Nigerian Building Professionals’ Ethical Ideology and Perceived Ethical Judgement

Abstract

In recent years, Nigeria is often cited in the international media in connection with corruption and other unethical practices. The professionals in the Nigerian building industry are not immune from the perceived national trend in ethical erosion. Moral philosophy or ethical ideology has been used to explain individuals' reasoning about moral issues and consequent behaviour. This study examines building industry professionals' ethical ideologies with a view to understanding their ethical behaviour in professional practice. In carrying out this investigation, building professionals in clients' organisations, contracting and consultancy organisations within the industry were asked to respond to the Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ) designed by Forsyth in order to determine their idealism and relativism level. Subsequently, they were classified into one of four groups, representing different ethical ideologies. The result indicates that the dominant ethical ideology of building industry professionals is situationism. The study predicts that the attitude of building industry professionals in practice, given the current socio-political and economic situation of Nigeria would possibly be unethical because of the extreme influence situational factors have on their behaviour. This finding is a bold step and necessary benchmark for resolving ethical issues within the industry and should be of interest to policy makers. It is also useful for intra professional ethical comparison.

A comparison of prevalence of unethical tendering practices at national and subnational levels in Nigeria

“…In Nigeria, however, it is also important to compare the prevalence of corruption between federal and state governments. Previous studies in the context of this research (notably Alutu 2007;Ameh & Odusami 2010a, 2010b did not concentrate on this area.…”

“…However, as Figure 3 shows, in some projects, federal government agencies influence or 'mentor' their state counterparts in the administration of projects for which both levels of government are responsible. According to Ameh and Odusami (2010b), relativism is the Nigerian construction industry professionals' dominant ethical ideology. Impliedly, in order for their good behaviour to remain stable and consistent, they must also be put in the proper kind of work situations, perhaps using laws.…”

“…(Agbor 2012;Usman 2014). Alutu (2007), Ameh and Odusami (2010a) and Ameh and Odusami (2010b) were written when these policies and laws were fresh; thus, the studies could hardly capture the effects of their full implementation. Secondly, they made no distinctions between corruption at the state and federal government project levels.…”

How Ethical Ideologies Relate to Public Attitudes toward Animals: The Dutch Case

“…Subjectivists accept the inevitability of occasional negative outcomes because different individuals have different views about moral principles. Exceptionists endorse the statement that the morality of an action depends on the consequences produced by it (Ameh & Odusami, 2010;Galvin & Herzog, 1992).…”

Cost and Time Overruns in Building Projects Procured Using Traditional Contracts in Nigeria

“…Dada (2013), for example, suggested that the traditional contract method may only succeed in giving a guarantee of certainty of initial cost. Ameh and Odusami (2007) believed that inflation or escalation of contract sum, amongst others, was a common phenomenon of traditional contracts. Tsai and Chi (2009) also alleged that traditional constracts were usually bidded low to secure award with the intention of hiking the cost later through loopholes in contract documents.…”