SIR MANSOOB U.

KHAN ETHICS IN BUSINESS RESEARCH

ASSIGNMENT#01

SUBMITTED TO: SIR MANSOOB U. KHAN

SUBMITTED BY: BUSHRA TARIQUE
COURSE: METHODS OF BUSINESS RESEARCH
DATE: 1st NOV, 2010

ETHICS IN BUSINESS RESEARCH

ETHICS:

Ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with morality. Ethics is concerned with
distinguishing between good and evil in the world, between right and wrong human actions, and
between virtuous and non-virtuous characteristics of people. It is a social, religious, or civil
codes of behavior considered correct, especially that of a particular group, profession, or
individual.

BUSINESS ETHICS:
It is a form of applied ethics that examines ethical principles and moral problems that arise in a
business environment. It applies to all aspects of business conduct and is relevant to the conduct
of individuals and business organizations as a whole. Applied ethics is a field of ethics that deals
with ethical questions in many fields such as medical, technical, legal and business ethics.

RESEARCH ETHICS:
The goal of ethics in research is to ensure that no one is harmed or suffers adverse consequences
from research activities. However, unethical activities are pervasive and include breaking
participant confidence, misrepresenting results, deceiving people, avoiding legal liability and
more.

ETHICAL TREATMENT OF PARTICIPANTS:

While conducting any research the researcher first think about the rights of the participants or
subject. Research must be designed so that a participant does not suffer physical harms,
discomfort, pain, embarrassment or loss of privacy. To safe guards against these, the researcher
should follow the following guide lines.

 Benefits.

 Deception.

 Informed consent.

 Debriefing participants.

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 Rights to privacy.

 Data collection in cyber space.

 BENEFITS

In case of any study a researcher must discuss all the benefits, neither overstates nor understate,
to the interviewee. An interviewer should begin an introduction with his/her name, the name of
the research organization and a brief description and benefits of the research. Such starts will
help the researcher in conducting that particular research and to make participant calm and at
ease, let them know to whom they are speaking and motivates them to answer the entire
question truthfully. Doing so will increase the cooperation of the participants through disclosure
main benefits of the research honestly.

 DECEPTION

It occurs when the researcher told only few truths about the research to the participants. It has
two main reasons

1. To prevent the biasing the participants before the survey or experiment.

2. To protect the confidentiality of a third party.

Basically these are the questions which the participant is going to ask about the research you are
conducting but in deception you can only share few truths with the participant and can excuse
for the others. The use of deception is inappropriate unless proper deceptive techniques are
justified by some special studies.

 INFORMED CONSENT

It is the matter of fully disclosing the procedure and purpose of the research before requesting
permission to proceed with the study. It consists of the information which researcher is going to
tell the participants without letting him to ask. Information such as introduce yourself, describe
the survey topic briefly, describe the geographic areas, tell brief about the sponsors, tell whom
much time is required for the research, describe the purpose of the study, tell the participant
that participation is voluntary and item non response is acceptable. Especially when dealing with
children or medical or psychological ramifications, it is wise to have a consent form. In case of
any chance that the data will harm the participant a signed formed containing the types of limits
should be obtained.

 DEBRIEFING PARTICIPANTS

Debriefing involves several activities following the collection of data.

1. Explanation of any deception.

2. Description of the hypothesis, goals or purpose of the study.
3. Post study sharing of results.
4. Post study follow-up medical or psychological attention.

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First, the researcher shares the truth of any deception with the participants and the reasons for
using deception in the context of the study’s goals. In cases where severe reactions occur, follow-
up medical or psychological attention should be provided to continue to ensure the participants
remain unharmed by the research.

Debriefing usually includes a description of the hypothesis being tested and the purpose of the
study. The researcher also gain important insight into what the participants thought about
during and after the experiment. This may lead to modifications in future research designs.

 RIGHTS TO PRIVACY

The privacy guarantee is important not only to retain validity of the research but also to protect
participants. The confidentiality of survey answers is an important aspect of the participant’s
right to privacy.

A right to privacy means one has the right to refuse to be interviewed or to refuse to answer
any question in an interview. Potential participants have a right to privacy in their own homes,
including not admitting researchers and not answering telephones.

The researcher protects participant confidentiality in several ways;

1. Obtaining signed nondisclosure documents.

2. Restricting access to participant identification.

3. Revealing participant information only with written consent.

4. Restricting access to data instruments where the participant is identified.

5. Not disclosing data subsets.

Researchers should restrict access to information that reveals names, telephone numbers,
addresses, or other identifying features. Only researchers who have signed nondisclosure,
confidentiality forms should be allowed access to the data.

 DATA COLLECTION IN CYBER SPACE

The convenience of communicating by computers has led researcher to cyber space in search of
plentiful sources of data. Whether we called it weird society, modernization, digital life or cyber
culture but the growth of cyber studies causes us to question how we gather data online, deals
with participants and present results. Researcher also prefer to collect the relevant data in
cyber space for his research but only in case of small researches such as voting polls for likeness
or viewer ship of different personalities such as NADIA KHAN , DR. SHAISTA WAHIDI,
MUSTAFA KAMAL on orkut and facebook etc.

ETHICS AND THE SPONSOR:

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When dealing with sponsors or research client the researcher should keep in mind some ethical
consideration. A researcher has the right to receive ethically conducted researcher whether
undertaking product, market, personnel or other research.

 CONFIDENTIALITY

Researchers have the rights to several types of confidentiality, including

1. Sponsors nondisclosure.

2. Purpose nondisclosure.

3. Findings nondisclosure.

Companies have the right to dissociate themselves from the sponsorship of a project. This is
called sponsors nondisclosure. It might be done when researcher hire an outside consulting
firm to complete the research projects. Purpose nondisclosure involves protecting the purpose
of the study. A research sponsor may be testing a new idea i.e. not patented and not already
available in the market. Most researcher want the research data and findings to be confidential,
at least until the management decision is made. Those sponsors usually demand and receive
findings nondisclosure between themselves or researcher or from any competitive parties.

 RIGHTS TO QUALITY RESEARCH

The researcher rights to quality research entails:

1. Providing a research design appropriate for the research question.

2. Maximizing the sponsor’s value for the resources expended.

3. Providing data-handling and reporting techniques appropriate for the data

collected.

The researcher should propose the design most suitable for the problem. The researcher should
not propose activities designed to maximize researcher revenue or minimize researcher efforts
at the sponsor’s expense.

RESEARCHERS & TEAM MEMBERS:

 SAFETY

One of the core responsibilities of the researcher is to design the project which is safe for all
interviewers, surveyors or observer. Some urban areas and rural areas may be unsafe for
research assistant such as high-crime districts or uncertain environmental factors. It is really
very unethical to require staff members to enter an environment where they feel mentally or
physically threatened.

 ETHICAL BEHAVIOR OF ASSISTANTS

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Assistants are expected to carry out the sampling plan, to interview or observe participants
without bias, and to accurately record all necessary data. Unethical behavior such as filling in an
interview sheet without having asked the questions to the participants cannot be tolerated.

 PROTECTION OF ANONYMITY

Researcher and assistants protect the confidentiality of the sponsor’s information and the
anonymity of the participants. Each researcher handling data should be required to sign a
confidentiality and non-disclosure statement.

PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS:
In research there are several standards of ethics exist for the professional researcher. Many
organizations, professional associations and even universities have their own code of ethics. An
ethical code is adopted by an organization in an attempt to assist those in the organization
called upon to make a decision (usually most, if not all) understand the difference between
'right' and 'wrong' and to apply this understanding to their decision. Society or association
guidelines include ethical standards for the conduct of research. The organizations that have
such kind of ethical code can also update their codes. Some of the effective codes are

1. Regulative.

2. Protect the public interest of the profession served by the code.

3. Behavior specific.

4. Enforceable.

Complete informed consent has four characteristics.

1. The participant must be competent to give consent.

2. Consent must be voluntary.

3. Participants must be adequately informed to make a decision.

4. Participants should know the possible risks or customers associated with the research.

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