Perceptions of Ethical Misconduct Scale (PEMS)

1. Abstract

The Perceptions of Ethical Misconduct Scale (PEMS) is an empirically derived, standardized psychometric instrument designed to evaluate how individuals cognitively perceive, evaluate, and categorize workplace behaviors across an ethical-to-unethical continuum. Developed by Andrea C. Mendez-Meggison, Alexander T. Jackson, and Michael B. Hein (2025), the scale emerged from an initial pool of 60 items based on workplace behavioral categorizations established by the Ethics and Compliance Initiative (ECI). Psychometric refinement, utilizing exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic procedures across multiple diverse cohorts—including undergraduate samples from Midwestern and Southeastern public universities and working adult populations recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk)—yielded a parsimonious, unidimensional 16-item measurement model.

The PEMS captures an individual’s normative moral threshold regarding prevalent organizational transgressions, including interpersonal mistreatment, abuse of company resources, deceitful customer-facing behaviors, substance use prior to or during work hours, and conflicts of interest. Respondents evaluate each behavior using a 7-point Likert response format ranging from 1 (Very unethical) to 7 (Very ethical). Across validation samples, the PEMS demonstrated broad internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients spanning from .63 to .97 across distinct sub-cohorts. Construct, criterion-related, and concurrent validity were corroborated through statistically significant associations with the Dirty Dozen measure of the Dark Triad (Jonason & Webster, 2010) and workplace counterproductive work behaviors measured via the Interpersonal and Organizational Deviance Scale (Bennett & Robinson, 2000). Furthermore, structural equation modeling demonstrated that perceptual evaluations captured by the PEMS mediate the relationship between subclinical psychopathy and self-reported organizational deviance, establishing the scale as a vital diagnostic and empirical tool for industrial-organizational psychologists, business ethicists, and human resource professionals.

2. Keywords

Perceptions of Ethical Misconduct Scale, PEMS, Business Ethics, Counterproductive Work Behaviors, Organizational Deviance, Moral Cognition, Dark Triad, Workplace Ethics, Psychometrics, Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Ethical Climate

3. Authors

The Perceptions of Ethical Misconduct Scale was conceptualized, operationalized, and psychometrically validated by researchers affiliated with Middle Tennessee State University:

• Andrea C. Mendez-Meggison, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology Program, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, United States. (Correspondence: 45 Powder Mill Road, Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776; Email: [email protected]).
• Alexander T. Jackson, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology Program, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, United States.
• Michael B. Hein, Ph.D. — Professor of Psychology, Director of the Center for Organizational and Human Resource Effectiveness (COHRE), Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, United States.

4. Purpose

The overarching purpose of the Perceptions of Ethical Misconduct Scale (PEMS) is to provide a standardized, psychometrically validated methodology for quantifying how employees, supervisors, and organizational stakeholders cognitively interpret ambiguous and explicitly transgressive occupational behaviors. Historically, organizational assessments of workplace ethics have focused primarily on two disparate domains: macro-level assessments of corporate ethical climate (e.g., Victor & Cullen’s Ethical Climate Questionnaire) or self-reported retrospective engagement in explicit malfeasance, such as counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs). However, these approaches overlook a critical intermediate cognitive mechanism: individual variation in the moral categorization of behavior. Two employees exposed to an identical act—such as padding an expense account, accepting a vendor’s gift, or embellishing sales claims—may conceptualize the act across vastly different points on the moral spectrum.

The PEMS addresses this critical empirical gap by assessing individual moral appraisals directly. By asking respondents to rate specific, actionable work behaviors on an ethical-to-unethical continuum, the instrument measures individual ethical tolerance and cognitive moral boundaries rather than relying solely on self-reports of rule-breaking. In applied organizational settings, the PEMS serves several vital functions:

• Diagnostic Climate Audits: Organizations can deploy the PEMS anonymously to benchmark normative ethical boundaries across different departments, managerial tiers, and geographic regions. Wide discrepancies between management and front-line workers in how they evaluate behaviors like “taking items from work” or “lying on a timesheet” can reveal underlying vulnerabilities in corporate governance and ethical culture.
• Evaluation of Compliance and Ethics Training: Rather than merely evaluating knowledge retention through multiple-choice compliance tests, training specialists can utilize the PEMS in pre-test/post-test designs to evaluate shifts in employees’ cognitive appraisals of borderline ethical conduct (e.g., identifying whether training successfully shifted appraisals of “offering gifts to persuade clients” toward the unethical end of the continuum).
• Risk Management and Internal Investigations: The scale enables compliance officers to detect systemic moral disengagement before minor normative drift escalates into institutional malfeasance, regulatory fines, or criminal fraud.
• Academic and Behavioral Research: In organizational psychology, management science, and applied ethics, the PEMS provides researchers with a clean, unidimensional mediator variable capable of elucidating the cognitive path connecting dispositional traits (e.g., the Dark Triad, moral identity, integrity) to observed workplace deviance, whistleblowing, and organizational citizenship behaviors.

5. Psychological Construct

The construct measured by the PEMS is perceived ethical misconduct in the workplace. This construct reflects an individual’s evaluative judgment regarding whether an occupational action breaches normative ethical boundaries, professional standards, social contracts, or fiduciary obligations. Unlike constructs that assess ethical intention (“Would you do this?”) or ethical identity (“I see myself as an ethical person”), the PEMS assesses evaluative moral judgment—the cognitive appraisal stage that precedes behavioral intention within classical decision-making frameworks.

Although the validated instrument functions psychometrically as a robust unidimensional construct, the behavioral domain captured by the 16 core items spans several distinct sub-domains of organizational life:

Interpersonal Deviance and Relational Transgressions

This domain involves interpersonal interactions characterized by a lack of respect, organizational justice, or basic dignity. Behaviors such as “Insulting a supervisor” and “Making jokes about age at work” tap into an employee’s moral threshold concerning hostile work environments, ageism, and insubordination. An individual who rates making derogatory jokes about older workers as “neither ethical nor unethical” exhibits a diminished sensitivity to psychological safety and workplace harassment norms.

Deceptive Commercial and Customer-Facing Practices

Deception targeted toward clients, consumers, and external stakeholders constitutes a substantial component of the PEMS construct. Items such as “Lying to customers to make a sale,” “Stretching the truth with customers,” and “Knowingly providing bad service to customers” capture an individual’s evaluation of customer exploitation. Individuals scoring high in ethical sensitivity perceive these actions as unequivocally transgressive, whereas individuals characterized by utilitarian opportunism or competitive pressure may rationalize them as normative commercial strategy.

Information Privacy and Confidentiality Violations

With data privacy becoming a preeminent legal and corporate issue, the PEMS directly operationalizes breaches of confidentiality via items like “Telling people about customers’ personal information” and “Discussing customers’ personal information with friends.” These items assess the boundary between professional discretion and unauthorized disclosure, measuring whether employees perceive informal disclosures of sensitive consumer records as severe breaches of professional trust.

Organizational Property and Resource Abuse

This dimension encompasses direct harms against the organization’s financial and physical assets. Items include “Taking items from work,” “Lying on a timesheet,” and “Lying to get a benefit offered by my company.” These items evaluate an individual’s moral appraisal of petty theft, time theft, and entitlement fraud. Because many workers engage in rationalizations regarding large corporations (“The company will not miss this pen/hour”), variance in these items reveals the degree to which an employee respects organizational property rights.

Impaired Readiness and Substance Misuse

The items “Having a beer at work” and “Smoking marijuana before work” evaluate employee perceptions of fitness-for-duty. Substance consumption immediately preceding or during occupational duties presents serious safety, liability, and productivity risks. The PEMS gauges whether individuals evaluate non-performance-enhancing chemical use as a personal prerogative or an ethical failure toward coworkers and employers.

Fiduciary Integrity, Bribery, and Conflicts of Interest

The final facet of the construct targets commercial bribery, improper inducements, and conflicts of interest through items such as “Accepting gifts from clients,” “Offering gifts to persuade suppliers,” “Offering gifts to persuade clients,” and “Having conflicts of interest at work.” These behaviors represent classic ethical dilemmas wherein personal or departmental incentives clash with fair market competition and objective fiduciary duties.

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the PEMS is grounded in several foundational psychological frameworks of morality, decision-making, and organizational deviance.

Rest’s Four-Component Model of Moral Functioning

The PEMS is deeply rooted in the moral psychology framework established by James Rest (1986). Rest posited that moral behavior requires four distinct internal psychological processes: (1) Moral Sensitivity (recognizing that a moral issue exists), (2) Moral Judgment (evaluating which actions are morally justifiable), (3) Moral Motivation (prioritizing moral values over competing personal or institutional goals), and (4) Moral Character (possessing the persistence and courage to act). The PEMS operationalizes Component 2 (Moral Judgment) while acting as a diagnostic proxy for Component 1 (Moral Sensitivity). By demanding an evaluative appraisal along an ethical continuum, the PEMS isolates how individuals judge actions before individual motivational pressures or situational constraints dictate action.

Bandura’s Theory of Moral Disengagement

The theoretical necessity for an instrument like the PEMS is clarified by Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory of Moral Disengagement (1999). Bandura observed that individuals commonly engage in cognitive restructuring to perform self-serving, harmful actions without experiencing self-censure. Mechanisms such as moral justification, euphemistic labeling, advantageous comparison, and diffusion of responsibility allow individuals to re-frame unethical acts as acceptable. When an employee evaluates “stretching the truth with customers” as “slightly ethical” or “neither ethical nor unethical,” they are exhibiting the cognitive product of moral disengagement. The PEMS provides an objective quantitative index of this moral reinterpretation.

Jones’ Issue-Contingent Model of Ethical Decision Making

Thomas M. Jones (1991) synthesized organizational ethical literature by positing that moral decision-making is heavily dependent on moral intensity—the intrinsic characteristics of the moral issue itself. Moral intensity comprises six dimensions: magnitude of consequences, social consensus, probability of effect, temporal immediacy, proximity, and concentration of effect. The initial 60-item pool and the refined 16-item PEMS utilize behaviors that vary across these dimensions of intensity. For instance, behaviors lacking overwhelming social consensus (e.g., accepting vendor gifts, consuming alcohol during a workday lunch) yield the widest variance in employee perceptions, reflecting the ongoing shifts in organizational norms and social consensus.

The Mediating Role in Personality-Deviance Frameworks

Mendez-Meggison et al. (2025) framed the PEMS as an indispensable cognitive mediator within personality-deviance models. For decades, personality researchers have observed robust correlations between dark personalities (Machiavellianism, subclinical narcissism, subclinical psychopathy) and workplace deviance. However, the exact cognitive bridge linking personality traits to overt actions remained an area of inquiry. The PEMS operationalizes this missing bridge: individuals high in dark personality traits view unethical behaviors through a lenient cognitive lens, rating illicit behaviors as less unethical (or even justifiable). This perceptual distortion, in turn, diminishes the psychological barrier to enacting counterproductive work behaviors.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Perceptions of Ethical Misconduct Scale has been established through multi-sample empirical testing, demonstrating strong construct, concurrent, and criterion-related validity.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Initial construct validation involved developing an exhaustive pool of 60 items based on empirical survey findings from the 2014 Ethics and Compliance Initiative (ECI) National Business Ethics Survey, which cataloged the 28 most frequently observed workplace ethical violations across U.S. commercial sectors. Mendez-Meggison et al. (2025) administered this pool across diverse cohorts, including undergraduate students from a large Southeastern university, students from a large Midwestern university, and a working adult cohort recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk).

Subsequent exploratory factor analysis (EFA) isolated an optimal 16-item subset loading onto a single primary factor that accounted for 57% of the total variance. Subsequent confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) verified the single-factor structure, establishing structural construct validity across heterogeneous employment sectors.

Criterion-Related and Concurrent Validity

Concurrent criterion validity was rigorously evaluated by correlating PEMS scores with established instruments measuring dark personality traits and actual counterproductive behavior:

• The Dirty Dozen Scale: PEMS demonstrated significant positive correlations with the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen scale (Jonason & Webster, 2010). Specifically, individuals who scored higher on Machiavellianism, subclinical psychopathy, and narcissism systematically evaluated the 16 transgressive workplace behaviors as significantly less unethical (or more ethical) than their peers.
• Workplace Deviance (IODS): Concurrent validity was further established via statistically significant positive associations with self-reported workplace deviance, as measured by Bennett and Robinson’s (2000) Interpersonal and Organizational Deviance Scale (IODS). Participants who perceived organizational transgressions as more ethical (or less transgressive) reported significantly higher rates of engaging in organizational deviance (e.g., taking corporate property, withholding effort) and interpersonal deviance (e.g., cursing at coworkers, publicly embarrassing colleagues).

Mediation and Predictive Modeling

A central finding supporting the scale’s nomological network was its role in structural equation mediation models. Mendez-Meggison et al. (2025) demonstrated that the PEMS acts as a statistically significant mediator in the relationship between subclinical psychopathy and self-reported counterproductive work behaviors. Individuals characterized by psychopathic traits (callousness, low empathy, impulsivity) engage in workplace deviance partly because their perceptual baseline of ethical misconduct is fundamentally altered; they genuinely evaluate severe ethical transgressions as normative or benign, lowering the cognitive threshold for deviant action.

8. Reliability

The PEMS exhibits robust psychometric reliability across various administrative contexts and participant populations.

Internal Consistency Reliability

Across the development and validation datasets analyzed by Mendez-Meggison, Jackson, and Hein (2025), internal consistency was thoroughly examined using Cronbach’s coefficient alpha (α):

• Across all preliminary and final validation cohorts—spanning student samples from Midwestern and Southeastern universities and working adult MTurk samples—Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranged between α = .63 and α = .97.
• The refined 16-item version consistently exhibited high internal consistency in the primary working adult samples, with alpha values clustering toward the upper end of the observed range (α > .90), demonstrating that the items reliably measure the shared underlying construct of perceived misconduct.
• Item-total correlations across the final 16 items were uniform and positive, confirming that no single item introduced conceptual noise into the measurement model.

Measurement Stability

The scale’s administration to diverse demographic groups—ranging in age from 20 to 74 years old across different levels of professional experience—demonstrated consistent measurement performance across age brackets, supporting its application across early-career, mid-career, and senior management cohorts.

9. Factor Analysis

The psychometric reduction from the initial 60-item pool to the finalized 16-item measurement tool was guided by iterative exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

The initial 60 items were subjected to exploratory factor analysis using principal axis factoring with oblique rotation to examine potential multidimensionality across behavioral categories (e.g., theft vs. interpersonal abuse vs. fraud). However, the scree plot, eigenvalue analysis (eigenvalues > 1.0), and variance extraction revealed a clear, dominant single-factor solution. The extracted primary factor explained 57% of the total variance, meeting the empirical threshold for essential unidimensionality in psychometric scale construction. Items exhibiting low factor loadings (< .40), ambiguous cross-loadings, or severe floor/ceiling effects (behaviors rated universally as 1 by virtually all respondents, such as extreme physical violence or explicit illegal acts) were systematically pruned, yielding the finalized 16-item set.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

The 16-item unidimensional structure was subsequently evaluated via confirmatory factor analysis on an independent validation sample of working adults. The single-factor CFA model yielded the following fit indices:

• Chi-Square Test: χ²(100) = 699.07, p < .001. While the chi-square was statistically significant—a standard occurrence in large sample sizes due to power sensitivity—it was supplemented with standard descriptive fit indices.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): The CFI was .91, surpassing the widely accepted threshold of .90 for acceptable structural model fit in applied psychological research.
• Goodness-of-Fit Index (GFI): The GFI was .86, reflecting moderate-to-good fit given the broad substantive breadth of organizational behaviors included in the item pool.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): The RMSEA was .11. While slightly above the conservative .08 cutoff, this value is typical for diverse behavioral measures spanning distinct situational contexts (e.g., customer interactions vs. substance use vs. supervisory conflict) that are modeled onto a parsimonious single-factor architecture.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Type: Original psychometric rating scale; self-report cognitive-perceptual assessment.
• Instrument Type: 7-point Likert-type rating scale.
• Format: Electronic or paper-and-pencil questionnaire. Typically administered via online survey software (e.g., Qualtrics, REDCap).
• Number of Items: 16 items in the finalized scale (derived from an initial 60-item pool).
• Response Format: Responses are scored along a fully anchored 7-point bipolar continuum:
  • 1 = Very unethical
  • 2 = Moderately unethical
  • 3 = Slightly unethical
  • 4 = Neither ethical nor unethical
  • 5 = Slightly ethical
  • 6 = Moderately ethical
  • 7 = Very ethical
• Target Population: Human working adults (aged 18 and older), spanning young adulthood (18–29), thirties (30–39), middle age (40–64), and older adults (65+). Validated across U.S. workers aged 20 to 74.
• Administration Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes for the finalized 16-item scale.
• Scoring Procedures:
  • Raw Mean Scoring: Items are scored from 1 to 7. A composite score is calculated by computing the unweighted mean across all 16 items (or the sum, ranging from 16 to 112).
  • Score Interpretation: Lower mean scores (approaching 1.0) reflect high ethical sensitivity and strict moral standards, where transgressive workplace acts are unequivocally categorized as unethical. Higher mean scores (approaching 7.0) indicate high ethical tolerance, moral disengagement, or cognitive permissiveness regarding workplace deviance.
  • Normative Benchmark: A score of 4.0 indicates moral neutrality or ambiguity regarding the evaluated behaviors.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Test Year: 2025 (Published online January 2024; print issue 2025).
• Commercial Status: Non-commercial instrument.
• Fee: Free for non-commercial academic research, educational instruction, and institutional scientific inquiry.
• Permissions and Licensing: The scale items and psychometric properties are published in the peer-reviewed journal Ethics & Behavior, published by Taylor & Francis. Academic researchers may utilize the 16-item scale freely provided proper citation is given to Mendez-Meggison, Jackson, and Hein (2025). For proprietary commercial use, corporate diagnostic monetization, or integration into commercial pre-employment testing software, interested parties must contact the publisher (Taylor & Francis) or the corresponding author: Dr. Andrea C. Mendez-Meggison ([email protected]).

12. References

Bandura, A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(3), 193–209. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0303_3

Bennett, R. J., & Robinson, S. L. (2000). Development of a measure of workplace deviance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(3), 349–360. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.85.3.349

Ethics and Compliance Initiative. (2014). National Business Ethics Survey of the U.S. workforce. Ethics and Compliance Initiative.

Jonason, P. K., & Webster, G. D. (2010). The Dirty Dozen: A concise measure of the Dark Triad. Psychological Assessment, 22(2), 420–432. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019265

Jones, T. M. (1991). Ethical decision making by individuals in organizations: An issue-contingent model. Academy of Management Review, 16(2), 366–395. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1991.4278958

Mendez-Meggison, A. C., Jackson, A. T., & Hein, M. B. (2025). Perceptions of Ethical Misconduct Scale development. Ethics & Behavior, 35(1), 13–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508422.2024.2306125

Rest, J. R. (1986). Moral development: Advances in research and theory. Praeger Publishers.

Victor, B., & Cullen, J. B. (1988). The organizational bases of ethical work climates. Administrative Science Quarterly, 33(1), 101–125. https://doi.org/10.2307/2392857

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)