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Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations… of a thousand different types — religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute … [for] the greatest number of purposes … Nothing in my view deserves more attention than the intellectual and moral associations in America (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, [1835] 1945).

If individuals exhibit less ethical behavior in the workplace than in their personal decisions, this may constitute evidence of role morality behavior. Role morality can be defined as “claim(ing) a moral permission to harm others in ways that, if not for the role, would be wrong” (Applbaum, 1999. Ethics for adversaries: The morality of roles in public and professional life (p. 3). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.) To investigate this issue, 55 practicing accountants completed and returned the experimental survey. Results show that in many situations, business decisions were less ethical than personal decisions, consistent with the theory of role morality. The implications and limitations of this study as they relate to practicing accountants are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to resolve some unclarity about the nature and character of intercultural information ethics (IIE).

By survey of some of the relevant literature, the paper identifies and explains the distinctive projects of IIE. In addition, to facilitate the achievement of these projects, the paper attempts to identify the most fruitful metaphysical and meta‐ethical assumptions about truth and moral truth. In particular, to identify and determine which of objectivist theories of truth and morality or intersubjectivist theories of truth and morality provides a better theoretical foundation for IIE.

Two projects are identified: a descriptive project and a normative project. It is argued that moral objectivism provides a better foundation for the normative (project than moral intersubjectivism (or, as it is sometimes called, normative cultural relativism) in the sense that objectivism provides a more solid ground for the principle grounding the normative project – namely that agreement among cultures on principles of information ethics is good or desirable. In other respects, it is concluded that moral objectivism and moral intersubjectivism do equally well in grounding the normative project.

The paper is the first to compare the two methodological approaches and points in the direction of the most fruitful approach to take in pursuing IIE.

This paper examines the duty to rescue and the duty to assist the needy. An explanation is offered regarding why common‐sense morality makes the duty to rescue feel more pressing than the duty to assist the needy.

Perceiving discrimination and unequal treatment as a problem implies an underlying value of human equality. Argues that such prescriptive equality is more powerful and more persuasive to the extent that it is built on a presumption of descriptive human equality. Explores the philosophical prerequisites for holding the presumption of actual equality. In the last part, surveys critically the general stance of economics regarding an affirmation of descriptive equality.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an ethical perspective that goes beyond best practice in performance measurement systems in the public sector to help minimise unintended and unethical effects.

The paper draws on the ethical concepts of bounded ethicality, ethical blind spots and ethical fading to help illuminate the dark side of performance measurement in public sector organisations.

An understanding of the psychological tendencies that create unethical behaviours will assist compliance with ethics and morality and is a way forward towards minimising the unintended consequences of performance measurement in the public sector.

The findings will assist public sector managers by providing a greater understanding of why so many unethical acts occur and how to overcome ethical failures in the design and use of performance measurement systems.

The study adds value by contributing to performance measurement literature on the need to recognise the limitations of the human mind and innate psychological processes that make people systematically and unknowingly engage in unethical behaviour. The ethical concepts proposed in this paper go beyond the best practice notions of performance measurement and extend the toolkit of performance measurement techniques in the public sector.

Information ethics, as is well known, has emerged as an independent area of ethical and philosophical inquiry. There are a number of academic journals that are devoted entirely to the numerous ethical issues that arise in connection with the new information communication technologies; these issues include a host of intellectual property, information privacy, and security issues of concern to librarians and other information professionals. In addition, there are a number of major international conferences devoted to information ethics every year. It would hardly be overstating the matter to say that information ethics is as “hot” an area of theoretical inquiry as medical ethics. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview on these and related issues.

The paper presents a review of relevant information ethics literature together with the author's assessment of the arguments.

There are issues that are more abstract and basic than the substantive issues with which most information ethics theorizing is concerned. These issues are thought to be “foundational” in the sense that we cannot fully succeed in giving an analysis of the concrete problems of information ethics (e.g. are legal intellectual property rights justifiably protected?) until these issues are adequately addressed.

The paper offers a needed survey of foundational issues in information ethics.

In the 1990s, Mike Flanagan foresaw video moving from analog to digital and developed an equipment rental business to meet the needs of the entertainment/media production industry. By 1996 he established a second company to offer training in the use of Avid, a digital video-editing program. Flanagan sold the rental business in 1998 and by 2002 expanded the training away from a business model to a full-fledged college business model. By 2014 what started as a successful training program developed into a negative interaction with the US Department of Education and Flanagan found himself being forced out of business.

This case was originally a client-based project conducted real time in an MBA-level marketing course at the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University.

The case is well suited for a variety of business and law courses that integrate ethical decision making in their curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The case allows for a greater understanding of the implications of managerial behavior tied to ethical beliefs and the possible outcomes that may result. It also allows for a stronger grasp of the integral nature of management, staff, consumers and outside organizations on the pervasive impact of non-ethical behavior. Last, this case creates a framework for students to assess how ethics influence managerial behavior that will affect an organization’s success.

What ethical duties and obligations does a business owe to its customers and other stakeholders? Is ignorance an excuse for failing to meet those ethical obligations?

The constructs of relativism and absolutism have a significant role to play in the development of ethical theory; however, they are commonly simplified in their depictions and are philosophically more complex than we give them credit for. The purpose of this paper is to undertake an in‐depth examination of ethical relativity and ethical absolutism before concluding with a discussion of which research implications warrant further investigation.

A descriptive, historical, anthological approach has been taken.

Ethical relativism is regrettably subject to a proliferation of related terminology and, in many instances with different meanings ascribed to similar terms. In addition, ethical relativity appears to attract different research perspectives that are heavily dependent on their academic origins. A clear distinction needs to be made between ethical and situational relativity. It is suggested that relativism is present in the process of moral justification and that ethical relativism should be analyzed from three levels: the individual level, the role and group level, and the cultural levels. The over‐riding objection to ethical relativism rests on the consequences of accepting relativism, which undermines the existence and strength of global moral standards and the inherent positioning of ethical absolutism. Absolutism does not deny the existence of multiple moral practices evident around the world, but proposes that variations in ethical actions could still be rooted in common universal moral standards based on our requirements as human beings and the necessities of long‐term survival.

The ensuing discussions of relativism and absolutism open up a rich vein of research opportunities and suggest caution is required in regard to research methodologies. From a methodological perspective, care needs to be taken. For example, using hypothetical ethical dilemmas that are often unrelated to a specific industry or cultural setting has resulted in many researchers observing situational relativity rather than true ethical relativity.

This paper specifically examines whether there are differences in underlying and basic moral standards even though similarities in ethical behaviour have been determined, or whether differing ethical actions could, as the absolutists believe, originate from common universal standards despite apparent differences in perceptions and actions across cultures.