Ethical Consideration in Research Process
Research and Trust
It is generally considered important that business and management researchers respect the confidentiality of the source of any evidence or information that is supplied to them by informants. This is especially true if there is any question of the evidence having any competitive or commercial sensitivity.
Research into ways of controlling and manipulating the workforce could be considered questionable.
How the Research should be Conducted
In business and management studies how the research should be conducted is perhaps of greater concern in an ethical sense
Openness with the Informants
In business and management studies the informants or participants in the study need to know a number of things and to be given a series of assurances. The main issues are as follows :
It is imperative that the researcher does not have any hidden agendas.
It essential that the researcher be fully open and honest with the informants and participants. This means that the informants and participants should be made aware of exactly why the evidence is required and exactly what will be done with it once the research has been completed.
It is necessary for the researcher to declare if he or she has any connections or relationships with organisations or individuals that could in any way be construed to be competitive to the informant or to his her organisation. Thus anything which could remotely relate to a conflict or interest needs to be specifically dealt with in advance of any evidence being revealed.
Where an informant does not wish to have his or her name associated with the evidence, this request should be respected.
The researcher should not obtain evidence from informants under duress. Thus it would not be acceptable for a researcher to have the managing director of an organisation insist that the staff complete a questionnaire if the individuals involved did not wish to so do. The informant should be told that he or she can withdraw from the interview at any time without any recriminations.
It is usual for the informants or participants to be aware of the final use of the evidence, and if at any stage the researcher wants to change how the evidence will be used, or to use it for additional purposes, it is important that he or she seeks the permission of the informants to do so.
The Integrity of the Evidence
Presenting in an unquestioning way evidence which the researcher feels is suspicious would not be acceptable. Thus the researcher needs to be actively honest rather than passively honest in the presentation of his or her evidence and research findings.
It is sometime believed that the original source of the evidence, for example, a transcript an interview, or copies of the original questionnaire, should be kept for a period of time, say somewhere between two and five years, to allow other researchers access to the data.
Processing the Evidence
The researcher needs to give considerable attention to the ethical issues related to processing of the evidence. Any attempt to window dress or manipulate and thus distort the evidence is of course unethical, as is any attempt to omit inconvenient evidence. In statistical terms this does not mean that outliers have always to be included in the numbers, but it does mean that the occurrence of such outliers should be reported as part of the findings and a reason supplied for not including them in the statistics.
This is a difficult line to tread as it is important that the research should not be overwhelmed with personal biases. It is not a useful or rational strategy to fabricate evidence or deliberately to misinterpret it, as a masters or doctoral degree does not rely on the candidate finding or proving a particular result.
This may not be easy to make with personal prejudices playing an overtly influential and important role.
With regards research findings, it is important that these are honestly presented and not produced in such a way as simply to support the opinions or prejudices of the researcher. This is indeed hard to accomplish. Ideally the researcher is trying to apply ‘ disinterested intellectual curiosity’, but this is almost impossible as was pointed out by Gould(1980a) when he said, ‘Science is not an objective, truth-directed machine, but a quintessentially human activity, affected by passion, hopes, and cultural biases. Cultural traditions of thought strongly influence scientific theories.’ Sometimes, if not frequently, personal bias is so subtle that the researcher is not even aware of it. In fact, many would argue that a researcher should not attempt to compensate for bias, but should simply state clearly the possible biases involved and allow the readers to compensate for these themselves.
Using the Findings
It is important that the intention of the research is that the findings will be used for ethical purposes. Thus research conducted for the purposes of perpetrating a fraud, for example, has no place in a university or business school. This is in keeping with the general spirit of a university, as well as being in recognition of the fact that most universities and most business are funded to a large, or at least substantial, extent from public money.
Of course it is expected that research conducted for a higher degree will only be presented to a single university towards the award of a single degree. It would not be considered acceptable for the findings to be used for a number of different degrees at different institutions.
Funding the Research
Doctoral research is often funded by the individual candidates themselves with, in many, if not most instances, subsidies from the state in one form or another. Only a limited amount of doctoral research is sponsored by private interests, such as commercial organisations. Thus the central issue here is the possibility of there being a conflict of interest. It is essential for the candidate to declare this explicitly to the university and to the supervisor at the outset of the work. All informants who supply evidence for the research should also be aware of this. Of course the external examiner or examiners should also be informed of such arrangements.
Performance of the Work
There are a number of ethical issues relating to the more routine aspects of research work than those mentioned above and these include plagiarism, fudging references, measuring-instrument construction, choosing a sample, assistance from others, misrepresentations of work done, to mention only a few point.
Plagiarism.
Occasionally plagiarism is a problem as sometimes candidates may rely too heavily on the work of others, to the extent of copying large tracts of work without acknowledge the source. This is obviously considered unethical and can lead, in extreme cases, to candidates being excluded from the university. As a general rule, although research candidates are required to rely heavily on the ideas of others at the outset of the research, these ideas need to be appropriately referenced. In addition, a dissertation, although it should include some quotations from other works, should not be too reliant on this type of printed evidence. It is sometimes said that a quotation from another piece of work should not be more than 50 to 100 words in length. Of course these are not hard and fast rules, but rather rough guidelines which if approximately followed will help avoid arguments.
Sometimes it is argued that there is an element of plagiarism present when a candidate attempts to replicate an experiment conducted in another country or conducted in another set of circumstances. This view is somewhat controversial and provided there is no outright copying of a previous dissertation the author would not accept that replicating an experiment is essentially an act of plagiarism, especially if the original work is correctly referenced.
The Theft of Ideas
Ideas can be stolen. A researcher may overhear others talking about possible areas of researcher preliminary findings and pursue these research ideas without reference to their origin.
Ideas can also been stolen by referees who see them in academic papers that they have been asked to review. It is also possible to have an idea stolen by members of funding boards who are given early access to new ideas that require money to proceed.
The only safe position to take to prevent any possible accusation of stealing ideas is for researcher to acknowledge any and all sources of ideas, be they from journals or books, or from verbal presentations, conversations or discussions. To prevent ideas being stolen, the best course of action is not to discuss interesting thoughts within earshot of colleagues until the ideas are reasonably well developed. This will help reduce such incidents although clearly it will not eliminate them. It is difficult to protect ideas from unscrupulous referees.
Fudging References
Is the issue of quoting an authority without having actually read the original reference, but rather having seen it published in someone else’s work. It is considered unacceptable to do this. Any reference made in a dissertation to the work of another should only be made if the research candidate has read the original him or herself. However it is acceptable to use the ‘cited by’ approach. Thus if the eminent scientist Albert Einstein is quoted in a book by Joe Bloggs, the candidate may use Einstein’s words provided he or she states that the quotation was cited by Joe Bloggs in this book and a full reference is given to this work.
Measuring-Instrument Construction
Constructing a measuring instrument can be a critical part of research in the business and management field and there are many ethical issues around how this is handled and how the evidence collected with the measuring instrument is treated.
Increasingly. Personal questions are becoming unacceptable. Issues of age, race, sex, educational standard achieved and so on are no longer regarded as issues about which researchers can expect to obtain information. In fact some would argue that this has become are ethical issue.
Researchers are sometimes tempted to state that the questionnaire is anonymous, while at the same time placing some sort of indicator on the document to allow its origin to be determined. The justification that can be given for this is that it enables the researcher to chase up those who have not completed the questionnaire. Such practice is generally considered to be unacceptable.
Using leading questions that have a high probability of being answered in the manner desired by the researcher is also ethically questionable.
Choosing a Sample
However, it becomes an ethical issue if the sample is manipulated to show a desired result. This may come about in two ways:
The researcher may choose only informants whom he or she knows will have opinions the researcher espouses.
The researcher may discard evidence from informants who do not comply with his or her views.
Samples need to be established honestly, which means they may produce results that will not necessarily support the views and/or prejudices of the researcher. Inconvenient or conflicting evidence should be directly addressed and not hidden or ignored.
Assistance from Others.
The implication was that the member of staff would actually write the dissertation for him. Clearly this was totally unacceptable and the offer was declined.
There is much anecdotal evidence of considerable assistance being given to degree candidates. Research degree candidates and their supervisors sometimes publish joint chapters and this is a perfectly acceptable way in which they may work together and through which the supervisor any give considerable help to the student.
If the candidate seeks help from professionals such as statisticians, then the question of whether a payment is made may become an issue. Many universities would regard paying for help of this kind as being ethically questionable.
Misrepresentation of Work Done
Candidates can purport to have conducted 30 interviews when they have actually only had 20. Interviews and questionnaires can be fabricated.
Any such misrepresentation is clearly unacceptable and furthermore is highly dangerous. Candidates can be found out and this type of misrepresentation would probably lead to the termination of their registration at the university.
Responsibility to the Greater Community
So far this chapter has only addressed the researcher’s ethical responsibility to the integrity of the research itself and to the university at which the researcher is registered. There is however another important dimension to the ethical issue and that is the researcher’s responsibility to the greater community or the society of which he or she is part.
Discovery of Unacceptable Practices
A major ethical issue that a researcher may face relates to the discovery or uncovering of some misconduct within the organisation being researched. There are three levels at which this may occur and these relate to:
Unlawful or illegal conduct;
Unsatisfactory practices which endanger staff;
Embarrassing revelations.
Unlawful or Illegal conduct
To discover unlawful or even illegal practices. By employees, or perhaps by the employees on the firm’s customers.
Such a circumstance presents a difficult situation for the researcher. The law requires that the presence of criminal acts or serious fraudulent practices should be reported to the authorities and it is essential that the researcher comply with the law in this situation. If this happens during an important case study then the researcher’s work may be set back by a considerable amount of time. However, this inconvenience, no matter how great, should not lead to the researcher refusing to comply with the law.
Endangering Staff
To worker safety or to customer safety, is not being complied with. Nothing actually illegal is taking place, the situation as discovered by the researcher is highly unsatisfactory.
All that may really be said is that the researcher needs to discuss carefully these situations with his or her supervisor and that an appropriate course of action should be taken. As already stated, such a course of action may well mean for the degree candidate the end of this part of the research exercise with the organisation and people involved.
It is crucial to our modern world that there is a high standard of ethics, as without this it would not be possible to operate the highly sophisticated, large-scale, high-technology society which now exists. Would not be possible without a highly honed sense of morality and ethics and thus a mutually agreed view of what is right and wrong.
Irrespective of any particular individual’s view of what is right or wrong many would agree that some notion of ethical behavior is important in research. The authors believe that this is the case and suggest that one way to ensure a high standard of ethics in research is to focus on the three principles of medical research, which may be translated in business and management research as follows:
1. Ensure a high degree of respect for the autonomy of the individual;
2. Work towards the benefit of society as a primary motivation of research;
3. Respect justice.
Research ethics is a challenging subject that the research candidate has to face, and which, if not addressed correctly, the result of the research work to be considered tainted or even invalid. It is therefore necessary for the research candidate clearly to understand the ethical restraints which his or her community places on the way he or she conducts the research work and publishes the results.
Doing Research in Business and Management - Dan Remenyi et al.
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