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Recently, ethical leadership has become a widely studied research topic. Simultaneously, many studies have begun to emphasise the role of interpersonal communication competence (ICC) in successful leadership. However, there has been little discussion on the links between ethical leadership and leaders’ ICC. To address this research gap, this study aims to compare and combine the research traditions of ethical leadership and leaders’ ICC. The study is based on two literature reviews examining (a) ethical leadership (substudy 1; N = 27) and (b) leaders’ ICC (substudy 2; N = 18). The research questions are as follows: (a) How are the requirements of leaders’ ICC noticed in the literature of ethical leadership? (substudy 1) (b) How are the requirements of ethical leadership noticed in the literature of leaders’ ICC? (substudy 2) The findings reveal that (a) studies in ethical leadership rarely pay attention to leaders’ ICC and (b) studies in leaders’ ICC do not often discuss ethical aspects of ICC, at least explicitly. While a larger sample would have been preferred, the study contributes to previous research by addressing a research gap between ethical leadership and leaders’ ICC and suggests integrating these research traditions to better understand the nature of ethics and ICC in leadership. By promoting novel interdisciplinary research perspectives, the study provides a foundation for further research and development of (a) a competence-based approach to ethical leadership and (b) an ethics-focused approach to competent leadership communication.

This study aims to evaluate blockchain as an e-government governance model. It assesses its alignment with legal frameworks, emphasizing robustness against disruptions and adherence to existing laws.

The paper explores blockchain’s potential in e-government, focusing on legal, ethical and governance aspects. It conducts an in-depth analysis of blockchain’s integration into data governance, emphasizing legal compliance and resilient security protocols.

The study comprehensively evaluates blockchain’s implementation, covering privacy, interoperability, consensus mechanisms, scalability and regulatory alignment. It highlights governance’s critical role in ensuring legal compliance within blockchain paradigms.

Ethical and legal concerns arising from blockchain adoption remain unresolved. The study underscores how blockchain challenges its core principles of anonymity and decentralization in e-government settings.

The framework outlined offers potential for diverse technological environments, albeit raising ethical and legal queries. It emphasizes governance’s pivotal role in achieving legal compliance in blockchain adoption.

Blockchain’s impact on legal and ethical facets necessitates further exploration to align with its core principles while addressing governance in e-government settings.

This study presents a robust framework for assessing blockchain’s viability in e-government, emphasizing legal compliance, despite ethical and legal intricacies that challenge its fundamental principles.

This paper seeks to explore the ethical implications of creating committed customer relationships.

The paper uses an empirical study to test a series of hypotheses concerning the impact of customers' commitment to a brand on their behaviors toward that brand. It then contrasts these behavioral changes with the assumptions of ethical frameworks.

Customers' behaviors toward a brand change as they become committed to the brand. They shop less, consider fewer brands, and are willing to pay more. These changes violate assumptions of less stringent ethical frameworks. The result is that, as customer commitment increases, the ethical burden on the brand also increases.

This research is limited by the scope of the sample, automobile finance. Future research should explore customer commitment in other product and service categories to determine the extent to which commitment varies.

The implications of these results are that, when a brand does a great job of satisfying customers and building trust, commitment develops, which increases the ethical burden on the brand. The very brand actions that develop commitment high quality, good service, caring about the customer, must actually increase in importance once strong customer relationships are built.

The findings in the paper are unique, in that they evaluate a marketing model in terms of ethical impact, rather than simply in terms of increased sales or market share. These findings should be valuable to any brand manager who is focusing on building or managing customer‐brand relationships.

Following the surge of documents laying out organizations' ethical principles for their use of artificial intelligence (AI), there is a growing demand for translating ethical principles to practice through AI governance (AIG). AIG has emerged as a rapidly growing, yet fragmented, research area. This paper synthesizes the organizational AIG literature by outlining research themes and knowledge gaps as well as putting forward future agendas.

The authors undertake a systematic literature review on AIG, addressing the current state of its conceptualization and suggesting future directions for AIG scholarship and practice. The review protocol was developed following recommended guidelines for systematic reviews and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA).

The results of the authors’ review confirmed the assumption that AIG is an emerging research topic with few explicit definitions. Moreover, the authors’ review identified four themes in the AIG literature: technology, stakeholders and context, regulation and processes. The central knowledge gaps revealed were the limited understanding of AIG implementation, lack of attention to the AIG context, uncertain effectiveness of ethical principles and regulation, and insufficient operationalization of AIG processes. To address these gaps, the authors present four future AIG agendas: technical, stakeholder and contextual, regulatory, and process. Going forward, the authors propose focused empirical research on organizational AIG processes, the establishment of an AI oversight unit and collaborative governance as a research approach.

To address the identified knowledge gaps, the authors present the following working definition of AIG: AI governance is a system of rules, practices and processes employed to ensure an organization's use of AI technologies aligns with its strategies, objectives, and values, complete with legal requirements, ethical principles and the requirements set by stakeholders. Going forward, the authors propose focused empirical research on organizational AIG processes, the establishment of an AI oversight unit and collaborative governance as a research approach.

For practitioners, the authors highlight training and awareness, stakeholder management and the crucial role of organizational culture, including senior management commitment.

For society, the authors review elucidates the multitude of stakeholders involved in AI governance activities and complexities related to balancing the needs of different stakeholders.

By delineating the AIG concept and the associated research themes, knowledge gaps and future agendas, the authors review builds a foundation for organizational AIG research, calling for broad contextual investigations and a deep understanding of AIG mechanisms. For practitioners, the authors highlight training and awareness, stakeholder management and the crucial role of organizational culture, including senior management commitment.

There is significant national interest in tackling issues surrounding the needs of vulnerable children and adults. This paper aims to argue that much value can be gained from the application of new data-analytic approaches to assist with the care provided to vulnerable children. This paper highlights the ethical and information governance issues raised in the development of a research project that sought to access and analyse children’s social care data.

The paper documents the process involved in identifying, accessing and using data held in Birmingham City Council’s social care system for collaborative research with a partner organisation. This includes identifying the data, its structure and format; understanding the Data Protection Act 1998 and 2018 (DPA) exemptions that are relevant to ensure that legal obligations are met; data security and access management; the ethical and governance approval process.

The findings will include approaches to understanding the data, its structure and accessibility tasks involved in addressing ethical and legal obligations and requirements of the ethical and governance processes.

The aim of this research is to highlight the potential use of use new data-analytic techniques to examine the flow of children’s social care data from referral, through the assessment process, to the resulting service provision. Data held by Birmingham City Council are used throughout, and this paper highlights key ethical and information governance issues which were addressed in preparing and conducting the research. The findings provide insight for other data-led studies of a similar nature.

The purpose of this paper is clearly illustrate this convergence and the prescriptive recommendations that such documents entail. There is a significant amount of research into the ethical consequences of artificial intelligence (AI). This is reflected by many outputs across academia, policy and the media. Many of these outputs aim to provide guidance to particular stakeholder groups. It has recently been shown that there is a large degree of convergence in terms of the principles upon which these guidance documents are based. Despite this convergence, it is not always clear how these principles are to be translated into practice.

In this paper, the authors move beyond the high-level ethical principles that are common across the AI ethics guidance literature and provide a description of the normative content that is covered by these principles. The outcome is a comprehensive compilation of normative requirements arising from existing guidance documents. This is not only required for a deeper theoretical understanding of AI ethics discussions but also for the creation of practical and implementable guidance for developers and users of AI.

In this paper, the authors therefore provide a detailed explanation of the normative implications of existing AI ethics guidelines but directed towards developers and organisational users of AI. The authors believe that the paper provides the most comprehensive account of ethical requirements in AI currently available, which is of interest not only to the research and policy communities engaged in the topic but also to the user communities that require guidance when developing or deploying AI systems.

The authors believe that they have managed to compile the most comprehensive document collecting existing guidance which can guide practical action but will hopefully also support the consolidation of the guidelines landscape. The authors’ findings should also be of academic interest and inspire philosophical research on the consistency and justification of the various normative statements that can be found in the literature.

There are two categories of ethical behaviour which affect the MIP. The first and most often discussed, includes those principles which encourage working for the welfare and prosperity of society: “Ethics for High Days”. The second consists of those principles which regulate one's everyday working practices: “Everyday Ethics”. It is with the latter that this paper is primarily concerned. Especially is it concerned with the fact that in everyday work one finds that sound ethical principles conflict with each other. Because of this, doubt arises whether it is worth establishing a formalised code of professional behaviour. After reviewing the pros and cons the author concludes that there are sufficient benefits to justify formulating a code though it will be useful mainly for public relations and for defending one's right to act in a professional manner. A number of ethical conflicts the MIP may encounter are reviewed, especially those in which modern information and communication technologies may play a part. [Since both men and women are MIPs, the words “he” and “she” will be used indiscriminately in the text] “And being exceedingly credulous would stuff his many letters sent to A.W. with fooleries and misinformations, which sometimes would guide him into the paths of error.” Richard Barber (ed.), Brief Lives by John Aubrey. London: The Folio Society, 1975, p.11. In his introduction to this recent edition of Brief Lives, a 17th century classic of English literature, Barber was quoting a description of Aubrey's work as an information searcher for one Anthony a Wood (A.W.), an Oxford antiquary. If Aubrey is a typical example of our predecessors, it is just as well that nowadays there are professional societies of information scientists and documentalists dedicated, inter alia, to maintaining proper professional standards. Indeed, as those who have read it will know, Brief Lives itself, Aubrey's masterpiece, is little but a very scrappy, not wholly reliable, set of short biographies of many eminent men of that century, Shakespeare and Sir Walter Raleigh among them. No modern information worker (or biographer) would be allowed to get away with a piece of work like it. Nor, I fear, would his more worthy product achieve such lasting fame. The problems of how thorough to be and when and whether to submit partial results are ones that affect information workers today just as much as in the 17th century, perhaps more so since professional time is very costly. So do a great many other problems which have an ethical component within them. In this paper I want to look at some of the everyday issues which members of the profession may face and to see whether the new communication technologies have made them easier or more difficult to resolve or even raise new problems.

Substantial government investment has accelerated innovation activity in children’s social care in England over the past decade. Ethical concerns emerge when innovation seems to be propelled by a drive for efficiency and over-reliance on process output indicators, as well as, or even instead of, improving the lives of children, families and societies. No ethical framework exists at present to act as a check on such drivers. This paper reviews the literature with the aim of considering how best to address this gap.

This paper draws on a review of innovation in children’s social care, conducted as part of an Economic and Social Research Council-funded project exploring innovation in services for young people exposed to extra-familial risk and harm.

This study proposes a new conception of “trustworthy innovation” for the sector that holds innovation in children’s social care to the standards and principles of the code of ethics for social work. This study offers an ethical framework, informed by the interdisciplinary school of organisational ethics, to operationalise this extended definition; the analytic framework guides policymakers and the practice sector to question at every stage of the innovation process whether a particular model is ethically appropriate, as well as practically feasible within a specific context. Implications for local decision-making and national policy are set out, alongside questions raised for future research.

This paper is the first to offer an ethical framework for innovation in children's social care. The conception of “trustworthy innovation” offers a guide to policymakers and the practice sector, which they can use to ethically test every stage of the innovation process and make decisions about whether a particular model is ethically appropriate, as well as practically feasible within a specific context.

Achieving equity in international research is one of the pressing concerns of the twenty-first century. In this era of progressive globalization, there are many opportunities for the deliberate or accidental export of unethical research practices from high-income regions to low- and middle-income countries and emerging economies. The export of unethical practices, termed “ethics dumping,” may occur through all forms of research and can affect individuals, communities, countries, animals, and the environment. Ethics dumping may be the result of purposeful exploitation but often arises from lack of awareness of good ethical and governance practice.

This chapter describes the work of the TRUST project toward counteracting the practice of ethics dumping through the development of tools for the improvement of research governance structures. Multi-stakeholder consultation informs all of TRUST’s developments. Most importantly, this gives voice to marginalized vulnerable groups and indigenous people, who have been equal and active partners throughout the project.

At the heart of the TRUST project is an ambitious aim to develop a Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings. Uniquely, the Code provides guidance across all research disciplines in clear, short statements, focusing on research collaborations that entail considerable imbalances of power, resources and knowledge and using a new framework based on the values of fairness, respect, care, and honesty. The code was recently adopted by the European Commission as a reference document for Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe.

To provide a practical insight into the Financial Services Authority's (FSA) “Treating Customers Fairly” (TCF) initiative for financial services firms endeavouring to implement such an approach.

This qualitative paper subjectively considers the TCF initiative in the context of the wider ethical approach to financial services by drawing an analogy with the FSA's earlier initiative in seeking to establish an ethical framework for financial services. Reference is made to recent practitioner literature and supported by key academic literature where appropriate.

The paper highlights the FSA's aim of adopting a high‐principled regulatory approach to TCF as a real alternative to highly prescriptive rules. It consider the scope of TCF and the inherent practical implications for firms seeking to implement such a policy by drawing an analogy between TCF and the ethical framework for financial services.

The paper is a useful insight into TCF from a critical, practical perspective and is part of a wider organizational cultural change debate which may be developed as the experience of the FSA and those it regulates matures.

The paper suggests that TCF is part of a greater need for the FSA and financial services firms to review their business in terms of an ethical approach, which in turn requires them to consider organizational cultural change.

The paper questions the FSA's strategic approach to embedding fairness in a firm's value system as part of TCF, rather than recognizing the TCF is a major component of the broader and more beneficial goal of changing a firms's ethical culture.