Ethical Culture in Mexican Organizations: The Mediating Role of Moral Conscience

Abstract

Ethical culture in today's business environment represents a competitive advantage, and due to the growth of the retail sector in Mexican organizations,
it is important to study it academically. The objective was to empirically verify a mediating conceptual model: moral conscience between the exogenous variables (internal control, corporate governance, and psychosocial risk factors), and ethical culture. The population of leaders with teams of more than six workers was identified; a probabilistic sample estimate and selection of employees by convenience were used. The structural equation modeling software PLS-Smart was used for the analysis to verify the mediation. The model resulted in four empirically tested hypotheses, all of which were verified, including the mediation of moral conscience. The results fill knowledge gaps: 1) identification of the mediating role of moral conscience; 2) the variable of psychosocial risks; and 3) confirmation of the conceptual model, which, to our knowledge, had not been studied with this integration. The main contribution is that an ethical organization is not decreed; it is built using the variables included in the model. This theoreticalpractical integration makes these conclusions and implications a tool for academic research as well as for private companies and the public sector.