Abstract
We assessed students’ and employees’ perception of ethical climate at a university school of medicine compared to that of social sciences and humanities, as well as temporal changes in the employees’ perception of ethical climate. We also explored potential predictors of ethical climate, including moral foundations. This cross-sectional questionnaire study was conducted at the University of Split School of Medicine and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, in Croatia, from April to September 2019. We used 36-item Ethical Climate Questionnaire and 22-item Moral Foundation Questionnaire to survey employees, senior and doctoral students. We collected responses using ballot boxes as well as online survey. We collected 449 complete responses (response rate 36.8%). The dominant ethical climates at two schools were “Company rules and procedures” and “Laws and professional codes”. We compared our results with a study conducted in 2012 and found that the perception of ethical climate had not changed dramatically in last 8 years. Ethical climate, or shared social and work-related behaviours, does not seem to change in these institutions even when students and staff are included with faculty in surveys. We provide further discussion of why this seems to be the case.
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Funding
This work was supported by Croatian Science Foundation, “Young Researchers’ Career Development Project—Training of Doctoral Students”, and by Croatian Science Foundation, grants “Professionalism in Health Care, ProHealth” grant number IP-2014-09-7672 and “Professionalism in Health—Decision making in practice and research, ProDeM” Grant No. IP-2019-04-4882. The funder had no role in the design of this study and its execution, analyses, interpretation of the data, or decision to submit results.
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Ana Marušić, Darko Hren and Marin Viđak designed the study. Marin Viđak and Anita Lunić collected data. Marin Viđak, Ružica Tokalić and Ivan Buljan performed data analysis, and all authors interpreted the data. Marin Viđak drafted the manuscript, and all authors critically revised the manuscript and gave approval for the publication of the final version. All authors had full access to the data in the study and can take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.
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The ethics approval for the study was obtained from the Ethics Committees of the University of Split School of Medicine (2181-198-0304-18-0060) and Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (2181-190-00-1-19-0005).
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Viđak, M., Buljan, I., Tokalić, R. et al. Perception of Organizational Ethical Climate by University Staff and Students in Medicine and Humanities: A Cross Sectional Study. Sci Eng Ethics 26, 3437–3454 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-020-00270-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-020-00270-w