The Relationships Among Love of Money, Machiavellianism and Unethical Behavior

Işıl Mendeş Pekdemir, Aygül Turan

Abstract


An emerging stream of work on money can be found in the management and organizational behavior literature; however, individuals’ attitude toward money (whether loving or hating it) is a relatively new concept to wait to be explored by scholars. Generally, growing body of literature has to researches investigating the positive side of money. Nevertheless, in this study we aim to explain not only positive, but also negative side of money differentiating individuals very much and very little fond of money and investigate the relationship between love of money, machiavellian personality and unethical behavior of individuals. Focusing individuals’ passion for money or wealth, we also purpose to illuminate the issue whether individual groups being very much and very little fond of money represent different level of machiavellian personality and unethical behavior. In addition, we investigate how differentiates unethical behavior in terms of individual’s machiavellianism level. Demographic variables are also within the scope of this research, so individuals’ attitudes toward money, machiavellian personality and unethical behavior are explained in terms of demographic characteristics. Therefore, we gathered data from 360 MBA students and conducted hierarchical regression as well as ordinal logistic regression analyses in order to verify our hypotheses. Results indicated that machiavellianism was partially mediated the relationship between love of money and unethical behavior. Implication showed that individuals being very much fond of money were 5,87 times likely to represent upper level machiavellian personality than individuals being very little fond of money. Furthermore, individuals being very much fond of money were 3,58 times likely to exhibit upper level unethical behavior than individuals being very little fond of money. Higher degree machiavellian individuals 2, 28 times likely to exhibit upper level unethical behavior than lower degree machiavellian individuals. Moreover, the evidence from the research represents that individuals not receiving ethics lesson were 2,05 times likely to exhibit upper level machiavellian personality than individuals receiving ethics lesson. Also, it can be comment males are 2,38 times likely to represent upper level unethical behavior than females.


Keywords


Love of money; Machiavellianism; Unethical behavior; Hierarchical regression; Ordinal logistic regression

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References


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