Perceptions of Faculty on the Alignment of the Administration with the Institution’s Mission
Mary L. Mundrane-Zweiacher, Michelle McCraney, Christine Childer, Sunddip Panesar-Aguilar & Chris Cale
Abstract
Society needs healthcare providers to treat and address patients ethically regardless of demographic or socioeconomic status. Healthcare providers develop their ethical codes or moral compasses early in their undergraduate education when they are health science students. Ethical behavior is not an inherent quality in individuals and must be taught, placing responsibility on academic administrators who control the ethical climate of their institutions. Academic administrators have the potential of influencing student ethical development and thus the future clinicians. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore faculty perceptions of the educational administration’s behavior toward students. The investigation also included faculty perceptions regarding administrators’ use of stated principles in the institution’s mission statement to guide their actions. Mission statements provide an academic institution’s purpose and direction while illustrating its core values and providing guidelines for the behavior of administrators, faculty, and staff. Faculty members’ perceptions were used in this study because they would be the most knowledgeable of both the institution’s mission statement and administrator behavior. The Social Learning Theory concepts of social modeling and moral disengagement were the theoretical basis of this proposed study’s conceptual framework. This study used a basic qualitative approach because the investigation focused on faculty perceptions of academic administrator functioning. Participants were health science faculty in higher education of greater than one year employment at that institution and recruited through a national database. The National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA) Qualtrics platform was the means of collecting data through email questionnaires and the analysis incorporated Quirkos software to identify themes.