Ethical Judgments among Public Relations Officers in Higher Education Institutions

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Date
2003-06
Authors
El-Astal, Mohammed Abed Said
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Abstract
The study determines: how ethical/unethical certain hypothetical public relations practices are as perceived by public relations practitioners in higher education institutions (universities, colleges, institutes, schools) in the United States, India, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Israel, Palestine, and the United Arab Emirates; whether the institution type, practitioners' personal attributes, professional characteristics and responsibilities produce significant differences in their ethical judgments; and finally to determine the extent to which religion and the policy of the institution for which each practitioner serves influence his/her ethical judgments. The population consists of public relations officers in the institutions that have English web-sites only. A systematic random sample of 254 ( 1 0%) institutions was drawn from 2540 of the United States, while all English web-sited institutions of the other countries were surveyed. For this purpose, a three-part, closed and open-ended questionnaire was designed. The first part of the questionnaire was designed to gather data about the institutions and the public relations officers' personal attributes and professional. characteristics. The second . . ... part was designed for gathering information about the responsibilities of the officers. In the third part, the officers, through a likert-type 4-point scale, were asked to state their opinions about how ethical/unethical the 25 hypothetical practices suggested are; and to state also the factor/s influenced or shaped their ethical judgments. ~inety-nine (17.27%) out of 573 public relations officers completed the questionnaire. Research data were analyzed using SPSS- program for Windows software, version 1 0.0.The study concluded the following: (1) Respondents' ethical judgments on the practices suggested came consistent with the IPRA Codes of Conduct adopted in Venice and Athens, and with the literature written on public relations ethical standards. · (2) Differences in the ethical judgments of respondents were found statistically significant in terms of culture and religion. (3) Differences in the ethical judgments of respondents, having different professional characteristics, were found statistically insignificant in terms of experience; while significant in terms of: specialties, accredited-pr-association membership, and finally tenure. (4) Differ«?nces in .t he ethical-judgments of respondents, having differ.ent -. .. professional responsibilities, were found statistically insignificant in terms of responsibility for institutional advertising; while significant in terms of: responsibility for community relations, fund-raising planning, and in terms of participating in policyadopting discussions. (5) Finally, the policy of the institution was the highest influence in the 25 hypothetical situations followed by religion and institution policy, religion, personal ethics and professional ethics consecutively.
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Keywords
Ethical Judgement , Public Relation , Higher Education
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