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Ethical standards and principals are one of the most significant part of any professional field. Being an applied practice field, the application of ethical codes and conduct is a critical component for school psychologists. There have been numerous research studies on ethical decision making and ethical dilemmas in many applied fields to help update the ethics principles and codes, same is the case for the field of School Psychology (APA, 2017; NASP, 2010). The purpose of this study was to examine school psychologists’ professional characteristics with regards to managing critical incidents that pose potential ethical violations. An additional purpose was to investigate if the school psychologists’ ratings on the categories including experience, violation, harm, and legality would be able to predict the level of difficulty in solving an ethical dilemma. The perceptions of psychologists towards various ethical dilemmas have previously been studied by Pope and colleagues (1987), and the level of complexity of ethical incidents and their solution has been proposed by Bailey and Burch (2016) in a model for behavior analysts. The current study aimed to adapt the Pope and colleagues’ (1987) research study and modify it to apply for the field of school psychology and investigate if the Bailey and Burch (2016) model can be applicable for school psychologists as well. The results of the study indicate that the ratings of school psychologists on the scales of Personal Experience, Ethical Violation, Probability of Harm and Legal Implications was able to predict the Ease of Solution for a given critical incident. In addition, the ratings on the scale of Probability of Harm was significantly able to predict how easy it would be to resolve a particular dilemma for a practitioner in the field of school psychology.

In line with the rules applying to all directors of a company, accountants also have the fiduciary duty to act ethically in all their decision-making. However, the widely-publicised cases of accounting fraud and misrepresentation of financial information is eroding public confidence in accountants. In order to address the topic of the role of uncertainty and loss framing in ethical decision-making by accountants, the researcher decided to apply a quantitative experimental research design in this study to collect primary data. This research design comprised three experimental groups, amounting to a total sample size of 167 accountants. The primary research was supported by secondary research, which included key literature on behavioural economics, prospect theory, various ethical decision-making frameworks, and the ethical positioning questionnaire. The present study revealed that situations framed negatively on the actions and behaviour of accountants, and where there was a perceived likelihood of a financial loss, there was a greater likelihood among accountants to consider unethical decision-making. Conversely, uncertain situations were unlikely to induce unethical decision-making. The study also explored the personal moral philosophy construct of taxonomy to determine if it can differentiate the extent of ethical behaviour between absolutists and situationists. Although the study established that there were some differences between the ethical behaviour of those found among absolutists and those identified among situationists, the results were not conclusive enough to clearly differentiate their ethical behaviour. However, the key contribution of this research is that it identified which framed decisions are more likely to result in unethical decisions being made by accountants and which framed situations are not likely to result in unethical decision-making. / Mini Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2021. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

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Although management scholars have examined various antecedents of punishment in the workplace, there has been scant research on how perceptions of the organizational context influence decision-making regarding punishment. Building on the work of Cameron and colleagues (Cameron, Bright, & Caza, 2004; Cameron & Caza, 2002), I propose that one's perceived organizational forgiveness - the perception of the extent to which the workplace is forgiving - is negatively related with one's punitive intent in response to ethical misconduct. In addition, I identify variables involving the disciplinary agent and the ethical misconduct itself as moderators of this relationship. In a lab study and a field study, I tested the main effect of perceived organizational forgiveness and the moderating effects of these other variables on punitive intent. Data from the lab study provided evidence of the hypothesized main effect and suggested that the effect holds when the disciplinary agent is high in accountability and when the misconduct has resulted in serious damage to the organization. Data from the field study suggested that the negative relationship between perceived organizational forgiveness and punitive intent seemed to hold only when an experience of being forgiven is salient in the mind of the disciplinary agent and there are mitigating circumstances surrounding the ethical misconduct that is the subject of punishment. Surprisingly, the field study results suggested a positive relationship between perceived organizational forgiveness and punitive intent when an experience of being denied forgiveness is salient to the disciplinary agent. The limitations of these studies and potential implications of the findings are then discussed.

This study examined the effects of experience on the ethical decision making of elementary school principals through the use of personal interviews. Five beginning principals (two or less years of experience) and five veteran principals (greater than ten years of experience) were asked to respond to a set of ethical dilemmas based on realistic administrative situations. Each interviewee was asked to provide a course of action and explanation for each dilemma or situation. Interview results were analyzed and compared within the two groups, beginning and experienced, and between the two groups as well. Results were classified according to Roche's Framework. Results showed a strong pattern of similarity between the responses of the two groups. While responses or choices for courses of action were similar between the groups, differences were noted in the rationales for the solutions between the two groups. Beginning principals tended to be more rules based in their responses because of their lack of experience and knowledge of potential consequences. Because they possessed a depth of experience and knowledge of consequences, veteran principals tended to be more ends based in their thinking and decision making.

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This case study investigated the ethic of the profession, one of the four ethical frameworks used for ethical decision-making in education. Typically, this line of research is applied to school administrators; however, this investigation extended this research to teacher leaders by examining their daily practice. Out of a pool of thirty-six respondents, nine teachers were chosen to participate in the study. These teacher leaders were employed in urban, exurban, and suburban school districts, with experience levels varying from three to thirty-three years. Participants were required to complete the following: the Self-Assessment to Assess Readiness for Leadership, creation of personal code of ethics, and the creation of professional code of ethics. An in-depth interview to discuss the codes, and clashes between codes was conducted, as well as a second interview to address an ethical dilemma identified by the participants. Categorical analysis was used to recognize recurring themes. A conceptual model of the decision-making process was developed to explain the phenomena observed in these data. In addition, recurring themes were identified through analysis of the interview data. Themes included a prevailing concern for fairness, student welfare, educational equality, safety, and student discipline. When responding to critical events that triggered ethical dilemmas, these participants habitually used their personal and professional codes of ethics to determine a course of action. Participants exhibited a sophisticated decision-making approach which moved participants past the reliance on one ethical frame of justice, critique, or care, into the use of multiple paradigms to solve ethical dilemmas. In the final analyses, the ethic of the profession was demonstrated by these nine teacher leaders through reflection and reliance on personal and professional codes of ethics, and by placing students at the center of the ethical decision-making process. / Educational Administration

Data Analytics (DA) has been blamed for contributing to discriminatory managerial decisions in organizations. To date, most studies have focused on the technical antecedents of such discriminations. As a result, little is known about how to ameliorate the problem by focusing on the human aspects of decision making when using DA in organizational settings. This study represents an effort to address this gap. Drawing on the cognitive elaboration model of ethical decision-making, construal level theory, and the literature on moral intensity, this study investigates how the availability and the design of demographic transparency (a form of decisional guidance) can lower DA users’ likelihood of agreement with discriminatory recommendations of DA tools. In addition, this study examines the role of user’s mindfulness and organizational ethical culture on this process. In an experimental study users interact with a DA tool that provides them with a discriminatory recommendation. The results confirm that demographic transparency significantly impacts both recognition of the moral issue at hand and perceived proximity toward the subject of the decision, which in turn help decrease the likelihood of users’ approval of the discriminatory recommendation. Moreover, the results suggest that user’s mindfulness and organizational ethical culture enhance the positive impacts of demographic transparency. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

A novel paper using Canada's real traffic accident data to propose a cost-prediction-based decision-making framework incorporating different ethical foundations for AVs. / Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) hold out the promise of being safer than manually driven cars. However, it is impossible to guarantee the hundred percent avoidance of collisions in a real-life environment with unpredictable objects and events. When accidents become unavoidable, the different reactions of AVs and their outcome will have different consequences. Thus, AVs should incorporate the so-called ‘ethical decision-making algorithm’ when facing unavoidable collisions. This paper is introducing a novel cost-prediction-based decision-making framework incorporating two common ethical foundations human drivers use when facing unavoidable dilemma inducing collisions: Ethical Egoism and Utilitarianism. The cost-prediction algorithm consists of Collision Injury Severity Level Prediction (CISLP) and Cost Evaluation. The CISLP model was trained using both Multinominal Logistic Regression (MLR) and a Decision Tree Classifier (DTC). Both algorithms consider the combination of relationships among traffic collision explanatory features. Four different Cost Evaluation metrics were purposed and compared to suit different application needs. The data set used for training and testing the cost prediction algorithm is the 1999-2017 National Collision Data Base (NCDB) which ensures the realistic and reliability of the algorithm. This paper is a novel paper using Canada's real traffic accident data to propose a cost-prediction-based decision-making framework incorporating different ethical foundations for AVs. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)