On the Ethics of Management Research: An Exploratory Investigation

While there is an abundant academic literature on professional codes of ethics, there appears to be few devoted to assessing the compliance of management research with such codes. This article presents the results of applying the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) Code of Professional Ethics and Practices to research articles based on probability sample surveys in the top three academic journals covering tourism, hospitality, and related fields. Four research questions are posed to focus application of the WAPOR Code to nearly 200 articles published in three recent years. Content analysis of these articles, documented by a measure of intercoder reliability, indicates that it is feasible for multiple coders to accurately apply the WAPOR Code to such articles. None of the articles examined complied with all WAPOR standards, and fewer than half of them complied with half of the standards. Finally, we find that there is some difference among the three journals in compliance, but this difference is relatively small. In sum, there is very little compliance with ethical standards in the field of management research studied here.