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The purpose of this paper is to present a novel mnemonic, ACTIVE, inspired by Mason's 1985 PAPA mnemonic, which will help researchers and IT professionals develop an understanding of the major issues in information ethics.

Theoretical foundations are developed for each element of the mnemonic by reference to philosophical definitions of the terms used and to virtue ethics, particularly MacIntyrean virtue ethics. The paper starts with a critique of the elements of the PAPA mnemonic and then proceeds to develop an understanding of each of the elements of ACTIVE ethics, via a discussion of the underpinning virtue ethics.

This paper identifies six issues, described by the mnemonic, ACTIVE. ACTIVE stands for: autonomy, the ability of the individual to manage their own information and make choice; community, the ethical effect of an information systems on the community which it supports; transparency, the extent to which the derivation of content and process in an information system is made clear; identity, the social and ethical effect of an information system on the definition and maintenance of the distinctive characteristics of a person; value, the value or moral worth placed on information associated with an individual and hence on the relationship with the individual; and empathy, the ability of the information systems professional to emotionally connect with the user and the extent to which the information system distances or connects.

The paper applies virtue ethics to developing a tool to help information professionals reflect on their ethical practice in developing and supporting information systems.

The purpose of this paper is to consider how ethics is currently taught to trainee auditors and to evaluate whether some ethical instruction techniques can be assessed as more effective than others.

Two separate cohorts of auditing students (262) provided responses to audit/accounting ethical scenarios. Each cohort was then subject to three separate ethics teaching techniques (either active or passive), from the two different teaching methodologies (active v. passive) over a semester. Their ethical attitudes to the scenarios were then re‐assessed and the teaching techniques evaluated.

Both methodologies were found to impact positively, as both cohorts selected more ethical responses to the scenarios post instruction. Some evidence of active techniques having more effect than passive techniques, on ethical decision making was revealed.

More research is needed into the impact of active and passive teaching methodologies on trainee auditors, in the ethics area.

Teaching ethics to the audit practitioners of tomorrow is critical. If the optimum mix of ethical teaching methodologies can be assessed, it will result in more effective ethical instruction. This study's results imply careful consideration must be taken in designing ethical training programs for trainee auditors.

Improvement in the ethical behaviour of auditors will provide more confidence for users of accounting information in the business environment.

This paper is original in that it evaluates the impact of a series of ethical instruction methods, as opposed to a single teaching method (the focus of many previous papers) on ethical training. The tentative finding of active methods proving more effective than passive methods is significant, and paves the way for future research.

The objective of this paper is to examine the influence of personal attributes, organizational ethics position and other factors which are rules conformance, active participation in profession activities, ethics instructions received and understanding of the professional code of conduct on the Malaysian accountants' judgment on questionable ethical scenarios.

A survey questionnaire is carried out to elicit opinions of Malaysian accountants on factors influencing ethical judgments.

Adopting 15 vignettes used in Emerson et al. to assess ethical judgments, the main findings revealed from the analysis are that older accountants, accountants attached to corporations with higher ethics scale and accountants who understand the professional code of conduct are expected to be stricter in judging questionable ethical situations.

The findings imply that perhaps one way to promote and preserve ethical organizational decisions is by employing older and experienced individuals and perhaps retaining older staff. The finding on age appears to suggest that wisdom comes with maturity.

This paper is one of the few studies which investigate factors influencing ethical judgments of accountants in Malaysia. The research is timely given the growing importance of women in decision‐making levels, the expected rise in employment and the requirement to include the business ethics course in the accounting programs in Malaysia.

While teaching of business ethics has been increasing in business schools worldwide, universities still face increasing pressure to do more to proactively defend and help avoid unethical business practices and scandals calling for more responsible education. This study aims to examine teaching business ethics in light of recent technological advances (i.e. teaching via the use of digital devices) and well-established pedagogical practices.

This study uses a 2 × 2 experimental design examining the effect of active (vs passive) and presence (vs absence) of digital devices in student learning of 192 US students.

The findings suggest that the active learning scenario, the usage of laptops and phones helped students get higher results in the test compared to active learning with no digital devices or passive learning with digital devices.

Active learning practices such as group discussions and peer assessment or the flipped classroom approach make a difference for business ethics teaching where students need to develop inquiry and interest for the subject and engage in ethical dilemmas and real-life examples. Further, students in the active learning scenario performed better in knowledge tests when they were asked to use their digital devices.

In the debate whether ethics should be separated from religion or otherwise, few have investigated the impact of religious beliefs and ethical ideologies on consumer ethics. Thus, the purpose of this study to investigate the influence of consumers’ religion, moral philosophy and generational cohort on their perception toward various consumers’ ethical behavior practices.

The study uses sample from three different cohorts (Generation Y, Generation X and Baby boomers) in Australia. The final numbers of respondents are 251. Male and female respondents are almost equal in number (52 and 48 per cent, respectively). Most participants are single (56 per cent), and 24 per cent are married. The age cohorts are Gen-Y (70 per cent), Gen-X (16 per cent) and Baby boomers (14 per cent). In terms of religion, 46 per cent of the respondents were identified as Christian or Catholic, whereas 42 per cent reported having no religion.

The results show that religiosity had the strongest effect compared to moral ideologies and generation cohorts. It can be assumed that at least for religious consumers, when two ideas collide between religion and ethical ideologies, religious principles may supersede ethical ideologies. The study offers several implications for marketers, educators and public policy makers.

The current study has several limitations, especially the use of convenience sampling that may limit the generalizability of the findings. Consumers in Australia may behave differently from general consumers or other cohorts with regard to their ethical judgments.

This is one of the first few studies exploring consumer ethics in Australia. We may conclude that in some ethical situations, religion will supersede ethical ideologies. Accordingly, it is important not to remove religion from ethics education, especially for religious consumers.

This research looks at the main effect of individuals’ moral philosophies, idealism and relativism, and its impact on the four dimensions of the consumer ethics beliefs – active benefit, passive benefit, no harm and doing good. The moderating impact of two dominant personalities – Machiavellianism and narcissism – was also analyzed. Based on Hunt–Vitell theory of ethics, this study aims to propose that there is a positive and significant impact of more relativistic and less idealistic moral philosophies on the decreased consumer ethical perceptions and that the narcissistic/Machiavellian personality traits drive that effect.

A total of 497 survey respondents were recruited via an online platform. All respondents were asked to answer questions, which were divided into four major parts. The first part consisted of scales related to both moral philosophies, the second part had both dark personality scales, the third part questioned about their consumer ethical beliefs and the final part was related to consumer demographics.

Relativists had higher scores in three consumer unethical belief dimensions. Idealists were not supportive of the active and passive illegal activities, as did their positive relation with doing good aspect of the ethical beliefs. Machiavellians strengthen the positive relativism relationship. The idealistic relation of narcissists, compared to relativistic relation, is stronger on unethical decision-making for consumers.

This study contributes to the current knowledge of individual’s moral philosophies and their impact on consumer ethical beliefs. It further demonstrates how the dark personalities of narcissism and Machiavellianism drive the relationship.

This paper contributes to the study of ethics programmes by the building of a theoretical model for implementing an ethics programme and examining the application of this model to an actual implementation case study. Ethics programmes aim at stimulating ethical behaviour in the organisation and assisting employees to act in a morally responsible way. It is proposed that for an organisational ethics programme to be effective, five dominant conditions are necessary: awareness of formal organisational goals and corresponding informal norms; suitable procedures for decision making; correct distribution of resources; presence of necessary skills; and personal intentions for ethical behaviour. Following detailed discussion of each condition, and with reference to an actual case example, the conditions will be further developed and supplemented with suggested organisational activities that could be used to support these conditions.

This conceptual paper aims to examine theoretical issues in the proactive ethical assessment of technology development, with a focus on uncertainty. Although uncertainty is a fundamental feature of complex technologies, its importance has not yet been fully recognized within the field of ethics. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to study uncertainty in technology development and its consequences for ethics.

Going on the insight of various scientific disciplines, the concept of uncertainty will be scrutinised and a typology of uncertainty is proposed and introduced to ethical theory. The method used is theoretical and conceptual analysis.

The analysis results in questions with regard to the collection of information about the object of assessment (i.e. complex technologies and their development) and the framework of assessment (i.e. ethical theory and its practical aim of guiding the assessment of technology development). Moreover, based on the insights of the analysis of uncertainty, it is argued that substantive ethical theories prove to be inapt for the ethical assessment of complex technology development and therefore require a concomitant procedural approach. The paper concludes with requirements for any future ethics of technology under uncertainty.

The value of the paper consists in establishing the need of researching and incorporating uncertainty in ethics. The results are consequently of practical and theoretical interest for anyone working in the field of ethics and technology.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of religiosity in consumer ethics. This objective will be achieved by investigating the impact of intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity on consumer ethics, and segmenting consumers’ religiosity and explore differences between each segment.

The surveys were distributed to undergraduate students, their friends and members of their immediate families, through a large public university in Australia. Of 700 paper questionnaires, participants returned 651. Incomplete surveys with too many missing values were removed from the sample. Of these, 517 were usable, yielding a response rate of 74 per cent. Singles accounted for 53.9 per cent of the sample, followed by married people (26.8 per cent). Of the respondents, 49.9 per cent were men. The majority of respondents were between 18 and 24 years old (52 per cent), followed by 15-34 years (16.4 per cent). Finally, most respondents had an income level of less than $20,000 (36.6 per cent) followed by $21,000-$40,000 (20.5 per cent) and $41,000-$61,000 (19.7 per cent). Overall, despite being dominated by younger consumers, the sample is relatively representative of the entire adult population of Australia.

The results show that both intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity had an impact on consumers’ ethical beliefs. Moreover, the results show significant differences between the two segments studied. The religious segment was more likely than the non-religious segment to reject various unethical beliefs, but no significant differences were found in the behavioural dimensions of recycling and doing good deeds.

This is one of the first few studies to explore the impact of religiosity on consumer ethics in Australia. The results of this study have several implications for academic researchers, religious leaders and managers working in the area of consumer ethics.