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This paper explores the question of whether the identification of many wrongdoings in an organisation requires knowledge of the technical and operating mechanisms of that organisation. If such is the case, many ethical problems cannot be resolved by a generalist. They must be left to people with knowledge of that industry. In attempting to answer the question, the paper examines 11 different types of organisations. It then asks how the ethical issues in those organisations might be resolved. The organisations are veterinarians, pharmacies, media companies, engineering firms, doctors, general businesses, including two sub disciplines, marketing and accounting organisations, nursing institutions, political parties, scientific research organisations, legal firms and information technology companies. Each can be a small professional company, locally based, or a large organisation, possibly international. Each exhibits one or more ethical problems that are not easily resolved by accepted ethical theory. Accepted theory, as further defined in the text, is the mainline ethical theories that would be core components of most ethics texts or courses. The question arises then on how would ethics be taught if the ethical issues require specialised knowledge of that industry sector. After examining the 11 industries, the paper puts forth two views. One is that a number of wrongs can be identified in industries and organisations where the ethical problems are complex and difficult to resolve, and where the standard ethical theories are of little or no help. Resolving these issues requires action from the organisation, or from the industry association encompassing all companies within that sector. A further complication has developed in the near explosive growth in whistleblower protection systems. These systems, now introduced in close to 30 countries around the world, have their own lists of wrongdoings for which the whistleblower will receive administrative and legal support. These lists of wrongs are distinct from any moral theory One conclusion to be drawn is that new methods possibly need to be found for teaching the identification and resolution of ethical issues. A second is a consequence of the first – that the teacher of ethics in these courses has to be drawn from within the industry. Further questions then arise: One is whether this demand then requires that this industry specialist learn moral theory? A second is then how would generalist applied ethics causes be taught (in humanities departments for instance)? Alternate viewpoints on joint teaching by a moral specialist and an industry specialist have been put forward. The paper puts forward one possible approach for the industry courses – that the industry specialist has to present the course, with new methods and content, but that a theoretical content is taught by someone knowledgeable in ethical theory. For generalist courses, the moral theorist has to include a sufficiently wide sample of industry and organisational ethical issues to ensure that students are aware of the wide range of ethical concerns that can arise, as well as approaches to resolving them.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the concept and the content of courses on ‘social ethics’. It will present a dilemma that arises in the design of such courses. On the one hand, they may present versions of ‘applied ethics’; that is, courses in which moral theories are applied to moral and social problems. On the other hand, they may present generalised forms of ‘occupational ethics’, usually professional ethics, with some business ethics added to expand the range of the course. Is there, then, not some middle ground that is distinctively designated by the term ‘social ethics’? The article will argue that there is such a ground. It will describe that ground as the ethics of ‘social practices’. It will then illustrate how this approach to the teaching of ethics may be carried out in five domains of social practice: professional ethics, commercial ethics, corporate ethics, governmental ethics, and ethics in the voluntary sector. The aim is to show that ‘social ethics’ courses can have a clear rationale and systematic content.

In this chapter I build upon the case I argued in Volume 1 of this series (Carpenter, D. (2016). The quest for generic ethical principles in social science research. In R. Iphofen (Ed.), Advances in research ethics and integrity (Vol. 1, pp. 3–18). Bingley: Emerald). There I established arguments for eschewing principlism and other well-established theories of practical ethics, such as deontology and consequentialism, in favour of virtue ethics. I drew on the work of Macfarlane (2009, 2010) in making a case for virtuous researcher and virtuous research. In this chapter, I draw attention to the role and conduct of ethics committees in reviewing research. If we are to consider the ethics of research and researchers, then we might also consider the ethics of reviewing and reviewers. Whilst there is an abundance of codes and similar documents aimed at guiding research conduct, there is relatively little to guide ethics committees and their members. Given the argument that a virtue ethics approach might help committees evaluate the ethics of proposed research and researchers, it could equally be the case that virtue ethics could be useful when thinking about the work of committees and ethics review. In this chapter I attempt to relocate and develop Macfarlane’s work by examining its application to the work of ethics committees and the virtues of their members. In particular, I will consider the virtues that reviewers should exhibit or demonstrate when reviewing research, and what we might take as the telos of ethics committees.

The boundaries between the for-profit sector and traditional nonprofit library focused information professions are blurring. As these information professions grow, more of their future leaders will be graduates from business management programs as opposed to library and information programs. There is a general perception that for-profit employers demand leaders who are analytical and achievement oriented. As a result, business schools have been criticized for focusing their curricula on transaction-based economics with less focus on preparing leaders to do what is right. So, how do we better prepare business graduates to face ethical dilemmas as they move forward to build and support information organizations of the future? This chapter reports the results of a study which explored the viewpoints of American thought leaders about ethics in the context of business programs. A total of 32 subjects from the corporate and higher education settings were interviewed. Results of the study revealed five major themes related to how educators can better prepare our next generation of leaders. Those themes were: (1) insights related to the student; (2) insights pertaining to the goal of business ethics education and curricula; (3) specific cases and experiences to include in ethics course(s); (4) explicit student learning outcomes; and (5) the specific role, skill, and ability of professors teaching ethics courses. While this chapter deals primarily with the academic scope of ethics, the study also explored personal views about ethics by the interviewees. Understanding how foundational ethical beliefs and awareness develop then informs the broader discussion of ethics.

Tourism researchers, like those in other fields, are subject to multiple ethical dilemmas. Consequently, scholars in the field have called for researcher reflectivity, and specifically ethical reflexivity. Based on this it is recognized that when conducting research merely meeting procedural ethics requirements may not be sufficient. Rather, there is a need to move beyond procedural ethics to capture ethics in practice and to critically recognize what it takes to be ethical when undertaking research. This reflective chapter contributes to the discussion on research ethics in tourism by sharing critical reflections on the ethical journeys of the chapter authors, all of who, in differing ways, study sensitive topics. As such, the chapter draws on work looking at sensitive content on social media, disabled children, sex, and bestiality. The chapter highlights the ongoing and responsive approach to being ethical adopted by these researchers. The chapter reveals how ethical issues and challenges unique to the individual researcher were navigated in practice. Overall, the chapter challenges researchers to be ethical in their research rather than simply conform to research ethics procedural requirements. It calls on researchers to engage in critical and adaptive thinking while balancing radical and traditional approaches to ethics.

This chapter examines the range of possible effects of ethics laws enacted by state legislatures. One objective of ethics law, to reduce corruption, cannot be demonstrated. Other objectives, to placate the media, defend against partisan attack, and permit the legislature to move on, have mixed results, while a final objective, to restore public confidence, is not achieved. Nevertheless, ethics law does affect the process, by somewhat discouraging legislator recruitment and retention, by raising the consciousness of legislators, and by changing the cultures of state capitals.

In this chapter I draw on the philosophical anthropology of Bruno Latour to propose an account of the work of research ethics. Through a consideration of research ethics as text, I explore the ways in which any such text needs to be accompanied – by people, by processes, by other voices or other texts – in order to become meaningful and then impactful for the ethnographer of education. Research ethics are thus positioned as the technological outcome of a dialogue that is prone to misunderstanding and misinterpretation, notwithstanding the strictures of the processes and policies that increasingly seek to codify the work that ethnographers do in the field. Through arguing for Latour's recent philosophical anthropology as a conceptual toolkit for the exploration of research ethics, I propose that it is research ethics as object that should be the focal point for ongoing ethnographic inquiry.

While technical environment starts from western culture which is mainly based on Christianity, the associated ethical concern of the operation of technology can be varied depending on the sociotechnical environment and/or organizational culture. Ethical standards – irrespective of religions – can be used to govern the appropriate behaviors of employees in technical environment. Religions, on the other hand can also act as an apparatus of good ethical motivation that can guide individuals in society/environment. Different religions might use different apparatus(s) to define the good code of ethics. This chapter shows similarities in the ethical teaching dictated by different holy books (mainly Islam, Judaism, and Christianity). The reason is to generalize that religion, as an apparatus of ethics, can be a factor toward ethical behavior supporting the man-made code of ethics in organizations which can also lead to support the definition of the proposed framework ethical behaviors.

Comparison between verses from holy books shows similarities in ethical dimension between religions (mainly Islam and Christianity). After showing the similarities, this chapter proposes a framework of ethical behaviors (FEB) to measure employees’ ethical standards in specific organization where technical environment like cloud computing was used as an example in this chapter.

Verses from both holy books (Quran and Bible–inclusive of the old testament) shows similarities in ethical standards. This similarity considered as a component toward the proposed framework for ethical behaviors in organizations where religion can be an important factor in multi-national, multi-cultural type of organizations. The proposed FEB can be used to identify possible environmental factors acting as moderators while religion and family values acting as mediators toward behaving ethically within technical environment.

The proposed framework can be used as a guide to identify ethical versus unethical employees where a mechanism to measure is proposed. Religious standard concluded out of the similarity section was used as a component of this framework.

The added value of utilizing good religious-based ethical standards is that employees/IT professionals will have an internal drive (on the top of corporate ethical standards) toward ethical behavior in such environment.

The idea of ‘identity politics’ has become quite prominent in news commentary. It has been referred to in explaining the 2016 US Presidential election result, the 2016 Brexit vote and a variety of other events in contemporary social life. The idea emerged under that title in the late twentieth century, and refers to political conflicts where groups unite and act on the basis of some shared identity. While the term initially referred to action by groups seeking to remedy past oppression, ‘identity politics’ may now refer to a wider range of cases where there is contestation based on recognition of some shared identity. Individuals’ identity is central to resurgent modern virtue ethics, but it has been suggested that virtue ethics is less relevant to political conflict than utilitarian views or theories of justice. However, an important distinction can be made between narrative identity, on the one hand, and social identity that emerges from individuals’ self-perceived group membership, on the other hand. It is narrative identity that figures in major accounts of virtue ethics. In many situations, narrative identity is importantly affected by group identity, but it is still only narrative identity that has intrinsic ethical weight. This suggests that virtue ethics has relevance to identity politics just because it urges attention to individuals’ narrative identity rather than to group identity.

This Chapter applies the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to business’ role in the ‘War on Terror’. Specifically, it uses Levinasian ethics to explain how organisations, often with an abundance of ethical resources, become associated with military drones strikes against civilians, and offers ideas that challenge this practice. The chapter comprises several sections beginning with a brief introduction to the ‘War on Terror’ and the use of military drones. A concise discussion about business ethics and just war theory follows after which, the chapter explains Levinas’ ethics and his views on war. These ideas are applied to transform business ethical practice in this controversial area. The Chapter concludes with a summary of its main points.