Unethical Attitudes Research Articles

Older people's experiences of their free will in nursing homes.

Older people in institutional care should be allowed to live a meaningful life in a home-like environment consistent with their own free will. Research on actualisation of older people's own free will in nursing home context is scarce. The purpose of this study was to describe older people's experiences of free will, its actualisation, promoters and barriers in nursing homes to improve the ethical quality of care. Fifteen cognitively intact older people over 65 years in four nursing homes in Southern Finland were interviewed. Giorgi's phenomenological method expanded by Perttula was used to analyse the data. Chief administrators of each nursing home gave permission to conduct the study. Informants' written informed consent was gained. Older people described free will as action consistent with their own mind, opportunity to determine own personal matters and holding on to their rights. Own free will was actualised in having control of bedtime, dressing, privacy and social life with relatives. Own free will was not actualised in receiving help when needed, having an impact on meals, hygiene, free movement, meaningful action and social life. Promoters included older people's attitudes, behaviour, health, physical functioning as well as nurses' ethical conduct. Barriers were nurses' unethical attitudes, institution rules, distracting behaviour of other residents, older people's attitudes, physical frailty and dependency. Promoting factors of the actualisation of own free will need to be encouraged. Barriers can be influenced by educating nursing staff in client-orientated approach and influencing attitudes of both nurses and older people. Results may benefit ethical education and promote the ethical quality of older people's care practice and management.

Laboratory animal: biological reagent or living being?

The duties of humans toward non-human animals and their rights in society have been debated for a long time. However, a discussion on the terminology used for the identification of laboratory animals is usually not considered, although the employment of inadequate terminology may generate disastrous consequences for the animals before, during, and after the experiment. This study intends to defend the use of appropriate terminology, call attention to an unethical attitude of certain professionals when dealing with experimental animals, and also propose operational mechanisms, which allow for those distortions to be corrected.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ACADEMIC FRAUDS WITH UNETHICAL ATTITUDE AND ACCOUNTING FRAUD

The attitude of being dishonest is not only done by the practitioner or an accountant, but it is also preceded by a fraud committed by students in formal education. This unethical behavior would arise when the accountants violate the professional code of ethics established by the Accountants Association in Indonesia (IAI). This study aims to analyze the relationships of attitudes toward academic dishonesty attitude toward unethical behavior and attitudes toward accounting fraud likelihood from public accountants’ perspective. Vignette used to collect data with the population of registered public accountants in IAPI. The sample covers 43 public accountants who have been participating in the Congress IAI XI in Jakarta, and public accountants in Surabaya. It was found out that there is significant correlation between attitudes with academic dishonesty and attitude with unethical behavior towards attitudes of accounting fraud.

A Factor Analysis and Reliability on Leadership Self-efficacy, Effective Leadership Behaviour and Managerial Job Performance

The recent financial crisis that hits the global market and cripple a lot businesses around the world is not without its causes. One of this causes is the role of the leadership or management in organisations. Recent business scandals that hit countries like American companies that were hit hard and other nations had been attributed to leaders or management greed, malpractices and unethical attitudes from the side of the leadership. This objectives of this study is aimed at examining the relshionship between the leadership self efficacy, effective leadership behaviour and managerial job performance.. Part of what is considered in this study is wether self discipline, perceived credibility, serve, challenge and involve LSE are related to task and contextual managerial performance with a mediating effect of effective leadership behaviour.

Peran Spiritualitas Keagamaan Bagi Akuntan dalam Lingkungan Organisasi

This paper tries to connect the values of religion, spirituality and work place of an accountant. One of the reasons why there is unethical attitude of an accountant is the disappearance of spirituality values. The disappearance of these values can be caused by work stress on either body or soul faced by an accountant. Spirituality Diversity Model has been proposed by Krishnakumar and Neck (2002) to replace spirituality values of religion so that spirituality concept become higher and holier than religion. Religion must be placed on spirituality values. Religion is the guidance for human to behave and act in the world. This model is named as Religion Values Model (RVM). The result of empirical research by Sulistiyo (2004) strengthens RVM that internal auditor spiritual values would improve integrity of profession and its organisation including capability to adapt and anticipate the transformation of organisation or company. In fast changing environment, accountant must have self identity. The modernisation and postmodernisation mind set must be responded critically and wisely. Not all that come from the West always gives positive effect. This self identity would strengthen existence of an accountant as better professionals. This self identity certainly could be found in religion values. Keywords: Accountant, Spirituality, Religion, RVM.

Журнал Развития Здоровья

The purpose of this study was to study the institutional environment of higher medical and medical colleges (HMC and MC), including such components as «The quality of the educational process»; «Administration of the educational process and safety culture»; «The quality of the scientific process»; «The quality of the clinical process»; «Anti-corruption culture and anti-corruption». Methods.The research was carried out on the basis of a survey of students, teachers and administrative and management personnel (AMP). In total, respondents from 73 HMC and MC took part in the survey, including 13 110 students, 825 teachers and 199 representatives of AMP. Results. An analysis of the qualitative characteristics of the persons who were accepted in the survey indicates a lack of nursing education and an insufficient level of academic achievement (confirmed by a scientific / academic degree) in the majority of AMP and teachers of the HMC and MC. At the same time, teachers with little pedagogical experience and AMP with no / short duration of pedagogical experience tend to overestimate all the studied questions. Analysis of the administration of the educational process and safety culture indicates that teachers and AMP give a much higher assessment of ensuring the rights of students and the level of friendliness of relations with students than the students themselves, which, in fact, indicates insufficient contact between teachers and AMP with students in terms of assessing their needs and requirements; The analysis of the quality of the scientific process indicates that the least accessible for the research work of students are the presence of electives in scientific areas, work in the laboratory, the opportunity to travel to scientific conferences in the Republic of Kazakhstan, to near and far abroad. All categories of respondents require building competence in working with scientific knowledge bases Scopus, Web of Science Nursing Reference Center Plus, CINAHL (EBSCO). An analysis of the quality of the clinical process indicates that, on average, only 2/3 of the respondents, students and teachers note satisfaction with the equipment of clinical sites, the provision of the necessary premises and resources from the clinical sites, access to medical equipment at clinical sites, and access to patients. AMP tends to give a higher assessment of the quality of the clinical process. An analysis of the level of anti-corruption culture indicates that the greatest risk of situations in which elements of corruption in college are most common occurs when entering college, when passing midterm exams (ratings), when passing final exams and tests. As the main reasons for corruption in college, the majority of respondents indicate the low level of teacher salaries, low interest in studying among students. The teaching staff and the AMP give a much higher assessment of satisfaction with the level of response of the college administration to complaints regarding the facts of corruption and unethical attitude than the students themselves. Сonclusions. The results of the study indicate the need to strengthen the selection of personnel for the AMP positions in colleges with the introduction of a mandatory requirement for the presence of at least 5 years of teaching experience, the presence of an academic degree. According to the experience of leading foreign universities and colleges, it is necessary to encourage the practice of combining teaching positions and positions of administrative and managerial personnel. It is necessary to introduce mandatory certification of college teachers, as well as mandatory certification of AMP, every 3-5 years according to clear KPI criteria that assess their work. The discrepancy in the assessments of certain categories of respondents indicates the need for regular feedback from students, conducting questionnaires by teaching staff, AMP and other categories of employees in order to study the institutional environment of MC and HMC and prompt response to problems voiced by students and employees.

Nigeria And Ethical Concerns In Information Technology

The focus of this study is to expose various ethical problems in Information Technology (IT). It is an in-depth desk research aimed at extending the frontiers of knowledge in Information Technology. Most end-users of IT in Nigeria are not aware of some ethical questions underlining the creation and application of IT devices. As a result, manufacturers, end-users and the populace, perpetrate unethical behaviours against or with the use of Information Technology. It was unraveled that unethical attitudes bedevil the Information Technology industry. Such ethical issues include computer criminals, environmental pollution, electromagnetic emissions, data security and privacy, intellectual property rights, among others. This paper concludes that the violation of ethical values in IT has resulted to health hazards and loss of property of end-users of IT devices in Nigeria. It recommends the provision of techniques, devices and human resources to forestall various unethical behavioural tendencies as they affect end-users, producers and merchandisers of Information Technology in Nigeria. Keywords: ethic; consumer; end-user; information technology JORIND Vol. 5 (2) 2007: pp. 8-8

Associations of unethical consumer behavior and social attitudes

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate young adult consumers' (i.e. university undergraduates') evaluations of consumer behavior scenarios as ethical or unethical in relation to the respondents' philosophies of human nature.Design/methodology/approachAn existing ethical decision making model in marketing was applied to consumer ethical decision‐making. Based upon the model, the marketer's solution to ethical dilemmas is influenced by factors such as attitudes. This study focused on a specific type of attitude (philosophies of human nature). Subjects completed a questionnaire that contained philosophies of human nature (PHN) items and three consumer behavior scenarios. Factor analysis was conducted on the PHN scale to assist in factoring items into subscales. One‐way analysis of variance was used to determine if a relationship existed between consumer ethical response scores and responses to the PHN scale.FindingsFor two of the PHN factors, the consumer ethical response scores differed significantly among the low, moderate, and high PHN groups. Subjects who were less believing that people behave dishonestly for personal gain had higher ethical response scores in all of the scenarios than subjects who were more believing. Subjects who were less believing that people will stand by their convictions had higher ethical response scores in the “returned garment after use” scenario than subjects who were more believing.Originality/valueThis study is one of a few that addresses variables related to how consumers make ethically related decisions and the results can be useful to employers in the apparel industry when screening job applicants.

Low-grade dysplasia in Barrett’s esophagus - an innocent bystander? Contra

According to recent guidelines, the diagnosis of low-grade intraepithelial neoplasia (formerly known as ”low-grade dysplasia”, abbreviated to ”LGD”) in Barrett’s esophagus requires a more frequent surveillance program, examining patients until the histology is negative for neoplasia or until a higher degree of neoplasia is detected [1] [2]. This is rather difficult to understand because the guidelines for managing this condition in the colon, duodenum, and stomach advise gastroenterologists to remove foci of low-grade intraepithelial neoplasia (i. e. adenomas) completely rather than to wait for the lesion to disappear or progress (which would be regarded as a rather lazy, or at least an unethical attitude with respect to such lesions in these sites).

Publication ethics: science at its best and always informative

Academic publishing is a scholarly achievement and a medium of making explicit, both credit and responsibility, for the intellectual contents of published articles [1]. The benefit of gaining valuable clinical information on patients from disseminating the findings in printed and electronic formats, indeed on an international level, as well as the positive influences of biomedical publishing on career promotion, advancement of medical knowledge, institutional prestige, and grantors sponsorship are all well recognized. Responsibility for the published work that is inseparable from those merits is, however, not widely accepted. Medicine is a profession based on trust, integrity, philanthropy, and altruism. This societal expectation of the profession is associated with an evolving public awareness of the core values of scientific inquiry such as critical analysis, evidence-based inference, hypothesis validation, inherent statistical bias, conscientious motives, and research autonomy. Members of the medical profession and the public, hence, generally agree that a culture of “zero tolerance” should permeate for academic dishonesty, particularly publication misconduct. Increasing examples of this misconduct have, nevertheless, been observed over the past decade, indicating that modern medicine’s key doctrines of scrutiny, trustworthiness, and accountability are being undermined by unethical practices and attitudes [2]. There is now a growing concern among the research community about this behavior and progressive appreciation of the need to urgently address publication misconduct including two consecutive editorials from this journal [3, 4]. The World Association of Medical Editors and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors have also recently issued important policy statements on good publication practice [1, 5]. There are various types of publication misconduct, but only the most commonly encountered problems and the appropriate preventive measures are presented in Table 1. The basic standards of publication ethics will be discussed in more details:

Viewpoint: The Trouble with Assessing Students??? Professionalism: Theoretical Insights from Sociocognitive Psychology

The academic literature on professionalism assessment in medical education is burgeoning, and its focus has primarily been on the assessment of professional behaviors. Consequently, the attitudinal elements of professionalism have largely been ignored in the literature. As a result, educators chiefly rely on professional behavior alone as the primary measure for professionalism without giving proper consideration to students' underlying attitudes. Using theoretical insights from sociocognitive psychology, this viewpoint article begins by discussing the relationship between attitudes and behaviors. It suggests that attitudes are poor predictors of behavior when external constraints, such as social pressure to behave in a particular way, are strong. It continues with a critical examination of the phenomenon of "faking it"--students faking professional behaviors to garner positive reactions from observers. This practice is contrasted with students who at times behave unprofessionally in response to social pressures or other contextual components, despite having professional attitudes. So, in using behavioral assessment alone, we may pass students with professional behaviors but unethical attitudes and fail students with unprofessional behaviors but ethical attitudes. Guided by a sociocognitive model of behavioral explanation, the article ends with some practical recommendations for coupling observation with conversation to assess students' professional behaviors and their attitudes more fairly.

The silent revolution of intensive ground water use: Pros and cons

In the 1970s, the word ‘‘hydroschizophrenia’’ was used to describe the attitude of decision makers, who played down the role of ground water relative to surface water resources. More than 30 years later, this situation has not changed. Take as an example the Ministerial Declaration signed by more than 100 ‘‘Water Ministers’’ at the Third World Water Forum (Kyoto, March 2003) in which ground water is not even mentioned. While ignorance or unethical attitudes on the part of governmental water agencies have sometimes resulted in the neglect of ground water resources, a spectacular increase in the use of ground water for irrigation has taken place in the past decades, mainly in arid and semiarid countries. This development has occurred through the personal initiative of millions of farmers in pursuit of the socioeconomic benefits ground water can trigger. In that sense, intensive ground water use has been a kind of ‘‘silent revolution.’’ The total direct cost of abstracting ground water for irrigation is, in most cases, only a small fraction of the economic value of the crops obtained. Furthermore, advances in hydrogeology and well-drilling techniques as well as the invention of the submersible pump have significantly contributed to reduced costs of ground water abstraction. Even if the price of ground water is usually higher than that of surface water (which is often heavily subsidized), many farmers still prefer ground water because it tends to be easier to obtain. Besides, ground water also provides a valuable backup resource when surface water cannot be used, e.g., due to drought. Another important benefit of ground water use is a positive effect on the social transition of many farming families. Low pumping costs, and mainly security against drought, have allowed poor farmers to progress into a middle-class status and enabled them to provide a better education for their children. Thus, after one generation, their children are trained as teachers and technicians, while those who continue as farmers have access to a better technology and grow cash crops that demand less water and result in a higher economic revenue. Uncontrolled abstraction has sometimes led to problems; the most important of which is usually degradation of ground water quality. However, this problem is usually related to changes in land use rather than to ground water withdrawals per se. Other associated problems are excessive drawdown of ground water levels, land subsidence, reduction of springflow and base flow, and the degradation of ground water–dependent ecosystems. Nevertheless, there are practically no documented cases where intensive ground water abstraction from medium or large aquifers has caused serious social or economic disturbances like those caused by soil waterlogging and salinization, or the serious social conflicts in relation to people displaced or ousted by the construction of large dams. Social progress due to ground water development has in turn strengthened the capacity of farmers to form powerful lobbies with political clout, although the lobbies may not be concerned with ground water sustainability but with the short-term benefits. For instance, in India, electric energy necessary for pumping is heavily subsidized. The immediate consequence is that the technical irrigation efficiency in the field is lower than in places like Spain, where the subsidies for irrigation energy are minimal. In Spain, farmers’ lobbies convinced the government that problems related to depleted aquifers need to be solved by importing surface water from other basins. Several demonstrations (over 300,000 participants) have taken place both for and against the transfer. In order to provide a solution to these problems and to bridge the gap between farmers and governmental agencies, the following suggestions, inspired by the Valencia Declaration (Valencia, Spain, December, 10–14, 2002; published in Selected Papers on Intensive Use of Groundwater, Sahuquillo et al., eds., 2004, Balkema Publishing Co., The 1 Netherlands, p. 399–400) are suggested:

Investigating UK Consumers' Unethical Attitudes and Behaviours

The UK annually spends ?450m on store security and crime prevention, which not only costs retailers, but also amounts to a hidden tax on those lawbinding consumers who bear higher retail prices. Little previous research has investigated how prevalent these misbehaviours are or the moral attitudes of consumers towards them. Despite the obvious implications for both buyers and sellers, most research has focused on the business ethics of the sellers or marketers. Using a hybrid of both qualitative and survey approaches (n = 240), this paper examines the structure and inter-relationship between consumers' ethical beliefs and aberrant behaviours. Many of the activities discovered were hidden frauds and the research developed an exploratory index of 50 unethical activities to assess the degree of UK consumers' aberrant behaviour. The most common were: 'taping a movie off the television', 'giving an unused car park ticket to a new user', 'receiving too much change and not saying anything', and 'lying about a child's age to get a price reduction'. Four main factors were found to have a significant influence in consumer's ethical decision making. These were: (1) the role played by the consumer; (2) the perceived illegality; (3) the perceived severity of consequence and a new factor, (4) the visibility of the behaviour. The paper argues that government, marketing practitioners and retailers should adopt pro-active rather than reactive measures to combat aberrant behaviour.