Kristin Wetherbee
AAC&U Core Commitments Grant Participant
UCF Ph.D. Student, Public Affairs
May 1, 2008

• Five dimensions of personal and social responsibility:
– Striving for excellence
– Cultivating personal and academic integrity
– Contributing to a larger community
– Taking seriously the perspectives of others
– Developing competence in ethical and moral reasoning
Core Commitments is an initiative of the Association of American Colleges and Universities
(AAC&U) and is funded by the John Templeton Foundation. The Core Commitments language and graphics should not be reproduced for purposes unrelated to this project.

• Faculty development
• UCF Ethics Bowl competition http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~stanlick/UCFEthBowlRegForm.doc
• College, departmental, and student participation on the Ethics Task Force
• IPL/StoryBox Research on ethical decision making http://www.iplonline.org/
• Academic Integrity Seminars

• Creed: Integrity, Scholarship, Community,
Creativity, Excellence http://www.sdes.ucf.edu/Creed/default.htm
• Golden Rule http://www.goldenrule.sdes.ucf.edu/
• Office of Student Conduct

American Society for Public Administration (ASPA)
I. Serve the Public Interest
II. Respect the Constitution and the Law
III. Demonstrate Personal Integrity
IV. Promote Ethical Organizations
V. Strive for Professional Excellence http://www.aspanet.org/scriptcontent/index_codeofet hics.cfm
Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.
— Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist (1879-1955) (Josephson Institute, 2008)

National Association of Schools of
Public Affairs and Administration

From dictionary.com
Ethics:
– a system of moral principles
– the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc.
Moral:
– of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong

• Parents
• Teachers
• Observation
• Education

• Virtue ethics - emphasis on virtues and character; motivations like charity and kindness (Aristotle, Hume)
• Deontology – emphasis on duties or rules
(Kant, Ross)
• Consequentialism – emphasis on consequences of actions
– Utilitarian - maximizes social well-being
(Bentham, Mill)

• Social Contract – one’s moral and political obligations are dependent upon an agreement with government to maintain social order
(Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau)
• Social Justice - rights that society members are owed by the government; should be distributed in ways that promote the most overall good for society rather than the most good for the most underprivileged (Rawls)
• Entitlement Theory - Equality due to access to the process; distribution will be unequal but not considered an inequality (Nozick)

• Personal relationships
• School outcomes
• Employer expectations
• Civil society
– Trust is the basis of social stability
– Education is the foundation for civic engagement
– Civil society is built upon civic participation
(Field, 2003; Lin, 2001; Moore, 1998; Shirley, 1997; Verba, et al., 1995)
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
Isaac Asimov, author and biochemist (1920-1992). (Josephson Institute)

Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.
— Charles-Louis de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu,
French jurist, philosopher (1689-1755). (Josephson Institute)
What are some differences between moral rules and laws?

Cheating Behavior in Higher Education
• Cheating behavior has remained fairly constant over the past decade
• Studies show 70% - 80% of students admit to cheating in college
• Incidents of plagiarism are on the rise
(McCabe & Pavela, 2005; McCabe & Treviño, 1993; McCabe, Treviño, &
Butterfield, 2001; Rettinger & Jordan, 2005; Thompson, 2006)

Public Administrator Ethical Issues
• Conflicts between personal beliefs and organizational values
– Social justice issues; responsibility of government
– Enforcing a policy you disagree with
– Loyalty to imperfect institutions

You coordinator for your state’s DOE in a new building
Legislature - found $200K to furnish your building
Vendor - 6 to 8 weeks for furniture; purchasing contract w/state so no bids
State policy - no purchases w/o a PO prior to placing the order
2 months - Governor and state reps coming
2 days left to make purchases before fiscal year-end. Funds not spent will be lost and next year’s budget can’t cover it.
Large purchases require budget office sign-off. You sent the form to the budget office 2 weeks ago but no one knows why it hasn’t been signed.
The salesman says, “We’ve done business before, sign the quote. We’ll start the order and enter the PO# later.”
Your supervisor is pressuring you to place the order but the PO won’t be created until signatures are received; she tells you to sign the quote.
What factors would you consider before taking action?

• Efficiency vs. equity
– Greatest good for society vs. distributive fairness
• Analytical integrity vs. responsibility to client vs. adherence to personal beliefs
– White House staff analyst vs. a regulatory commission analyst
(Weimer and Vining, 2005)

You are a policy analyst for your county’s parks service.
You have prepared an analysis regarding the placement of a new park in the county. You have calculated and weighted the costs and benefits of the project, such as, cost to buy land, level of use, community needs, etc.
You conclude that the best location for the park is in a high-crime, high-poverty, urban community with no parks. This idea is politically unpopular and your supervisor is going to use part of your analysis to justify building a second park an upper-class community.
What factors would you consider before taking action?

• Plagiarism
• Faking data to get the results you want
• Removing outliers without explaining why
• Sending the same paper to multiple journals without telling the editors
Adapted from http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/bioethics/whatis.cfm

Research
– Ask a professor or mentor for guidance
– Review IRB guidelines and training
Writing
– http://www.plagiarism.org/
– UCF’s University Writing Center http://www.uwc.ucf.edu/
– Buy a publication manual or style guide for the citation method used in your discipline
• APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian

•
Association of American Colleges and Universities. (2008). Core commitments: Educating students for personal and social responsibility . Retrieved January 28, 2008, from http://www.aacu.org/core_commitments/index.cfm
•
Crown, D. F., & Spiller, M. S. (1998). Learning from the literature on college cheating: A review of empirical research.
Journal of Business Ethics , 17, 683-700.
• Field, J. (2003). Social capital. New York: Routledge.
• Josephson Institute. (2007). Quotations on management and business ethics . Retrieved January 29, 2008, from http://www.josephsoninstitute.org/business-ethics_quotations.html
• Lin, N. (2002). Social capital: A theory of social structure and action . New York: Cambridge University Press.
•
Mayer, J. & Seidel, R. (1998).Citizenship and the policy professional. In J. Bowman & D. Menzel (Eds.), Teaching ethics and values in public administration (p. 107). Albany: State University of New York Press.
• McCabe, D. L., & Pavela, G. (2005). Honor codes for a new generation. Inside Higher Education . Retrieved October
17, 2007, from http://www.insidehighered.com/views/new_honor_codes_for_a_new_generation
• McCabe, D., & Treviño, L. (1993). Academic dishonesty: Honor codes and other contextual influences. Journal of
Higher Education, 64, 522
–538.
• McCabe, D. L., Treviño, L. K., & Butterfield, K. D. (2001). Cheating in academic institutions: A decade of research.
Ethics & Behavior, 11 (3), 219 –232 Moore, D. (1998). What makes these schools stand out ? (Designs for Change, April
1998). pp. 1-19, 81-107. Retrieved October 7, 2007 from http://www.designsforchange.org/pdfs/SOScomplete.pdf
• Resnik, D. B. (2007). What is ethics in research & why is it important? Retrieved January 30, 2008, from http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/bioethics/whatis.cfm
• Rettinger, D. A., & Jordan, A. E. (2005). The relations among religion, motivation, and college cheating: A natural experiment. Ethics & Behavior, 15 (2), 107
–129.
• Smith, K. J., Davy, J. A., Rosenberg, D. L. & Haight, G. T. (2002). A structural modeling investigation of the influence of demographic and attitudinal factors and in-class deterrents on cheating behavior among accounting majors. Journal of
Accounting Education , 20, 45-65.
• Shirley, D. (1997). Community organizing for urban school reform. Austin: University of Texas Press. Chapter 8
(“Texas”), 200-220.
• Swift, C. O., & Nonis, S. (1998). When no one is watching: Cheating behaviors on projects and assignments. Marketing
Education Review, 8, 27-36.
• Thompson, C. C. (2006). Unintended lessons: Plagiarism and the university. Teachers College Record , 108(12), 2439-
2449.
• Verba, S. Schlozman, K. L., & Brady, H. E. (1995). Conclusion: Voice and equality in democratic participation. Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics (pp. 509-533). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.