ABSTRACT
Epictetus would, no doubt, consider ethics one of those excellent endeavors in and of itself. Philosophers such as Aristotle and Kant declared ethics to be the most pure of all intellectual pursuits, worthy of contemplation by its very nature, as opposed to being dependent on its outcomes. Therefore, it is a natural progression of the Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management (Grunig, 1992c) study to consider the ethical, the moral, and the good to be essential components of excellence. Scholars such as this author argue that ethics is the most crucial of all excellence factors because it unifies and promulgates all of the other factors of excellence. Ethics is a single excellence factor and the common underpinning of all factors that predict excellent public relations. This chapter discusses the unification of ethics and the principles of excellence as an advancement toward the future of Excellence Theory.
