Moral choice in an agency framework and related motivational typologies as impacted by personal and contextual factors for financial institutions in China.

In this study an empirical investigation is conducted of the factors affecting moral choice, a necessary antecedent to moral behaviour (or action). The theoretical framework has drawn upon Rest's (1983, 1986) model of moral behaviour, with particular interest in the components motivation and moral judgment. The theoretical framework also integrates agency theory, with its emphasis on the individual as a psychological egoist, as a perspective from which to test hypotheses about determinants of moral choice and the motivational typologies arising from moral choice. Such hypothesis testing is undertaken in the setting of the banking and financial services industry in the People's Republic of China.The development and empirical testing of a set of motivational typologies is a major focus of this study. Such a set of typologies effectively replaces the singular concept of the agent as a self-serving individual. It enables the identification of other realist moral predispositions that may strongly influence the choices business operatives make. These predispositions range from altruism to thinly disguised self-interest. An individual's predisposition to be altruistic or to display strongly disguised self-interest has long been recognized in the ethics literature, but these notions have received little attention in agency theory testing. In addition, an attempt was made to incorporate human judgment theory, including Simon's (1992) concept of "bounded rationality", as a basis for decision making as part of the proposed model.This research study has been conducted in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone of the People's Republic of China during the period 1999 to 2001 and has involved a sample of 400 business operatives employed within national state-owned banks, regional commercial banks, insurance companies and securities companies. Use has been made of a modified ++