Professional conduct guidelines
These conduct guidelines are established to promote and maintain the highest professional standards of service and conduct among the membership of GCSAA. Members are encouraged to remind fellow GCSAA members about these courtesies through phone calls, electronic messages and letters. Peer reinforcement of these standards is encouraged.
As a member of GCSAA, I will to the best of my ability:
- Recognize and discharge all of my responsibilities and duties in such a manner as to enhance this Association and my profession.
- Practice and insist upon sound business and turf management principles in exercising the responsibilities of my position.
- Utilize frequent opportunities to expand my professional knowledge, thereby improving myself and my profession.
- Refrain from any act tending to promote my own interest at the expense of the dignity and integrity of the profession.
- Base endorsements, whether written, verbal, or through any other medium strictly upon satisfactory personal experiences with the product, item or service endorsed.
- Refrain from encouraging or accepting considerations of any value without the express understanding of all parties that said consideration is available to all persons in similar circumstances, and no gift or consideration is for personal gain to the detriment of the course, my employer or the profession.
- Recognize and observe the highest standards of integrity in my relationships with fellow golf course superintendents and others associated with this profession and industry.
- Extend all professional courtesies to a fellow superintendent, including but not limited to contacting him or her prior to visiting his or her golf course, adhering to the complimentary golf policies of other golf courses and always giving as much advance notice as possible when seeking playing privileges at a fellow superintendent’s golf facility; and conducting myself in the highest professional manner at all golf-related events and other public events where I am representing the golf course superintendent profession.
- Assist my fellow superintendents in all ways consistent with my abilities.
- Abstain from expressing negative opinions or making false statements concerning another superintendent that cause public embarrassment to another superintendent or fellow members.
- Lend my support to, and actively participate in, the efforts of my local chapter and GCSAA to improve public understanding and recognition of the profession of golf course management.
- Express professional opinions on technical subjects publicly only when that opinion is founded upon adequate knowledge of the facts and competence in the subject matter.