The Perceived Organizational Ethical Climate in Hashemite University
- PDF / 162,080 Bytes
- 7 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 74 Downloads / 187 Views
The Perceived Organizational Ethical Climate in Hashemite University Aieman Ahmad AL-Omari
Published online: 22 December 2012 Ó De La Salle University 2012
Abstract This study aimed to determine what types of ethical climates are perceived by 256 faculty members who worked in Hashemite University-Jordan, using the Ethical Climate Questionnaire. The results revealed that perceived organizational ethical climate in order were egoistic (M = 4.29, SD = .48), utilitarian (M = 3.45, SD = .51), and deontological (M = 3.04, SD = .53). There were no significant differences among faculty members regarding their gender and academic rank. The researcher recommended that future research should be conducted on the types of ethical climates in different universities and different variables. Keywords Organizational ethical climate Jordanian Universities Hashemite University Faculty members
Introduction Throughout the past decade, the increasing lack of ethical behavior in the workplace has manifested itself as creation of challenging ethical climates, stimulating the research on ethics in organizations. The literature addressing ethical behavior in organizations has varied in approaches ranging from the establishment of ethical codes (Marnburg 2000; Moore 2006; Trevino and Weaver 2003) to creating teachable lessons on workplace ethics (Falkenberg and Woiceshyn 2008; Jurkiewicz et al. 2004; Shaw 2008; Trevino and Nelson 2007).
A. A. AL-Omari (&) Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan e-mail: [email protected]
Ethical climates are best understood as a group of prescriptive climates reflecting the organizational procedures, policies, and practices which lead to moral consequences (Victor and Cullen 1988). Universities are not exempt from ethical dilemmas, either. According to Kelley and Chang (2007), universities that have not experienced major ethical scandals tend to neglect the need for an established ethical culture and the need for promoting ethical initiatives. The ethical climates of non-profit organizations including colleges and universities are being scrutinized for how they are addressing ethical dilemmas, such as questionable accounting practices with public resources (Campbell 1995), as well as selection and retention of university presidents (Grunewald 2008). Felicio and Pieniadz (1999) found that there is a lack of systematic forums and frameworks for attempting to resolve ethical dilemmas in higher education. One of the few approaches to addressing ethical dilemmas in organizations is the use of codes of ethics. Despite established codes of ethics, the need for enforcing policies on ethical decision making is often overlooked until something undesirable happens. Marnburg (2000) tested the differences in ethical attitudes among employees in companies with and without a code of ethics. The study found that there is no significant difference, exhibiting that members of many organizations that have ethical codes still exhibit unethical behaviors. In terms of the higher education institution, Moore (2006) proposed
Data Loading...
