Ethical Culture of SMEs and Perceived Contract Enforcement in Ugandan Buyer-Supplier Contractual Arrangements

Abstract

The study examined the relationship between ethical culture, organizational memory, bargaining power of buyers/suppliers, subjective norms, attitudes and contract enforcement in the developing world context of Uganda. Using a proportional stratified random sampling approach, a sample of 1500 employees was drawn from SMEs in Uganda. Five-hundred and ninety-four (594) fully-filled questionnaires were returned, giving a response rate of 39.6 per cent. Ethical culture, organizational memory, bargaining power of buyers/suppliers, subjective norms and attitudes were found to significantly predict 51.2 per cent of the variance in contract enforcement behaviours in Ugandan SMEs. This finding has both policy and managerial implications which we present in the paper.

Keywords: Ethical culture, organizational memory, bargaining power of buyers/suppliers, subjective norms, attitudes, contract
enforcement, SMEs