Search

This 26th volume of Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations is a selection of papers from the 27th Annual Conference of the Australian Association of Professional and Applied Ethics with the theme ‘Who's watching? Surveillance, big data and applied ethics in the digital age.'The papers in this volume critically engage with contemporary issues surrounding big data and surveillance, particularly in relation to large institutions, including corporations and government agencies. Special focus is put on the ethical issues concerning the collection and use of big data sets. Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations (REIO) is a double-blind, peer-reviewed series that publishes rigorous academic research into organizational ethics from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives.

Professional Ethics have become fashionable during the past two decades. This proliferation of various professional ethics bears witness to a need to introduce ethical concerns in the exercise of various professions. In order to answer this need, each profession attempts to develop its own code of'ethics'. In this respect, questions such as the following arise: Are the various ethical problems faced during the exercise of a profession different in kind from those ethical problems faced in everyday life? Or, are they ethical problems of the same kind, requiring in addition knowledge of the specific area of human endeavour in order to tackle them? The book deals with these and similar questions and points to the need for a different approach to professional ethics.

Suppose an accountant discovers evidence of shady practices while ex­ amining the books of a client. What should he or she do? Accountants have a professional obligation to respect the confidentiality of their cli­ ents'accounts. But, as an ordinary citizen, our accountant may feel that the authorities ought to be informed. Suppose a physician discov­ ers that a patient, a bus driver, has a weak heart. If the patient contin­ ues bus driving even after being informed of the heart condition, should the physician inform the driver's company? Respect for patient confidentiality would say, no. But what if the driver should suffer a heart attack while on duty, causing an accident in which people are killed or seriously injured? Would the doctor bear some responsibility for these consequences? Special obligations, such as those of confidentiality, apply to any­ one in business or the professions. These obligations articulate, at least in part, what it is for someone to be, say, an accountant or a physician. Since these obligations are special, they raise a real possibility of con­ flict with the moral principles we usually accept outside of these spe­ cial relationships in business and the professions. These conflicts may become more accentuated for a professional who is also a corporate employee-a corporate attorney, an engineer working for a construction company, a nurse working as an employee of a hospital.