Hospitality ethics curriculum: an industry perspective

In curriculum design, it is important to solicit the industry's views to ensure its relevancy to industry needs. Therefore, this study conducted a questionnaire survey with 308 hospitality employees who helped in identifying the importance of 39 ethical issues in the hospitality industry. It is assumed that the more important an issue is rated, the more important it is to include its discussion in the curriculum. The two most important issues were found to be “Theft of company property by employees” and “Sexual harassment on the job”. When factor analysis was adopted, eight factors were identified which include, in descending order of importance, “environmental protection”, “social conscience and employee integrity”, “social justice”, “consumer protection”, “business fraud”, “employee equity”, “privacy of employees” and finally “personal advantage”. It is recommended that developers of hospitality curricula should consider the inclusion of these ethical issues in their programs.