Code of Conduct for Universities: A Comparison between USA and Vietnam

Abstract

In the context of globalisation, codes of conduct are being increasingly adopted in universities worldwide; however their impacts on staff perceptions and behaviour have not been thoroughly addressed. As a tool of soft innovative management, several universities formulate a code of conduct in order to stimulate responsible behaviour among their members and enhance the social responsibilities of the organization.

Much time and effort is regularly spent fixing the content of the code but a lot of universities find it hard to implement and maintain the code and how to achieve its goals. The challenge of implementation is to utilize the dynamics which have emerged from the formulation of the code. By doing a comparison between codes of conduct of some US and Vietnam universities, this paper aims at scope, principles and standards included in a code of conduct and suggests a feasible way of implementing a code of conduct for Vietnam universities.

Keywords: Code of conduct, university, behaviour, social responsibility, soft management.