Measuring the Level of Ethics within the Project Team

Abstract

The subject of Ethics has been of interest for centuries, especially for philosophers and theologians, and it has impacted all aspects of human life since its beginnings. Today more than ever ethical behavior is essential in the business world and it is of focus in all organizations, even in the temporary, project based ones. "Measuring the Level of Ethics within the Project Team” is an article that addresses the need to assess the level of ethics of any and every project team, by testing the applicability of a previously designed instrument. The tool was created with the help of a group of ethic professionals from the Project Management field through a focus group. The resulting questionnaire consists of a series of statements, considering the areas of project organization, team communication and team development, out of the total of 79 resulted affirmations. To validate the applicability of this kind of assessment, 28 questions were selected and previously applied in an outsourcing multinational company with over 2000 employees in Bucharest only; more specifically in the Purchasing Department for client X, where there were several ongoing projects. In accordance to specialty literature, several basic ethical values were especially tested: responsibility, respect, honesty, fairness. Considering the premise of this research is that this instrument is suited for any kind of project team, this paper’s main objective is to test if there is a correlation between the questionnaire positive results and the existence of at least one of the six ethical conduct elements. Consequently, the hypothesis is that the results of the questionnaire will be influenced by the existence of one or more of the components: code of conduct, trainings, advice, evaluation, reporting and disciplinary systems. To test it, 33 project teams were asked to take the questionnaire, and their responses were correlated positively, negatively or neutral to the companies’ concern for business ethics norms.