The Contract of Employment - Ethical Dimensions

A review of the literature indicates that faculty, students, and employers recognize the importance of professional behaviors for a successful career. These professional behaviors were defined by business school faculty to include honesty and ethical decision making, regular attendance and punctuality, professional dress and appearance, participation in professional organizations, and appropriate behavior during meetings. This paper presents the results of a survey administered to managers, faculty, and students about how business school professors can teach these professional behaviors. A hypothesis was tested that managers, professors, and students differ in their perceptions about what is appropriate professional behavior. Using a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree to respond to critical incidents, one-way ANOVA indicated no group differences for items about cheating, plagiarism, and helping students to work projects on schedule. Group differences were found for ethics items (raising course grade for the purpose of tuition reimbursement, stopping excessive use of school printers, simplifying course work to accommodate weaker students), time management items (making accommodations for students unable to regularly attend class, refusing to admit late students), appearance items (requiring students to dress in suits for major presentations, counseling a student with facial piercing), and for items about required activities inside and outside of the classroom. Allen Hall received his Ph.D. in education from the University of Iowa. Currently he is an associate professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) Institute of Technology. His research projects center around surveys designed to measure changes in ethical awareness. His teaching area is Business & Society. He currently studies management issues in non-profit organizations. Lisa Berardino received her Ph.D. in management from Virginia Tech. Currently she is an associate professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) Institute of Technology and coordinator for the Master of Business Administration program. Her publications focus on identifying, measuring and building the critical skills that business students need in today’s workplace. Her teaching area is human resource management and compensation. Her current research projects center on how to build the competency of professional behavior and how to teach ethics.