Abstract

The landmark cases of Enron and WorldCom have been seen as a wake up call for businesses in Malaysia to augment their ethical practices and roots of good governance in today’s dynamic business environment. Business ethics has been perceived to be influenced by gender, age, academic exposure, ethnicity, culture and other demographic factors. This study examines the relationship between the perception on gender, age and academic exposure with business ethics and capitalism among graduate students in Malaysian universities. Although previous studies indicated that there is a significant relationship between gender, age and business exposure, however, the present study reveals that there is no significant relationship between these independent variables and business ethics respectively. The result also shows that business ethics is negatively related to capitalism. This finding indicates that current issues related to unethical practices impinge on students’ perception of business ethics and capitalism.

Key words: Graduate students, ethics, capitalism, education, business.