Ethical Work Climate and Ethical Attitudes of Procurement Officers: Empirical Evidence from Government Organizations in Uganda

Abstract

This paper aims at establishing the effect of ethical work climate onethical attitudes of procurement officers working in Ugandan publicentities. A cross-section research design was employed and primarydata were collected from 89 government organizations. A sample of198 procurement officers was drawn from the population of 393procurement officers. A total of 190 usable questionnaires werereturned, giving a 95 percent response rate.Findings from this study indicated a significant positive relationshipbetween ethical work climate and ethical attitudes. Being a crosssectional study by its nature, subject to common method variances, areplication of the study using a longitudinal approach is recommended.This should be supplemented with more interviews from a crosssection of procurement officers in these organizations to tap salientissues from respondents.Key words: Ethical work climate, Ethical attitudes, procurementofficers, Government organizations.