It is incontestable that the prevalence and effective practical implementation of ethical principles and moral values in organizations like higher education is crucial. The principle of work ethics including integrity, equity, fairness, accountability, transparency, teamwork and the like controls what an employee should perform in different situations in every organization. These principles and values mainly determine the good performance of the workers and effectiveness of an organization, principally as they applied to guide human conduct. However, most of Ethiopian public higher educations lack the good practices of these valuable work ethics and moral values. Rather, these institutions are characterized with corruption, poor governance, lack of integrity, equity, fairness, accountability, transparency and so on. Yet, greater attention was not given to the above ethical practice and values by the concerned bodies. Therefore, this study attempts to shed light on the condition of work ethics in the Ethiopian higher education. In this article, by using analytic approach and some personal experiences, the findings of the study indicated that there is a significant unethical behavior in most of Ethiopian public universities as originating from ethical lapses including greed, inadequate ethics training, lax ethics laws, and lenient disciplinary actions. The study has also identified that besides conflicts, scandals and other acute unethical practices, there is sneaky tendency of politically targeting higher education institutions especially by opposition parties. Similarly, since there is no uniform code of ethics and adequate ethics training, the proper perception as well as meaningful practical implementation of the principles of workplace ethics and values in these institutions is very weak. Hence, it is argued that these malicious and pervasive unethical practices need greater educational regulation policy and strategy reconsideration from Ethiopian government, Ministry of Science and Higher Education and university leaders. There should be an established uniform, binding and refined universities wide Code of Ethics that guide the behavior of employees and leaders. This also helps to develop the practice of ethics training, effective disciplinary action and strong staff appraisal mechanism.

ethics, work ethics, code of ethics, performance appraisal, higher education