The Korea Local Administration Review

There has been a great deal of research conducted into the question of gender differences in ethical judgment. Overall the research seems inconclusive, although what differences have been noted tend to show women as more ethical than men. In this article we analyzed the ethical judgment of Gu officials in Korea. It was found that women officials evinced significantly higher ethical judgment than their male counterparts. We also found that the organizational variables affected the ethical judgment more than the personal variables. Moreover, contrary to previous researches, this study found that ethical judgment of the supervisor rather than co-worker is an influencing variable, and that penalty rather than reward is an influencing variable on ethical judgment of Gu officials. However, since the results of this study were based on the small sample of Gu officials, future studies should use bigger samples representing local government officials in Korea.