A study on the assessment of the ethical aspect of manager and staff behaviors in the internship period by students who receive tourism education

Ethics as a philosophical discipline is about human actions. It is obvious, considering the labor-intensive characteristic of the tourism industry, that ethical applications are necessary in tourism businesses. Besides, it is essential for a business to arrange the tasks and behaviors of its staff based on ethical principles in order for that business to be effective and efficient. The goal of ethics in tourism is to protect the interests of this occupational group, ensure the welfare of occupational members and service receivers, make the profession and professionals respectable in the relevant society and to increase the objectivity of the profession. The goal of this study, in this context, was an assessment of the ethical aspect of the behaviors of managers and staff in tourism businesses from the perspective of intern students. A second goal was to determine whether ethical behaviors differ depending on demographic variables. In order to perform this study, a questionnaire was applied to 308 students attending to a Vocational School of Tourism and Hotel Management in Gaziantep and to the Department of Gastronomy and Culinary Arts in the Faculty of Fine Arts of Gaziantep University. The questions prepared to assess ethical behaviors were categorized in six groups including "the responsibility of providing opportunities for professional development, the responsibility of equal treatment, responsibility of avoiding harassment, the responsibility of increasing the quality of work life, the responsibility of respecting the right of privacy and the responsibility of setting an example for the society and intern students. It was concluded that, from the perspective of interns, staff members displayed more ethical behaviors compared with managers. However, statistically significant differences were determined between the ethical assessment of manager/staff behaviors by intern students and their educational levels, their sexes, the type of business where they carry out their internships and the departments in which they carry out their internships.