Towards integrity systems

Integrity systems (described in the Introduction) contain the elements that interact to strengthen ethical behaviour and to discourage unethical ones within a given domain. But how are these systems developed from qualitative research data? This chapter describes a methodological approach that research teams undertook to understand empirically what drives professional ethical integrity in four professions: construction management, engineering, town planning, and architecture. Four research teams gathered data from strategic documents from government organisations, private companies, and professional/industry associations, as well as from semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Data focussed on ethical values, their drivers, and their barriers. The research team performed multi-level data analysis to identify themes, which were then used as building blocks (‘nodes’) for influence diagrams using specific protocols. The nodes were linked, resulting in influence diagrams for each of the professions. Following the development of profession-specific influence diagrams, the research team also undertook initial steps to explore the extent to which these influence diagrams could be integrated into a single diagram for multiple professions. For the construction management team, influence diagrams were also foundational to two other analytical frameworks: Bayesian Networks (thirteenth chapter) and actor-network theory (ANT) analysis (fourteenth chapter). Collectively, they provide a detailed understanding of ethics and integrity in the built environment.