The Ethics of Professorial Book Selling: Morality, Money and "Black ...

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fessors regarded the moral acceptability of selling examination textbooks, which are provided free. The Ethics of Professorial. Book Selling: Morality, Money.
The Ethics of Professorial Book Selling: Morality, Money and “Black Market” Books

ABSTRACT. This study used experimental and correlational techniques to examine perceptions that university faculty hold regarding the practice of professorial selling of examination textbooks to wholesalers. Faculty members (n = 236) from 14 universities and community colleges and a wide variety of academic disciplines responded to a web-based survey. We presented hypothetical selling situations to respondents with manipulated variables consisting of solicitation status (unsolicited versus solicited) and use of money (for faculty or for student activities). Both main effects and the interaction effect were signifiChet Robie (Ph.D., Bowling Green State University), is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizational Behavior in the School of Business & Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University. His research interests can be characterized as quite broad with publications in: expatriate selection and training issues; multi-source ratings; assessment centers; personality testing; leadership; business ethics; psychometrics; job satisfaction; and shiftwork. Roland Kidwell (Ph.D., Louisiana State University), is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business Administration at Niagara University in New York. During 2003–2004, he is a visiting research fellow at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales, Australia. His research interests include withholding effort in work teams, managerial and ethical implications of organizational deviance, and human resource management issues in small businesses. James Kling (Ph.D., University of Maryland), is an Associate Professor of Business and an administrator at Niagara University in Lewiston, New York. As Director of University Mission, he has the responsibility of communicating the need to integrate ethics into the curriculum and the organizational culture. He is also the Director of the Logistics and Transportation Management Center, and his professional interests center around supply chain management, including measuring customer quality.

Chet Robie Roland E. Kidwell Jr. James A. Kling

cant such that respondents perceived it to be more ethical to sell an examination book when the book was unsolicited and when the money was being used to fund student activities. The variable most correlated with faculty members’ beliefs that book selling is ethical and the faculty members’ self-reports of whether or not they have engaged in bookselling was how widespread the practice appeared to be on campus. About 30 percent of faculty members sold textbooks over the past year at a dollar value of about $80 per professor. About 38 percent of respondents reported they believed the practice to be generally ethical. Implications for business ethics theory, students’ moral development, and advancement of on-campus codes of ethics policies are discussed along with avenues for future research. KEY WORDS: book selling, ethics, professors, web survey

A book buyer attempting to purchase examination textbooks from faculty found differing results on a recent visit to a university campus in the Northeastern United States. One faculty member openly welcomed the book buyer into his office and sold textbooks with the office door open. Just down the hall, another faculty member sold unwanted textbooks to the buyer but only after closing the office door so they could not be observed. In the same department, a third faculty member was not even approached because she had informed the book buyer on several previous occasions that she did not sell examination textbooks. These varied reactions from faculty members indicated a lack of uniformity in how the professors regarded the moral acceptability of selling examination textbooks, which are provided free

Journal of Business Ethics 47: 61–76, 2003. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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to faculty by book publishers. Indeed, a study of faculty behaviors that could be deemed unethical found that selling unwanted complimentary textbooks to used book vendors was not seen as unquestionably ethical or unquestionably unethical by faculty respondents (Morgan and Korschgen, 2001). Situations such as those described above – witnessed on various campuses over the last several years – point out a need for more rigorous research into faculty beliefs regarding the ethics of selling examination textbooks. The purpose of this study is to use experimental and correlational techniques to more systematically consider professors’ ethical views on the sale of examination textbooks. Using an experimental design, we examine situational factors that could result in faculty having different stances regarding the ethical appropriateness of selling examination textbooks. We also looked at the extent to which faculty sold textbooks, how much money they received, factors related to the selling of examination textbooks, and the general views of faculty on the ethics of the practice. Research has considered a variety of possible unethical behaviors engaged in by university professors. Morgan and Korschgen (2001) examined general faculty and student perceptions of 16 behaviors that could be viewed as unethical. The three behaviors considered to be most unethical were: ignoring strong evidence of cheating, insulting or ridiculing a student in his or her absence, and telling colleagues a confidential disclosure told to you by a student. One behavior, selling unwanted complimentary textbooks to book vendors, was not considered to be highly unethical by either faculty or students. It ranked 13th out of 16 on the degree of unethicality with a mean rating of 2.47 on a scale that ranged from 1 “unquestionably not ethical” to 5 “unquestionably ethical.” Moreover, another study by Tabachnick et al. (1991) found that more than half of academic psychologists they surveyed had engaged in bookselling but only about a fourth perceived the practice to be ethical. The apparent ubiquity of bookselling, the puzzling researching findings in the area, and the potential economic effects of the practice on

publishers, authors, and students require further exploration into the ethical nature of book selling and why it continues to be supported by many faculty.

Conceptual background and hypothesis development The ethics of bookselling: A case example Examination textbooks are used as a marketing tool in the sense that they are sent to faculty in the publisher’s hope that professors will review the book and require students to buy it for a class. Sometimes the books are sent because the professor has asked for a copy from the publisher’s representative. Other times, books related to the faculty member’s area of interest are sent unsolicited to the faculty member by the publisher. If the faculty member does not adopt the book, he or she may return it to the publisher, donate it to the campus library or a charitable organization, keep it on the shelf as a reference, sell it to a book buyer who regularly visits campus, give it to a student or colleague, or otherwise dispose of it. The selling of examination textbooks by faculty is a topic that has been discussed in various circumstances, including between faculty members and book publishing representatives during sales visits. The practice has even become the topic of an ethics case. An analysis of the case suggests that situational factors determine whether the practice should be viewed as ethical or unethical (Keith-Spiegel, et al., 1993, case #118, pp. 104–105): [Behavior]. “Professor Pinmoney collects the complimentary books that publishers send to him and sells them to a used-book vendor.” [Authors’ ethical analysis of the behavior]. “Publishers are usually responsive to faculty requests for free textbooks and often send unsolicited books to professors in the hope of a classroom adoption. This enormously expensive promotion and advertising technique cannot easily be replaced, primarily because professors need an opportunity to review an educational product care-

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Figure 1. College textbook supply chain: Flow and members. fully before requiring students to learn its contents. The cost of complimentary textbooks is passed along to student purchasers. The average cost of a hardcover textbook surpasses fifty dollars. The complimentary books do become the receiver’s personal property. Therefore, it cannot be considered unethical to sell complimentary books, especially those that arrive unsolicited. However, a moral alternative would be to return

unwanted books to the publishers’ field representatives or give them away to students, the departmental library, or worthy educational agencies (e.g., Books for Africa).1 The practice of requesting books from publishers for the sole purpose of selling them to usedbook vendors is a tacky and unethical way of earning a few dollars at the expense of the publishers and ultimately of the student consumers.

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Chet Robie et al. Furthermore, a colleague who labored to create the work is deprived of hard-earned compensation.”

Supply chain issues It is important to understand the role of the faculty member in the textbook sales and distribution process. Figure 1, “College Textbook Supply Chain: Flow and Members,” helps to illustrate the situation. From the perspectives of the book’s author and the publisher, the more sales generated of new books through the traditional path the better. With new sales, the author, publisher, and sales representative all receive compensation for their contributed effort. This is not the case when a student buys a used book, and, of course, there is a substantial used book market. However, there is nothing inherently unethical about used markets. Many products including records, books, artwork, and patented machinery are commonly resold and the original owner of the intellectual property as well as the producer are out of the compensation loop during the resale. In fact, when a book is resold, there are social welfare benefits: market demand is met using less physical resources such as paper and ink. Therefore, the ethics of the used book market as a whole are not being questioned. The ethical question in this paper revolves around the presumed and actual relationship a university faculty member maintains in this supply chain. The faculty member is a decision maker and is thus courted by the sales representative, and by extension the faculty member who wrote the text, “Dr. Smith would like you to review and consider his new text.” Ideally, the topic of the book is one of interest to the faculty member, they know and respect Dr. Smith, and the faculty member’s relationship with the sales representative is ongoing and positive. In this professional collegial environment, it is assumed that the faculty member will value and keep the book for its own sake even if it is not adopted for a class. The decision of a faculty member to convert this collegial review relationship into a for-profit supplier position is the focus of this research.

Legal and economic issues: Solicitation status and use of the money The case analysis suggests that solicitation status (whether the book came at the request of the professor or was sent uninvited by the publisher) is a variable that affects ethical perceptions of book selling. Solicitation status is primarily an ethical concern because it is unlikely that the practice of book selling is illegal per se whether the book in question was requested or was sent to the faculty member unsolicited. For example, in relation to situations in which a complimentary book is sent to a professor without his or her first requesting it, New York State General Obligations Law Section 5-332 (2002) states that “. . . The receipt of any such [unsolicited] goods, wares, or merchandise shall for the purposes be deemed an unconditional gift to the recipient who may use or dispose of such goods, wares, or merchandise in any manner he sees fit without any obligation on his part to the sender.” In relation to the situation in which a professor requests the complimentary book and sells it, the only situation in which this may be illegal is if the publishing company requires the receiving professor to sign an agreement not to sell the complimentary book [New York State General Obligations Law Section 5-701 (2002)]. The case analysis also suggests that perceived economic effects of book selling may also affect the perceptions of the ethics of the practice. One may posit that if a professor believes economic effects to be a factor, then he or she would either not engage in the practice, or, if they engage in it, would not keep the money but use it in some manner that would be less in his or her selfinterest. For example, the professor might use the money to offer prizes to students in classroom activities or make contributions to scholarship funds so as to improve the economic status of others in a small way. Such an altruistic use of the money may have a positive impact on the ethical views of the practice from which the money originated. An opinion piece on the deleterious economic effects of selling books on the “black market” argues that selling examination books is clearly unethical. Rigden (1982) suggested (without

The Ethics of Professorial Book Selling detailing how the figures were obtained) that this practice led to publishers’ losses of $20 million and authors’ losses of royalties of $10 million, all of which eventually get passed on to students in the form of higher textbook prices. Thus, the author suggests, publishers, professors, and students all bear the brunt of the practice of selling “black-market” books. Hypothetically, the practice of faculty book selling aids one cohort of students but hurts a subsequent cohort of students. Textbooks remain in their current editions for an average of two to four years. During this time, an increased supply of used books (which invariably are sold at lower prices than new books) on the shelves of bookstores (via the practice of selling complimentary copies of said texts) drives down the overall price of textbooks to the student. Complicating this issue, however, is the probability that many of the complimentary books sold by faculty are subsequently being priced by bookstores as new books. The degree to which this is happening would mitigate against the economic benefits that this student cohort would receive. Moreover, when the text goes into a new edition, publishers invariably pass on unexpected costs of the sale of complimentary texts to the consumer – that is, the student. It is an open question, amenable probably only to sophisticated econometric analyses, as to whether a net gain or loss to students results from the practice of complimentary book selling.

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utilitarian moral philosophy in which an attempt is made to “seek the greatest good for the greatest number of people.” The perception of that faculty member may be that selling books does not harm publishing companies a great deal, helps students by increasing the number of (cheaper) used books on the book market, and helps the faculty member in the form of a monetary incentive. According to this philosophy, the ends justify the means. On the other hand, a professor who chooses not to sell textbooks may subscribe to a deontological moral philosophy that focuses on the rights of individuals and on the intentions associated with a particular behavior rather than on its consequences. According to this philosophy, the ends do not justify the means. Finally, a professor could subscribe to a relativist moral philosophy that uses the actions of some relevant group as the basis for defining ethical standards. This professor is most likely to be influenced by contextual factors in his or her decision to sell textbooks. Such contextual factors in a university setting may include book selling norms, institutional policies, and professors’ pay satisfaction. In reality, it is likely that these ethical paradigms are not strictly trait-like concepts applied to all situations but philosophies that combine to determine an individual’s approach to ethical decision-making.

Hypotheses Moral philosophy of the professor Most ethical decision making models propose that ethical conduct is influenced by a combination of individual characteristics and contextual factors (cf. Treviño et al., 2001). This model likely applies to the practice of faculty bookselling in the sense that professors are influenced by their individual ethical standards and the ethical environment in which they work, including the practices of their colleagues. Differential moral philosophies held by individual professors may partially determine the practice of book selling (Ferrell et al., 2002). A professor who sells textbooks may subscribe to a

Whereas the moral philosophy of individuals should be expected to have an important role in their ethical views, the primary focus of this study was to examine how two situational variables related to the practice of book selling (solicitation status and use of money) affected ethical perceptions of selling textbooks. Bersoff (2001) found that impeding rationalizations that define deviant behavior as situationally appropriate (i.e., neutralizations) decreased the incidence of unethical behavior in a laboratory experiment. We expect this use of neutralizations to hold when these situational variables are considered. Given that unsolicited books are legally viewed

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as unrestricted gifts, we hypothesize that professors who are presented with a situation in which a book is given to them without their requesting it, would consider selling such a book to be more ethical than selling a book they had requested. We would also expect that if the money obtained from the sale is given to students rather than used by the faculty member this action would be seen as more ethical whether the book sold was sent unsolicited or solicited from the book publisher. H1: Selling unsolicited books will be perceived as more ethical than selling solicited books. H2: Giving the proceeds from sold examination books to students will be perceived as more ethical than using the money for the faculty members’ own purposes. In addition to the situational variables that may impact ethical philosophies, another rationalization arises from anecdotal experiences in discussing this issue with colleagues. This is the argument that some professors may find it ethically unproblematic to sell books to offset relatively low pay at some colleges and universities. Thus, a secondary interest of our study is to consider whether a professor’s pay satisfaction, which has been theoretically and empirically linked to perceptions of organizational justice and attitudes toward the organization (Folger and Konovsky, 1989; Tremblay et al., 2000), relates to whether the professor sells complimentary textbooks and how the professor views the ethics of the practice. Secondary interests of this study also include: (1) obtaining base rate estimates for the percentage of faculty members who sell texts and how much they receive in dollars per year, (2) ascertaining the attitude of faculty members towards the practice of book selling in general, and (3) examining the correlations of contextual factors with book-selling behaviors (e.g., whether the faculty member has sold books in the past year, how much they received in dollars over the past year, how widespread the practice is at their university).

Method Participants Participants were faculty members at 14 public and private four-year colleges and universities and community colleges in close proximity to the university where the authors of this study work. All respondents were from universities located in New York State. These institutions were chosen for two reasons: (1) to hold constant state laws and regulations that may differ on the legality of examination book selling (and thus possibly differentially affect responses), and (2) in the hope that our institutional name recognition would boost response rates, either through accumulated institutional goodwill or in the higher perceived probability that the email survey would not be regarded as a disguised computer virus. A two-stage sampling plan was used for the 1000 survey links that were sent out. (See the Procedures section below for more on the webbased methodology that was used.) First, we attempted to stratify the sample according to whether the institutions at which the professors worked were public or private. About 52 percent of survey links were sent to professors working at one of eight public colleges (36 percent at four universities and 16 percent at four community colleges) and 48 percent of survey links were sent to professors working at six private universities. Second, within each institution, we sampled professors from as wide a variety of academic disciplines as possible; individuals within each department were placed in one of four experimental cells with as few individuals as possible being placed in the same experimental cell within each department. Of the 1000 survey links sent out, 90 survey links were not received by the recipient, four were sent to administrative personnel, and six were sent to emeritus professors who reported that they did not believe that it was appropriate for them to fill out the survey given their retired status. Of the remaining 900 participants who ostensibly received a survey, 236 were returned for an effective approximate response rate of 26 percent. A majority of the respondents were male (63 percent) and white (90 percent)

The Ethics of Professorial Book Selling with an average age of 49.80 (SD = 10.06) and an average organizational tenure of 14.42 (SD = 10.77) years. About 52 percent of respondents were affiliated with public universities (37.4 percent four-year and 14.5 percent community college), 41.3 percent were affiliated with private four-year universities, and 6.8 percent responded that their university fell into an “other” category. Roughly equal percentages of faculty reported being in the three academic ranks (25.6 percent assistant professor, 31.2 percent associate professor, and 35.5 percent full professor) with 7.6 percent reporting falling into an “other” category (perhaps these were adjunct professors). The majority of respondents (65.3 percent) were tenured with 24.6 percent untenured tenure-track, 8.5 percent untenured non-tenure-track, and 1.7 percent in an “other” category. These respondents represented a wide variety of academic disciplines (see Table I).

Measures The majority of the measures used in the study were original measures designed to tap very narrow constructs. Various situational factors were measured using the following one-item measures: “Does your institution have a policy restricting the sale of examination textbooks by faculty?” (1 = no, 2 = yes, 3 = not sure); “How widespread is the practice of selling examination textbooks among your colleagues?” (1 = no one, 2 = rarely, 3 = some faculty, 4 = most of the faculty, 5 = everyone, “not sure” coded as missing); “Are you openly discouraged by colleagues in selling examination textbooks?” (1 = no, 2 = yes); and “Are any of your colleagues textbook authors?” (1 = no, 2 = yes, “not sure” coded as missing). Selling behaviors were measured using the following measures: “Have you ever sold an examination book?” (1 = no, 2 = yes); “Have you sold an examination book over the past year?” (1 = no, 2 = yes); and “If you have sold any examination books in the past year, what is the approximate dollar value of the money you have received over the past year in selling examination books?” Finally, general

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TABLE I Percentage of respondents by academic discipline Academic discipline

Percentage

Accounting Anthropology Biology Chemistry Computer science Criminal justice Counseling Earth sciences Economics English Finance Fine arts Health science History Humanities Management Marketing Math Philosophy Physical education Physics Political science Psychology Religious studies Social sciences Social work Sociology Did not respond to question

003.4 003.0 005.5 006.8 000.8 000.8 000.4 000.4 002.1 007.2 000.4 001.3 000.4 001.3 001.3 005.1 000.8 002.5 001.7 000.8 000.8 001.3 005.5 000.4 001.7 000.4 003.8 039.8

Total

100.0

Note: Total N = 236.

attitude towards selling examination textbooks was measured using the following measure: “What is your general attitude towards the selling of examination textbooks by professors?” (1 = definitely unethical, 2 = ethical under rare circumstances, 3 = don’t know/not sure, 4 = ethical under many circumstances, and 5 = definitely ethical). Pay satisfaction was measured using nine items from the pay satisfaction scale of the Job Descriptive Index ( JDI; Balzer, et al., 1997) – a popular and well-regarded measure of satisfaction with various job facets. Each item is an adjective or short statement describing aspects of pay

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[income adequate for normal expenses; fair; barely live on income (reverse-scored); bad (reverse-scored); income provides luxuries; insecure (reverse-scored); less than I deserve (reverse-scored); well paid; and underpaid (reverse-scored)]. Respondents are asked to answer for each item whether: yes “describes my pay” (scored as a “3” for regularly scored items and as a “1” for reverse scored items); no “does not describe my pay” (scored as a “1” for regularly scored items and as a “3” for reversescored items); and ? “cannot decide” (always scored as a “1”). Scores are typically summed and then doubled for this scale to conform to other scales in the JDI. We doubled the scores in our study per standard practice specifically so we could compare our results to the published norms. The internal consistency reliability of the pay satisfaction scale in our study was 0.86.

Procedure and design Respondents were sent an email (and a followup email five days later) requesting their participation in the study that contained a World Wide Web link to our on-line survey, which could be filled out in a point-and-click fashion. We also included a monetary inducement (i.e., “raffle”) in our email message that required participants to reply to us in an email with the word “survey” in the header line to be considered for a chance (1 in 5 for a 10 percent response rate and 1 in 10 for a 20 percent response rate) to win a $20 gift certificate to a national on-line bookseller. All responses to the on-line survey were anonymous, as we did not track the identity of those respondents who filled out the survey. Although the response rate was 26 percent, of the 236 respondents who filled out the survey, only 59 respondents sent us emails requesting participation in the raffle. Thus, about one week after the follow-up email, we paid ten $20 on-line gift certificates by randomly selecting ten of 59 email addresses and sending each a promotional code that could be redeemed at the on-line bookseller’s web site. We programmed our survey software such that certain items had to be answered to be able to

submit the responses to our server. All of the demographic items and the item asking for the approximate dollar value of the money received over the past year for selling examination books did not require an answer to be able to submit responses. The experimental portion of the study required that we randomly assign respondents to one of four experimental cells using the following instructions for all four cells: “Please read the following hypothetical scenario involving a faculty member selling an examination book (i.e., book given to faculty for review purposes) to a wholesaler. Use the rating scale below the scenario2 to rate your perception of the acceptability of the faculty member’s behavior.” Scenario A: (unsolicited book/money for faculty) A faculty member receives an unsolicited examination book from a textbook publishing company. The faculty member sells the book to a wholesaler. The faculty member will use the money for his or her own purposes. Scenario B: (unsolicited book/money for students) A faculty member receives an unsolicited examination book from a textbook publishing company. The faculty member sells the book to a wholesaler. The faculty member will use the money to fund student activities. Scenario C: (solicited book/money for faculty) A faculty member requests an examination book from a textbook publishing company. The faculty member sells the book to a wholesaler. The faculty member will use the money for his or her own purposes. Scenario D: (solicited book/money for students) A faculty member requests an examination book from a textbook publishing company. The faculty member sells the book to a wholesaler. The faculty member will use the money to fund student activities.

This experimental design necessitated the use of a 2 × 2 between-subjects univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA). The manipulated variables were solicitation status (unsolicited versus solicited) and use of money (faculty versus students).

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tuting a moderate effect, and an η2 of greater than 0.25 as constituting a strong effect (p. 233).

Results Experimental Ethical rating scale scores were subjected to a two-way ANOVA having two levels of solicitation status (unsolicited versus solicited) and two levels of use of money (faculty versus students). All effects were found to be statistically significant (see Table II), supporting both of our hypotheses. The main effect of solicitation status was such that respondents perceived that selling books that were not solicited (M = 2.19) was more ethical than selling books that were solicited (M = 1.62), F(1, 232) = 35.48, p < 0.001. The strength of the relationship, as indexed by partial η2 was 0.13. The main effect of use of money was such that respondents perceived that using book proceeds to fund student activities (M = 2.07) was more ethical than using book proceeds for the faculty’s own purposes (M = 1.76), F(1, 232) = 12.74, p < 0.001. The strength of the relationship, as indexed by partial η2 was 0.05. Finally, the interaction between solicitation status and use of money was such that the effect of solicitation status was greater when the money was used to fund student activities than when the money was used for the faculty’s own purposes (see Figure 2), F(1, 232) = 4.56, p < 0.05. The strength of the relationship, as indexed by partial η2 was 0.02. In the behavioral sciences, Jaccard and Becker (1990) conceptualize an η2 of less than 0.10 as constituting a weak effect, an η2 between 0.10 and 0.25 as consti-

Descriptive and correlational An overwhelming majority of the respondents reported either that their organization did not have a policy restricting the sale of examination books (64 percent) or were not sure if their organization had such a policy (35.2 percent). Also, very few respondents (6.4 percent) reported being openly discouraged by their colleagues in selling examination textbooks. Most of the respondents reported they had colleagues who were textbook authors (64.8 percent). Finally, the question on how widespread the practice of textbook selling was on campus garnered a wide range of opinion with 4.2 percent reporting no faculty members sold books, 8.1 percent reporting faculty members rarely sold books, 38.6 percent reporting some of the faculty sold books, 14 percent reporting most of the faculty sold books, no one reporting that all of the faculty sold books, and 35.2 percent reporting they were not sure of the pervasiveness of the practice. The average pay satisfaction of respondents was 31.84 (SD = 15.95). This level of pay satisfaction is about equal to the median pay satisfaction score of managers in the JDI normative sample (Balzer et al., 1997). Thus, the respondents in our sample are, in general, no more or less satisfied with their pay than the relevant population in general.

TABLE II Summary table for a two-factor between-subjects univariate ANOVA SS

df

MS

F

Partial η2

Solicitation status (A) Use of money (B) A×B Error

023.38 008.40 003.01 152.90

001 001 001 232

23.38 08.40 03.01 00.66

35.48** 12.74** 4.56*

0.13 0.05 0.02

Total

187.70

235

Source of variation

Note: * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.001. Partial η2 = percentage of unique variance accounted for by the main effect or interaction out of the total variance in responses.

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Figure 2. Mean ethical rating as a function of solicitation status (unsolicited versus solicited) and use of money (faculty versus students).

The question on the perception of book selling in general by professors garnered a wide range in opinion. Almost half of the respondents believed examination book selling to be either definitely unethical (33.9 percent) or rarely ethical (13.6 percent); some respondents were unsure (14.8 percent); and almost 40 percent of the respondents believed it to be either mostly ethical (30.9 percent) or definitely ethical (6.8 percent). A graphical representation of the responses for this question may be seen in Figure 3. A significant minority of respondents had sold an examination book at least once (42.8 percent) and a still sizeable minority of respondents had sold an examination book over the past year (30.1 percent). The average amount of money received for those who sold examination books over the past year was $79.43 (SD = $70.82). Correlations among the situational factors, pay satisfaction, attitude towards book selling, and selling behaviors are displayed in Table III. Note

that the questions regarding book selling policies and open discouragement of book selling were not included in the correlation matrix because of the extremely low variance evidenced in the items (only two respondents reported that their institution had a policy restricting the sale of examination books and only 15 respondents reported that their colleagues openly discouraged them in selling examination books). Moreover, two of the 20 correlations for the remaining variables could not be computed because at least one of the variables in the pair was a constant for each pair (i.e., only those who sold books reported an amount of money that they received for selling the books). Six of the 18 computed correlations were significant at the 0.001 alpha level. Correlations of the respondent’s perception of the proportion of faculty who sell textbooks were significant with the following variables: (1) general attitude towards book selling (r = 0.49), whether the respondent had ever sold a book (r = 0.56), and whether the respondent had sold

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Figure 3. General attitude towards the selling of examination books by professors.

a book over the past year (r = 0.53). The correlation of general attitude towards book selling was also significantly related to whether the respondent had ever sold a book (r = 0.59) and whether the respondent had sold a book over the

past year (r = 0.55). Finally, as one may expect, a large correlation was evidenced between whether the respondent had ever sold a book and whether the respondent had sold a book over the past year (r = 0.76).

TABLE III Intercorrelations of situational factors, pay satisfaction, attitude towards book selling, and selling behaviors Variable 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Other sell Authors Pay Sat. Attitude Ever sold Recent sold Amount $

M

SD

n

1

2

3

*2.96 *1.71 31.84 *2.63 *1.43 *1.30 79.43

*0.78 *0.46 15.95 *1.39 *0.50 *0.46 70.82

153 217 236 236 236 236 *65

1.00 0.01 0.03 *0.49* *0.56* *0.53* 0.08

1.00 0.04 0.11 0.10 0.12 0.00

*1.00 *0.03 *0.04 *0.03 –0.01

4

5

1.00 *0.59* 1.00 *0.55* *0.76* 0.05 –†

6

7

1.00 –†

1.00

Note: * p < 0.001. Other sell = proportion of faculty who sell textbooks at the institution (1 = no one to 4 = most of the faculty). Authors = whether any colleagues are textbook authors (1 = no, 2 = yes). Pay sat. = pay satisfaction (0 = low pay satisfaction to 54 = high pay satisfaction). Attitude = general attitude towards the selling of examination textbooks by professors (1 = definitely unethical to 5 = definitely ethical). Ever sold = whether the respondent has ever sold an examination textbook (1 = no, 2 = yes). Recent sold = whether the respondent has sold an examination textbook over the past year (1 = no, 2 = yes). Amount $ = the total dollar value of examination textbooks sold by the respondent over the past year. † Could not be computed because at least one of the variables for each correlational pair was a constant.

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Discussion The results of this study suggest that professors are most likely to perceive book selling as ethical when the books in question are given to them without being solicited from the publisher and when money gained from the sale of the books is used to fund student activities. Moreover, the variable most related to one’s attitude towards the ethicality of book selling and actual selling behavior was how widespread the practice appeared to be on campus. An interesting finding of this study was the importance of the interaction effects between solicitation status and use of money. The effect of solicitation status on ethicality of book selling was greater when the money was used to fund student activities than when the money was used by the faculty member. Respondents’ pay satisfaction was not related to ethical perceptions or selling behavior; thus one may conclude from this data that relatively few faculty sell books (or morally justify selling textbooks) to compensate for dissatisfaction with pay. About 30 percent of faculty members sold textbooks over the past year at a dollar value of about $80, with a sizeable minority of about 38 percent reporting that they believed the practice to be generally ethical. The results of our study can be compared to those of Tabachnick et al. (1991). If you collapse the bottom and top two categories for the ethical perceptions question in each study, it appears that in both studies, about half of respondents believed bookselling to be unethical. In the present study, a higher percentage of respondents reported that bookselling was ethical (37.7% for professors across disciplines versus 28.6% for psychology professors) and a lower percentage of respondents reported being unsure (14.8% professors across disciplines versus 26.1% for psychology professors). The difference between our study and the Tabachnick et al. study evidenced for the proportion of those who were not sure of their ethical view on bookselling may have been due to the increased amount of contextualized information we gave respondents earlier in the survey. This information may have served to polarize their responses to this question. Finally, only 42.8% of respondents in our study had ever

sold a book, whereas, 53.1% of respondents in the Tabachnick et al. (1991) study had sold a book at least once.

Implications Several implications can be made from the results of this study. First, the practice of book selling is a moderately accepted and expensive proposition that can possibly be controlled through situational manipulations. Second, very few institutions have policies that govern the practice of book selling. It is likely that a combination of institutional policy-making and publishers’ more careful screening of examination book distribution could significantly reduce the practice of book selling. Publishers, obviously, are against the sale of examination books and frequently mark these books as “not to be resold.” The results of this study indicate that if publishers send books only at the request of faculty members, the ethical views of many faculty members might mitigate the likelihood that books received in such a manner would be sold to book buyers. However, this implication is speculative in that we did not specifically ask respondents if they would be less likely to sell a book that they had requested. In addition, the ethics of bookstores that buy books that are clearly marked “examination copy, not for resale” should be scrutinized. Stores that take in these “black market” books from book buyers at cut-rate prices, and then charge students the full price of a new book should be identified. Such activities by university bookstores and contractors who locate on campuses should be subject to institutional restrictions regarding book selling that are imposed on faculty. The results of this study indicated that Rigden’s (1982) economic analysis of the book selling phenomenon is only partially accurate.3 First, the economic cost of book selling to publishers, authors, and students is a complicated combination of several factors. The economic costs to publishers and authors can be extrapolated using the base rate of faculty who have sold books gleaned from the present study (30

The Ethics of Professorial Book Selling percent), the average amount received by respondents of the present study ($79.43), and the estimated number of faculty currently working in the United States (about 1 million, according to U.S. Department of Education, 2000 statistics). If a complimentary book that retails for $100 new is sold by a faculty member to a book buyer for $20, the book buyer then sells the book to a wholesaler for $40. The wholesaler then sells that book to the bookstore for perhaps $60. The bookstore then generally sells the book as a used book to the student for $80. The original net to the publishing company of a new book would be $75 (with 25–35 percent going to the bookstore as mark-up). Of that $75, about $11 would be paid to authors in royalties (with a final net to the book publisher of $64). Thus, for every dollar received by a faculty member for selling complimentary books, about $3 of publishing company revenue is lost ($64/$20) and $0.50 of authors’ royalties is lost ($11/$20). Using the parameter estimates from our studies, book selling is potentially costing (annually and in the U.S. market alone) book publishers about $71,487,000 and is costing authors about $11,914,500. As we noted earlier, a proportion of these losses to the publishing company and authors are made up by passing the costs on to students. It is unknown to what degree the resulting high prices lead to students’ failing to buy books that are required for their courses. Finally, we are not including in our estimates instances of outright fraud. For example, a professor from Seton Hall University was recently convicted of using fictitious names and those of his colleagues in obtaining $150,000 worth of books from a number of publishing houses, then reselling them through a bookseller for a profit of $20,000 to $30,000 (Sterling, 2003). The degree to which fraudulent behavior is engaged in is unknown; however, a publishing company representative with whom we consulted frequently discontinues sending complimentary books to about 10 percent of the professors she serves for various reasons. These reasons include professors: (1) ordering an inordinately large number of complimentary books, (2) repeatedly ordering examination copies of the same book,

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and (3) having in their possession examination copies of books outside of their professional area when copies of such books have been reported missing in the mail by other professors (observed in an office visit). Given the amount of money publishing companies are losing and the degree to which our research suggests that the degree of acceptability of the practice of professorial bookselling seems to influence its viability, an obvious implication of this research is the need for publishing companies to be more proactive in educating faculty about the expectations of the book review process. For example, research typically shows that individuals are more likely to behave unethically (e.g., stealing behavior) towards corporate entities that are perceived to be impersonal (i.e., “I don’t know them”) and wealthy (i.e., “they can afford it”) (Murphy, 1993). If publishing companies could demonstrate that professorial book selling is hurting a business staffed by real people, this may be one strategy to help to reduce the current levels of professorial book selling. Whereas it might be argued that this study focuses on a topic that is not as crucial to business ethics as some others, we believe the topic is important in terms of the message it sends to students who become aware of this practice. Bookselling is likely not to bankrupt the publishing industry, make textbook authors destitute, or keep students from obtaining books. But when students observe or hear stories of professors selling complimentary textbooks and when that money is typically not declared as taxable income, the primary lesson may be that “fast money is OK money”; that is, as long as no one is visibly hurt, you can “make a buck doing it,” and those “bucks” come relatively fast and easy, then it is morally acceptable. Such a lesson has the potential to create short- and long-term negative effects on students moral development and the subsequent ethical choices they make in their careers. Professors serve as role models for students, and their behavior certainly can have important effects on students who know of it.

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Limitations Social desirability bias is likely an issue with the current research (Choong et al., 2002). Thus, it is likely that our estimates of book selling and dollar amounts received are biased downward. Approaches to measuring base rates that provide absolute anonymity such as the unmatched-count technique (UCT) and the randomized-response technique (RRT) have generally shown that conventional estimates are biased downwards, especially with potentially stigmatizing behaviors. For example, Wimbush and Dalton (1997) found that only 28.2 percent individuals admitted to theft via direct self-report but 59.2 percent admitted to theft using RRT and 57.9 percent admitted to theft using UCT. Thus, the percentage of faculty in our study who sell books and the amount of money that they sold them for is likely higher. Another limitation of our study was that we did not have demographic data on the respondents so we could not compare the characteristics of respondents to non-respondents. However, the percentage of respondents by public and private university closely resembled the percentage of survey links by type of school. An additional limitation of the study is that only professors in the state of New York were surveyed. This was done to maximize survey response rate and to provide internal validity by guarding against confounding the results due to differences in state laws and regulations that might be present in a wider sample. This decision may lessen the generalizability of the results in terms of ethical views of all faculty toward book selling. Whereas the raffle incentive may have been a confound in that we may have been screening for respondents with an interest in monetary inducements, the converse could also have been true. Not providing a monetary inducement could have been screening for respondents with an interest in being involved in research for purely altruistic purposes. The purpose of our study was to focus on situational factors so we did not attempt to measure individual ethical philosophies of the respondents. However, by assigning respondents

to random experimental conditions and finding significant results on both situational variables as well as interaction effects, one might conclude that these contextual factors are very powerful in determining an individual’s ethical views of this practice, no matter the individual’s ethical philosophy.

Future research This study attempts to answer recent calls for more rigorous, data-based inquiry in the field of academic ethics (e.g., Holtschneider, 2001). Several avenues of future research would be beneficial to pursue. For example, the true impact of professorial book selling on students in terms of increased text costs versus the opportunity to purchase books at a lower price would be an excellent subject for future inquiry. Such a study would require sophisticated economic analyses to determine whether a net gain or loss to students results vis-à-vis the practice of complimentary book selling. In Wimbush and Dalton (1997) study, UCT, RRT, and conventional means of ascertaining base rates of theft were examined. Replicating their analysis with bookselling would be important to understanding the true base rates of the phenomenon under study. Appropriate econometric analyses could then be completed to estimate the true economic costs of the phenomenon. To obtain varied perceptions regarding the issue and determine the impact of bookselling on perceptions of faculty ethics, future research should consider the ethical views of students and administrators regarding the moral correctness of faculty engaging in book selling. Bookselling practices in other countries and other cultures should also be a focus of further inquiry in this area to determine if cross-cultural perspectives on moral behavior impact the practice. The impact of a faculty member’s actual pay and academic discipline on a faculty member’s ethical views of selling text books would be important to examine. Our study dealt only with perceived pay satisfaction rather than actual pay level. The question of whether a lower-paid

The Ethics of Professorial Book Selling faculty member would feel more ethically justified in selling a book than a higher-paid colleague is one for future research. This research might be an important contribution to the pay satisfaction and organizational justice literature. In terms of academic discipline, we did not have a large enough sample size to examine such questions as: Would business school professors be more influenced by economic arguments regarding selling textbooks than liberal arts faculty? In addition, it would be important to consider faculty views toward selling examination textbooks in terms of institutional codes of ethics and policies about the matter. This study found little variance in terms of institutional restrictions on the practice. The degree to which these restrictions exist, and how they are propagated, should be examined. A lack of such codes and restrictions may indicate that selling examination textbooks has not been viewed in the past as an important ethical concern on campus. Interestingly, when we fed back the results of our study to one of our respondents, she noted to us that certain on-line companies provide professors a commission for enticing students to buy texts from them instead of from the university bookstores. Future studies into the ethical perceptions of the university bookstores’ circumvention and the paying of commissions to professors are certainly warranted. Two other suggestions for future research can be made. A mixed methods approach that includes a qualitative component would allow a future study to survey the reasons why the respondents come to the conclusions they do. This qualitative data could glean some interesting insight into the ethical reasoning of those who respond; reasoning that may vary from their quantitative responses. Finally, this study may not generalize to a larger sample of universities, in different states (with different laws pertaining to bookselling), and to different academic disciplines. Future studies should be designed to extend the present study to those contexts. Evidence exists that university professors may not hold as vaunted a place in the public’s heart, as they perhaps should. One survey of the public’s perception of seven professions’ prestige, honesty, and ethical standards, found that university pro-

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fessors were rated lower than doctors, dentists, pharmacists, and clergy; the same as lawyers; and higher than bankers (Stevens et al., 1993). Clearly, anything that can be done to examine the causes of and rectify these perceptions would be worthwhile. Whether bookselling is related to such public views remains a topic for further inquiry.

Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank Vincent Agnello for his assistance on legal issues, Stanton Warren and William Peek for their assistance on economic issues, Daniel Tompkins for his helpful review and critique, and Michael Paul for his assistance with pulling the sample of respondents used in this study. We owe a special thanks to Lucinda Steinhauser for her critically helpful insights into the publishing business and her careful review of several aspects of our work.

Notes 1

The only alternative that will not potentially harm a book publisher or author is to dispose of the book. Giving the book to a student or donating the book to a library or charitable organization will keep the book in circulation which may result in students using it free of charge and thus choosing not to buy the book. Thanks are extended to Daniel Tompkins for making us aware of this. 2 The ethical rating scale for the scenarios was definitely unethical (coded as a “1”), cannot decide (coded as a “2”), and definitely ethical (coded as a “3”). We chose to modify the ethical rating scale for the scenarios from that used for the general attitude towards the selling of examination books by professors because the specific situational context given in the scenarios made the anchors “ethical under rare circumstances” and “ethical under many circumstances” less relevant. 3 Some of the information for this analysis was obtained through personal communications with a representative from a national textbook publisher. This study was neither endorsed nor funded by any textbook publishing companies.

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Chet Robie Department of Business, School of Business & Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5, E-mail: [email protected] Roland E. Kidwell Jr. and James A. Kling Department of Commerce, College of Business Administration, Niagara University, New York, U.S.A. and Charles Sturt University, N.S.W., Australia.