Search

Donation after circulatory determination of death (DCDD) is an accepted practice in the United States, but heart procurement under these circumstances has been debated. Although the practice is experiencing a resurgence due to the recently completed trials using ex vivo perfusion systems, interest in thoracoabdominal normothermic regional perfusion (TA-NRP), wherein the organs are reanimated in situ prior to procurement, has raised many ethical questions. We outline practical, ethical, and equity considerations to ensure transplant programs make well-informed decisions about TA-NRP. We present a multidisciplinary analysis of the relevant ethical issues arising from DCDD-NRP heart procurement, including application of the Dead Donor Rule and the Uniform Definition of Death Act, and provide recommendations to facilitate ethical analysis and input from all interested parties. We also recommend informed consent, as distinct from typical "authorization," for cadaveric organ donation using TA-NRP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Limited access to health services, decreased quality of care, and worse health outcomes are well documented barriers people with limited English proficiency (LEP) face in US health care. Laws enacted since the 1964 Civil Rights Act recognize such barriers and have helped generate demand for culturally respectful health service provision, assessment of cross-cultural relations, and adaptation of services that fail to meet persons' needs and improve quality of life. Yet, as this commentary on a case considers, even with legal protections for language services for patients with LEP, long-term care facilities face limited resources and thus have limited capacity to offer such services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health care and public health programs increasingly rely on, and often even require, organizational action, which is facilitated, if not dependent on, trust. Case examples in this essay highlight trust, trustworthiness, and distrust in public and private organizations, providing insights into how trust in health‐related organizations can be betrayed, earned, and justified and into the consequences of organizational trust and trustworthiness for the health of individuals and communities. These examples demonstrate the need for holistic assessments of trust in clinicians and trust in organizations and for organizations, public health, and the medical profession to address questions concerning their own trustworthiness. Normative and empirical assessments of trust and trustworthiness that capture the experiences of those treated within the walls of a health care organization, as well as the care of those outside, will contribute to more trustworthy systems of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whistleblowers have significantly shaped the state of contemporary society; in this context, this research sheds light on a persistently neglected research area: what are the key determinants of whistleblowing within government agencies? Taking a unique methodological approach, we combine evidence from two pieces of fieldwork, conducted using both primary and secondary data from the US and Indonesia. In Study 1, we use a large-scale survey conducted by the US Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). Additional tests are conducted in Study 1, making comparisons between those who have and those who do not have whistleblowing experience. In Study 2, we replicate the survey conducted by the MSPB, using empirical data collected in Indonesia. We find a mixture of corroboration of previous results and unexpected findings between the two samples (US and Indonesia). The most relevant result is that perceived organizational protection has a significant positive effect on whistleblowing intention in the US sample, but a similar result was not found in the Indonesian sample. We argue that this difference is potentially due to the weakness of whistleblowing protection in Indonesia, which opens avenues for further understanding the role of societal cultures in protecting whistleblowers around the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background & Aims: In today's world, solving many problems of a society depends on the educational system of that society. If the society has the correct education, it can overcome all its problems. There are several definitions of the concept of attitude. Attitude is a combination of beliefs and emotions that prepare a person in advance to look at others, objects, and different groups in a positive or negative way. Attitudes summarize the evaluation of objects and thus undertake to predict or guide future actions or behaviors. Attitude can be defined in terms of learning theories and cognitive approaches. In each of these theories, the concept of attitude is defined differently and each of the different aspects of attitude is emphasized. Attitude is a state of mental and nervous preparation that is organized through experience and has a direct and dynamic effect on the individual's reaction to all issues and situations related to attitude. "In this definition, which is mainly based on learning theory. The influence of past experiences on organizing attitudes as well as reacting to a situation (as in the behaviorist approach) has been considered. Attitude is the stable organization of motivational, emotional, perceptual, and cognitive processes related to With some aspects of the individual world, it is observed that this definition does not refer to the origin of the attitude and instead emphasizes the mental experience of the present, in other words, each attitude is a kind of the previous position to perform a positive or negative action. Attitudes toward people, objects, and events are social goals and play a guiding role in transforming psycho-emotional states into motor states. The attitude in educational management is a sensitive issue that affects a large set of organizations. They are the mainstay of current societies. Among these, educational organizations are very important due to their comprehensiveness, uniqueness and importance in growth and development. Attitude-related issues are closely related to the strategic and professional activities of the organization. Responsibility, commitment, and self-control can be mentioned as influential components of attitude. One of the important personality traits that play a major role in success is responsibility. Responsibility is defined as an inner obligation and commitment on the part of a person to perform well all the activities assigned to him/her, and responsibility originates from within the person. The person in charge of the work agrees to perform a series of activities and tasks or to supervise the performance of these tasks by others. Self-control means the ability to control ourselves in terms of controlling our desires and tastes. People who have self-control can adjust what they want to make sure they do not overdo it. Self-controlled people can save their lives. In other words, they are able to do the right thing to keep themselves healthy and happy. Identifying the components affecting the attitude of employees in the education system plays an effective role in advancing the goals of the education system. Methods: The research method is heuristic mixed. In the qualitative stage, the theme analysis was used and in the quantitative stage, the descriptive-survey analysis method was used. Participants in the qualitative section included experts and specialists in the field of management and educational sciences, and 16 people were selected as key informants through purposive sampling. The statistical population in the quantitative part includes all education staff in Mazandaran province. 350 employees were selected using a stratified random sampling method for the study. A semi-structured interview was used to collect research data in the qualitative stage and a researcher-made questionnaire was used in a quantitative part. The research data were collected in the qualitative part using open coding and in the quantitative part using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis in Amos and SPSS statistical software. Results: The results showed that responsibility, commitment, and self-control have a significant effect on employees' responsible attitude, which is one of the components of ethics. Conclusion: As a result, we can pay attention to responsibility, commitment, and self-control in the education system to institutionalize the attitude of employees. Based on the analysis of research data, responsibility, commitment, and self-control components affect employees' attitudes. The results of a study showed that responsibility is one of the key components of organizational ethics. Attitude is one of the most important concepts in modern social psychology. In contemporary US social psychology, the concept of attitude is probably the most distinctive and essential. Attitude, like many psychological variables, is not a directly observable essence, but a hypothetical construct about the nature of human behavior. The concept of attitude does not refer to any particular action, but is an abstraction of a large number of related reactions or actions. In another study, it was found that the values of the organization, benevolence, service, intimacy, empathy, cooperation, consultation, and participation in the optimal performance of job duties and organization are components of organizational ethics, these results are consistent with the findings of the present study. Attitude is a state of mental and psychological readiness that is organized based on experience and has a dynamic and directional effect on a person's reaction to all the objects and situations he encounters. Attitude is therefore seen as the desire to respond to a person, an idea, or a situation in a particular way, and in fact reflects an inner desire and motivation to do or not to do a particular behavior. It is a combination of favorable and unfavorable beliefs, tendencies, or feelings, which refers to a person's readiness and willingness to react in a relatively constant way to specific objects, people, and events. Attitudes are fixed personal characteristics that give people a positive or negative view of working conditions. Attitude is not visible or palpable, but is inferred from a person's words or actions. Therefore, the study of employees' attitudes in different organizations due to the significant results that can have on improving organizational behaviors, has been considered by researchers and experts in organizational behavior management and human resource management over the past few decades. Manpower spends most of its life in the organizational environment, it is natural that attention and awareness of the dimensions of physical, mental, and social health of employees are of great importance. In line with the results, it can be stated that attitude is a common understanding of the occurrence of behaviors that should be done. Development of organizational values, creating a responsible attitude towards society and organization, developing the atmosphere and ethical atmosphere based on Islamic principles, developing organizational virtues, and observing the principles of professional ethics in the organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does it look like when an organization tentatively steps away from an exclusively rules-based regime and begins to attend to both rules and principles? What insights and guidance can ethicists and ethical theory offer? This paper is a case study of an organization that has initiated such a transition. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) has begun a turn toward the promotion of ethical principles and best practices by adding a "conceptual framework" to its existing Code of Professional Conduct (Code). This conceptual framework calls upon its members to intentionally increase their awareness of significant threats to their compliance with its rules of conduct and to establish safeguards to offset or eliminate those threats. To this end, each member is required to regard every questionable situation, circumstance, transaction or relationship by attempting to view it through the eyes of an imagined reasonable third party. This paper examines this protocol theoretically and practically. First, we frame this analysis within the principles and ethical concepts that inform the professional ethics of accountants. Second, we critique the AICPA's long-standing rules-based approach to its Code. Third, we examine the new conceptual framework with a view toward its potential for the promotion of a more principles-based approach to the professional ethics of the accounting profession. Fourth, we give attention to the notion of the "reasonable and informed third party," which has been embedded in the new conceptual framework, and consider how two schools of thought—Adam Smith's modernist "impartial spectator" concept and Emmanuel Lévinas' postmodern phenomenology in regard to "the Other"—may offer theoretical support and clarity for this epistemic exercise. Finally, we point out several ways in which the AICPA's commitment to its new conceptual framework could be strengthened and enhanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the role of supplier fairness in developing long- term relationships between relatively smaller vulnerable resellers and larger, powerful suppliers. The authors conceptualize two components of fairness-distributive fairness, that is, the fairness of outcomes received by the reseller from carrying the supplier's line, and procedural fairness, the fairness of procedures and processes used by the supplier in relation to its resellers. Testing their hypotheses from the perspective of automobile dealers, the authors find strong evidence that vulnerable resellers' perceptions of both distributive and procedural fairness enhance their relationship quality, although these effects are moderated by the level of outcomes and environmental uncertainty. Furthermore, procedural fairness has relatively stronger effects on relationship quality than distributive fairness, which is a somewhat surprising result from a managerial perspective. The constructs and relationships among the constructs demonstrate cross-national stability across the two countries in the sample, the United States and the Netherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from participants at a single organization, we employed a three-perspective meta-theory to move toward a more comprehensive description of organizational culture and examined how differing theoretical perspectives yield convergent, complementary, or contrary findings. Survey data (n = 124) combined with the results from 19 structured interviews indicated that employees shared consensus around some cultural values, but also suggested the existence of subcultures and general ambiguity around other cultural elements. That is, from an integrative perspective, there was clarity surrounding one set of values; from a differentiation perspective, subcultures existed; and from a fragmentation perspective, there was evidence of ambiguity and conflict regarding the meaning of some cultural manifestations. This study contributes to the literature on organizational culture enacting calls to conceptualize and examine culture from multiple perspectives and discussing the consequences. Furthermore, the study highlights the importance of employing multiple methods in diagnosing organizational culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clinical ethicists represent a growing profession in U.S. healthcare. This profession's aspirations include serving as a supportive resource to hospital staff, but also as an ethics "watchdog," ensuring that medical decision-making adheres to ethical standards. Drawing on 31 in-depth interviews conducted in 2021 of clinical ethicists working across the U.S., I evaluate the extent to which these watchdog aspirations have been achieved. I investigate ethicists' success in leveraging three strategies aspiring professions have used to secure their jurisdictional claims: acquiring professional expertise, securing administrative authority, and cultivating trusting relationships. I show that ethicists face barriers to leveraging each, which has consequences for how ethical dilemmas are resolved. Findings point to challenges aspiring professions must overcome in order to claim jurisdictions posing a threat to incumbent professions; the tensions that exist between legal risk management and clinical ethics; and the organizational strategies marginal actors leverage to advance their interests and influence the delivery of healthcare. • Clinical ethicists aspire to be ethics "watchdogs," ensuring medical decision-making adheres to ethical standards. • Structural barriers have prevented many from achieving this aspiration. • Some hospital staff question the legitimacy of ethicists' expertise. • Many hospitals lack policies protecting ethicists' ability to intervene in value-laden decision-making. • Physicians and risk managers represent ethicists' competition in claiming jurisdiction over resolving ethical dilemmas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examined as an isolated situation, and through the lens of a rare and feared disease, Mr. Duncan's case seems ripe for second-guessing the physicians and nurses who cared for him. But viewed from the perspective of what we know about errors and team communication, his case is all too common. Nearly 440,000 patient deaths in the U.S. each year may be attributable to medical errors. Breakdowns in communication among health care teams contribute in the majority of these errors. The culture of health care does not seem to foster functional, effective communication between and among professionals. Why? And more importantly, why do we not do something about it? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses how institutional system and organizational ethos influence the front-end delivery of course, programs and research. Topics discussed include an investigation of specialized institutions looking to expand their curricular offerings, an examination of 2 higher education organizations that pursued various approaches aside from internal development and a study on another method for rapid expansion involving acquisitions that can result in a new institutional classification.

Advertising by health care institutions has increased steadily in recent years. While direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising is subject to unique oversight by the Federal Drug Administration, advertisements for health care services are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission and treated no differently from advertisements for consumer goods. In this article, we argue that decisions about pursuing health care services are distinguished by informational asymmetries, high stakes, and patient vulnerabilities, grounding fiduciary responsibilities on the part of health care providers and health care institutions. Using examples, we illustrate how common advertising techniques may mislead patients and compromise fiduciary relationships, thereby posing ethical risks to patients, providers, health care institutions, and society. We conclude by proposing that these risks justify new standards for advertising when considered as part of the moral obligation of health care institutions and suggest that mechanisms currently in place to regulate advertising for prescription pharmaceuticals should be applied to advertising for health care services more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses organizational behavior, the U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines, and efforts to encourage ethics in organizations as of January 2014, focusing on reviews of several ethics-related research projects. Compliance with the law is addressed in relation to the U.S. Department of Justice, prosecutions, and the requirements of the nation's Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Compliance programs and organizational values are examined, as well as social identity theory and control orientation.

Two insights of psychology on which we would like to draw are that people react to law in more complex ways than rational-choice models assume and that good people sometimes do bad things. With that starting point, this article provides a behavioral perspective on some of the factors that policymakers seeking to reduce the level of misconduct in the pharmaceutical industry should consider. Effective regulation and enforcement need to address the following questions: Who are the regulation's targeted actors -- researchers or executives? Are the regulations directed toward research or marketing activities? Is the misconduct a product of explicit rational choice or implicit processes of which the actor is unaware? Is it reasonable to address all types of misconduct using the same approach? Certain misconduct -- particularly by researchers -- is due to automatic, intuitive, and unconscious decisions and needs to be addressed through different means than those used to address misconduct due to controlled, deliberate decisions. This article therefore recommends using different sorts of regulation depending on the context. It suggests more tailored enforcement mechanisms that will be sensitive to the pharmaceutical researchers' unique work motivations and to their awareness or lack of awareness of their own misconduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To spark a conversation about how best to evaluate ethics quality, this article draws on the collective experience of the IntegratedEthicsTMevaluation team to reflect on what we have learned and to envision an agenda for future work. The article emphasizes the importance of beginning with a well-defined conceptual model, building an expert team, committing the resources necessary to do evaluation well, and tailoring the evaluation methods to the target audience. The article then describes a five-point agenda for future work on ethics quality in health care: further evaluate and improve ethics programs; further evaluate and improve specific ethical practices; examine the relationships among various aspects of ethics quality; examine the relationships between ethics quality and other important organizational outcomes; and foster cross-institutional collaborations to evaluate and improve ethics quality. The hope is that some day ethics will be fully integrated into the mainstream of health care quality management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background:To enhance understanding of ethical leadership and the ethical environment and culture (EL/EEC) in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system, we mapped selected questions from the VA IntegratedEthics™  Staff Survey (IESS), a national survey of employees’ perceptions of ethical practices, to the Ethical Leadership Compass Points (ELC), a tool to help leaders cultivate an environment and culture that makes it easy for employees to “do the right thing.” The ELC distills insights and principles from organizational and business ethics and provides leaders with specific behaviors that can be incorporated into daily administrative routines.Methods:We analyzed the responses of 88,605 VA employees to the 2010 IESS questions that previously were mapped to the ELC. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize overall distribution of responses to the survey questions, and Pearson's chi-squared tests were performed to assess differences in responses by employee characteristics. Multiple regression analyses examined the association between perceptions of EL/EEC and perceptions of the organizations’ overall ethics quality.Results:Physicians and employees with a higher level of supervisory responsibility were more likely to have the most positive perceptions of EL/EEC and the organization's overall ethics quality. More than three-quarters of the variation in perceptions of overall ethics quality was explained by employee perceptions of EL/EEC. The IESS questions that showed the largest associations with perceptions of overall ethics quality addressed fair allocation of resources across programs and services, avoidance of mixed messages that create ethical uncertainty or conflict, fair treatment of employees, and following up on ethical concerns reported by employees.Conclusions:These results support the important relationships between ethical leadership, an organization's environment and culture, and overall ethics quality. Certain ethical leadership practices may have a larger impact on employees’ perceptions of overall ethics quality than others. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hospitals in the United States have been engaging in the practice of returning immigrant patients, usually undocumented immigrant patients, to their country of origin when the patient has long-term medical needs for which no reimbursement is available. I argue that for such an action to be ethical, it must be done in accordance with the mission and values of hospitals. I describe three standards that an individual instance of repatriation must meet to be ethical: (1) patient best interests, (2) medical due diligence, and (3) informed consent. I argue that these should form the basis for best practices in regard to medical repatriation for all hospitals in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sometimes physicians lie to third-party payers in order to grant their patients treatment they would otherwise not receive. This strategy, commonly known as gaming the system, is generally condemned for three reasons. First, it may hurt the patient for the sake of whom gaming was intended. Second, it may hurt other patients. Third, it offends contractual and distributive justice. Hence, gaming is considered to be immoral behavior. This article is an attempt to show that, on the contrary, gaming may sometimes be a physician's duty. Under specific circumstances, gaming may be necessary from the viewpoint of the internal morality of medicine. Moreover, the objections against gaming are examples of what we call the idealistic fallacy, that is, the fallacy of passing judgments in a nonideal world according to ideal standards. Hence, the objections are inconclusive. Gaming is sometimes justified, and may even be required in the name of beneficence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to a person's character and training, the organization's ethical work climate (EWC) can assess how the organization influences an individual's ethical decision-making process by examining the individuals' perception of 'what is the right thing to do' in a particular organizational environment. Relatively little research has explored which EWCs dominate military units and the impact of organizational role and environmental uncertainty on individuals in the military and their ethical decision making. In this study, we examined the predominant EWCs among military units and found that certain organizational influences are associated with the specific EWCs. Based on these discoveries, we discuss the implications of EWC studies and the influence of organizational role and environmental uncertainty for researchers, as well as military leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is an extension of our recent ethics research in direct marketing (2003) and information technology (2007). In this study, we investigated the relationships among core organizational values, organizational ethics, corporate social responsibility, and organizational performance outcome. Our analysis of online survey responses from a sample of IT professionals in the United States indicated that managers from organizations with organic core values reported a higher level of social responsibility relative to managers in organizations with mechanistic values; that managers in both mechanistic and organic organizations which were perceived as more socially responsible were also perceived as more ethical; and that perceived ethical attitudes and social responsibility were significantly associated with organizational performance outcome measures. Our article discusses research premises, conceptual framework, hypotheses, research methodology, data analysis, recommendations for further research, and conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To promote ethical practices, healthcare managers must understand the ethical challenges encountered by key stakeholders. To characterize ethical challenges in Veterans Administration (VA) facilities from the perspectives of managers, clinicians, patients, and ethics consultants. We conducted focus groups with patients (n = 32) and managers (n = 38); semi-structured interviews with managers (n = 31), clinicians (n = 55), and ethics committee chairpersons (n = 21). Data were analyzed using content analysis. Managers reported that the greatest ethical challenge was fairly distributing resources across programs and services, whereas clinicians identified the effect of resource constraints on patient care. Ethics committee chairpersons identified end-of-life care as the greatest ethical challenge, whereas patients identified obtaining fair, respectful, and caring treatment. Perspectives on ethical challenges varied depending on the respondent's role. Understanding these differences can help managers take practical steps to address these challenges. Further, ethics committees seemingly, are not addressing the range of ethical challenges within their institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study developed and tested a model of culture's effect on budgeting systems, and hypothesized that system variables and reactions to them are influenced by culture-specific work-related and ethical values. Most organizational and behavioral views of budgeting fail to acknowledge the ethical components of the problem, and have largely ignored the role of culture in shaping organizational and individual values. Cross-cultural differences in reactions to system design variables, and in the behaviors motivated or mitigated by those variables, has implications for the design and effectiveness of budgeting systems. The data largely support our research model, demonstrating the hypothesized national cultural differences in system design variables (e.g., participation, standards tightness, budget emphasis, etc. which we characterized as the opportunity and incentives to create budgetary slack), and the expected relationship between incentives (but not opportunity) to create slack and slack creation behavior. The data demonstrate hypothesized cultural differences in ethical ideology but show ethical ideology related to slack creation behavior only for U.S. managers. A discussion of the results and their implications is included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Institute of Medicine report, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System, has spurred public concern over hospitals' ability to deliver safe care. The health care industry continues to struggle to address these concerns. These efforts have driven the growing expectation that health care practitioners or systems disclose unanticipated outcomes to patients and family members. Although the tort system has been cited as an impediment to medical error disclosure, some organizations and systems have successfully implemented policies calling for full disclosure of errors and unanticipated outcomes. However, most organizations have yet to develop policies concerning error disclosure. This article provides an overview of error disclosure and a model framework for an error disclosure policy. The ethical principle of respect for patient autonomy is emphasized as the driving force in developing an institutional disclosure policy and changing the organizational culture to one that supports development and implementation of such a policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses foundations for ethical customer relationships, contingent knowledge about customers as stakeholders, and insights on establishing a balanced stakeholder orientation. The relationship between customers and a firm exist because of a mutual expectation built on trust, good faith, and fair dealing. Ethical responsibilities to U.S. consumers have a strong foundation of legal protection. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) works to protect consumers against unfair or fraudulent practices. Experts say organizations need to create ethical corporate cultures based on leadership and the commitment to values that stress the importance of stakeholder relationships.

The present paper compares the ethical perceptions of Americans and Greeks using conjoint analysis. The two samples were presented with 2 scenarios manipulating three factors: gender of the transgressor, organizational status of the transgressor, and the magnitude of the transgression. For each scenario, conventional mean comparisons and conjoint analyses were performed on five ethical measurements. The matrix of means and the relative importances of the American sample were compared with that of the Greek sample. The results showed that Greeks paid more attention to the dollar amount involved and less attention on the organizational status of the transgressor than Americans did. The gender of the transgressor was the least important factor for both samples. The use of relative importance measures derived from conjoint analysis is shown to provide a new dimension in cross-cultural comparisons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As more women enter the work force and assume management positions in corporations, increasing attention is being given to employment diversity. In addition, studies suggest that females have more propensity for ethics than males. However, these results may be debatable and limited data are available to substantiate these claims or assess gender differences among employees. Ethics codes can aid in supporting policies and enhancing corporate diversity. To assist one company in the development of an ethics code, a survey of 4005 employees in one U.S. corporation was conducted to ascertain their opinions of the ethical environment of the company. The survey used the Ethics Environment Questionnaire (EEQ), consisting of twenty items on a 5-point Likert-type scale; reliability on Cronbach's alpha was 0.94. Response rate was 50%, with the sample paralleling the population in proportion of males and females. Respondents reported a profile of 3.18 out of the high of 5.0, but with several significant differences between the male and female employees, including differences on education and position. Males were more in agreement than females that the firm had an ethical environment. On some items, however, males and females were in strong agreement. Comparisons to prior studies were drawn, including suggestions for ways corporations could use an ethics survey to tailor in-service training, enhance diversity in the work force, and support the development of an ethics code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research presents findings from a study of gender-based differences in an ethical decision situation. The study focuses on gender as it relates to situational factors and accounting experience. The primary element of interest is how the gender of the actor (the person described in each vignette) influences the evaluation/assessment of the ethical/unethical decisions. While previous research has provided evidence of ethical differences relating to the gender of the responding subjects, limited evidence has been presented relating to situational issues that may influence assessments of ethical decisions. This research uses four accounting environment vignettes to survey the responses of accountants and accounting students to the ethical/unethical nature of the actions that are taken. In addition, how likely the accountants believe they are to take the same actions is also surveyed. The subjects are a representative sample of practicing accountants in the U.S. and senior/graduate accounting majors at a state university in the southwestern United States. The survey finds that occupational socialization is occurring up to a point. When specific rules are violated or tested, males and females behave similarly, thus illustrating that they have learned from their environment -- occupational socialization. Alternatively, when gray areas are involved, they either tend to behave differently or assess the behavior of others differently, pointing to evidence of gender socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study compares Canadian and U.S. marketing researchers' attitudes, perceptions and intentions related to several areas of ethical concern. A particular focus involves salience of norms common to marketing research codes of ethics (COEs) and familiarity of such codes to marketing research professionals. Researchers' attitudes towards today's ethical climate are identified and compared between the two countries. Relationships are examined between familiarity, ethical intention and salience. Results indicate that U.S. and Canadian marketing researchers have similar perceptions of the relative importance of specific ethical norms, but worldwide COEs do not reflect these perceptions. Canadian marketing researchers report having a greater familiarity with their firms' adopted COEs, but this finding is moderated by the type of researcher. Among other findings, results indicate that familiarity influences ethical intention only for highly salient issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hallmarks of professions include self-regulation. The American Psychiatric Association fulfills this responsibility by delegating the handling of ethics complaints against members to each of 72 District Branches (DBs). The authors sought to explore the number and typology of ethics complaints received by member DBs, the handling of complaints, the relationship between the DB and state licensing authorities, the challenges and resources needed for conducting complaints, and the overall attitude of DBs regarding ethics review. This analysis presents the results of the survey and outlines how the process may be useful for professional medical organizations adhering to principles of transparency and empirically informed policy., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The Challenger incident was a result of at least four kinds of difficulties: differing perceptions and priorities of the engineers and management at Thiokol and at NASA, a preoccupation with roles and role responsibilities on the part of engineers and managers, contrasting corporate cultures at Thiokol and its parent, Morton, and a failure both by engineers and by managers to exercise individual moral responsibility. I shall argue that in the Challenger case organizational structure, corporate culture, engineering and managerial habits, and role responsibilities precipitated events contributing to the Challenger disaster. At the same dine, a number of individuals at Morton Thiokol and NASA were responsible for the launch failure. Differing world views, conflicting priorities of the engineers and managers on this project, and the failure of either engineers or management to take personal moral responsibility for decision-making contributed significantly to the event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the American context, the term Corporate Good Citizenship, a rather vague and somewhat dated notion, bears little relationship to the concept of Business Ethics. Whereas the latter refers to systematic reflection on the moral significance of the institutions, policies and behavior of business actors in the normal course of their business operations, the former is a subset of the broader notion of Corporate Social Responsibility and denotes, generally, discretionary, possibly altruistic, "non-business" relationships between business organizations and diverse community stakeholders. A newer concept, the Corporate Social Policy Process, which focuses on the institutionalization within business organizations of processes facilitating individual and organizational reflection and choice regarding the moral significance of personal and organizational action together with a consideration of the likely consequences of such action, provides analytical linkages between Business Ethics and Corporate Good Citizenship which can be useful to business scholars and operating managers alike. Specific aspects of Corporate Good Citizenship, including corporate community involvements, are examined and particular attention is paid to current trends in corporate donations, including an increasing emphasis on "strategic philanthropy" which explicitly mixes practical and benevolent motives in company giving policies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because uncertainty is a fact of organizational life, an understanding of ethical behavior is important to the development of organizational science. Studies of ethical decision making have tended to emphasize either the individual role or situational variables. A more realistic perspective might be gained by a revision of Kohlberg's interactionist model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study focuses on Roger Boisjoly's attempt to prevent the launch of the Challenger and subsequent quest to set the record straight despite negative consequences. Boisjoly's experiences before and after the Challenger disaster raise numerous ethical issues that are integral to any explanation of the disaster and applicable to other management situations. Underlying all these issues, however, is the problematic relationship between: individual and organizational responsibility. In analyzing this fundamental issue, this paper has two objectives: first, to demonstrate the extent to which the ethical ambiguity that permeates the relationship between individual and organizational responsibility contributed to the Challenger disaster, second, to reclaim the meaning and importance of individual responsibility within the diluting context of large organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated several issues with 1498 managers nationwide regarding, for example, how ethical they felt their organizations were and whether their personal principles must be compromised for the organization's sake. In addition their decision criteria for two scenarios involving ethical implications were articulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attitudes of 164 United States and 151 South African managers towards corporate social responsibility were assessed. The United States managers held significantly more favourable attitudes towards corporate social responsibility. In addition, they agreed with more pro-responsibility arguments, whereas the South African managers agreed with more anti-responsibility arguments. The United States managers felt that their society expected more corporate involvement in social responsibility activities than the South African managers felt was expected from their society. The results are explained in terms of the susceptibility of social responsibility attitudes to cultural norms and values - which reflect the different nature of the two societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tendency of American business schools to teach a "universal" set of ethical standards and managerial perspectives can have a serious impact on the business practices of new graduates as well as on the success of companies desiring to do business globally. We need to become more sensitive to other cultural/ethical approaches and to sensitize our business students to them early in their academic process in order to encourage the use of common-norming to attain mutual economic benefit. We can understand this process through the application of anthropological principles to ethical constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cross-cultural empirical study is reported in this article which looks at ethical beliefs and behaviours among French and German managers, and compares this with previous studies of U.S. and Israeli managers using a similar questionnaire. Comparisons are made between what managers say they believe, and what they do, between managers and their peers' attitudes and behaviours, and between perceived top management attitudes and the existence of company policy. In the latter, significant differences are found by national ownership of the company rather than the country in which it is situated. Significant differences are found, for both individual managers by nationality, and for companies by nationality of parents, in the area of 'organizational loyalty'. The attitude towards accepting gifts and favours in exchange for preferential treatment, as a measure of 'societal values', is also found to show significant differences between national groups. However, no significant differences are found for measures for 'group loyalty', 'conflict between organizational and group loyalty' and for 'conflicts between self and group/organization'. The findings have implications for cross-border management decision strategies regarding such issues as receiving and giving of gifts, and the management of relations between local employees and international organizations which may be affected by differences in attitude to corporate loyalty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a descriptive study which examined the attitudes and perceptions of 273 business students at eight universities across the U.S. towards ethics education. The results indicate that students perceive that the level of discussion of ethics and ethical issues ranges from less than adequate in some marketing courses to adequate in others. Sales/sales management courses received the highest ratings for coverage of ethical issues, while transportation/logistics courses scored the lowest. The study also finds that students believe, quite strongly, that the discussion of ethics and ethical issues is worthwhile and important. Many feel a course in business/marketing ethics should be required and more indicate that they would take such a course, if offered, even if it was not required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a cross-cultural analysis of ethics with U.S. and Hong Kong Chinese managers as subjects. These managers were given the Strategies of Upward Influence instrument and asked to evaluate the ethics of using various political strategies to attain influence within their organizations. Differences were found between Hong Kong and U.S. managers on a variety of dimensions, indicating important differences between these two groups on their perceptions of ethical behavior. In the paper, we identify potential reasons for the findings, and suggest directions for future work in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Franchising in the business format sector accounted for approximately 35 percent of retail sales in the U.S. in 1991. Consequently, the franchising industry has a clear ethical responsibility to the public. At the same time, there exists an ethical obligation of the two major factors in the industry -- the franchisor and the franchisee -- toward each other. Because the franchise agreement, which is the basis of the relationship, is originated by the franchisor, an asymmetrical distribution of power often exists, resulting in opportunistic behavior by the franchisor. In other cases, questionable or unethical practices by franchisees likewise result in conflict. This paper examines some of the basic areas of the franchise relationship which result in conflict, and discusses the situation analysis in business format franchising, which shows promise for reduction of conflict and unethical behavior for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whistleblowing by employees to regulatory agencies and other parties external to the organization can have serious consequences both for the whistleblower and the company involved. Research has largely focused on individual and group variables that affect individuals' decision to blow the whistle on perceived wrongdoing. This study examined the relationship between selected organizational characteristics and the perceived level of external whistleblowing by employees in 240 organizations. Data collected in a nationwide survey of human resource executives were analyzed using analysis of variance. Results indicated that executives of larger organizations perceived a higher level of employee-voiced concerns to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, as well as a higher overall level of external whistleblowing. Executives of organizations with union employees perceived a higher level of employee-voiced concerns to the EEOC, the media, and a higher overall level of external whistleblowing. Executives of organizations in the manufacturing industry group perceived a higher level of employee-voiced concerns to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The implications of these findings are discussed, and limitations of the research are addressed. The paper concludes with several suggestions for continued research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ism" is a word rarely associated with the world of business. After all, the game of business is played in a competitive arena and hence few expect business people to be altruistic. The path to profits, it is widely believed, is not paved with caring concern but with Darwinian cleverness. Add to these expectations a North American character of individualism and a baby-boomer generation known for its "me-ness," and you have a world where altruism is a word rarely heard. Yet in the early mornings and evenings before and after our workday, we nurture our children, attend PTA meetings, and donate our time and money to the local YMCA or Girl Scout troop. In this part of our lives, altruism seems quite alive and commonplace. This seeming discrepancy naturally raises several questions: "Does altruism have a place in our business lives as well as our private lives? And does it make good economic sense?" The answers may indeed be "yes." For, in reality, parts of the world are proving the opposite of a business paradigm based on self-interest as the pathway to success. For example, the community-based societies of Japan, Taiwan, and Korea are enjoying great economic success. Companies such as the Body Shop donate time and money to environmental welfare projects. Harvard Business School students provide volunteer time to repaint and clean up low-income housing projects. Consumer goods companies change to environment-friendly packaging. All of these efforts may indeed lead to enhanced organizational effectiveness. The reason is straightforward. The greater complexity of today's global marketplace will demand within organizations a higher degree of interdependence than independence, more attention based on cooperation than competition, and greater loyalty to the organization than to the individual. Such changes will require acts of altruism on the part of both the individual and the organization to succeed. Unfortunately, the rewards and organizational structures of the past will not be sufficient to bring about such acts of altruism in themselves. Instead values, expectations, and socialization practices will have to change and be supported by a workplace that encourages them. The first step toward change, however, is to understand just what altruism might look like at work and then to consider how it might be encouraged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on several aspects associated with the scientific ethics and its association with the U.S. forestry industry. The topics addressed include details on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) code of scientific ethics and its role in add clarity for Society of American Foresters (SAF) members who are scientists.

The article presents the author's comments on the paper "Engineers and Management: The Challenge of the Challenger Incident," by Patricia H. Werhane. The author concurs with Werhane's analysis of the space shuttle program's problem with organizational structure, organizational values, and the impact of the political-economic context in the U.S. He believes that organizations need to develop a greater sense of impartial perspective on professional ethics. The author also recommends a distinction between functional and substantive reality.

The article offers information on the several aspects associated with the professional credibility in the forests industry based organizations along with an importance of other factors with compliance to achieve it. The topics addressed include details on the Best management practices (BMPs) which were developed and were specific to the forest conditions in each state of the U.S.

Two potentially lifesaving protocols, emergency preservation and resuscitation (EPR) and uncontrolled donation after circulatory determination of death (uDCDD), currently implemented in some U.S. emergency departments (EDs), have similar eligibility criteria and initial technical procedures, but critically different goals. Both follow unsuccessful cardiopulmonary resuscitation and induce hypothermia to "buy time": one in trauma patients suffering cardiac arrest, to enable surgical repair, and the other in patients who unexpectedly die in the ED, to enable organ donation. This article argues that to fulfill patient-focused fiduciary obligations and maintain community trust, institutions implementing both protocols should adopt and publicize policies to guide ED physicians to utilize either protocol for particular patients, in order to address the appearance of conflict of interest arising from the protocols' similarities. It concludes by analyzing ethical implications of incentives that may influence institutions to develop the expertise required for uDCDD but not EPR.

For decades a debate has played out in the literature about who bioethicists are, what they do, whether they can be considered professionals qua bioethicists, and, if so, what professional responsibilities they are called to uphold. Health care ethics consultants are bioethicists who work in health care settings. They have been seeking guidance documents that speak to their special relationships/duties toward those they serve. By approving a Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibilities for Health Care Ethics Consultants, the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) has moved the professionalization debate forward in a significant way. This first code of ethics focuses on individuals who provide health care ethics consultation (HCEC) in clinical settings. The evolution of the code's development, implications for the field of HCEC and bioethics, and considerations for future directions are presented here.