L., & Chonko, L. B. (1990). Social responsibility and personal success: A research note. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 18, 239–244.
• Singhapakdi, A., Vitell, S. J., & Franke, G. R. (2001). How important are ethics and social responsibility? A multinational study of marketing professionals. European Journal of Marketing, 35(1/2), 133–152.
• Vitell, S. J., Ramos, E., & Nishihara, C. M. (2010). The role of ethics and social responsibility in organizational success: A Spanish perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 91(4), 467–483.

Items of the Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility Scale

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

Factor 1: Social Responsibility and Profitability

1. Social responsibility and profitability can be compatible.
2. To remain competitive in a global environment, business firms will have to disregard ethics and social responsibility.*
3. Good Ethics is often good business.
4. If survival of business enterprise is at stake, then ethics and social responsibility must be ignored.*

Factor 2: Long-Term Gains

1. Being ethical and socially responsible is the most important thing a firm can do.
2. A firm’s first priority should be employee morale.
3. The overall effectiveness of a business can be determined to a great extent by the degree to which it is ethical and socially responsible.
4. The ethics and social responsibility of a firm are essential to its long-term profitability.
5. Business has a social responsibility beyond making a profit.
6. Business ethics and social responsibility are critical to the survival of a business enterprise.

Factor 3: Short-Term Gains

1. If the stockholders are unhappy, nothing else matters.
2. The most important concern for a firm is making a profit, even if it means bending or breaking the rules.
3. Efficiency is much more important to a firm than whether or not the firm is seen as ethical or socially responsible.

Scoring: The items are rated on a 9-point disagree-agree scale, where Disagree = 1 and Agree = 9. Items marked with an asterisk (*) are reverse scored items.