Ethics & Codes of Conduct Nature and Purpose of Research

Ethics

As stated by Fernando (2009) ethics attempts to figure out the nature of morality and to identify and differentiate from what is right and wrong. Furthermore it’s said that ethics is a “is a branch of axiology which together with metaphysics, logic and epistemology constitutes philosophy.”

Business ethics

As stated by Investopedia (2014) business ethics is the study of business practices regarding controversial issues, such as cooperate governance, insider trading, bribery, discrimination, corporate social responsibility and fiduciary responsibilities.”

Business ethics are often governed by law, while some businesses provide a basic framework to be followed to gain the general acceptance of the public.

Business ethics are implemented to ensure a certain level of trust among consumers and various forms of market participants.

Task

The tasks given to student were to list down bcs.com and another businesses code of conduct.

By looking into bcs.com the following code of conducts were extracted.

(BCS, 2014)

the second organization was chosen to be Riverside county regional medical centre (RCRMC)

At the next lecture students were told to provide the work completed and points were noted down on the board, then the lecturer additionally gave out some code of conducts that should be considered. Those are as follows.

• Integrity
• Privacy
• Reputation
• Responsibility
• Monitoring of Use (system )
• Organizational culture - Behavior & Honesty
• Use of Internet - Job & Personal
• Public Interest
• Competencies
• Loyalty
• Interaction with customers
• Good Practices

On completion of the topic ethics and code of conduct the students were briefed about research.

According to Kumar (2008)research is defined as an intensive and purposeful method of searching for information and understanding of social and physical phenomena. Furthermore it can be stated that research is a scientific activity and systematic search for information on a particular subject.

The students were taught about two forms of reasoning.

1. Inductive
2. Deductive

Inductive reasoning

• Inductive reasoning is a research technique used by taking a specific and then generalizing it, generalization is based on a limited number of observations.
• Eg:- today tom left for school at 8 am, and arrived at 8.30 am therefore tom would reach school at 8.30 am everyday if he left at 8 am.
• This form of reasoning is commonly used in science but not entirely accurate when considering the general principle is correct. There may be other factors that affect this type of reasoning like traffic, weather condition etc. so the outcome cannot be considered to be accurate all the time.
• Also known as “bottoms up” approach

Deductive reasoning

• Deductive reasoning takes place when a researcher works from more general to the specific, researcher starts with a broader spectrum and concludes to a specific.
• Eg:- Every day I make tea at 8 am. Every day the time taken to make tea is 10 minutes, therefore in conclusion in can be stated that if I make tea at 8 am today I can complete the task in 10 minutes.
• This type of research solely depends on the initial information to be correct, a delay may occur if one of the products used to make tea isn’t available.
• There will always be a possibility that the initial hypothesis to be proved wrong therefore it cannot be considered to be completely accurate or proved.

Inductive and deductive reasoning don’t always provide solid conclusions.

Above Information extracted from Berg & Latin (2008)

5 scientific methods that were mentioned by the lecturer

• Identifying the problem
• Formulating a hypothesis
• Developing a research plan
• Collecting & analyzing data
• Interpreting results & forming conclusions.

In the next lecture students were given a self-assessment on are you ethically challenged?

The results are posted as below.

The author falls under the category of “If B’s appear most on your list”

Lessons learned

• What is ethics and business ethics?
• Why ethics is important?
• Study on two businesses code of conduct
• understanding the importance of code of conduct
• Understanding of inductive and deductive reasoning
• How ethical the author is by looking at the results obtained in the self-assessment test