Search results

The purpose of this paper is to present the philosophical roots of development ethics as a field of study with its interdisciplinary character.

The conceptual and historical evolution of development ethics is unfolded through Aristotle’s philosophy.

The authors argued that Aristotle’s philosophy, incorporating the concepts of “a good life” and “a good society,” defines ethical development and influences contemporary development ethics.

Development ethics is a relatively new field of study within social sciences and determines the ethical perspective of development in a holistic and normative manner. It is important to understand the antecedents, pioneers and contemporary practitioners of development ethics and how they are related. Based on the authors’ knowledge, there has been limited research regarding the origins of the concept of a “good society” as a determinant factor of development. In this context, Aristotle’s philosophy incorporating the concepts of a “good life” and a “good society” is the founding determinant in the study of ethical development.

Development ethics is an important topic which is often neglected in development studies. The purpose of the paper is to analyze international development in an ethical‐based context using the approach of development ethics.

The analysis is mainly based on the pioneering work of the prominent development ethicists and the founder of development ethics as self‐conscious area – Denis Goulet – along with recent development ethics literature. In this context, international development is approached under a holistic ethical manner.

Development ethicists reduce the gap between a conventional perspective of development and the real needs of humankind. In contrast to mainstream economics view, for development ethics the true indicator of development is not growth in a narrow sense of material expansion of wellbeing, but the qualitative enrichment of human beings in all relevant aspects of human life. International development is preserved as an effort to a better life for individuals and to a good global society for nations.

If research is reported on in the paper, this section must be completed and should include suggestions for future research and any identified limitations in the research process.

The proposed ethical goals and strategies are normative judgments which provide both the notional and practical framework within which international development should be discussed and policy recommendations could be formulated.

The notion of development is redefined on ethical foundations. A conceptual typology of the development ethics goals and strategies to international development is offered. The paper can be perceived as a point of departure that scholars and students of international development and development economics in broad, from both perspectives (orthodox and heterodox), can be incorporated with ethical matters to international development and benefit from it.

From a Latin American decolonial and transdisciplinary perspective, this article expands the increasingly relevant conversation about disaster ethics, not only in depth and scope but also both interdisciplinarily and interculturally. By reviewing key points of development ethics that are closely related but underexplored, it makes the case for focusing on disaster recovery as a relevant distributive phase for improving future prevention and mitigation, while remedying long-standing injustices.

To do so, against the backdrop of recently emerging postcolonial, decolonial and structural approaches to disaster and vulnerability studies, the article presents a theoretical conversation between decolonial studies, development ethics, intercultural practice and philosophy, and disaster ethics beyond utilitarian approaches.

So far, development and disaster ethics remain worlds apart, despite their relevant convergence around the key notion of “recovery” and its underlying normative determination. This article identifies that prevailing utilitarian ethics in emergency response, in addition to their problematic universalization, have prevented further engagement with deontological and process-based principles, including a nuanced distributive sensitivity. As a result of such cross-fertilization, methodological individualism in an intercultural encounter is suggested, as well as continued engagement with pluriversal deliberation about key ethical values and notions regarding disaster risk and response.

Calling for distributive bottom-up engagement beyond professional and academic boundaries, this article presents a new direction for decolonising disaster ethics, so far unexplored, seeking to bridge the value gap between development and disaster efforts, planning and prevention.

This chapter explores the vital connection between ethics and community development, underlining the fundamental role of ethical considerations in shaping fair, just, and sustainable communities. It begins by emphasizing that community development is inherently ethical and delves into the concept of ethics, examining ethical theories like consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics in the context of community development. Real-world case studies from diverse countries, such as South Africa, Australia, and India, are interwoven throughout the chapter to provide practical insights. These case studies illustrate the complexities of ethical implementation in community development, from navigating power dynamics to addressing conflicts of interest and balancing immediate needs with long-term sustainability. The chapter also explores macro-level considerations, highlighting the need for systemic change to create a more just and equitable society. It guides practitioners on integrating ethics into their work, establishing a strong moral framework for community development. Continuous learning, reflective practice, and adaptability are underscored as essential in responding to evolving societal contexts, norms, and challenges.

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.

States that “development” has long been equated with modernization and western‐ization and studied as a straightforward economic issue. Reports that the discipline of economics has been the main source of policy prescription for development decision makers and that this view is now widely criticized as ethnocentric and as economically reductionist. Reveals that change is occurring: economics itself is reintegrating ethics in its conceptualization, methodology, and analysis; a new paradigm of development is in gestation; and a new discipline, development ethics, has come into being. Explains that development ethics centres its study of development on the value questions posed: what is the relation of having goods and being good in the pursuit of the good life, what are the foundations of a just society, and what stance should societies adopt towards nature? Thinks that the new discipline emerges from two sources, which are now converging: from engagement in development action to the formulation of ethical theory, and from a critique of mainstream ethical theory to the crafting of normative strategies to guide development practice. Concludes that development ethics has a dual mission: to render the economy more human and to keep hope alive in the face of the seeming impossibility of achieving human development for all.

This paper aims to explore methods of teaching sustainability and business ethics, relevant to the modern demand for student’s skills and knowledge. The study explores the challenges of teaching a business school undergraduate-level course and argues that a constructivist pedagogy is a suitable epistemological approach for designing a course unit concerning sustainability and ethics.

The paper presents case study findings drawn upon course feedback and course reflections aimed at making sense of what the most effective pedagogic approaches were that influenced students’ learning.

Results indicate that students appreciate active forms of learning via practical assignments and discussions. As knowledge of sustainability and business ethics is important for the student’s future career path, students need to develop skills of applying conceptual knowledge to practice via constructive pedagogical methods.

This empirical study contributes to the literature of constructivist pedagogics, which is explored in the context of sustainable development and business ethics teaching. Practically, it contributes to the analysis of teaching methods and frameworks applied in the course emphasizing the necessity of engaging in interactive and personalized learning and teaching processes.

Issues of teaching ethics and sustainable development are known concerns, but they have to be addressed systematically because of the changing business environment. This study explores the constructivist pedagogy based on empirical evidence and highlights its value in the educational process.

Quantitative analysis of existing literature is conducted to compare the textual features of ethics education in science and technology under the broad theme of ethics in science and technology. On this basis, the authors reveal the research hotspots and topic evolution in this field, and propose development suggestions in conjunction with the 5W theory.

In this paper, the authors visualize the graph and quantify the indicators in four aspects: time series, institutional collaboration, author co-authorship, and research hotspots.

Compared to ethics of science and technology, the research results in the field of ethics of science and technology education are limited. There is still room for improvement in the low density of cooperation between authors and institutions. The research themes are focused on theoretical discussions and countermeasure research. At present, the reform of ethics of science and technology is still in its infancy and has not yet formed a perfect system for education and personnel training. It is necessary for research on the ethical theory of technology to provide theoretical support.

In the context of sustainable development strategies, it is beneficial to explore the path of pedagogical optimization of ethics of science and technology in this study. This includes the maintenance of a good research environment and the realization of a healthy development in the field of science and technology.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how individual differences predict personal business ethics of business students with a particular focus on how these factors moderate the relationship between ethical organizational interventions and personal business ethics perception.

Totally, 488 participants completed Clark’s Personal Business Ethics Scores (PBES) survey. ANOVA analyses were then performed.

Significant correlations were observed between personal business ethics and diversity professional development, age, and education. The authors found significant difference on ethical behavior and diversity professional development. Professional development focusing on diversity was positively related to reports of ethical behavior for women but no significant relationship was observed for men. Furthermore, professional development focusing on ethics was positively related to reports of ethical behavior for younger employees but no significant relationship was observed for older employees.

Researchers and scholars in cross-cultural management and business ethics fields can benefit from this study as it provides more empirical results in understanding the impact of demographic, educational, and cultural factors on the ethical maturity of business students in different countries.

Leaders, managers and practitioners, can benefit from this study as it provides managerial implications in managing this workforce in the most effective and efficient manner. The results from this research suggest that ethics education and diversity training play the critical role in creating an ethical climate on workplace.

This study fills the gap within the literature and offers a unique analysis of the personal business ethics of Russian business students. Determining the types of business ethics education and training that are the most effective in Russia would be beneficial to researchers and practitioners.

Research done to date has produced a wide range of perspectives that center on the junction between the specific function and responsibility of the entrepreneur when applying ethical dimensions to the field of entrepreneurship. By combining a bibliometric analysis with the literature review, the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of entrepreneurship ethics and its contribution to sustainable development goals, along with future research directions on the topic of entrepreneurship and ethics.

The research looked for literature based on entrepreneurship ethics from the Dimension database. The authors accumulated 2,279 articles for the period of 2002–2022 for analysis. The authors used bibliometric analysis for analyzing the topic with the use of VosViewer and Excel.

By combining a bibliometric analysis with a literature review, this study aimed to provide an overview of the ethics and entrepreneurship and contribution to sustainable development goals. The most influential author and journal are Vanessa Ratten and the Journal of Business Ethics, respectively. The top sustainable development goals (SDGs) being contributed by entrepreneurship ethics are SDG4, SDG8, SDG16, SDG11 and SDG3. By contrasting these two interpretations, the authors have demonstrated that the entrepreneurship environment involves various ethical issues connected to personal, organizational and societal sectors.

The current study may serve as a general guideline for future investigation into this topic.

Regarding the practical ramifications, the findings can help entrepreneurs who are preparing to launch a business or are already doing so. The findings provide a comprehensive framework of success variables that must be considered to improve the venture’s performance.

This study’s originality is from presenting a structured and in-depth literature review that describes the current state of entrepreneurship ethics and its contribution to sustainable development goals. A complete analysis of the data gathered on entrepreneurship ethics is offered to establish that it is sustainable.