Hypothesis 2 that predicted a negative relationship ()0.08 coefficient) between personal financial benefit and ethical orientation. Practically speaking, this result suggests that the individual who tends to be more idealistic will,
in the presence of an opportunity to personally benefit from a business decision, tend to move toward
a more strongly idealistic position. That is, the idealistic person seems to sense the ethical dilemma inherent in the decision and adopt a stronger conviction to avoid this potential problem. Given the same set of circumstances, the individual who tends to be more relativistic will apparently tend to favor the positive consequences (personal benefit)
that are possible, which tends to strengthen their relativistic position. These results are generally in line with
the findings that Forsyth (1980) reports, and these results are intuitively appealing based on prior research
(e.g., Shaub et al., 1993, Douglas and Wier, 2000), where individuals, when confronted with other business dilemmas, tended to reinforce their ethical orientation.