Applied Research Methods & Professional Development - Weekly Journal : 5th Week Learning Log - Ethics & Code Of Conduct / Nature and Purpose of Research

Fifth week of the module was started of with two broad topics and first to discussed was about "Ethics & Code of Conduct" As usual the lecturer wanted to break the silence by asking students their opinion about the terms related. Ideas spoken by the individuals included that Ethics is a way of thinking, doing the right thing and an ethical person is someone who believe in what they do. After brainstorming with the class together, lecturer presented her fine opinion about ethics to be is that, it is an cultural or a social believe or an adequate amount of measure that society accept/expect you to do. As an example she mentioned that one of her moral value is being a vegetarian.

Source: http://manavsthalischool.com/ethics-corner/

According to (Malloy, 2008) Ethics means, a set of tools that provides a yardstick to determine whether we should do or not do a certain action and the preferable extent of a previous action that should have maintained, and overall accepted by the majority of the society.

Source: http://www.cces.ca/files/pdfs/CCES-PAPER-Malloy-E.pdf

To adopt ethical behavior for an individual may not be easy, therefore a person should receive specific motivations from external parties or within him/her self. Lecturer provided some basic Incentives for ethical conduct:

Trust - Belief in someone, something or else the truth
Security - In general when someone is being aware of consequences, in specific fields like IT it's the protection of assets and product or customer(supplier/buyer) information
Comfort - In general the peace of mind

In Business Ethics people can get Incentives/motivation form the external parties as well, to keep up their relationships with organization's stakeholders and to improve ethical decision making in day to day business. To make sure that the staff is pushed towards ethical conduct, there are two basic approaches that the management of the company can be followed:

Sanctions Approach - This is where the employees are threatened to follow a specific disciplinary code and if breached relevant punishments/reflective actions would be taken. This method is used for a long time but recently law related to employees sometimes object certain actions taken according to incorporated law rights. But still it's considered to be successful because the fear in employee sometimes guide him/her towards the right path.

Reward Approach - More than the previous method this method it self sounds ethical. Here the employees would receive salary inducement or personal scores/comments to their annual employee appraisal form in order to motivate them behave ethically in any given business situation.

Source: http://www.ibe.org.uk/userassets/briefings/ibe_briefing_11_incentivising_ethical_behaviour_in_staff.pdf

Examples for Reward Approach:

Class Activity:-

Students in groups, were asked to search Code of Conduct available at British Computer Society (BCS) and write down special points or characteristics include in them. Also to research about other society conducts available on internet. And identify common points in them, ultimately to gain knowledge about "Code of Conducts" at organizations. (My teammates: Mishan & Jude)

BCS code of conduct

Main points noted down by our group were:

Public Interest - Health, Privacy, Security & well being of individuals and the surrounding environment
Professional Competence & Integrity - Always accept the attainable workload incorporation to your professional competence of the organization
Duty to relevant Authority - Maintain professionalism with obligation and diligence, in according to relevant authorities requirements while practicing professional decision making at all times
Duty to the profession - Obliged to improve professional standards at workplace while participating in development, use and enforcement. Depict good reputation of BCS.

Furthermore our group identified another 2 more organizations that also consist of a code of conduct, first one is "Code of Governance of the Irish Institute of Technology" (IIT) this also included some rules that aligns with Integrity, Information security, Obligation, Loyalty, Fairness in Work/External environment, Authority and Review. Secondly "SCOTS" which talk about code of conduct for a specific system (users) in a specific region. Any company that uses this system is obliged to perform their tasks according to these rules, it also consists of following main points; Addresses Responsibility, Personal use of internet, Misuse and unacceptable behavior, Accidental access to sensitive data & Monitoring of certain usage of the system.

At the end students realized that there are Common Code of Conducts in each of the above such as:

Integrity
Privacy
Reputation
Responsibility
Monitoring of the system
Use of Internet
Behavior and honesty
Public Interest
Competency
Loyalty
Good Practices
Interaction with customers

Next topic that was learnt on the same week was "Nature and Purpose of Research" The term research refers to a logical and systematic searching process that explore new or specific information. (Rajasekar, Philominathan, & Chinnathambi, 2013) the world renown song "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - How I wonder What you are!" simply summarize all the essence about research. That is a certain person explore about an unknown object/topic, words like how & what emphasize research process steps.

Source: https://allabouttheheart.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/img_1089.jpg

Then the students were taught about Deductive Reasoning (Logic): means the direction of thinking is from general assumption to specific assumption.

(for an example: All vampires are immortal. Edward is a vampire. Therefore Edward is immortal)

Whereas Inductive Reasoning (Induction) means: Direction of thinking is from specific to the general (sampling method). This is the basic principle of scientific inquiries. Any researcher may observe an individual or a small size group/sample from the larger population and arrives at conclusions according to the results obtained from the sample, assuming that chosen sample represents the whole research population.

Lecturer thereafter taught the students, Basic 5 scientific steps/methods to do a research:

Identifying the problem
Formulating a hypothesis (make assumptions of either what is causing it or what is resulting)
Developing a research plan
Collecting and analyzing data
Interpreting the results and forming conclusions

Finally after few learning sessions students were given a questionnaire called "Are you ethically challenged ?" where there are 5 questions related to real world situations to check how you react accordingly, each student must chose only 1 answer that depicts the most possible reaction if they face the situation in real.

My answers were mostly "B's" where the result description of quiz says that it depicts high ethical standards & know how to solve/handle complicated dilemmas without fearing about the negative consequences rather more focused on the righteous thing to do. While understanding the true value pf professional integrity. But in addition sometimes even I find my self pushed out of the ethical route due to various non-ethical incentives, therefore I hope hereafter to be more focused on ethics rather than non-ethical benefits.

At the end of the week students were requested to start their research proposal by identifying a problem area and writing why it is important to eliminate/reduce or to find a solution for that specific issue. By learning this week topics I now can take ethical decision in life/businesses also got to know about various codes of conduct in different organizations. Plus I'm more aware of scientific research methodologies that includes Deductive and Inductive reasoning and etc. Overall this week's learning log improved my professional skills in theory and in practical both.

I hope you enjoyed My 5th Week Learning Log :) Have a nice day, Thank you!!!

Topic Related Videos

1. Introduction to ethics: