Ethical decision-making in universities: A study on Turkish and American administrators

One of the basic elements of decision-making in university administration is the ethical aspect of decisions. The rise of globalization has necessitated a more comprehensive perspective on understanding ethical values and ethical decision-making practices. The ethical decision-making styles of administrators from different cultures provide the opportunity to better understand how important ethical decisions are. This thesis study, designed with a phenomenological pattern in the qualitative research method, aims to study the views of Turkish and American university administrators on ethical decision-making processes. In-depth interviews are conducted with 13 Turkish and 10 American university administrators from different levels such as vice-president, dean, director and department head, the results of data analysis are presented in tables, discussed, and recommendations are presented for decision makers, stakeholders and researchers at the end of the study. It is found that Turkish administrators tend to use Ethics of justice and Ethics of the profession, while American administrators tend to use Ethics of justice, Ethics of critique, Ethics of care and Ethics of the profession in ethical decision-making processes. While Turkish administrators emphasize senior administrators' pressure, administrators' attitude, lack of time and nepotism as factors that negatively affect the ethical decision-making processes of university administrators organizationally, American administrators highlight lack of information, financial deficiency and lack of authority. Individually, Turkish administrators find administrators' personality traits, experience and communication skills as important, while American administrators do not attach much importance to these traits. Turkish and American administrators have made both similar and different suggestions regarding administration and administrators to improve ethical decision-making processes in universities. While Turkish administrators say that there should be meritocracy instead of nepotism, a legal and ethical framework should be drawn, autonomy and freedom should be increased; American administrators say that social media should be used, universities should not be administrated like companies, and top administration should be diversified. The common recommendation of both groups is that accountability and transparency should be ensured, new researches should be conducted, ethical decision-making training should be provided, ethical awareness should be developed and stakeholders' participation in the decision should be ensured. This research, which strives to reveal the ethical decision-making processes of university administrators, is aimed to help start the "discussion" regarding ethical decision-making and to conduct more research on this very subject.