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How can we explain the development – or equally the non-development – of professional ethics norms in a particular case? And how can we enhance compliance with existing professional ethical norms? In this chapter, I develop a supply/demand theory of professional ethics. That is, I consider the demand-forces and pull-factors that call for the construction, reform or continuance of a professional ethos. These demands may come from various stakeholders, including individual service-providers, the professional community, actual and prospective clients and the general public collectively as interested third parties. The supply-side, on the other hand, constitutes the ethical materiel out of which norms emerge: these are the felt-motivations of individual professionals at the coalface of action that drive them to recognize, acknowledge and act upon a professional norm. This material includes traditions and stories, the conscious application of common-sense ethics, explicit endorsement of public moral codes, internal excellences within the activity, a discrete community capable of cultivating attractive role-identities and so on. As well as considering such ethical-materiel, I canvas the institutional and cultural supports that facilitate the production of these motives.

This chapter explores the ethics of a critical vulnerability suffered by migrant health professionals (MHPs): the problem of ‘pathways to nowhere’. This problem arises from dynamic change in the processes, practices and policies governing how migrant professionals achieve accreditation, training and employment in destination countries, whereby established pathways to professional practice are unexpectedly altered or removed. The authors detail the significance of this phenomenon in Australian and Canadian contexts. Drawing on the literature on legitimate expectations and the rule of law, the authors outline the ethical stakes and responsibilities that attach to states creating and then disappointing people’s legitimate expectations, and discuss how these considerations apply to destination countries’ treatment of MHPs.

How can public institutions achieve their goals and best nurture virtue in their members? In this chapter, I seek answers to these questions in a perhaps unlikely place: the television series The Wire. Known for its unflinching realism, the crime drama narrates the intertwined lives of police, criminals, politicians, teachers and journalists in drug-plagued urban Baltimore. Yet even in the thick and quick of institutional dysfunction the drama portrays, human virtue springs forth and institutions (despite themselves) sometimes perform their roles. I begin this exploration of The Wire by drawing on Montesquieu and other political theorists to evaluate the problems facing state institutions – problems of diversity and principle as much as selfishness and power-mongering. I then turn to the prospects for virtue within modern institutions, developing and applying the system of Alasdair MacIntyre and paying particular attention to the role of narrative in cementing and integrating virtue.

Questionable ethical decisions and morally reprehensible practices are often motivated by pressures, the product of circumstances surrounding the socio-political and socio-economic world we inhabit. Having an awareness of the interacting connection between propagated actions of agents and the consequent effects on others (even non-actions can perpetuate effects), more often than not come down to the judgements made that consequently impact the lives, property, and/or environment. Therefore, good ethical decision-making requires distinguishing between different associated thinking processes with attendant consideration given to impact influences. In this reflective piece, the author argues that knowing first requires the knower – the embodied agent – having an understanding of that said to be known. The author recognises and accepts that the application of what constitutes ethics is a dynamic process which one can learn, that can be understood and practiced, but which requires internalising what constitutes ethical conduct through an embodying process involving critical broad range agential reflective thinking and indeed praxis.

We review the 2019 documentary Untouchable, directed by Ursula Macfarlane, about the allegations against Harvey Weinstein. (The film was made and released before Weinstein’s trial and conviction in early 2020.) Macfarlane, by examining the terrifying stories of the Weinstein’s accusers, provides a platform for women to voice their stories and stand in solidarity against sexual harassment in the workplace.

The content of ethics education courses is still generally shaped around the presentation of the traditional ethical theories of Western moral philosophy, complemented by case studies and discussion of ethical decision-making models. The purpose of courses is still largely geared towards the development of skills in ethical reasoning. Yet developments in surrounding fields, from psychology to learning and leadership development, raise numerous questions about the traditional curriculum. Ethics courses need to be more responsive to psychological factors and to the social realities of workplace contexts, and cognisant of a wider spectrum of ethical concepts. The perspective of virtue ethics remains pertinent, as the broader agenda of ethics courses is to enable students to develop a personal ethical outlook. But ethics courses should also be exploring and incorporating concepts from non-Western philosophies, and incorporating developments in fields such as leadership development.

There are many contexts within which to consider the teaching of legal ethics to law students, such as historical, philosophical, or procedural. This paper describes a course with an emphasis on considering purposes of law as a heuristic context. The work is based on the writer’s experiences in establishing a new course in legal ethics for final year law students at the University of Western Australia. The background to the development of the course lay mainly in experience as legal practitioner, legal academic, and investigator of complaints against lawyers.