The Rankings Of Involvement And Consistency In Line With Academic Research Ethics

Abstract

This paper aims to show the cultural constraints for developing research ethics among faculty members. Ethical research seems influenced by academic culture in the organizations. University as an organization, needs its own specific research ethics and culture. In this study, the researchers applied Denison Organizational Culture as a suitable model to see the impact of different aspects of the model on research ethics in an Iranian state university. The researchers named four aspects of the model as involvement, consistency, adaptability and mission. In this study, the researchers applied the quantitative approach, Fredman non – parametric measurement, using a researcher-made questionnaire. The researchers further used purposeful sampling method and chose fifty-five faculty members in Human Sciences as the respondents of the study. The conclusion of this study illuminates that among the four traits of Denison Organizational Model, involvement and consistency have the highest ranks among other traits as to highest attribution to research ethics.

Keywords: Research EthicsOrganizational CultureFaculty Member

Introduction

Human’s attitude toward societies have always led him/her to organized groups by which they can move forward reaching his personal goals. Such groups are systematically clarifying organizations consisting of common social principles and ground rules. An organization consists of environment, strategy, versatile interaction of work, technology and individuals (Nadler, 1997). The mounting development of organizations have titled our era the age of organizations (Gharamaleki, 2014). There is a set of rules in each organization, which is defined by a context named as culture. The culture of each organization builds up the identity and existence of it. According American Heritage culture is the whole of communally transferred behavior, configurations, arts, beliefs, organizations and all other products of human effort and understood characteristic of a community of people. Organizations differ in their existing culture from one to another because beliefs and values of different groups are specialized within their own certain organizational culture. In other words, organizational culture is the key source of abilities in a system. One of the organizations that plays a significant role in the goals orientation and higher education development of each society is the university, which its leading culture possess a assured distinctiveness and like an ethnic group they follow their own values, beliefs and cultural, language, regional model (Becher, 2001). The key feature of the university culture is its function in identity making. Regarding this point, Taylor argues that university identity is divided into three levels such as identity figured from place of work, field identity, and universal identity (Taylor, 1999). According to Gharamaleki (2014), research has a collective identity, which constructs the organizational culture.

There is a variety of factors, which influence the research ethics among faculties of different subjects. This study pays a meticulous attention to the research ethics misbehavior, which is a growing phenomenon in Iran. Frequently, Iran’s Ministry of Sciences, Research and Technology have announced several types of research misconduct such as research misbehavior, ignoring the rights of subject, ignoring commitment and responsibility toward beneficiaries, data forgery, plagiarism, scientific hiring, ignoring the rights of intellectual ownership and accomplished research responsibility, republication, publication overlapping, trading research works, identity forgery (Yousefi, 2016).

The process of research ethics in Iran meets a serious crisis, for instance the most recent example of this misconduct, which happened as a result of fraud in writing process, judgment, and publication, ended in rejection of 58 Iranian papers from Springer (Yousefi, 2016). The mentioned example is one of the many samples happening in not also Iranian academic life, but in many other scientific societies around the world. Since research ethics is deeply affected by the university culture; therefore, based on findings, the researchers want to find the attribution of organizational culture to research ethics.

Problem Statement

As the researchers studied different models of organizational cultures, they have found Denison’s model of organizational culture as one the most comprehensive ones in order to detect the attribution of its traits to the academic’s research ethics which is the highlighted portion of this study. As a matter of fact the main issue of this paper to be analyzed is the involvement and consistency as the traits of this model.

Research Questions

Several questions raised to get answers in this paper that can be summarized in one main question: what is the priority setting among the traits and subcategories of Denison’s model in attribution to research ethics?

Purpose of the Study

This study is to highlight the existing constraints for developing research ethics among faculty members of an Iranian state university. It is suggested to be taken into consideration that research ethics in an organization like a university, is deeply influenced by its academic culture because a university needs the specific culture and also the research ethics.

Research Methods

The researchers utilized quantitative approach with Friedman non – parametric measurement, applying a researcher-made questionnaire, which was based on 60-Item Denison’s questionnaire. These items are along with four main traits and subcategories of these traits. Adaptability, consistency, involvement, and mission are the main traits. Adaptability includes creating change, customer focus, and organizational learning. Consistency covers coordination and Integrity, agreement, and core Values. Involvement contains empowerment, team orientation, and capability. Also, mission comprises of strategic direction, goals and objectives. The purposeful sampling was used and also 55 faculty members in human sciences were selected as the respondents. The sample were selected from Kharazmi University, Iran.

Findings

In this part, the researchers analyze the priority of Denison’s four dimensions of organizational culture, which is presented in table. 1 , the traits are prioritized regarding their attribution to research ethics.

Table 2 shows that regarding the ranking of organizational culture based on attribution to research ethics, chi2 is 1.825 and the significant level of α=0.05 , there is the significant difference. Moreover the highest level of the ranking is allocated to Involvement and the lowest is given to Adaptability.

Table 3 shows that regarding the ranking of organizational culture based on attribution to research ethics, chi2 is 0.429 and the significant level of α=0.05 , there is the significant difference. Moreover the highest level of the ranking is allocated to involvement and the lowest is given to consistency.

Table 4 shows that regarding the ranking of organizational culture based on attribution to research ethics, chi2 is 12.832 and the significant level of α=0.05 , there is the significant difference. Moreover the highest level of the ranking is allocated to core values and the lowest is given to agreement.

Table 5 shows that regarding the ranking of organizational culture based on attribution to research ethics, chi² is 5.146 and the significant level of α=0.05 , there is the significant difference. Moreover the highest level of the ranking is allocated to creating change and the lowest is given to student-centered.

Conclusion

To summarize what the researchers have obtained from this study, since there have been various organizational culture models so far, the authors tried to find the common points of the models attributed to research ethics among academic members. As we mentioned before regarding the focus of the studies on different organizational models, to the best of researchers’ knowledge, Denison’s organizational culture model seemed an appropriate match to the organization of university. As we mentioned before because of the comprehensive features of Denison’s model comparing with the other organizational culture, two traits of this model have been highlighted which are involvement and consistency. According to Kreitner, R.& Kinicki (2012), Kayworth & Leidner (2002) and Denison et al., (1990), it is discussable that active involvement among the staff leads the organization to a better efficiency and dynamism of the system. Consequently, the participatory leadership facilitates the process of problem solving, taking advantage of the members’ involvement. Consistency is another noticeable trait according to Deal & Kennedy (2000), which is based on a belief that the success of an organization is linked to its integrity and cooperation.

In conclusion, core values, empowerment, and teamwork are the main factors that can influence research ethics. These factors show that core values that are the subcategory of consistency are highly attributed to research ethics following by empowerment and teamwork that are the subcategories of the involvement. It is deduced that if in the university the managers focus on these three the result will be reflected on the improvement of research ethics among academic members.

It is suggested by the researchers that other models of organizational culture examine by other research as to understand the attribution of different traits to research ethics. Moreover, the different studies could be measured to observe different manifestations of misconducts in research as well.

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