A Study on Moral Reasoning among Managers of the State-owned Companies in Algeria

The purpose of this study was to assess the general level of moral reasoning of a sample of the state-owned companies’ managers in Algeria. The study used descriptive analysis methods to interpret the data. The researcher applied convenience sampling technique to collect the relevant data. This study was conducted in the South-eastern province of Wargla. There were 66 participants; 64 males and two females (33% response rate). In collecting research data, the short form of the DIT-2, the defining issues test questionnaire was used. The short form of the DIT-2 in this study contains three scenarios: “Famine,” “Reporter,” and “Cancer.” DIT-2 questionnaires have been scored by the center for ethical development, University of Alabama. The findings showed that the respondents operated predominantly at Maintaining Norms stage of moral reasoning. These results implied that Maintaining Norms is the most common and dominant pattern of moral thinking among managers of the Algerian state-owned companies. The results of this study also showed that managers do not have a high score of moral reasoning as indicated by the poor N2 scores.