Can moral potency and psychological risk close the gap between ethical beliefs and unacceptable consumer behavior?

Depending on how they perceive risk, consumers may not always act according to their ethical beliefs, exposing a gap between beliefs and behavior. We investigate the effect of moral potency on perceived psychological risk of committing an unacceptable behavior. The results suggest that perceived risk is triggered by moral ownership.

Ethical Values and the Integrity of the Climate Change Regime

This book investigates the ethical values that inform the global carbon integrity system, and reflects on alternative norms that could or should do so. The global carbon integrity system comprises the emerging international architecture being built to respond to the climate change. This architecture can be understood as an 'integrity system'- an inter-related set of institutions, governance arrangements, regulations and practices that work to ensure the system performs its role faithfully and effectively. This volume investigates the ways ethical values impact on where and how the integrity system works, where it fails, and how it can be improved. With a wide array of perspectives across many disciplines, including ethicists, philosophers, lawyers, governance experts and political theorists, the chapters seek to explore the positive values driving the global climate change processes, to offer an understanding of the motivations justifying the creation of the regime and the way that social norms impact upon the operation of the integrity system. The collection focuses on the nexus between ideal ethics and real-world implementation through institutions and laws. The book will be of interest to policy makers, climate change experts, carbon taxation regulators, academics, legal practitioners and researchers.

Too ill to will? deathbed wills: assessing testamentary capacity near the end of life

Assessing testamentary capacity in the terminal phase of an illness or at a person's deathbed is fraught with challenges for both doctors and lawyers. Numerous issues need to be considered when assessing capacity for a will. These issues are exacerbated when such an assessment needs to be undertaken at the bedside of a dying patient. The nature and severity of the illness, effects on cognition of the terminal illness, effects of medication, urgency, psychological and emotional factors, interactions with carers, family and lawyers, and a range of other issues confound and complicate the assessment of capacity. What is the doctor's role in properly assessing capacity in this context and how does this role intersect with the legal issues? Doctors will play an increasing role in assessing testamentary capacity in this setting. The ageing of society, more effective treatment of acute illness and, often, the prolongation of dying are only some of the factors leading to this increasing need. However, despite its importance and increasing prevalence, the literature addressing this challenging practical area is scarce and offers limited guidance. This paper examines these challenges and discusses some practical approaches.

Cultural considerations in will-making in Australia: A case study of Islamic or Sharia-compliant wills

This article explores the influence of cultural and religious beliefs and laws on how individuals make decisions about asset distribution through wills, drawing on a case study of Islamic will makers. Findings highlight diversity in beliefs and practices within Australian Islamic communities. When drafting a will people from culturally diverse backgrounds need to accommodate their religious and cultural values and local law. Implications of research findings for legal policy and practice in Australia are discussed.

Busy auditors, ethical behavior, and discretionary accruals quality in Malaysia

The required professional and ethical pronouncements of accountants mean that auditors need to be competent and exercise due care and skill in the performance of their audits. In this study, we examine what happens when auditors take on more clients than they should, thus raising doubts about their ability to maintain competence and audit quality. Using 2803 observations of Malaysian companies from 2010 to 2013, we find that auditors with multiple clients are associated with lower earnings quality, proxied by total accruals and discretionary accruals. Our results demonstrate that associating client firms’ reported discretionary accruals with individual auditors, rather than their firms or offices, is important in determining audit quality. Moreover, we demonstrate that the disclosure of auditors’ signatures on their reports is useful for assessing auditor quality at the individual level, thus contributing to the debate on the usefulness of having auditor identities on reports.

The question of ethical decision in marketing and ethics

Resumen: Mientras que el marketing está asociado con prácticas negativas que involucran la explotación y la deshonestidad, Anton Jamnik afirma la necesidad de crear una teoría ética para éste. El artículo intenta brindar, por un lado, un breve bosquejo de las principales corrientes de la literatura de la ética del marketing y, por otro, participar de su desarrollo. El autor analiza los desafíos éticos que sur girán en el futuro, provenientes de tres fuentes distintas: las innovaciones tecnológicas, la influencia de la competencia global y la expansión de las actividades de mercado en áreas no tradicionales. Esto requerirá el desarrollo de una ética normativa realista. Para concluir, explica que la ética del marketing debería analizar hasta qué punto ha sido exitosa a la hora de resolver los desafíos éticos del mundo actual.

'Preferring the wrong way': Mapping the Ethical Diversity of US Twentieth-Century Poetry

Woods, T. (2006). 'Preferring the wrong way': Mapping the Ethical Diversity of US Twentieth-Century Poetry. In C. Bigsby (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Culture (pp.450-468). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. RAE2008

‘Complementary & alternative medicine’ (CAM): ethical and policy issues

Editorial for Bioethics 2016. 30:(2)

Ethical Dimension of Time in Plato’s Apology of Socrates

The aim of the present article is to analyse the Apology in its aspect of time. When defending himself against the charges, Socrates appeals to the past, the present and the future. Furthermore, the philosopher stresses the meaning of the duration of time. Thus, the seems to suggest that all really important activities demand a long time to benefit, since they are almost invariably connected with greater efforts. While the dialogue proves thereby to be an ethical one, the various time expressions also gain an ethical dimension.

Ethics Standards (HRPP) and Public Partnership (PARTAKE) to Address Clinical Research Concerns in India: Moving Toward Ethical, Responsible, Culturally Sensitive, and Community-Engaging Clinical Research.

Like other emerging economies, India's quest for independent, evidence-based, and affordable healthcare has led to robust and promising growth in the clinical research sector, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.4% between 2005 and 2010. However, while the fundamental drivers and strengths are still strong, the past few years witnessed a declining trend (CAGR -16.7%) amid regulatory concerns, activist protests, and sponsor departure. And although India accounts for 17.5% of the world's population, it currently conducts only 1% of clinical trials. Indian and international experts and public stakeholders gathered for a 2-day conference in June 2013 in New Delhi to discuss the challenges facing clinical research in India and to explore solutions. The main themes discussed were ethical standards, regulatory oversight, and partnerships with public stakeholders. The meeting was a collaboration of AAHRPP (Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs)-aimed at establishing responsible and ethical clinical research standards-and PARTAKE (Public Awareness of Research for Therapeutic Advancements through Knowledge and Empowerment)-aimed at informing and engaging the public in clinical research. The present article covers recent clinical research developments in India as well as associated expectations, challenges, and suggestions for future directions. AAHRPP and PARTAKE provide etiologically based solutions to protect, inform, and engage the public and medical research sponsors.

Temporal structure and enablement representation for mutual wills: A Petri net approach

Those temporal formalisms that are sporadically found nowadays in the literature of AI & Law are based on temporal logic. We claim a revived role for another major class of temporal representation: Petri nets. This formalism, popular in computing from the 1970s, had its potential recognized on occasion in the literature of legal computing as well, but apparently the discipline has lost sight of it, and its practitioners on average need be tutored into this kind of representation. Asynchronous, concurrent processes—for which the approach is well‐suited—are found in the legal domain, in disparate contexts. We develop an example for Mutual Wills.