A recent study has examined and validated the psychometric properties of the Polish version of the Ethical Climate Questionnaire (ECQ), paving the way for enhanced assessment of ethical climates within Polish businesses.
Conducted by researchers Marcin Wnuk, Agnieszka Czerw, and Magdalena Żywiołek-Szeja, the study aimed to fill the gap left by limited tools assessing ethical organizational climates. The findings were published on March 14, 2025, and highlighted the need for reliable measures to assess the ethical dynamics within the work environment of Polish organizations.
Traditionally, the concept of ethical climate relates to employees' shared perceptions of what constitutes appropriate behavior within their organization, guiding their decisions and interactions. The study's introduction pointed out the surprisingly limited interest and research on ethical climates specific to Poland, noting only seven articles on the subject from 2013 to 2023. This presented a clear opportunity for developing and validating the ECQ to understand the psychological aspects of organizational ethics.
To achieve this, the researchers conducted two studies involving diverse samples from various Polish companies. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was employed to assess the structure and validity of the adapted ECQ. Through this analysis, the original framework of the ECQ was confirmed, demonstrating improved psychometric properties over the original English version. The results indicated good internal consistency, with Cronbach's alpha coefficients reported between 0.74 to 0.81. This enhanced reliability suggests the Polish ECQ could effectively serve as a dependable tool for studying ethical climates within local organizations.
The analysis revealed substantial insights about different types of ethical climates defined through the ECQ: law and code, caring, independence, rules, and instrumental climates. Notably, the five-factor model was successful at explaining approximately 70.98% of the variance related to the ethical climate. Of these dimensions, the law and code ethical climate alone accounted for 31.75%. This data reinforces the notion of legal adherence as foundational to organizational ethics.
Findings from the study underscored the practical importance of these ethical climate dimensions. Specifically, the caring, rules, and law and code climates revealed positive correlations with various beneficial outcomes, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment, whereas the instrumental climate was negatively correlated with such outcomes, leading to effects like workplace deviance and high turnover intentions.
The researchers also examined the demographic characteristics of study participants, which included 1,071 employees, predominantly women, whose average age was 28.64 years. They came from diverse professional backgrounds, including ordinary workers, independent specialists, managers, and employees from organizations of varying sizes.
The methods employed for this research involved rigorous measures to assure ethical compliance, including obtaining informed consent and ensuring confidentiality for participants. Ethical integrity was maintained throughout the research process as specified by the committee overseeing the study at SWPS University, emphasizing the importance of ethical standards even within the research itself.
Conclusively, the Polish version of the ECQ will significantly contribute to assessing and improving workplace ethics and employee well-being across Polish organizations. It offers valuable insights and measurable standards aiding businesses to promote positive ethical climates. According to the authors of the article, "The Polish version of the Ethical Climate Questionnaire is deemed a measure... for studying the ethical climate..." This adaptation has the potential to enrich future studies on workplace ethics and guide interventions aimed at enhancing organizational cultures.
This successful validation of the ECQ within Poland not only establishes a new benchmark for assessing ethical climates but also reinforces the importance of nurturing ethical standards across multifarious working environments.