The relationship between moral judgment and personal attributes such as age, gender and level of qualifications may be explained by using the stages of moral development theory proposed by Kohlberg (1973, 1981). The theory suggests that as individuals aged, conscience and ethical principles of the individuals will determine their moral decisions. This suggests that older people will be more ethical in deciding on questionable situations. In a study by Freeman and Giebink (1979) testing Kohlberg’s model, it was found that moral judgment was significantly associated with age, with older respondents giving more morally correct answers suggesting maturity of judgment as individuals become older. In addition the study also documented that fourteen-year-old girls showed higher moral judgments than their male peers. However, this finding did not hold true for other age categories where girls and boys did not show any significant difference in their moral judgments. The results imply that girls mature earlier than boys but after a certain age, their level of maturity converges. This finding on convergence of ethical judgments between female and male was also documented by Aldrich and Kage (2003). Rest (1979) linked an individual’s level of education to stages of moral development where those who are more educated are more likely to be at higher stages of moral development. Hence it may be expected that individuals with higher level of qualifications are more ethically inclined.
In addition to personal attributes, corporate ethical values may also have some influence on ethical decision making. As proposed by Hunt and Vitell’s (1986) model, environmental factors including organizational environment is one of the attributes contributing to ethical judgments. The model posits that organizational norms and ethical climate influence an individual’s evaluation process which in turn impacts his ethical judgments. Thus, individuals in organizations with high ethical values should be morally directed in making decisions.