Ethical Decision-Making in Construction Engineering Projects

Problems exist with ethical decision-making in U.S. construction engineering projects. The purpose of this study was to explore factors that affect ethical decision-making in engineering construction in the United States. The general concepts of marketing ethics, Kohlberg\u27s discussion of ethical and moral reasoning development, and Gillian\u27s discussion of ethical care served as the basis of the conceptual framework. Factors that inhibit ethical decision making were addressed in the research questions. The resulting narrative framework included implementable initiatives based on these factors that could improve the quality of ethical decision-making and the impact of these initiatives on the cost and quality of construction engineering projects. The use of qualitative grounded theory design led to findings from the research questions and enabled the development of a theory to explain the phenomenon. The research was based on data collected from interviews with a purposive sample of 12 civil engineers with 15 to 45 years of forensic and managerial experience with construction engineering projects. The constant comparative method was used to analyze the data. The principal finding from the research was that unethical decision-making in the legal and political systems undermines the image and authority of construction engineers in the United States. The findings of the study may cause social change by indicating how to enhance the ethical behavior of individuals involved in decision-making within the U.S. construction engineering industry, leading to improvements in the cost and quality of construction projects that benefit individual stakeholders as well as society

Willingness to pay for industrial recruitment: A look at local decision-maker activity versus citizen preference

Academic research in the area of economic development policy is overwhelmingly critical of industrial recruitment, recommending instead that resources be directed towards strategies such as business retention and expansion, fostering local entrepreneurship, and amenity development. This research moves beyond criticizing industrial recruitment policy and explores one potential reason, a high discount rate, for practitioners\u27 reliance on recruitment over other available local development techniques. The research also investigates developer\u27s probability of success for industrial recruitment as well as alternative development strategies and examines whether economic developer use of incentive packages to recruit local businesses is a rational decision, i.e., supported by the general public. Contingent valuation methods estimate discount rates of local economic developers from Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia using a mail survey while West Virginia citizens were surveyed by phone

Social Justice on Campus: Does It Really Fight Hate? An Exploratory Study

This exploratory study expands upon information from a previously conducted pilot study involving schools from states in two regions of the United States—the Southeast and the West Coast—which compared the number of social justice organizations at four universities from every state to the number of bias incidents in each state from 2010 through 2016. While no statistically significant relationship was found, the pilot study suggested a negative relationship between the number of social justice organizations and the occurrence of hate crimes. This thesis uses data from forty-nine states and the District of Columbia to create a larger data pool consisting of the two largest public schools from each state. The data is not wholly accurate, however, due to prominent underreporting of these crimes by victims and police departments, as exemplified by the annual FBI Hate Crime Statistics Reports. Therefore, these data cannot be complete and wholly correct, but serve as an indicator for present conditions and as a basis for further future evaluation. Through both an intrinsic literature analysis of hate crime theory, legislation, and social justice and a statistical study on the relationship between hate crime and social justice, this thesis provides a call to action for reform of the Hate Crime Statistics Act (HCSA). This theoretical foundation emphasizes the need for mandatory participation at all law enforcement levels in order to establish a more accurate contextual framework upon which future research may be conducted. Drawing from media reports, Congressional bills, state and federal and statutes, hate crime statistics, hate crime theory, and social justice theory, this thesis analyzes the relationship between these topics in order to evaluate the effects collegiate social justice, identity, and cultural groups have on bias incidents and vice versa

Examining the effect of a flipped classroom on students\u27 motivation and mathematics achievement in developmental college algebra

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a flipped classroom learning environment on mathematics achievement and motivation. The study compared community college developmental algebra students in a flipped classroom environment versus those enrolled in traditional classroom environment during the spring 2016 semester. A total of 46 students participated in the 8-week study that was conducted in a comprehensive two-year community college located in Chicago\u27s northwest suburbs. In the flipped classroom section, the instructor created online videos of his lectures, and students viewed them and took a short quiz prior to attending class. Students worked on problem-solving activities in class. Math achievement was compared between an intervention and comparison group using scores from the mid-term exam. Student motivation was compared between the intervention and comparison group using the Keller\u27s Course Interest Survey (CIS) and Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS), and open-ended questions for the intervention group. The results indicated no statistically significant difference in motivation and math achievement between the intervention group (flipped classroom) and comparison group (traditional classroom). Also, the relationship between motivation and math achievement was not statistically significant. Finally, results showed that class type -- flipped classroom and traditional classroom did not moderate the effect of motivation on math achievement