In the popular movie series "Pirates of the Caribbean," there is a pirate code that influences how pirates behave in unclear situations, with a running joke about whether the code is either a set of rules or guidelines for behavior. Codes of conduct in any social group or organization can have much the same feel; they can provide clarity and…

Codes of conduct can and should fulfill a critical role in higher education. Codes help overcome some of the challenges inherent in a system predicated on high levels of autonomy and on self-regulation. Codes not only are important indicators of critical topics that are deemed worthy of explicit protection or expectations for behavior; they may…

Fundamentally, ethical codes take on the most troublesome of behaviors related to academe and present ways for individuals to behave in the face of pressures and uncertainties. They represent the ideals of various stakeholder subgroups and even mediate key institutional relationships. Codes can also exist at different organizational levels in…

This study presents research comparing faculty-held norms for academic deans' behavior to Mertonian norms of science. Findings indicate that while some elements of Mertonian norms hold true, it is not the best pattern of grouping faculty expectations for deans. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (Contains 5 tables.)

Calls for greater accountability in higher education have prompted responses from most faculty and administrators that self-regulation is the answer. This paper takes a quantitative approach to examining how administrative behavior is regulated, applying a social control perspective to the issues of sanctioning, detecting, and deterring deviance.…