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AimsThis study aimed to investigate barriers in the observation of professional ethics during clinical care from a nursing viewpoint. Also, it examined the association between these barriers and nurse demographic variables.MethodsA descriptive-analytic design was carried out on 207 nurses working in selected hospitals within an urban area of Iran in 2019. Data were collected using a standard questionnaire containing 33 questions that measured barriers to observation of professional ethics. The questionnaire measures three domains of management, environment and individual care.ResultsIn the management dimension, the most important barrier preventing observation of professional ethics was the shortage of personnel. For the environmental dimension, biological changes due to working on the nightshift, and for the individual care dimension, a lack of time were the most important barriers preventing observation of clinical ethics. Findings additionally highlighted a significantly inverse association between barriers to observing professional ethics and the male gender, participating in the ethics workshop and high work-level experiences.ConclusionsIt is suggested that nursing managers in hospitals correct and remove obstacles with careful planning and emphasis on principles and standards of care including environmental and managerial factors and training professional ethics to nurses.

Background:Nurse managers are expected to continuously ensure that ethical standards are met and to support healthcare workers’ ethical competence. Several studies have concluded that nurses across various healthcare settings lack the support needed to provide safe, compassionate and competent ethical care.Objective:The aim of this study was to explore and understand how nurse managers perceive their role in supporting their staff in conducting ethically sound care in nursing homes and home nursing care.Design and participants:Qualitative individual interviews were performed with 10 nurse managers with human resources responsibilities for healthcare workers in four nursing home wards and six home nursing care districts. Content analysis was used to analyse the data.Ethical considerations:The Norwegian Centre for Research Data granted permission for this study.Findings:The analysis resulted in seven subcategories that were grouped into three main categories: managers’ perception of the importance of the role, managers’ experiences of exercising the role and managers’ opportunities to fulfil the role. Challenges with conceptualizing ethics were highlighted, as well as lack of applicable tools or time and varying motivation among employees.Discussion:The leaders tended to perceive ethics as a ‘personal matter’ and that the need for and benefit of ethical support (e.g., ethics reflection) depended on individuals’ vulnerability, attitudes, commitment and previous experiences. The managers did not seem to distinguish between their own responsibility to support ethical competence and the responsibility of the individual employee to provide ethical care.Conclusions:Our findings suggest that nurse managers need support themselves, both to understand and to carry out their responsibilities to foster their staffs’ ethical conduct. Supporting staff in conducting ethically sound care requires more than organizing meeting places for ethical reflection; it also requires greater awareness and understanding of what ethical leadership means.

Given their positions of public trust, regulated professions are legally required to uphold ethical standards, and ensure that professional practice protects the public. Nonetheless, there is ample evidence that professionals do not always behave ethically. One proposed solution is greater organizational surveillance; however, research from a neo-Weberian perspective encourages scepticism about such arguments. Organizations may not only fail to stop professionals from violating ethical codes, but rationalizing organizations might actively encourage such violations in the name of efficiency. This article explores the impact of organizations and rationalization on professional misconduct through a mixed-methods study of professional engineers in Ontario, Canada. Findings suggest engineers are impacted by rationalization, and that those with less decision-making authority experience pressures discouraging practice in the public interest.

Following ethical standards is more critical than ever in a digital world where media reaches global, fragmented audiences. But each country, culture, and situation is different. So, how do we decide what standards are important to teach? Syndicate participants identified issues that instructors need to address to answer this question. This report represents areas of agreement as well as differences on teaching ethics without borders in a digital age.

In the era of epic disruption, HR has positioned itself as a strategic business partner, and in the fourth industrial revolution, it has taken up business priorities as its own to ensure business success. As agents of change for making people feel truly valued, six imperatives: Structure, Systems Selection/Succession, Separation, Standing Up and Safety form the pillars which sustain corporate governance and serve as the lodestar for the organisation. This article attempts to define the roles and responsibilities and rehumanise this function, keeping in mind the challenging conditions. The role of the employee and contracts are fast changing, and HR has to be able to confront and deliver around the 6 S’s for the future too.

When is it appropriate, and consistent with ethical standards, for evaluators to modify reports in response to “requests” from clients to do so? Some evaluators may view any pressure to make any changes in their reports as an attack on their independence. While, clearly, it is not acceptable for evaluators to be asked to distort or misrepresent findings and conclusions, evaluators, no less than anyone else, should be open to feedback and not be above criticism. This article discusses under what circumstances and in what forms it may be appropriate, or not, for evaluators to be given feedback and requested to consider appropriate modifications to their reports. It then identifies steps that evaluators can take to minimize inappropriate “suggestions” for change, and what they can do in the event that this does happen. It also considers implications, and strategies, for internal as well as for external evaluators.

Voluntary accountability carried out by nonprofit organizations seeks to ensure organizational adherence to financial and ethical standards beyond legal regulations, thereby sending signals of quality and trustworthiness. Yet, insights into whether and how different forms of voluntary nonprofit accountability influence the public’s attitude are limited, and recent calls emphasize the need for further empirical investigation. Building on the combination of three different research streams, this article presents a conceptual framework that distinguishes between four forms of (voluntary) nonprofit accountability within the theoretical context of the principal-agent theory. In an online experiment with 407 participants, the author demonstrates that externally certified voluntary accountability demonstrates higher reputation and perceived quality among nonprofit organizations, but not relating to donation behavior (relative to the other accountability conditions). Internal voluntary accountability has no effect, whereas no accountability is associated with less public trust, reputation, perceived quality, and donation behavior (compared with legal minimum accountability).

In this research, we quantify the difference in correctional officers’ ethical standards, as perceived by both officers and inmates. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and higher order modeling were used to validate the correctional ethics instrument. Group invariance tests at first-order level were applied to examine the invariance structure of conceptualized and operationalized ethics across staff and inmates. The evidence indicates the construct validity of the ethic instrument. Furthermore, correctional officers have a higher perception of their ethical practice than inmates on two of five common dimensions (“professional relationship with inmates” and “use of force”).

This study focuses on two topics that have heretofore received little attention: ethical standards for publishing tourism research and assessment of the effectiveness of such standards in generating compliance. A random sample of research articles published by 75 tourism journals in 2013 was drawn and 45 were identified that employed the probability sample survey method. Ten rules for ethical reporting of survey results were derived from the World Association for Public Opinion Research Code of Ethics, designed to encourage transparency of method, and applied to the articles. Most articles failed to comply with most of these rules, documenting that the articles did not incorporate the value of research transparency, a foundation of inquiry in social sciences. Recommendations are presented on how to encourage future papers employing this method published in tourism journals to comply with ethical standards for disclosure in order to improve the transparency and credibility of tourism research.

Research misconduct is a serious violation of a scientific community’s ethical standards. Scientists who commit research misconduct typically face corrective actions from employers and funding agencies, as well as significant professional stigma. Unfortunately, there is little systematic data about the post-misconduct career of these guilty parties. Through a review of Office of Research Integrity (ORI) case summaries, I identified a pool of 284 researchers who engaged in research misconduct and were subject to ORI corrective actions. To assess the prevalence of post-misconduct research activities for these scientists, I searched publicly available databases and online resources for evidence of post-misconduct research activities (such as publications and federal research support). The data demonstrate that researchers often receive second chances as researchers, with indicators of post-misconduct research activities identified for 134 (47.18%) of the offending researchers. In addition, those researchers have received more than US$123 million in federal support for their post-misconduct research efforts.

In recent years, various professional associations in social work and regulatory bodies worldwide have engaged in ambitious efforts to draft and implement comprehensive ethics guidelines, standards, and education. For a variety of complex reasons, the social work profession in India has lagged behind developments in many other nations. The purpose of this article is to assess the current status of social work ethics in India, review relevant developments throughout the world, and present a blueprint to guide the development of much-needed indigenous ethical standards and education in India.

Schools have adopted a wide variety of procedures for their safety drills, some of them potentially traumatizing without being effective. David P. Perrodin urges school leaders to look to the world of human research for a model of how to ensure their safety drills are helpful and not harmful. An institutional review board made up of educators, emergency managers, parents, students, and other stakeholders could review any proposed safety drill procedures to ensure they are likely to achieve their purpose without inflicting unnecessary trauma.

Part of understanding the meaning and power of algorithms means asking what new demands they might make of ethical frameworks, and how they might be held accountable to ethical standards. I develop a definition of networked information algorithms (NIAs) as assemblages of institutionally situated code, practices, and norms with the power to create, sustain, and signify relationships among people and data through minimally observable, semiautonomous action. Starting from Merrill’s prompt to see ethics as the study of “what we ought to do,” I examine ethical dimensions of contemporary NIAs. Specifically, in an effort to sketch an empirically grounded, pragmatic ethics of algorithms, I trace an algorithmic assemblage’s power to convene constituents, suggest actions based on perceived similarity and probability, and govern the timing and timeframes of ethical action.

This short report attempts to shed light on the interesting but controversial personality of George T Dexter (ca1812 -?), the physician who first described manipulation of the female genitalia in a hysterical impressionable girl as being associated with the termination of singultus. Although his interaction with the young female patient would not meet today's ethical standards, his medical observation was valid and contributes to our understanding of the pathophysiology of singultus. He was well ahead of his colleagues who presented hiccup therapy case reports with similar or related pathophysiology mechanisms some 150 years later.

The 12 diversity dimensions of the ASCA Ethical Standards (ASCA, 2010) provided a framework for examining whether a statewide sample of high school counseling websites (N = 312) had content for diverse students and their families. Many websites offered little content related to those dimensions, and content was especially low for some groups including LGBT students and immigrant students. Findings indicate a need for school counseling websites to have nondiscrimination statements, text/documents, links, and financial aid information for diverse populations.

One of the most difficult and under-examined issues in integrity research is understanding whether regulatory interventions designed to improve the ethical conduct of public bodies actually have any effect on public trust. In this article, we present the results of research which has sought to unpack this issue. Drawing on a large-scale public survey and case study analysis of nine local councils in England, the research examined the relative importance of ethical conduct (whether elected councillors displayed good behaviour) on public trust in local government. We found that contextual factors (such as the size of the population and its social and ethnic diversity) and the ethical standards and behaviour of councillors were among the more important determinants of public trust. The most important variable in explaining levels of public trust was how a council performed. Points for practitioners One of the aims of ethics regulation is to improve levels of trust by promoting changes in behaviour and providing some reassurance for the public. Our results show that councils with low levels of councillor misconduct and good performance generally enjoy higher levels of public trust. The behaviour of councillors and whether they told the truth were important determinants of public trust, but ‘good conduct’ is not always narrowly ‘caused’ by ethics regulation; rather, it may reflect the culture of an organization. Public trust is also determined by a range of contextual variables which are difficult for public institutions to steer.

This article reviews ethical responsibilities that must be considered when engaging in pastoral care, counseling, and psychotherapy. It discusses important contemporary issues counselors will want to contemplate in pursuing a high quality of care in their counseling practices. Examples and case studies are provided. Readers will be able to: Understand the function of ethical standards in the practice of counseling Be able to differentiate between pastoral care, pastoral counseling, and pastoral psychotherapy and their ethical implications Understand the importance of identifying one's limitations in counseling situations and how to proceed under such circumstances. Understand the need for pastoral counselors to attain the necessary credentials for practice in the area of counseling they intend to undertake. Become aware of the legal requirements when engaged in a counseling relationship.

Enforceable ethical standards and human resource management (HRM) strategies are important to the progress of any nation and both can be used to avoid or correct ethical wrongdoing. Using survey data from 6 Asia-Pacific countries and 4 U.S. states, this study finds that while most employees are aware of ethical requirements at work, there are clearly differences between East and West in the perceived frequency of unethical behaviors and the ethical infrastructure used to address wrongdoings. The study concludes that required adaptations to improve ethical behavior are not exclusively the East adapting to the West or the West adapting to the East. There is also some ethical convergence where similar ethical problems and anticorruption strategies are found in both cultural settings. Further, there are substantial national variations as well as some ethical convergence within the Asian context. Selected HRM strategies to promote ethics are highlighted.

This article outlines the development and application of a student-constructed and -evaluated crisis case study created for a master’s-level course in issues and crisis management. Its five learning objectives were that students (a) demonstrate an understanding of the theories of crisis management, establishing theory–practice linkages; (b) assess the effectiveness of an organization’s management of a crisis against industry best practice; (c) evaluate the effectiveness of the organization’s crisis communication strategies with diverse stakeholders; (d) discuss the organization’s ethical standards of practice during the crisis phases; and (e) make recommendations for improvement to the organization’s crisis management strategy. This exercise enables students to apply scholarship to examine crisis management, communication, and ethics in a student-selected crisis case in order to develop critical insights into thinking about and responding to crises.

Despite significant changes in mainstream journalism in recent decades, journalistic fields beyond the news have been little explored. In an attempt to contribute to a deeper understanding of such fields, this article examines the role perceptions of 85 Australian travel journalists. By viewing travel journalism as a distinct field of practice that is affected by a unique mix of influences, this study identifies five dimensions of practitioners’ role perceptions. These relate to travel journalists’ views of themselves as Cultural Mediators, Critics, Entertainers, Information Providers and Travellers. In addition, the study examines in some depth the ethical standards of travel journalists. Determinants of these views and standards are explored. The study argues that, in light of travel journalists’ increasingly important role in reporting about foreign places, more remains to be done to promote travel stories that show a deeper understanding of other cultures and which contain a more critical appraisal of destinations.

Ethical standards and issues associated with the access and use of state Medicaid administrative data for research purposes from the data owners’ perspective (i.e., state Medicaid authorities) were examined. Key informants at Medicaid authorities were surveyed regarding their states’ policies and procedures related to the access and use of Medicaid data for research purposes. Results indicate that although a majority of states permit the use of Medicaid data by independent investigators for research purposes (74%), there is substantial variability across states in both the frequency with which access is granted as well as with the policies and procedures governing the access to these data. Literature on existing “best practices” by data owners regarding the use of administrative data in research is combined with survey findings to add the discussion in this highly important area and proposed guiding principles for administrative data owners and custodians are offered.

On a standard view, the criminal standard of ‘proof beyond reasonable doubt’ is a statement of probabilities, the pre-set benchmark of evidential support that must be crossed before a contested hypothesis of guilt can be accepted as true. Where to set that benchmark calls into play the calculation of social costs and benefits. This article proposes an agent-centred interpretation, one that involves viewing trial deliberation as a mental activity and the acquisition of an ethical vocabulary with which to express standards of excellence for the conduct of that activity. Our moral exemplar would, in her deliberation on the criminal verdict, exhibit relevant virtuous traits, and be guided by practical wisdom in the contextual operation of those traits. In judging the application of the standard of proof, there is a sense in which we should ultimately be making an ethical judgment of the person who applies it.

This paper examines the issues involved in the use of ethical standards related to social responsibility using the two ethical codes: the American Evaluation Association Guiding Principles for Evaluators and the Academy of Human Resource Development Standards on Ethics and Integrity. This examination will take the perspective of an internal evaluator working within a private organization. Using that perspective, the discussion will consider the complex issues involved in following such standards, particularly when undertaking evaluations within organizational settings.

It is no longer an easy matter to define exactly who is a journalist. As the blogosphere expands in range and influence, there are more and more people – the people formerly known as the audience – who are taking an active part in disseminating news. The change this has wrought in reporting has both renewed the old debate over “objectivity” and stimulated a new concern about ethical standards. Ivor Gaber, Professor of Political Campaigning and Reporting at City University, considers the dangers of dealing with an anarchic tsunami of information.

Although accountability systems are established to ensure organizational adherence to financial and ethical standards for nonprofit organizations, the reality of whether such standards make a difference to donors has not been measured. This article discusses the current landscape of accountability systems and accountability ratings and describes a model for estimating the effect of ratings systems on donor behavior within the theoretical context of information asymmetry. Hypotheses are tested with nonprofit ratings for New York charities from the Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance to estimate the effect of accountability ratings on the amount of contributions an organization receives. Results indicate that the Wise Giving Alliance “pass” ratings have a statistically significant effect on the contributions received; however, “did not pass” ratings are nonsignificant. The study is important for academics as well as practitioners who are monitoring time and money spent on accountability issues.

The article reviews ethical consideration in social research and identifies current approaches to safeguarding ethical standards. One of these is the requirement to obtain approval from research ethics committees (RECs). Based on the results of a survey of UK social science academics about the process of applying to National Health Service RECs, we conclude that lessons can be learned for Sociology from the experiences of social researchers in Health. Overly rigid ethics committees could be counter-productive; we may need to reassess the functions of RECs and to strengthen other procedures to ensure the highest ethical standards for Sociology. Some suggestions for how this might be done are taken from the literature in the hope that they will stimulate debate.

Fieldwork with independent travelers and seasonal workers raises specific methodological considerations that result from the temporary transience of both communities. In this paper the authors bring together their experiences of the ways in which this transience both enabled and challenged various aspects of data collection, including integrating themselves into the participant network, locating participants and arranging interviews, adhering to ethical standards, and withdrawing from their data collection, as well as participants' perceptions of their research projects.

Deregulation in the utilities industry is putting pressure on the utility companies to operate more efficiently. This efficiency drive seems to have had an impact on commitment to established safety procedures and ethical standards. Analyzing three major corporate accidents in the nuclear power generation industry, the author came to the conclusion that the lowering of ethical standards was the root cause of the accidents, resulting in severe damage to public image and profit. The author also found that maintaining effective communication through openness is the main leverage in preventing deterioration of ethical standards and practices and, thus, reducing the risk of major accidents occurring. The approach selected for teaching and training of business ethics and openness was learning by doing with the help of gaming/simulation. By using this approach, the author developed two gaming/simulation exercises, the RESCUE TEAM and the KING OF FISHERMEN.

Objectives: To obtain information regarding the involvement of pre-registration house officers (PRHOs) in the discussions on bad news, and the competency and difficulties they perceive in clinical practice. Design: Structured telephone interviews. Participants: 104 PRHOs. Main outcome measures: Information about frequency and quality of involvement of PRHOs in discussions on bad news with patients and relatives, perceived competency and difficulties related to this task as well as ethical views concerning the disclosure of bad news. Results: 82 PRHOs (78.9%) had initiated the breaking of bad news to a patient at least once, whilst patients themselves had initiated discussions of bad news by asking the doctors questions (92.3%). Almost all (96.2%), indicated that they had broken bad news to relatives of a patient. The majority of the junior doctors participating in our study felt fairly or very confident (90.4%) to break bad news. ‘Often’ quoted difficulties for over a fifth of the sample included ‘Thinking I was not the appropriate person to discuss the bad news', ‘Having all the relevant information available’, ‘Dealing with emotions of patient/ relative’, ‘Lack of privacy’ and ‘Patients/relatives do not speak English’. Although 99 PRHOs (95.2%) believed that patients should be informed about a serious life threatening illness, 30.8% of the participants stated that doctors need to judge whether or not to tell a patient bad news. Factors most frequently selected by the PRHOs from a given list of possible factors contributing to a gap between theory and practice included problems with the organization of clinics (73.1%), insufficient postgraduate training (63.5%) and lack of staff (54.8%). Conclusions: The results indicate that PRHOs are frequently involved in the breaking of bad news. Whilst no claims can be made for their actual performance in practice, their perceptions of competency would indicate that the extensive and compulsory undergraduate teaching they had received on this subject has served to prepare them for this difficult task. Organizational and structural aspects need to be taken into account as factors assisting or undermining doctors in their efforts to put into practice ethically sound and skilled communication when disclosing bad news.

Results from Trautmann and colleagues’ large, representative survey of Dutch people suggest a more nuanced relationship between class and ethics than previous research has demonstrated (Trautmann, Van de Kuilen, & Zeckhauser, 2013, this issue). Following their analysis, we suggest that it is unlikely that either upper- or lower-class people are unequivocally more moral. Rather, several psychological and external forces are at play in ethical decision making, which likely vary in strength depending on the conceptualization of class and the sociocultural context. Furthermore, people from different social classes may have different ethical standards or different degrees of willingness to breach these standards (or both), a distinction that should be explored in future research.

One of the articles contained within European Council Directive 86/609/EEC states that “Persons who carry out experiments or take part in them, and persons who take care of animals used for experiments, including duties of a supervisory nature, shall have appropriate training”. In effect, this article stipulates that only competent individuals are allowed to work with laboratory animals. At least three groups of individuals can be identified with different responsibilities toward experimental animals: animal technicians, scientists, and veterinarians/animal welfare officers. The responsibilities and duties of the individuals within each of these categories differ. This paper focuses on the training of scientists. The scientist designs, and often also performs, animal experiments. Therefore, scientists must be educated to develop an attitude of respect toward laboratory animals, and must be trained so that, if an experiment must be performed with animals, it is designed according to the highest possible scientific and ethical standards. In The Netherlands, the law stipulates that scientists intending to work with animals must have completed a course in laboratory animal science. This compulsory course started in 1986. The Department of Laboratory Animal Science at Utrecht University is responsible for the national coordination of this course. Participants must have an academic degree (at the level of MSc) in one of the biomedical sciences, such as biology, medicine or veterinary medicine. Although the course is an intensive 3-week, 120-hour long course, which covers both technical and ethical aspects of laboratory animal experimentation, it cannot provide full competence. It is designed to provide sufficient basic training and knowledge to enable students to design animal experiments, and to develop an attitude that will be conducive to the implementation of the Three Rs. However, full competence will always require further training that can only be acquired as a result of practical experience gained while working in the field of laboratory animal research. Evaluations subsequent to the course have revealed that more than 98% of the students regard the course as indispensable for all scientists working in a research area where animal experiments are performed. They agree that the course not only contributes to the quality of experiments and to the welfare of animals, but also to a decrease in the number of animals used in experiments.

December 2003 marked the 30th anniversary of the American Psychiatric Association’s decision to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality as a normal sexual orientation have broadened the scope of ethical standards and therapeutic approaches when working with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual individuals. This review provides an overviewof the circumstances leading to the decision and the effect it has had on the helping professions.

In this article, the authors discuss their experiences of two separate research projects involving interviews with both partners in care relationships that pushed the ethics of research methods along unfamiliar routes. The desire to understand the relationship from both sides was seen to outweigh the perils of accessing both stories but only when the ethical and procedural elements had been sufficiently worked through. It is those ethical and procedural elements that they share in this article, which is offered as a provocative nudge toward a continued critical appraisal of ethical standards within qualitative research and begins with the authors’reflection on their processes for such research through the examination of a fictionalized vignette.

Research suggests that police recruits come to policing with high ideals and positive ethical standards. Yet as early as the police academy, subtle shifts in recruit attitudes and values occur. By the end of the rookie year, this ethical value shift is almost complete, and it has negative ethical implications. This ethical value shift places many officers in conflict with a number of legal standards and core societal values. Although research has identified these outcomes, there is only limited understanding of the processes that fuel these ethical value shifts. This article presents exploratory research in police socialization processes and identifies process mechanisms that trigger a number of these value shifts. Structural elements in policing training that sustain these mechanisms are analyzed.

The Kuder Career Search, the most recent edition of the Kuder Preference Records, is available in an online administration format. This study was conducted to compare the results of the online Career Search with concurrent measures of career interest and self-efficacy. The Activity Preference scales were generally related as expected to the concurrent interest and efficacy measures; most correlations between corresponding scales were small to moderate. The rank order of the Career Clusters was correlated with the ranks of the concurrent interest scales. An initial evaluation of the validity of the online version of the Kuder Career Search is provided in light of these findings.

New and emerging collaborative responses to sex offender management are challenging traditional notions about how treatment providers and probation and parole officers (POs) deliver services to this difficult population. Typically, sex offender treatment professionals provide community-based services to offenders who are supervised by POs. Yet, no comprehensive survey has investigated how treatment providers and POs collaborate and view their relationships with each other. This national random survey examined the beliefs and behaviors of community-based adult sex-offender treatment providers concerning various types of provider and PO interactions and collaborative models. Overall, treatment providers reported that they value frequent and substantive communication with POs concerning mutual clients. There was, however, considerable diversity in practice and opinion among providers with regard to POs leading, coleading, and observing sex offender treatment groups. Treatment providers' opinions about various clinical, ethical, and legal issues evident in these collaborative approaches are examined.

Ethical standards for corporations are today acknowledged and ratified by several international declarations. These standards are closely linked to the new world-wide stress on corruption free governments. The ultimate source of both Business Ethics and honesty in government lies in the now internationally accepted Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This paper examines in some detail the chief reasons for the low ethical standards in public administration today. References have been made to the concept of dharma and the principles for ethics in public adminis tration as reflected in our tradition in the Vedanta, Upanishads, Manu and the Bhagwad Gita. Several radi cal, legal and systemic remedies are suggested and defended at length. The leitmotif of all this is an earnest call to return to and practise the ancient principles of dharma to manage the polity on the basis of enduring verities. The suggestions offered by the author are all anchored in such permanent principles.

Ethical standards for instructors of marriage and family counselors have not been well defined in the International Association for Marriage and Family Counselors code of ethics. The inherent power differential in an instructor-student relationship demands an accountability structure that is currently rare to nonexistent. This article describes some abuses of this power and calls for the creation of a code of ethics for marriage and family counselor educators. There is an understandable dearth of statistics regarding this matter; however, if the experiences of this author are an indicator, then the problem is significant and needs to be addressed far and wide.

A pilot study of 101 employees in two midwestern hotels found that the employees saw training programs as the most common channel for the hotels' managers to transmit information about the hotels' ethical standards. That channel was closely followed by coaching, printed matter, and watching managers' actions. Meetings and memos were dead last. However, when it came to citing the chief sources of ethics-related information, the employees said the chief source of their ethical standards was family and friends-rather than the workplace. Thus, managers need to pay careful attention to how they communicate the organization's ethical standards by making sure that ethical codes are printed in employee manuals, conducting training programs, coaching employees, and modeling desired behavior.

The growth of international business calls for the development of universal ethical standards. Corporate and national cultures embody differing codes of conduct. Serious ethical lapses have damaged organizations and societies. Various international groups of business leaders are developing voluntary ethical standards. Citizen activism may be needed to ensure implementation and compliance with such standards.

Principals must do their jobs in an increasingly litigious climate. A clear understanding of the way case law and anti-discrimination legislation function will free administrators to maintain ethical standards of performance even in the face of threatened litigation.

Seeking prospective ethical approval from an institutional review board is an essential first step in both basic science and clinical acupuncture research. However, ethical responsibility extends well beyond this preliminary stage, covering both the conduct and reporting of research. The aim of this editorial is to define the minimum ethical standards required for publication in Acupuncture in Medicine and to highlight the two aspects with the poorest compliance among recently submitted articles—namely, prospective registration of clinical trials and detailed reporting of laboratory animal welfare. It has been over a decade since the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) announced, in September 2004, that ICMJE-listed journals (including Acupuncture in Medicine and most mainstream biomedical publications) should not consider publishing clinical trials that started after 1 July 2005 unless they had prospective registration at or before the time of first patient enrolment.1 The ICMJE uses the WHO definition of a clinical trial, which is widely encompassing and includes “any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes” (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations). A current list of acceptable clinical trials registries is available on the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform. A comprehensive overview of the rationale behind clinical trial registration is …

Issue Interior designers require an understanding of societal, professional, and personal ethical codes to successfully respond to complex moral decisions in the workplace. Course activities that involve ethical decision making help prompt students to identify and clarify their personal values by responding to moral issues they will encounter in design practice. Goal Practice with ethical decision making allows students to learn more about their own values and how these values, in turn, impact their daily decisions. The goal was to prepare senior–level interior design students for decision making that maintains the high ethical standards of the interior design profession and their own personal ethics code. Application Debates and case studies, as instructional techniques, allow students to see ethical situations from various perspectives and encourage students to voice individual ideas. Description Students participated in a structured debate focused on design practice issues. They also reviewed and developed case studies representative of ethical issues that could arise in a business setting. Conclusion Providing interior design students the opportunity to explore ethical dilemmas in an academic setting is an effective preparatory method toward positive decision making as a design professional. Debates and case studies,. focused on ethics, provide students with an interactive learning experience that encourages the development of a personal framework for addressing moral issues. Students become confident about identifying and evaluating potential ethical dilemmas and drawing conclusions about situations they will confront in their professional careers.

Given the connection between the media and democracy, the question of media quality is important. A recurring theme is the distinction between positive and negative aspects of media quality: what is required and what is prohibited. The legal route to media quality is considered and accepted as necessary, but not sufficient. It needs to be supplemented by the ethical route, understood as a competence to deploy ethical consideration in professional practice. The idea of ethical standards being provided by a code of practice is considered, and the (British) Press Complaints Commission's Code is examined as an example. The conclusion is that codes have their limitations but overall the ethical route is indispensable, although in need of further exploration.

A series of highly publicized cases of ethical violations in Congress has produced a concerted reexamination of Congress's ethics processes. This article reviews the key arguments promoted by advocates for reforming Congress and examines the substantive and procedural dilemmas confronting members of Congress as they attempt to respond to calls for reform. These dilemmas are illustrated by examining a number of recent ethical cases in Congress. We conclude that the standards that Congress employs and the procedures its members use to enforce them are strongly influenced by the unique constitutional and political context of the institution. As legislators proceed in their efforts to institute new ethical standards, they will continually attempt to strike a balance between legitimate yet contradictory ethical, political, legislative, and procedural demands.

There is widespread concern for ethics in government, and news reports justify that concern. The public's emphasis, fueled by both accurate and inaccurate reporting, appears to center upon the conduct of elected officials. Some of that reporting is significant, and some is trivial. Professional literature tends to concentrate upon the bureaucracy. This article traces the history in general of ethical thought regarding public service in America and sketches attempts to require adherence to ethical standards. It concludes that—with notable exceptions and despite considerable insightful work from ethicists—the strongest reactions have often come in response to relatively trivial infractions and that prescriptions tend to be entirely negative. Such negative approaches are unlikely to result in significant improvement of ethics in public service, whether judged by standards of personal conduct or the even more important standard of institutional performance and integrity.

Some advertisers try to make sure copy in farm journals is favorable to their product, according to a mail survey of 190 members of the American Agricultural Editors Association (78% response rate). Many farmers rely on farm journals for information in an increasingly complex industry. Yet 62% of the farm journalists reported receiving pressures from advertisers, while about half said that advertising had actually been withdrawn on occasion. About half also reported that keeping distance from advertisers is a challenge.