The study of organizational ethics continues to be the focus of significant academic attention, however it is a discourse that remains largely informed by a form of morality that is perhaps best described as ordered and cognitive. Traditional approaches to questions of organizational ethics emphasize a fundamentally static view of organizations and the people within them, reinforcing notions of mind/body dualism and reifying ethics as an outcome of human agency, choice, and deliberate intention (see MacKay and Chia). (...) We challenge this approach and instead argue in favor of ethics research that adopts an ontology grounded in process metaphysics. Escaping the confines of Cartesian dualism, we reconceptualize organizational ethics as something that is in fact not held constant, is not a static termination point or an outcome of events, but is rather an input into the continually reconstituting context of the organization over time (see Langley, et al.). The process ethics we articulate provides a grounding for moral critique in diverse communities that is not undermined by relativism. Moreover, it provides guidance to managers and employees facing moral problems without forcing them to face a tyranny of principles. We consider how a process ethics would be enacted in organizations through managerial decision-making and in the treatment of employees. (shrink)

Background Research is fundamental to improving the quality of health care. The need for regulation of research is clear. However, the bureaucratic complexity of research governance has raised concerns that the regulatory mechanisms intended to protect participants now threaten to undermine or stifle the research enterprise, especially as this relates to sensitive topics and hard to reach groups. Discussion Much criticism of research governance has focused on long delays in obtaining ethical approvals, restrictions imposed on study conduct, and the inappropriateness (...) of evaluating qualitative studies within the methodological and risk assessment frameworks applied to biomedical and clinical research. Less attention has been given to the different epistemologies underlying biomedical and qualitative investigation. The bioethical framework underpinning current regulatory structures is fundamentally at odds with the practice of emergent, negotiated micro-ethics required in qualitative research. The complex and shifting nature of real world settings delivers unanticipated ethical issues and (occasionally) genuine dilemmas which go beyond easy or formulaic ‘procedural’ resolution. This is not to say that qualitative studies are ‘unethical’ but that their ethical nature can only be safeguarded through the practice of ‘micro-ethics’ based on the judgement and integrity of researchers in the field. Summary This paper considers the implications of contrasting ethical paradigms for the conduct of qualitative research and the value of ‘empirical ethics’ as a means of liberating qualitative (and other) research from an outmoded and unduly restrictive research governance framework based on abstract prinicipalism, divorced from real world contexts and values. (shrink)

The study of ethical decision-making has made significant advances, particularly with regard to the ways in which different types of processing are implicated. In recent decades, much of this advancement has been driven by the influence of dual-process theories of cognition. Unfortunately, the wealth of findings in this context can be confusing for management scholars and practitioners who desire to know how best to encourage ethical behavior. While some studies suggest that deliberate reflection leads to more ethical behavior, other (...) studies find, in contrast, that intuitive decision-making leads to more ethical results. The goal of this integrative conceptual review is to help make sense of such apparently contradictory findings by identifying the moderating influences that lead to more versus less ethical decisions, whether they are made via intuitive or deliberative processes. Based on our integrative review of moderators from different disciplines and eras, we develop a taxonomy that can aid researchers in the task of identifying when similar constructs have been studied under different names. We organize our findings concerning these influences in accordance with four emergent moderator categories—psychological, situational, social, and physiological. This work helps us identify patterns of moderating factors across both intuitive and deliberative ethical decision-making, gaps that suggest future research directions and practical implications. (shrink)

The Médecins Sans Frontières ethics review board has been solicited in an unprecedented way to provide advice and review research protocols in an ‘emergency’ mode during the recent Ebola epidemic. Twenty-seven Ebola-related study protocols were reviewed between March 2014 and August 2015, ranging from epidemiological research, to behavioural research, infectivity studies and clinical trials with investigational products at early development stages. This article examines the MSF ERB’s experience addressing issues related to both the process of review and substantive (...) ethical issues in this context. These topics include lack of policies regarding blood sample collection and use, and engaging communities regarding their storage and future use; exclusion of pregnant women from clinical and vaccine trials; and the difficulty of implementing timely and high-quality qualitative/anthropological research to consider potential upfront harms. Having noticed different standards across ethics committees, we propose that when multiple ethics reviews of clinical and vaccine trials are carried out during a public health emergency they should be accompanied by transparent communication between the ECs involved. The MSF ERB experience should trigger a broader discussion on the ‘optimal’ ethics review in an emergency outbreak and what enduring structural changes are needed to improve the ethics review process. (shrink)

This study analyzes cognitive responses to explore a dual processing perspective of ethical judgment formation. Specifically, the study investigates how two factors, judgment task difficulty and moral intensity, influence the extent of deontological and teleological processing and their effects on ethical judgments. A single experiment on 110 undergraduate research participants found that judgment task difficulty affected the extent of deontological and teleological processing. Although moral intensity affected ethical judgments, it did not produce effects on either deontological or teleological cognitive responses. (...) Results did not support the hypotheses that deontological and teleological cognitive responses would mediate the relationships between the experimental factors and ethical judgments. Overall, the results support continued research of factors that affect the nature of information processing in ethical decision situations and the use of cognitive response analysis as a tool for conducting this research. (shrink)

In spite of an intensive discussion of ethical subjects, psychiatric departments rarely request clinical ethics support. However, during regular psychological supervisions subjects with an underlying ethical conflict are increasingly encountered. Based on the case study of a 39-year-old female patient suffering from personality disorder and her newborn child, the role of ethical consultation in psychiatric treatment and the decision making regarding health and welfare of child and mother will be presented. While discussing opportunities and limitations of psychological supervision as (...) a possible vehicle for clinical ethics support, it becomes obvious that during psychological supervision, ethical conflicts can also be reflected and treatment alternatives be evaluated. Psychological supervision finds its limits because of its more intuitive processes when the conflict escalates, when the patient cannot be involved and when institutional interests dominate. In these cases, the more structured and formalised process of clinical ethics consultation clearly offers advantages. (shrink)

Research question and aim Clinical Ethics Committees (CECs) aim to support healthcare professionals (HPs) and healthcare organizations to deal with the ethical issues of clinical practice. In 2020, a CEC was established in an Oncology Research Hospital in the North of Italy. This paper describes the development process and the activities performed 20 months from the CEC’s implementation, to increase knowledge about CEC’s implementation strategy. Research design We collected quantitative data related to number and characteristics of CEC activities (...) carried out from October 2020 to June 2022 using the CEC internal database. Data were reported descriptively and compared with data from the literature to provide a complete overview of the CEC’s development and implementation process. Participants and research context The study has been conducted at the local health authority (LHA) of Reggio Emilia. It is a report of the activities provided by the CEC, where no HPs or patients were involved. Ethical Considerations The report is part of a larger study named EVAluating a Clinical Ethics Committee implementation process (EvaCEC), which has been approved by the Local Ethics Committee (AUSLRE Protocollo n° 2022/0026554 of 24/02/2022). EvaCEC is also the first author's PhD project. Findings In total, the CEC performed 7 ethics consultations (EC), published three policies related to particular ethical questions of clinical and organizational practice, provided one educational online course on ethics consultation targeting employed HPs, and promoted a specific dissemination process among the different departments of the LHA. According to our results, the CEC widely fulfilled the standard threefold set of clinical ethics support services tasks (namely, ethics consultation, ethics education, and policy development), but further investigations are needed to evaluate the CEC’s impact on clinical practice. Conclusion Our findings may increase knowledge regarding the composition, role, and tasks of a CEC in an Italian setting, informing future strategies and efforts to regulate these institutions officially. (shrink)

Hosmer's fourth edition of The Ethics of Management provides business students (future managers) with a very specific analytical process for understanding and resolving moral problems in management. A manager needs insight and understanding in a global economy to convince everyone involved, given his or her varied religious, cultural, economic and social backgrounds, to accept a proposed moral solution. Acceptance of managerial moral solutions, over time, brings trust, commitment and effort, and those three, also over time, are essential for (...) organizational success. (shrink)

The general public and environmental policy makers often perceive management actions of environmental managers as science, when such actions are, in fact, value judgments about when to intervene in natural processes. The choice of action requires ethical as well as scientific analysis because managers must choose a normative outcome to direct their intervention. I examine a management case study involving prescribed burning of sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) communities in south-central Montana (USA) to illustrate how to teach students to ethically evaluate a (...) management action by precisely identifying: 1) the proposed management action, 2) the deficiency of the system to be remedied by the action, 3) the stakeholders affected by the action, and 4) the category and type of values affirmed in the management action. Through such analysis, students are taught to recognize implicit and explicit value judgments associated with management actions, identify stakeholders to whom managers have legitimate ethical obligations, and practice a general method of ethical analysis applicable to many forms of environmental management. (shrink)

Much has been written about stakeholder analysis as a process by which to introduce ethical values into management decision-making. This paper takes a critical look at the assumptions behind this idea, in an effort to understand better the meaning of ethical management decisions.A distinction is made between stakeholder analysis and stakeholder synthesis. The two most natural kinds of stakeholder synthesis are then defined and discussed: strategic and multi-fiduciary. Paradoxically, the former appears to yield business without ethics and the (...) latter appears to yield ethics without business. The paper concludes by suggesting that a third approach to stakeholder thinking needs to be developed, one that avoids the paradox just mentioned and that clarifies for managers (and directors) the legitimate role of ethical considerations in decision-making. (shrink)

Unique in both perspective and approach, this is the first book to use classical American pragmatism as an ethical framework for dealing with ethical issues in business. The book first explores ethical theory from both the traditional and pragmatic perspectives. Then, using the pragmatic perspective, discusses the nature of the corporation and its relationship to society, the various environments in which business functions, and specific issues in the contemporary marketplace and workplace.

The article explores the understudied subject of the distinctly Christian ethics of human intelligence (HUMINT) and considers how a Christian intelligence officer (IO) can draw on the robust and diverse tradition of Christian ethics to make their secular vocation compatible with the ethical principles of their faith. The current intelligence ethics literature is dominated by the Just Intelligence Theory (JIT), an adaptation of the just war tradition, which offers many valuable contributions. However, I propose the enrichment of (...) JIT by discursive ethics from within the respective Catholic and Reformed theologies. I also consider the originally non-Christian concepts of the ethics of care and the I-Thou ideal through Christian hermeneutics. I conclude that the IO's ceaseless questioning of their conduct and its sources, and the continuous striving for primarily personal relations, as opposed to institutional relations, is the essence of the ever-imperfect process of becoming a Christian IO. Such an IO is a hearing and critical disciple who does not pretend to know the mind of God, but one whose conduct is directed by their critical reflection on their Christian faith and on the institutional setting wherein they operate. Paradoxically, this presents an enormous ethical possibility for a Christian IO. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide an original account of the distinction between the spheres of Sitten that goes beyond the traditional one based on the nature of incentives, since this underestimates some of their characteristics. First, the paper identifies in obligatio a common source between Ethics and Right. Then, it explores how in the Metaphysics of Morals the connection between law and incentive constitutes a more relevant criterion to distinguish ethical lawgiving from juridical lawgiving. Specifically, it (...) demonstrates that such connection: to be ethical should be linear, understood as a necessary self-determined process of connecting law to incentive; to be juridical should be mediated, namely it comprises an inclusive disjunction between two modalities of connecting law to incentive: a non-necessary linear and a divergent one. It concludes by exploring the implications of such perspective on the notions of internalisation and externalisation associated to each lawgiving. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Toward Thriving Communities: Virtue Ethics as Social Ethics by Brian StiltnerChristine DarrToward Thriving Communities: Virtue Ethics as Social Ethics Brian Stiltner WINONA, MN: ANSELM ACADEMIC, 2016. 271 PP. $28.95Brian Stiltner's text provides a clear introduction to the theoretical framework of virtue ethics and how that framework can be fruitfully applied to understand the interplay between individual character development and flourishing, and the flourishing (...) (or not) of communities to which those individuals belong. He breaks this task into two parts. In the first, Stiltner offers an introduction to the field of ethics in its personal, communal, and social dimensions. He discusses the three normative ethical theories most prominent in the West (deontological, consequentialist, and virtue ethics) and then applies these theories to a case study to examine the strengths and weakness of each. He then argues that, while applied ethicists often recommend employing all three approaches into the decision-making process, a person who wishes to make [End Page 198] formal ethical arguments must ultimately choose which framework to favor. In Stiltner's view, the framework of virtue ethics is best able to address the social and communal dimensions of ethics, which is the focus of the second part of the book.In the latter half of the first part, Stiltner describes the cultivation of virtue and examines specific categories—namely, virtues of care, respect, purpose, perceiving and reasoning, and acting and relating. The lynchpin between the first and second parts of the text is Stiltner's elucidation of human flourishing, in which he begins to link individual flourishing with the flourishing of communities. He draws heavily on Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach to explain how individual flourishing can be enhanced or diminished by the communities of which one is a part. Finally, he argues that some groups perform as "mediating institutions" wherein "the pro-social influences of the virtues instilled in people in one communal context transfer to other contexts as the individuals participate in many associations," thereby influencing society as a whole (105).Following the primarily theoretical first part, the focus of the second part is how to apply those theoretical principles to actual communities. He describes his objective here as "recommend[ing] ethical principles and concrete practices that will help persons, groups, and societies to flourish" (131). He examines four specific types of mediating institutions—families, schools, work, and service—and follows the same pattern of analysis for each. He provides a brief sociological account of the group, then scrutinizes the ethical impact of the reciprocal relationships of persons to groups and groups to society. He then discusses a case study that highlights some of the challenges in each particular institution and what resources are available to individuals and institutions that could overcome those challenges.Stiltner's text is an excellent introduction to the field of virtue ethics for an undergraduate audience. One particular strength is his discussion of many contemporary voices from the fields of ethics, philosophy, and sociology—from Nussbaum to Robert Putnam, his reliance on fields outside of ethical theory proper strengthens and broadens his analysis significantly. In addition, he provides ample resources along the way for the reader. Each chapter begins with a boxed overview of the chapter and ends with questions for review and discussion as well as resources for further research. The text does not specifically address the spiritual dimension of ethical development or the role of religion as a mediating institution; while this is not necessarily a weakness, one should know this is not specifically a Christian ethical analysis. Nevertheless, I strongly recommend this text for an introduction to ethics course or as a resource for undergraduates studying sociology or social work. [End Page 199]Christine DarrUniversity of DubuqueCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The Australian Health Ethics Committee’s National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research Involving Humans (1999) expanded the health and medical focus of preceding statements by including all disciplines of research. The Statement purports to promote a uniformly high ethical standard for this expanded range of research, and is endorsed by, inter alia, the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Australian Academy of Science, and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.High ethical standards should apply to all research involving humans. (...) However, uniformity in the review processes of disparate research endeavours is not a necessary condition for uniformly high ethical standards. Bringing the ethical review of all research under a model which has developed within the context of health and medical research ethics for over thirty years may be inappropriate and at times incoherent. The language, methods, nature and products of research in areas such as the Humanities are often very different from those of health, medical and other sciences.The Behavioural and Social Sciences Ethics Review Committee at The University of Queensland (UQ) had, since the mid-1980s, considered that the guidelines of the time did, in fact, cover all aspects of human experimentation. We describe the ways in which this position was implemented, how issues raised by the new wording in the National Statement have been recently managed by UQ’s research ethics committees, and point to outstanding questions. (shrink)

As organization development (OD) increasingly is being viewed globally as the major approach to organization change, a parallel interest in and need for attention to ethical issues has emerged in the field. In spite of the importance of ethical issues in OD, little attention has been focused on the ethical dilemmas that arise in OD practice, especially specific ethical dilemmas that may appear at each stage of the process. In addition, there is little discussion in the literature about how (...) to deal effectively with ethical dilemmas in OD and how to make an ethical decision by utilizing appropriate tools. Thus, in this paper, potential ethical dilemmas that may occur in each stage of the OD process are identified and presented. Recommendations and implications are discussed. (shrink)

The Healing Virtues explores the intersection of psychotherapy and virtue ethics - with an emphasis on the patient's role within a healing process. It considers how the common ground between the therapeutic process and the cultivation of virtues can inform the efforts of both therapist and patient. Within this book, the Duff R. Waring argues that there is a case for patient virtues that are crucially relevant to working through the problems in living that arise in psychotherapy, (...) e.g., honesty, courage, humility, perseverance. The central idea is that treatment may need to build virtues while it ameliorates problems. Hence, the patient's work in psychotherapy can both challenge character strengths and result in their further development. (shrink)

In this study, Clare Palmer challenges the belief that the process thinking of writers like A.N. Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne has offered an unambiguously positive contribution to environmental ethics. She compares process ethics to a variety of other forms of environmental ethics, as well as deep ecology, and reveals a number of difficulties associated with process thinking about the environment.

Background: Nursing students on clinical placements as part of their professional training are routinely faced with situations involving ethical conflicts. The initial act of perceiving a situation as causing an ethical dilemma is the result of both the students’ personal values, drawn from their culture and families, and of the professional knowledge and values that they have acquired through training and experience. Objectives: Nursing students’ experiences on clinical placements in primary care settings were investigated in order to identify situations that (...) they perceived as involving ethical conflict and describe the elements they took into consideration during their decision-making processes in these situations. Methods: The research design was qualitative descriptive case study. Around 50 students from three different intakes to a nursing degree answered a questionnaire and discussed it in focus groups. Ethical considerations: The study was designed in accordance with the principles guiding research with human beings and was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee. Results: Synthesised into two principal axes: (a) ethical conflicts in primary care, linked with the domains of working processes, professional nursing ethics and human and social rights and (b) students’ decision-making processes – realisation, reflection and intervention. Conclusion: The student nurses saw themselves both as actors and spectators in situations involving ethical problems and demanding moral deliberation, demonstrating the ability to base their arguments soundly. They tended to emphasise the possibilities offered by dialogue and that different ethical values must be respected to find fair solutions to ethical problems. (shrink)

Calls are increasing for American health care to be organized as a learning health care system, defined by the Institute of Medicine as a health care system “in which knowledge generation is so embedded into the core of the practice of medicine that it is a natural outgrowth and product of the healthcare delivery process and leads to continual improvement in care.” We applaud this conception, and in this paper, we put forward a new ethics framework for it. (...) No such framework has previously been articulated. The goals of our framework are twofold: to support the transformation to a learning health care system and to help ensure that learning activities carried out within such a system are conducted in an ethically acceptable fashion. (shrink)

PurposeThe paper aims to introduce the Islamic “legal system of Shari'ah laws and ethics” and its process of resolving ethical quandaries as applied in the field of information ethics.Design/methodology/approachThe paper first introduces some of the intricacy of the Islamic Shari'ah laws and ethics and then to reason its applicability in the field of IE, a scenario is discussed to illustrate how Islamic legal maxims maybe implemented to arrive at a moral judgment.FindingsThe discussed scenario shows glimpses of (...) the Shari'ah laws and reasoning processes of the Islamic ethical methodology for deriving moral judgment as used in the Muslim world to bring benefits and repel harms. The system respects both collective and individual's perspectives and can be conceived as being a synthesis between deontological, consequentialist and virtue ethics theories.Practical implicationsThe paper is sufficient to give the reader a feel for its potential to encourage further research in the area of resolving ethical issues, specifically for those who are calling for universal ethical theories to avoid moral imperialism.Originality/valueEthical researchers have gone back in history as far as Aristotle and Descartes to address ethical issues arising from the development and application of information and computer technologies. One area of ethics rarely touched by ethical theorists is the religious laws and ethics of Islam. The paper introduces Islam and its sources of knowledge, which are the foundation for a large set of legal maxims used to govern ethical decisions. (shrink)

In 1970 a coalition of student activists opposing the Vietnam War circulated documents revealing the involvement of several prominent social scientists in U.S. counterinsurgency activities in Thailand--activities that could cause harm to the people who were the subject of the scholars' research. The disclosure of these materials, which detailed meetings with the Agency for International Development and the Defense Department, prompted two members of the Ethics Committee of the American Anthropological Association to issue an unauthorized rebuke of the accused. (...) Over the next two years, the AAA agonized over the allegations and the appropriate response to them. Within an academic community already polarized by the war, political and professional acrimony reached unprecedented levels. Although the association ultimately passed a code of ethics, the key issues raised in the process were never fully resolved. Now back in print, Eric Wakin's Anthropology Goes to War is the first comprehensive study of what became known as the Thailand Controversy--and a timely reminder of a debate whose echoes may be heard in our own time. (shrink)

Business and Society: Ethics and Stakeholder Management, 5th edition employs a stakeholder management framework, emphasizing business' social and ethical responsibilities to both external and internal stakeholder groups. A twin theme of business ethics to illustrate how ethical or moral considerations are included the public issues facing organizations and the decision making process of managers. The text is written from a managerial perspective that along with the twin themes of stakeholders and ethics, shows how to identify stakeholders, (...) incorporate their concerns into the organization's strategy and operations, and also integrate ethical wisdom into their decision making process. In addition, 35 case histories are included to help connect theory and practice through timely and interesting examples. (shrink)

The essential difficulty about Computer Ethics' (CE) philosophical status is a methodological problem: standard ethical theories cannot easily be adapted to deal with CE-problems, which appear to strain their conceptual resources, and CE requires a conceptual foundation as an ethical theory. Information Ethics (IE), the philosophical foundational counterpart of CE, can be seen as a particular case of environmental ethics or ethics of the infosphere. What is good for an information entity and the infosphere in general? (...) This is the ethical question asked by IE. The answer is provided by a minimalist theory of deseerts: IE argues that there is something more elementary and fundamental than life and pain, namely being, understood as information, and entropy, and that any information entity is to be recognised as the centre of a minimal moral claim, which deserves recognition and should help to regulate the implementation of any information process involving it. IE can provide a valuable perspective from which to approach, with insight and adequate discernment, not only moral problems in CE, but also the whole range of conceptual and moral phenomena that form the ethical discourse. (shrink)

In order to maximize human performance, defence forces continue to explore, develop, and apply human performance enhancement (HPE) methods, ranging from pharmaceuticals to (bio)technological enhancement. This raises ethical, legal, and societal concerns and requires organizing a careful reflection and deliberation process, with relevant stakeholders. We discuss a range of ethical, legal, and societal aspects (ELSA), which people involved in the development and deployment of HPE can use for such reflection and deliberation. A realistic military scenario with proposed HPE application (...) can serve as a starting point for such an iterative and participatory process. Stakeholders can discuss this application, modify its features, and design appropriate processes around it – for instance, procedures for informed consent. We propose that organizing aspects into these three categories – ethical, legal, and societal – can help involve appropriate interlocutors at different moments: legal aspects with people in strategy or management roles, from the start of a project; ethical aspects with people in operations and medical roles, during development; and societal aspects with people in communication and personnel roles, during deployment. Notably, we developed and discussed this framework and the three aspects in close collaboration with personnel from the military. (shrink)

The ethics of editing have remained largely unexplored despite their far-ranging consequences to careers of individual psychologists. I examine three ethical issues as they relate to the editorial process: welfare of the consumer, dual relationships, and objectivity. I conclude that the current practices do not adequately take into account professional ethics, and I offer detailed recommendations on how these practices could be improved.

After twenty-five years sustainable development is not a reality. Policies and practices focus on the short-term and economists regard sustainable development as extraneous to their core responsibilities. Science, economics and self- interest have not proven a sufficient ground for sustainable development. Ethics calling for moral reasoning and courageous action, spirit offering transcendence, vision and sustenance, and value asking what is development for are needed. United Nations negotiations have shaped, are shaping, and will continue to shape the meaning and practice (...) of sustainable development. A global citizens‘ movement to build the political will for change is needed. To catalyze sustainable development ethics, religion and spirituality must operate out of a historical context and narrative of a ―Great Transition. ‖ Ethics must enter at the ground level in determining how science, technology, and economics are to be conceived. Religion and spirit must begin with respect for the order of existence. A particular ―Ethics and Spirituality Initiative for Sustainable Development‖ is building a coalition of religious, spiritual and secular values based-organizations to bring ethics and spirituality into the sustainable development process. (shrink)

One of the core goals of Digital Health Technologies (DHT) is to transform healthcare services and delivery by shifting primary care from hospitals into the community. However, achieving this goal will rely on the collection, use and storage of large datasets. Some of these datasets will be linked to multiple sources, and may include highly sensitive health information that needs to be transferred across institutional and jurisdictional boundaries. The growth of DHT has outpaced the establishment of clear legal pathways to (...) facilitate the collection, use and transfer of potentially sensitive health data. Our study aimed to address this gap with an ethical code to guide researchers developing DHT with international collaborative partners in Singapore. We generated this code using a modified Policy Delphi process designed to engage stakeholders in the deliberation of health data ethics and governance. This paper reports the outcomes of this process along with the key components of the code and identifies areas for future research. (shrink)

Commercial food health branding is a challenging branch of marketing because it might, at the same time, promote healthy living and be commercially viable. However, the power to influence individuals’ health behavior and overall health status makes it crucial for marketing professionals to take into account the ethical dimensions of health branding: this article presents a conceptual analysis of potential ethical problems in health branding. The analysis focuses on ethical concerns related to the application of three health brand elements (functional (...) claims, process claims, and health symbols) as well as a number of general concerns that apply to health branding as such. Being a pioneering analysis, this article advances the academic understanding of health branding and provides practitioners with knowledge of important concerns to take into account when marketing health brands. (shrink)

In Calvin's doctrine of sanctification and in recent work on children's moral formation within developmental psychology, we find a surprising convergence. In both cases, moral formation or transformation takes place within the context of a parent's loving and unconditional commitment to a child. Although Reformed doctrines of sanctification have struggled to articulate how the graced change of sanctification is intelligible as a human process, a comparison between these two approaches shows that sanctification is both intelligible to the moral agent (...) and a genuinely human process. This comparison also highlights affective social acceptance as a condition for moral agency that is infrequently addressed in theoretical accounts of moral formation. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 8, Page 11-13, August 2012.

ABSTRACT:The ethical sensemaking approach stands as an essential alternative to the dominant rational and objectivist paradigm of ethical decision-making in organizations. From this perspective, this research explores the intrapersonal interplay of emotions and reflexivity in ethical sensemaking. We analyzed thirty-seven semi-structured interviews conducted with executive coaches sharing a critical incident about an issue they framed as ethical. Our findings show that their ethical decisions unfolded over a three-phase emotional reflexive sensemaking process, where reflexivity allowed for the management of emotions (...) in the form of emotional awareness, emotional unpacking, and emotional engagement. Therefore, we portray ethics as afabric, produced through the knitting of emotions and reflexivity. And, while ethics certainly appear to be produced by the subject, we suggest a reciprocal relationship, whereby the very fabric of ethics contributes to the production of the ethical subject. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to explore and assess the process of responsibility, decoupling point, and disengagement of moral responsibility, in combination with business sustainability in supply chains. The research is based on a qualitative approach consisting of two multifaceted case studies, each including multiple case companies and different empirical research characteristics, and a review of BSus in supply chain literature. The case studies apply moral disengagement to propose how moral responsibility can deteriorate in supply chains, and the (...) literature review identifies elements of BSus in supply chain management. The contribution of this paper is to compare these two research streams and evaluate the efficacy of the concepts proposed in the case studies. Through this study, BSus gains an entirely different and complementary toolkit which should facilitate further and more effective research in SCM. The theory of MDis also provides a foundation for reinforcing explanatory and prescriptive aspects of ‘best practices’ in the SCM literature. The findings also establish a basis for organizing and monitoring supply chains so as to improve BSus efforts. Considering moral responsibility as a flow this research explains why and how certain practices may impede BSus efforts in supply chains. Original and/or innovative outcomes include explanatory and prescriptive insights that emerge from a combination of empirical findings from two case studies, including seven companies and a framework for improving BSus management in supply chains, based on a typology of moral disengagement. (shrink)

Business ethics courses have been launched with professors from business pulling on one oar, and professors of philosophy pulling on the other, but they lack a sense of direction. Let's begin with the basics: What is an ehtical decision? More fundamentally, why the interest in professional ethics in the first place?There are over 300 centers for the study of appIied ethics in this country-why? The events which face our society today are outside the business-oriented collection of shared (...) beIiefs that set our pubIic policy agenda. Cur beIiefs are too narrow, thus we see, understand, and control small slices of life.Business ethics should be the study of the structure and impact on us of what we call "business science," e.g., accounting, marketing, economics, law, etc., and the corresponding study of the process of what Carl Jung called individuation: learning to become one's own uniqueself in the face of these bodies of professional knowledge which have structured our lives and charted the direction for our sensibilities for too long. (shrink)

There is a current, ultra-Darwinian trend for finding in the process of evolution by natural selection the roots of our ethical behavior. In such a way that ethics may become a branch of biology. Nevertheless, this preposterous notion is supported on previous naive assumptions of contemporary biology that have already been falsified by recent results of research in genomics and molecular biology.

A serious attempt to integrate ethics in management was done by Professor Juan Antonio Pérez López (1934–1996). His thought represents a break with current scholarly thinking on these subjects. The purpose of this article is to explain some of the most significant aspects of his theories, relating basically to his recourse to ethics as what defines the characteristic behavior of human beings, considered as individuals and as members of organizations. Pérez López used the anthropological conception underlying the (...) class='Hi'>ethics of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to build a solid base for that ethics, starting from the decision-making process. He then used that ethical base to point to the kind of action theory and organization theory that could most effectively assist the human development of people and organizations. (shrink)

An ethics reflection group is one of a range of ethics support services developed to better handle ethical challenges in healthcare. The aim of this article is to evaluate the implementation process of interdisciplinary ERGs in psychiatric and general hospital departments in Denmark. To our knowledge, this is the first study of ERG implementation to include both psychiatric and general hospital departments. The implementation and evaluation strategies are inspired by action research, using a qualitative approach and systematic (...) text condensation of 28 individual interviews and 4 focus groups with clinicians, ethics facilitators and ward managers. The implementation process was influenced by both structural factors and factors related to clinicians having different values, interests and experiences. Structural barriers and promotors in the process to implement ERG included the following sub-categories: Organizational factors, recruitment and training of ethics facilitators, the deliberation model, planning and recruitment of participants to the ERGs, the support of the ward managers and the project group. Barriers and promotors found among clinicians included the following sub-categories: Expectations and pre-understandings of ERGs, understandings of a physician’s job, challenges experienced by ethics facilitators. At the end of the study, when it was decided that the ERGs should be continued, the implementation strategies were remodeled by the participants to meet new challenges. The study of ERG implementation identified important structural and professional barriers and promotors that are likely to be relevant to anyone wanting to implement ethics support services across various types of healthcare services. (shrink)

Educated people everywhere now acknowledge that ecological destruction is threatening the future of civilization. While philosophers have concerned themselves with environmental problems, they appear to offer little to deal with this crisis. Despite this, I will argue that philosophy, and ethics, are absolutely crucial to overcoming this crisis. Philosophy has to recover its grand ambitions to achieve a comprehensive understanding of nature and the place of humanity within it, and ethics needs to be centrally concerned with the virtues (...) required to create and then sustain economic, social and political formations that augment the life of ecological communities. Achieving these ends will involve reviving speculative philosophy and its quest to forge a synthesis of natural philosophy, history and art to enable humanity to redefine its place in the world, both collectively and as individuals, in very practical ways. Such a synthesis is required to oppose the corrosion of democracy and to revive the virtues of citizenship and the sense of responsibility citizenship entails, but more fundamentally and intimately related to such citizenship, to oppose managerialism and the proletarianization of the workforce and to revive workmanship and professionalism as the foundations of not only economic life, but social and political life. (shrink)