Use of moral theory to analyse the ethical codes of built environment professional organisations: A case study of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors

Purpose – 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”.

Design/methodology/approach – 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.

Findings – 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”.

Research limitations/implications – 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.

Originality/value – 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.

Virtue ethics, CSR and corporate citizenship

The Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management values the dignity of the individual; human rights; and equal opportunity. Its Code of Ethics declares a professional’s duty to broader society. The code advocates education to reinforce this ethical outlook. This paper contributes a specific approach towards the practitioner’s ethical understanding. It enlists the critique of Alasdair MacIntyre who strongly criticises much conventional ethical theory. MacIntyre’s teleological approach is joined with a notion of a hierarchy of narratives of ethical expectations in an argument which counsels that public relations must always operate at the highest level of these narratives.

The treatment of sex offenders : evidence, ethics, and human rights

Public policy is necessarily a political process with the law and order issue high on the political agenda. Consequently, working with sex offenders is fraught with legal and ethical minefields, including the mandate that community protection automatically outweighs offender rights. In addressing community protection, contemporary sex offender treatment is based on management rather than rehabilitation. We argue that treatment-as-management violates offender rights because it is ineffective and unethical. The suggested alternative is to deliver treatment-as-rehabilitation underpinned by international human rights law and universal professional ethics. An effective and ethical community–offender balance is more likely when sex offenders are treated with respect and dignity that, as human beings, they have a right to claim.

Developing professional attributes in critical care nurses using Team-Based Learning.

Australian nurses prepare for specialty practice by undertaking postgraduate theoretical and clinical education in partnership models between universities and hospitals. In our global healthcare system, nurses require advanced critical thinking and strong communication skills to provide safe, high quality patient care. Yet, few education programs focus on developing these skills. Team-Based Learning (TBL) is a specific educational strategy that encourages and rewards students to think critically and solve clinical problems individually and in teams. The aim of this study was to investigate critical care nursing students' perceptions and experiences of TBL after it was introduced into the second half of their postgraduate specialty course. Following Ethics Committee approval, thirty-two students were invited to participate in an extended response questionnaire on their perceptions of TBL as part of a larger study. Data were analyzed thematically. Postgraduate students perceived their professional growth was accelerated due to the skills and knowledge acquired through TBL. Four themes underpinned the development and accelerated acquisition of specialty nurse attributes due to TBL: Engagement, Learning Effectiveness, Critical Thinking, and Motivation to Participate. Team-Based Learning offered deep and satisfying learning experiences for students. The early acquisition of advanced critical thinking, teamwork and communication skills, and specialty practice knowledge empowered nurses to provide safe patient care with confidence.

Analysis of the ethical aspects of professional confidentiality in dental practice

From the point of view of deontological ethics, privacy is a moral right that patients are entitled to and it is bound to professional confidentiality. Otherwise, the information given by patients to health professionals would not be reliable and a trustable relationship could not be established. The aim of the present study was to assess, by means of questionnaires with open and closed questions, the awareness and attitudes of 100 dentists working in the city of Andradina, São Paulo State, Brazil, with respect to professional confidentiality in dental practice. Most dentists (91.43%) reported to have instructed their assistants on professional confidentiality. However, 44.29% of the interviewees showed to act contradictorily as reported talking about the clinical cases of their patients to their friends or spouses. The great majority of professionals (98.57%) believed that it is important to have classes on Ethics and Bioethics during graduation and, when asked about their knowledge of the penalties imposed for breach of professional confidentiality, only 48.57% of them declared to be aware of it. Only 28.57% of the interviewees affirmed to have exclusive access to the files; 67.14% reported that that files were also accessed by their secretary; 1.43% answered that their spouses also had access, and 2.86% did not answer. From the results of the present survey, it could be observed that, although dentists affirmed to be aware of professional confidentiality, their attitudes did not adhere to ethical and legal requirements. This stand of health professionals has contributed to violate professional ethics and the law itself, bringing problems both to the professional and to the patient.

Committees for ethics in research involving human subjects

In Brazil since October 1996 there have been guidelines for research involving human subjects. Now human subjects know when their treatment is part of research. Deceit is no longer tolerated. But is not enough to say we offer an explanation to the potential subject and we offer a choice before he or she is confronted with an informed consent form. As in all professional activity, scientific investigation needs social controls. In Brazil, the ultimate responsibility of an investigation lies on the investigator, but in every institution where research is carried out there is a Committee for Ethics in Research. All Committees are subordinated to the National Commission of Ethics in Research, which is submitted to the Brazilian Institute of Health. During 2005 around 17,000 protocols involving 700,000 human subjects were revised by 475 Committees distributed all over the country. Approximately 7,000 people are now working in these Committees.

[Ethics, empiricism and uncertainty]

Accidents can lead to difficult boundary situations. Such situations often take place in the emergency units. The medical team thus often and inevitably faces professional uncertainty in their decision-making. It is essential to communicate these uncertainties within the medical team, instead of downplaying or overriding existential hurdles in decision-making. Acknowledging uncertainties might lead to alert and prudent decisions. Thus uncertainty can have ethical value in treatment or withdrawal of treatment. It does not need to be covered in evidence-based arguments, especially as some singular situations of individual tragedies cannot be grasped in terms of evidence-based medicine.

Engineering Ethics: Looking Back, Looking Forward

The eight pieces constituting this Meeting Report are summaries of presentations made during a panel session at the 2011 Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) annual meeting held between March 3rd and 6th in Cincinnati. Lisa Newton organized the session and served as chair. The panel of eight consisted both of pioneers in the field and more recent arrivals. It covered a range of topics from how the field has developed to where it should be going, from identification of issues needing further study to problems of training the next generation of engineers and engineering-ethics scholars.

Three Dichotomies in Lawyers’ Ethics (With Particular Attention to the Corporation as Client)

Three usually unexpressed, and too often unnoticed, conceptual dichotomies underlie our perception and understanding of lawyers’ ethics. First, the existence of a special body of professional ethics and professional regulation presupposes some special need or risk. Criminal and civil law are apparently insufficient. Ordinary day-to-day morality and ordinary ethics, likewise, are not considered to be enough. What is the risk entailed by the notion of a profession that is special; who needs protection, and from what? Two quite different possible answers to this question provide the first of the three dichotomies examined in this article: one can understand the risk as primarily to a vulnerable client from a powerful professional; or, to the contrary, from a powerful client-lawyer combination toward vulnerable others. Second, what is the foundational orientation of lawyers? Are lawyers serving primarily their particular clients, and those clients’ preferences, choices and autonomy? Or is the primary allegiance of lawyers to some community or collective goal or interest distinct from the particular goals or interests of the client? The third dichotomy concerns not the substance of the risk, or the primary orientation, but the appropriate means of responding to that risk or that fundamental obligation. Should professional ethics be implemented primarily through rules? Or, should we rely on character and the discretion of lawyers to make a thought out, all things considered, decision? Each of these three presents a fundamental difference in how we perceive and address issues of lawyers’ ethics. Each affects our understanding and analysis on multiple levels, from (1) determining the appropriate or requisite conduct in a particular situation, to (2) framing a specific rule or approach for a particular category of situations, to (3) more general or abstract theory or policy. A person’s inclinations in regard to the dichotomies affects the conclusions that person will reach on each of those levels of analysis, yet those inclinations and assumptions are frequently unexamined and unarticulated. One’s position on each of the dichotomies tends to structure the approach and outcome without the issues and choice having been explicitly addressed or possibly even noticed. This article is an effort to ameliorate that problem. Part I addresses the question of what is the risk in the work of lawyers, or the function of lawyers, for which professional ethics is the answer. The concluding section focuses on the particular problem of the corporation as client. Part II then asks the related and possibly consequent question of what is the foundational orientation or allegiance of the lawyer? Is it to the individual client? Or is it to some larger community interest? Again, the concluding section focuses on the corporation. Part III turns to the means or method for addressing the obligations and possible problems of the professional ethics of lawyers. Should lawyers’ ethics guide and confine the conduct of lawyers primarily through rules? Or should it function primarily through reliance on the knowledge, judgment and character of lawyers? If the latter were the guide, ethical decisions would be made on a situation by situation basis under the discretion of each lawyer. Toward the end of each discussion possibilities for bridging the dichotomy are considered (and with such bridges each dichotomy may come to look more like a spectrum or continuum.). At several points after its introduction in Parts I and II, the special problem of the corporation as client is revisited and possible solutions suggested. Illustrating the usefulness of keeping the dichotomies in view, Part IV applies them to several exemplary situations of ethical difficulty in actual lawyer practice. For readers finding it difficult to envision the consequences of these distinctions, turning ahead to Part IV may be useful in making the discussion more concrete. Some commonalities across the dichotomies and connections among them are then developed in the concluding section, Part V.

The regulation of professional advertising practices in Spain, 1988–2013

From the perspective of the sociology of professions, every professional activity should have its own clearly circumscribed and regulated sphere of action. Such an articulation facilitates the regulation of the production of a given profession as well as the way in which it is practiced. The purpose of the research reported here was to provide a comprehensive review and evaluation of the regulatory framework governing the advertising sector in Spain. To this end, the authors analysed external regulatory legislation and self-regulatory codes extracted from the data base of the Asociación para la Autoregulación de la Comunicación Comercial (Autocontrol) that had been enacted or adopted between 1988, the year that Law 11/1998 on General Telecommunications entered into force, and 2003 as well as other relevant documents retrieved from the Boletin Oficial del Estado (BOE) pertaining to the same period. Findings indicate that although there has been a groundswell of legislation governing advertising practices in Spain since 1988, especially at the regional level, lawmakers have focused on the content of advertising messages and shown very little interest in regulating the professions of advertising and public relations. Furthermore, Spanish legislation enacted in 2003 and EU policies appear to have encouraged the adoption of voluntary codes of ethics. Sectors traditionally subject to mandatory advertising regulation, either due to the vulnerability of their target audiences or the potential impact of their commercial messages on public health or the environment, are more likely to develop self-regulatory codes of conduct than others

Ethics Inquiry Program /

Cover title.

Applying for ethics committee approval

Provides information on ethics committee approval. Importance of research ethics committee; Application to the relevant local research ethics committee; Information on obtaining ethical approval.