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The purpose of this paper is to explore an emerging ethical theory for the Digital Age – Flourishing Ethics – which will likely be applicable in many different cultures worldwide, addressing not only human concerns but also activities, decisions and consequences of robots, cyborgs, artificially intelligent agents and other new digital technologies.

In the past, a number of influential ethical theories in Western philosophy have focused upon choice and autonomy, or pleasure and pain or fairness and justice. These are important ethical concepts, but we consider “flourishing” to be a broader “umbrella concept” under which all of the above ideas can be included, plus additional ethical ideas from cultures in other regions of the world (for example, Buddhist, Muslim, Confucianist cultures and others). Before explaining the applied approach, this study discusses relevant ideas of four example thinkers who emphasize flourishing in their ethics writings: Aristotle, Norbert Wiener, James Moor and Simon Rogerson.

Flourishing Ethics is not a single ethical theory. It is “an approach,” a “family” of similar ethical theories which can be successfully applied to humans in many different cultures, as well as to non-human agents arising from new digital technologies.

This appears to be the first extended analysis of the emerging flourishing ethics “family” of theories.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and critique ways in which the threats from confirmation bias have been rejected.

Dismissals of the existence of, or threats from, confirmation bias are identified from a review of literature across a very wide range of disciplines. The dismissals are robustly examined.

The dismissals are categorised as: (1) radical scepticism (2) consequentialism: and (3) denial. Each type of dismissal, it is argued, is flawed.

The three-fold structuring of confirmation bias dismissal is novel. In addition to drawing from organisation, management and wider social science literature, the article also uses arguments and examples from the creative arts.

We contend that software developers have an ethical responsibility to strive for reliable software. We base that obligation on long standing engineering traditions that place the public good as a central tenant and on the professional relationship between a software developer and the users of the software developed.

Professional ethics is explored with three main foci: a critique of codes of conduct and the value of creating a global code for information and communication technology (ICT); a critique of ICT professional certification; and the debate over whether ICT is really a profession.

This is a conceptual reflection on the current state of the ICT industry internationally, informed by the literature.

Compared to a mature profession, such as health, ICT is a young profession. This is evidenced in the disparity of domains of practice, the lack of agreement on universal values governing the industry and the ongoing difficulties in creating international certification.

Until now, there has been little recognition of the corporatisation of ICT professionals and the effect that has on their ability to engage in appropriate professional ethics. More research is needed to explore appropriate ways in which ethical behaviour can be encouraged in the corporate workplace, including how professional development can be strengthened through building learning organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce, in the project management field, an Aristotelian ethics lens moving beyond the classical deontological and consequentialism approaches underlying the current ethical practices and codes of ethics and professional conducts. In doing so, the author wishes to pose the premises of a debate on the implications of a conscious ethical perspective for the structure and agency relationship within the project management field.

Project management is a knowledge field on its own right. However, the current perspectives applied to make sense and develop the field (modernism vs postmodernism) leads to dichotomous thinking rather than recognizing the merits and contextual validity of both sides. The author calls for Aristotelian ethics as a way of moving beyond this dichotomous thinking. The author introduces briefly Aristotelian ethics and its consequences in term of relation theory – practice, means and ends, facts and values and finally politics (i.e. being part of a community of practitioners). Then the author illustrates some consequences for the field taking PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct and APM Code of Professional Conduct as supports for discussion.

The author suggests a need for revisiting and/or redesigning the codes of ethics and professional conducts for project management according to an Aristotelian perspective, in order to move beyond the normative limitations of classical deontological (conflict between competing duties, exemplified by PMI Code) or consequentialism (focusing on the “right” outcome to the detriment of duties, exemplified by APM Code) approaches (both, in fact, leading to a disconnection means and ends, and facts and values). This implicates shifting the view from the question “what is my duty”? to the questions “why should I undertake my duty”? and “how ought I act in this situation”?

Raising professional bodies, industry and education institutions awareness and consciousness and leading them to rethink about codes of ethics and the implications for the way they conceive practice and research, bodies of knowledge, credentialing, education, etc.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this kind of discussion has not yet been conducted within the project management field, and considering the implication of project management in the life and for the well-being of the society, an ethical debate may present some value(s).

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the mechanics of the neoliberal mindset is governed paradigmatically by a peculiar notion of “time,” which leads, in turn, to a kind of amoral consequentialism that projects meaninglessly and amorally into the future. The author proposes, in comparison, the pre-modern and ancient sense of the temporal which has the potential to yield moral insights for guiding policy thinking.

The author employs a philosophical approach and historical approach. The authors analyze philosophically the notion of the temporal in the consequentialist neoliberal agency, and draws on continental, ancient and medieval philosophical sources of temporality to develop an alternative.

The author argues that a rich notion of the temporal can be retrieved from medieval sources. This notion of the temporal is located in our experience of changing embodied beings, or physis, and gives rise to thuamazein or awe, which shows moral insights. The latter is a valuable source of guidance in policy thinking.

This paper also suggests that epistemological commitment to an authority as numbers, feeding a policy as numbers, needs to be challenged. This paper does not draw on empirical data but nevertheless aspires to develop a thoughtful conceptual case on behalf of its conclusions.

A moral, neoliberal consequentialism is harmful to professional agencies. This paper offers a different way to think policy that puts what truly matters in front of us.

Neoliberalism breeds the terrors of performativity that forgets what as a society we need to aim for on behalf of happiness, and instead drives us to compete without restraint after particular quantitative achievements. By challenging this paradigm, it is possible to offer policy thinking a different set of conceptual tools with which to think ourselves out of this performative irrationality.

This paper retrieves a medieval notion of time that is related with the showing of moral insights, opposed to amoral neoliberal consequentialism. In this way, there is a proposal of an alternative to neoliberalism, and not merely the worry of its damaging effects. It is also an original developmental study of Heidegger’s retrieval of ancient philosophy’s sense of temporality and its connection with ethics in the light of the resources in medieval philosophy.

The ethicality of using audience segmentation in social marketing contexts has typically been framed within either a consequentialist or non-consequentialist perspective, leading to a hitherto intractable debate. This paper seeks to shed new light on this debate using two alternative ethical frameworks: the theory of just health care (TJHC) and integrative social contracts theory (ISCT).

The paper uses cross-sectional survey data from a Kenyan social marketing campaign that aimed to increase awareness and support for the use of anti-retroviral therapy (ART), a class of drugs that inhibit the development of HIV.

Application of the TJHC and ISCT to the Kenyan social marketing campaign revealed the use of audience segmentation to be ethically justified. Moreover, the TJHC provided a useful framework for guiding decisions about the selection of target audience(s) in health-related contexts.

In situations where there are known asymmetries in exposure to mass media channels, adopting a non-segmented mass-media approach may unintentionally entrench pre-existing disparities in health knowledge.

The application of the TJHC and ISCT to health-related social marketing contexts offers a means of resolving the longstanding debate about the ethicality of audience segmentation. The ethical principles underpinning the TJHC also provide a decision-making framework to guide discussions about whether audience segmentation should be based on cost-effectiveness (consequentialism) or need (non-consequentialism). This is particularly relevant in social marketing settings, where the resources available for conducting campaigns are often limited and segmentation decisions about the groups that are targeted or excluded can have important health-related implications.

Sen has recently acknowledged his “immense” debts to the liberal tradition of J.S. Mill and, to much lesser extent, to T.H. Green. This essay explores how identifying himself so enthusiastically with Mill sheds light on one’s understanding of Sen’s defense of the capabilities approach. But trying to understand him through the lens of Mill can be a double-edged sword. Sen not only risks causing his readers to append too much Mill to capabilities liberalism, but he also risks encouraging them to misinterpret Mill. These implications naturally bear significantly on how compelling readers find both Sen’s conception of distributive justice and the public policy recommendations based on it. Besides exploring some of the problematic implications of Sen’s readily identifying with Mill’s liberalism in particular, this essay also speculates on what it means to identify with any political philosophical tradition and how such identification colors and adds momentum to both one’s political theorizing and practical recommendations. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Textual interpretation.

As noted above, this paper examines how Sen’s esteem for J.S. Mill sheds light on the capabilities approach. It also suggests that using Mill to understand Sen better is fraught with difficulties.

The paper also speculates on what it means to identify with a particular political philosophical tradition much as Sen identifies with Mill’s liberalism.

This paper also explores how such identification with a particular political philosophical tradition colors and adds momentum to both one’s political theorizing and practical recommendations.

Using Mill to understand Sen better is certainly worthwhile. On the other hand, doing this sort of thing risks distorting Mill and even Sen.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether profit maximizing behaviour can be defended from an ethical point of view, and what possible restrictions should be made on following this interest.

The main structure of the paper is as follows. First, it states the problem. Second, it considers which ethical theory is relevant for evaluating the situation at hand, and argues that rule‐consequentialism is the most appropriate one, but that some constraints in the form of, e.g. protecting human rights must be used as a supplement. Third, it analyses the consequences of profit seeking and profit maximization, and argue that these have a number of beneficial effects. The methodology and approach is one of critical argumentation.

Profit maximization as a firm goal has traditionally been meet with suspicion in the literature on business ethics, being seen as either immoral or amoral. It is argued herein that this practice should be evaluated according to rule‐consequentialist ethics, but supplemented with elements that are more of a deontological ethical character. When seen from this point of view, profit maximization may be seen as ethical. This requires, however, that a number of institutional and other requirements are fulfilled.

In stead of arguing, or taking as a premise, that profit maximization is inherently unethical, researchers should argue which ethical point of view should be used to evaluate such a goal, and then argue whether business practices are ethical or not. In addition, business ethics literature should incorporate basic insights from economic theory.

The paper provides new insights in the ethical nature of profit maximization as the main corporate value. More generally, we argued that, given it is in the owner's perceived interest(s), it is ethically justifiable for executives to take profit maximization as their ultimate goal in running their businesses, as long as they do not violate law, norms or social customs.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the use of moral theory as a philosophical analytical framework for built environment organisations' ethical codes of practice. The identified moral theories under consideration are “deontology”, “consequentialism” and “virtue ethics”.

The paper uses a case study to examine the use of moral theory to explain the ethical codes of practice of built environment professional organisations. The chosen organisation is the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). The approach for conducting the case study is through semi‐structured interviews with experienced RICS members which gather views on the application of moral theory to explain the RICS ethical principles.

The case study revealed that there are mixed views on the use of moral theory to explain the RICS code of practice. The general view is that deontology is the most suitable theory to explain the fact that the work or process has been undertaken correctly. On the other hand, there is also a view amongst senior professionals that virtue ethics is most appropriate as it addresses the importance of both the correct “result” and the correct “process”.

The paper uses a case study approach to examine the ethical code of one built environment professional organisation. This research does not therefore claim empirical generalisation but instead provides illustrations on the use of moral theory to explain the code of practice of a built environment professional organisation. The paper is based on a series of interviews. The findings should be understood as the aggregated opinions of the interviewees.

The paper makes an original contribution to existing literature on the theoretical analysis of codes of practice for built environment professional organisations. It describes research which is the first to use moral theory as a framework for analysing rules of conduct of built environment professional organisations.