Why Is a Book about Academic Ethos Management Needed Now?
Why is it important to conduct scholarly studies of bolstering integrity in the world of academia through the process of academic ethos management? And why is now the appropriate time to do so? Following are some compelling reasons.
First, over the past few years we have been witnesses to an ever-growing interest among scholars, educators, and managers with regard to integrity in business and management education. This movement is partly a reaction to highly publicized corporate scandals and instances of management misconduct that have eroded public faith. From the beginning of the millennium, the business press has presented a growing list of corrupt practices among various organizations (Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Tyco, Quest, and Adelphia, to name a few). Corruption seems to be omnipresent in enterprises, nonprofit organizations, and even in religious organizations. Moreover, corrupt behavior seems to be strongly connected not only to individuals within organizations, but also to whole organizations that more often become corrupt entities. That is why corruption concerns not only particular enterprises, but also entire business sectors or even nations. It seems to be justified to ask a question as to whether higher education and especially business schools have forgotten their prime objective: not only promoting the discovery and exchange of knowledge and ideas, but also educating wise people who will be equipped with knowledge and integrity. Questions also rise as to whether the academic environment truly shapes the moral attitudes of young people and creates the appropriate examples for them. Do the core values of academic ethos really mold the behavior of an academic community?
The time has come to redefine academic ethos in the context of recent economic crises stemming from the unethical behavior of corporations; such behavior has fostered a growing distrust in interpersonal relations, an atrophy of organizational bonds, and a decreasing level of intraorganizational social capital. The new focus on academic ethos, redefining core values of a higher school, should be one of the answers of academic world for the corruption phenomenon and its proliferation within its own environment.
Second, the quest for integrity in business and education is not only a reaction to highly publicized corruption scandals, but also a result of the expectations that stakeholders of contemporary corporations and their leaders will take more active roles in the fight against the most important problems in the world, such as environmental degradation, abuse of human rights, and corruption.
Along with cultural and technological trends in the global business environment, the economic crisis became a catalyst for the development of a new person-centered perspective on business and education. This perspective is based on positive psychology,1 spiritual aspects of individuals, and a fascination of scholarly management with the human brain and intelligence. It is clear that universities throughout the world cannot ignore this trend.
Inspiration for exploring academic ethos management also comes from an awareness that, while integrity “is at the heart of what effective business and education is all about,” future business leaders seem to have a problem with the challenge of managing their businesses with integrity. Related to this is the fact that we know very little about how universities prepare managers and professionals for those challenges. There is also a more popular thesis that the best way to develop the moral character of future business leaders and to encourage them to behave with integrity is by giving students the opportunity to study and work in an organization with integrity: the university itself.2 That is why the challenge now is to search for answers to questions about the causes of academic ethos erosion on the one hand, and for the ways of creating and developing integrity at higher school on the other hand.
Third, in today’s world of local society, where an organization’s borders become more and more transparent, as well as in times of global crisis, a deep understanding of academic ethos core values and the best practices of managing them is especially important; such studies may show how individuals, groups, organizations, and whole societies can promote a sense of purposefulness, direction, meaning, and appropriate ways of creating moral frameworks for ethical conduct in a world of constant change.
Fourth, the fascination with the theme of integrity, which is clearly visible in the academic world as well as in business, is connected with the intensified interest in core values. Since the launch of Porras and Collins’s book Built to Last,3 this fascination has been confirmed by numerous research and scientific elaborations. The authors focus on the importance and crucial role of values in managing contemporary organizations,4 emphasizing the fact that the oldest organizations managed by core values are not Sony, American Express, Disneyland, DuPont, or Marriot but churches, armies, and universities. Numerous higher schools are proud of their core values and present them to their employees, students, and stakeholders. Walls in many campuses are adorned with placards expressing those core values, which are also frequently included in the first pages of many academic publications. Though, the role and influence of these core values can appear restricted to these superficial actions. True core values seem dead, covered with the dust of time, forgotten. They provoke cynicism and laughter among students and employees as they are not transferrable to the real day-to-day activity of a higher school. Consequently, decisions made by a university’s authorities do not fit declared core values; they do not create a culture of internal integrity at a school as much as they foster a culture of cynicism and a lack of trust in interpersonal relations. This, in turn, causes the atrophy of organizational bonds and the decrease of social capital inside a university.
It is time for a change.
Fifth, core values of academic ethos are the core of cultural identity, which plays a crucial role in the development of today’s universities. Cultural integrity is a particular logic of transferring academic ethos core values into a university’s development behaviors; it is the university’s individual paradigm, typical for a given higher school.
We should be aware that university does not simple exist; rather it happens, becomes, and transforms. For a contemporary university, it is the consciousness and stability of its academic ethos core values that condition the way it evolves.
With these motivations in mind, I have designed this book to achieve the following goals:
1. to develop the conceptual framework of academic integrity based on positive academic ethos;
2. to present a new, holistic approach involving developing academic integrity based on human fulfillment and development of man’s virtuous nature;
3. to provide empirically grounded, theoretical insights for redefining academic ethos as a result of the last economic crisis stemming from the unethical behavior of contemporary organizations and their leaders;
4. to formulate the assumptions (guidelines) for integrity development at the higher school through the process of managing core values of academic ethos;
5. to formulate recommendations for developing academic integrity through the process of managing core values of academic ethos, based on conducted qualitative research (case study) in deliberately chosen universities from different parts of the world (North America, South America, Europe);
6. to describe the process of academic ethos management and identify its particular phases and their components;
7. to provide particular methods and tools for managing the core values of academic ethos as the attitude for the construction of academic integrity.
I have organized these goals in 10 chapters.
Chapter 1, “The Erosion of Academic Ethos—Quo Vadis Higher Education?” focuses on the definition of academic ethos and the core values that constitute it for management of the contemporary university. The chapter also examines sources of academic ethos erosion and the steps that should be taken for its redefinition in the twenty-first century.
Chapter 2, “Discovering and Developing the Core Values of Academic Ethos,” offers detailed description of the first phase of the process of academic ethos management. We may learn not only how to discover the values of academic ethos and how to define them in terms of desirable behavior but also which type of conduct threatens the particular values of academic ethos. This chapter is replete with examples of core value definitions extracted from higher schools throughout the world.
Chapter 3, “Enacting the Core Values of Academic Ethos,” provides specific guidelines for enacting the core values of academic ethos through reflecting and supporting the core values of a university’s goals, objectives, measures, and through familiarization with a university’s policies, procedures, and codes. By doing this, a university forms a dialogue at the institutional, classroom, and individual levels around fundamental values of academic ethos and enhances the conduct of academic community in performing their duties in pursuit of academic ethos.
Chapter 4, “Communicating Core Values of Academic Ethos,” presents examples from around the world showing the spectrum of tools used in the process of communicating values of academic ethos, ranging from age-old traditions and cultural models to academic publicity, architectural, physical, and prestige symbols, and beyond to contemporary instruments based on information technologies such as chatterbots.
Chapter 5, “Maintaining Core Values of Academic Ethos,” uses concrete examples to describe elements of maintaining core values of academic ethos through recruitment, core values explanation, training on core values in and out of the classroom for students, and consistent, updated training for employees. The goal is to study the importance of instilling core values of academic ethos over simple behavioral compliance of academic community members with the behaviors ascribed to core values.
The subsequent chapters present a section devoted to the description of the process of managing academic ethos in deliberately chosen higher schools from the North America (United States), South America (Argentina), and Europe (Iceland, Poland). Each case study lists the main facts about a particular higher school and presents a brief history; then, based on direct research (interviews) and internal documentation analysis, the core values of academic ethos are characterized and their specific implementations within a particular school are enumerated.
Chapter 6, “Core Values Management at the University—Insights from USA,” highlights the process of academic ethos management at two American universities (DePaul University and Wright State University) that are different in terms of its form of ownership, age, and the phase of development as well as the core ideologies constituting their values of academic ethos.
Chapter 7, “Core Values Management at the University—Insights from International Case Studies,” describes the process of academic ethos management coming from the merger of universities (Reykjavik University and Technical University of Iceland) as well as a relatively young Argentinean higher school (IAE Business School at Austral University), which is placed among world’s top business schools in many prestigious rankings.
Chapter 8, “Core Values Management at the World’s Oldest Universities,” is devoted to descriptions of academic ethos management at higher schools that are proud of their long-standing traditions. This chapter looks at academic ethos management at one of the oldest European universities (Jagiellonian University) and at the oldest 200-year-old university in Minnesota (Hamline University).
The next chapter, “Recommendations from Cases—Toward the Concept of Academic Integrity Development by Academic Ethos Management,” presents guidelines for the construction and development of academic integrity by managing the core values of academic ethos based on the conclusions and recommendations of research (case studies).
The last chapter, “Positive Academic Ethos—the Frame for Integrity in Managerial Education,” is a synthesis of the considerations about the role of managing the core values of academic ethos for the construction and development of academic integrity. Previous considerations of the author as well as conclusions and recommendations from research enable the identification of the phases of academic ethos management process, including the indication of components constituting each particular phase. This chapter presents alternatives to current attitudes, examining theories of higher school management toward the creation of academic integrity based on Positive Organizational Scholarship and virtue ethics. The conceptual framework on integrity based on positive academic ethos is also presented.
The author believes that the university as an institution and the scholars and academic teachers are responsible not only for discovering the truth and delivering knowledge but also for educating citizens who will make this world a better place. Such visionary aspiration cannot be achieved without integrity within academic world.