Infusing Ethics into the Undergraduate Public Relations Curriculum

Abstract

In response to reports of misconduct and unethical behaviour in the public relations profession and the increasingly insistent - and proper - demand that ethics be given an enhanced role in the public relations curriculum, this paper presents an action research approach to development, delivery and evaluation a module in ethics and professional responsibility for final year undergraduates in public relations. The key component of the project is a survey instrument which measures changes in the ethical sensitivity of students and showed that student attitudes changed in the short term on some issues such as lying to protect the client, and conflicts of loyalty, but not in others such as the desirability of doing pro bono work.