a cognitive, emotional and behavioral assessment of colombian entrepreneurs attitudes toward corruption

This paper presents theories that describe the characteristics of entrepreneurs who established businesses in Colombia, to offer an approach to individual and business ethics, and corruption, the most common kind of crime in Colombia, a brief diagnosis by the Colombian National Directorate of Taxes and Customs (dian), and ethics in higher education. A questionnaire with a Likert scale was designed to measure attitudes toward corruption in the private sector. Following the model of White (2001) regarding the balance and proportion of items, the questionnaire represents cognitive, affective and behavioral components, operationalizing variables while crosschecking between categories that define the relationship between corruption and its emotional, behavioral, and cognitive components. The categories analyzed were marketing, production, administrative, legal, and environmental activities. It is possible to state that people with less formal education show positive attitudes towards corruption, and approval rates decrease as the formal education of entrepreneurs increases, because they increasingly reject corrupt acts and their consequences. It was found that i) 54 out of every 100 entrepreneurs with no formal education approve corrupt behavior, mainly related to marketing processes in their organizations; ii) 40 out of 100 business owners whose businesses have been operating between 0 and 3 months approve of corruption in production rocesses; iii) 30 out of 100 business owners with secondary educations do not differentiate between corrupt actions and ethical behaviors when implementing administrative models in their companies; and iv) 35 out of 100 business owners do not experience negative emotions when committing unlawful acts or violating business rules.