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The COVID-19 pandemic is a complex, disruptive event with many impacts beyond those related to health, national economies and global competition. While many worldwide companies were challenged to survive, the pandemic also presented many development opportunities for the long-term. The digital transformation, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, require new skills (OECD, 2020) informed by greater attention to the applied ethics of responsibility. Moreover, the development of the pandemic has generated an acceleration in a process of change in consumer behavior. Many businesses around the world have become aware of having to reconsider their market relationships starting from marketing channels, the use of marketing channels, from multichannelling, to omnichanneling, to metachannelling.

This paper presents the findings of a study that used applied ethics to evaluate autonomous robotic systems practically. Using a theoretical tool developed by a team of researchers in 2017, which one of the authors contributed to, we conducted a study of four existing autonomous robotic systems in July 2020. The methods used to carry out the study and the results are highlighted by examining the specific example of ANYmal, an autonomous robotic system that is one component of the CERBERUS team that won first place in DARPA’s Subterranean Challenge Systems Competition in September 2021.

Curricular justice, achieved through a counter-hegemonic curriculum that serves the needs of the least rather than most advantaged members of society, plays a central role in providing more equitable access to meaningful education for all young people. We contend that the defining features of the contemporary schooling context in many parts of the globe, including Australia, are growing inequality and increasing disparity between students who have access to educational opportunities and outcomes, and those who do not. We take Connell’s claims—made in Schools and Social Justice, published in 1993—of the centrality of social justice in schooling and consider its relevance nearly 30 years later. In particular, we argue that curricular justice must sit at the heart of schooling that fosters democratic participation and meaningful opportunities for civic participation and belonging within society.

As the field of interventional radiology assumes a larger role in patient care, the specialty has a growing responsibility to recognize and understand ethical dilemmas within the field. We present a case-based primer on common ethical issues in IR, including requests for potentially inappropriate procedures, surrogate decision making, informed consent, and managing conflicts of interest and procedural complications. This primer is intended to be used as a guide for discussion-based training in ethics in IR while inspiring further research in applied ethics in IR.

The ethical and societal implications of artificial intelligence systems raise concerns. In this article, we outline a novel process based on applied ethics, namely, Z-Inspection®, to assess if an AI system is trustworthy. We use the definition of trustworthy AI given by the high-level European Commission’s expert group on AI. Z-Inspection® is a general inspection process that can be applied to a variety of domains where AI systems are used, such as business, healthcare, and public sector, among many others. To the best of our knowledge, Z-Inspection® is the first process to assess trustworthy AI in practice.

The purpose of the article is to present a discourse of public health ethics, as a social action, and research development. The following problematic questions have been framed to achieve the above purpose: what are the reasons for multiple meanings of public health concept? How is the concept of public in the context of pubic health understood? What are the possible approaches to the analysis of public health ethics? What are the major differences between public health ethics and healthcare ethics? The first part of the article makes an analysis of multiple meanings of the concept of public health. The second part addresses the concept of public in the context of public health. In the third part, there are analytical approaches to public health ethics reflected (professional ethics, applied ethics, representation ethics, critical ethics). The fourth part of the article focuses on differences between public health ethics and healthcare ethics. A summarising historical discourse on the development of public health ethics reveals the dynamics of theoretical approaches to the purpose of the article. KEY WORDS: ethics, public health, analytical approaches to health ethics. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15181/tbb.v79i3.1895

The complexity of biobank research has recently increased generating a number of novel ethical issues. In recent years the University of Insubria is committed to provide specific training programs in Bioethics, Applied Ethics and Clinical Ethics aimed to face to critical topics related to medicine, research and biobanking. Actually we design the Insubria Biobank as a research infrastructure with an appropriate Ethical Framework and responsible for the custody of biospecimens and data according to a model of Charitable Trust. So to answer certain questions is crucial: How could biobank respect the trust placed in it? What resources could promote the goals of the biobank? Do professionals require a specific ethical training? This credit of trust must be fed and confirmed by the ethical choices of the biobank and ensuring maximum transparency and traceability of decisions. The aim of the Insubria Biobank is to become an ethical subject to secure the public trust and to define the ethics criteria to be made public and to which the biobank will comply. In our model we propose the prospective involved parties that could guarantee the achievement of this goal: Informed Consent, Charter of Principles and Biobank Ethics Consultation Services (BECS). Our purpose is to offer a Charter of Principles and BECS to help scientists, health care professionals, patients, donors, institutional review board and policymakers, better navigate the ethical issues in biobanking. An exploratory survey to identify the willingness to use BECS represent our future research plan.

This paper examines the effect of state-level culture in the US on the adoption of firms’ workplace diversity policies. Using firm-level panel data (1592 firm-year observations) over the period 2011–2014, we document that firms in highly individualistic states are less likely to adopt workplace diversity policies, which in turn negatively affects firm performance. Our results are robust to alternative variables and econometric specifications. Our findings provide insights into the contemporary debate on the economic aspects of workplace diversity policies for firms operating in different cultural backgrounds.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a management concept where by the companies integrates social and environmental concerns in their business needs, operations and interactions with their stakeholders. Corporate social responsibility is important to both consumers and company’s .CSR is generally understood as being the way through which a company achieves a balance of economic, environmental and social imperatives, while at the same time it also helps in addressing the expectations of shareholders and stakeholders. A properly implemented CSR concept can bring along a various variety of competitive advantages, such as enhanced access to capital and markets, increased sales and profits, operational cost savings, improved productivity and quality, efficient human resource base, improved brand image and reputation, enhanced customer loyalty, better decision making and risk management processes. In this sense it is important to draw a distinction between CSR, which can be a strategic business management concept, and charity, sponsorships or philanthropy. Often, companies that adopt CSR programs have grown their business to the point where they can give back to society Even though the latter can also make a valuable contribution to poverty reduction, will directly enhance the reputation of a company and strengthen its brand, the concept of CSR clearly goes beyond that. It refers to practices and policies undertaken by corporations that are intended to have a positive influence on the world. CSR is generally understood as a strategic initiative that contributes to a brand's reputation. CSR is titled to aid an organization's mission as well as serve as a guide to what the company represents for its consumers. Business ethics is the part of applied ethics that examines ethical principles, moral and ethical problems that can arise in a business environment. Organizations in India have been quite sensible in adopting CSR initiatives and integrating them into their business processes. It has become progressively projected in the Indian corporate setting because the organizations have recognized that besides growing their businesses, it is also important to shape responsible, valuable and supportable relationships with the community at large.

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has shed more light on the difficulty of making health care decisions integrating scientific knowledge and values associated to life and death issues, human suffering, quality of life, economic losses, liberty of movement, etc. But the difficulties related to health care decisions and the use of innovative drugs or technologies are not new, and many countries have created agencies that have the mandate to evaluate new technologies in health care. Health Technological Assessment (HTA) reports’ aim is to guide the decision makers in these difficult matters. There are two ethical components in HTA. The first is the report’s presentation of an ethical evaluation of the technology. The second is the value-ladenness of the HTA decision-making process itself. When implicit value judgments are not elicited, the justification of the final decision cannot be transparent. The present paper aims to identify and elicit the implicit value-judgments related to each step of the HTA process. This research is grounded on an applied ethics decision-making paradigm based on the role of value judgments in the decision-making process. The first part discusses two different approaches to values and value judgments in HTA. In the second part, citations mentioning value judgments extracted from a systematic review on the integration of ethics into HTA were categorized to elicit the value judgments and their criteria for each different HTA decision-making steps. The results show that there are 18 decision-making steps in the HTA process where 23 implicit value-judgments can be recognized. The range of these value judgments encompasses the whole HTA process: from the initial request, the presenting of the principal issues, to the final report’s dissemination. Since stakeholders need to understand which value judgments the conclusion of a report relies on, eliciting the implicit value judgments in the HTA decision-making process should yield more transparency.

The global food system exhibits dizzying complexity, with interaction among social, economic, biological, and technological factors. Opposition to the first generation of plants and animals transformed through rDNA-enabled gene transfer (so-called GMOs) has been a signature episode in resistance to the forces of industrialization and globalization in the food system. Yet agricultural scientists continue to tout gene technology as an essential component in meeting future global food needs. An ethical analysis of the debate over gene technologies reveals the details that matter. On the one hand, alternative regimes for institutionalizing gene technology (through regulation, trade policy, and intellectual property law) could mitigate injustices suffered by politically marginalized and economically disadvantaged actors in the food system, especially smallholding farmers in less industrialized economies. On the other hand, GMO opposition has been singularly effective in mobilizing citizens of affluent countries against policies and practices that lie at the heart of these same injustices. As part of the roundtable, “Ethics and the Future of the Global Food System,” this essay argues that charting a middle course that realizes the benefits of gene technology while blocking its use in the perpetration of unjust harms may require a more detailed grasp of intricacies in the food system than even motivated bystanders are willing to develop.

Visibility for transgender and gender nonconforming people and the elderly is growing; however, thus far the overlap of the two groups has rarely been considered. Trans persons therefore remain largely invisible in the context of older people’s care and medicine. The discrimination faced by this group is at least twofold: they are the targets of aggression incited by transphobia, and also by ageism. Although older trans and gender nonconforming people exist as a greatly marginalized group within another already marginalized group, even the field of theological ethics has neglected to grant them ethical attention. This leads to especially harsh consequences for elderly transgender and gender nonconforming people due to their specific vulnerabilities. There are reports from trans persons who have resolved never to make use of health services again due to regular experiences of transphobia in medical settings. There are religious components within transgender and gender nonconforming issues that should not be overlooked in this context. On the one hand, medical staff, in the name of their Christian beliefs, have refused to provide trans persons with basic medical care. On the other hand, demands for places of visibility, and spaces for the individual, are regularly made in trans-positive studies, and can be linked to discussions within theological ethics about giving space. Some ethical formulas within the Hebrew and Christian traditions focus on the creation of space in which other beings may exist, as found in concepts like brother–sisterhood, friendship, and Sabbath. By casting light on elderly trans and gender nonconforming people, and on their demands for space, via reflections on ethical concepts of space-making, this study develops a specific understanding of space for elderly trans persons. The paper aims to develop an understanding of trans-positive spaces within theological ethics and applied ethics. Spaces that assume a withdrawal or contraction by all those who have previously taken up trans spaces through ignorance, contempt, or violence, should not thereby become spaces of absence: indeed, elderly trans and gender nonconforming people might be in need of both kinds of spaces, those where otherness enables withdrawal, and those where the helping presence of others continues.

End-of-life care has always been prominent in discussions of clinical ethics. Almost 30% of hospital inpatients are in their last year of life. Doctors frequently encounter people with end-of-life care needs and should to be equipped to respond. The bewildering array of what has been written about it leaves many doctors, other healthcare workers and the public uncertain and confused. What key things should doctors know and understand? The principles are the same as in any area of medicine, but they have to be applied in a different context. Some goals (e.g. long-term survival) can no longer be achieved, but new ones (e.g. new ways to improve quality of life) become available. By clearly understanding the ethics, we can learn how to do good end-of-life care. This article briefly addresses key areas including why ethics matters in end-of-life care, how to apply familiar principles, how we can respond to some barriers to respect for autonomy, applying the doctrine of double effect and understanding the application of ethics in the last days of life. It also gives pointers to further detailed reading.

BACKGROUND: Clinical genomic implementation studies pose challenges for informed consent. Consent forms often include complex language and concepts, which can be a barrier to diverse enrollment, and these studies often blur traditional research-clinical boundaries. There is a move toward self-directed, web-based research enrollment, but more evidence is needed about how these enrollment approaches work in practice. In this study, we developed and evaluated a literacy-focused, web-based consent approach to support enrollment of diverse participants in an ongoing clinical genomic implementation study. METHODS: As part of the Cancer Health Assessments Reaching Many (CHARM) study, we developed a web-based consent approach that featured plain language, multimedia, and separate descriptions of clinical care and research activities. CHARM offered clinical exome sequencing to individuals at high risk of hereditary cancer. We interviewed CHARM participants about their reactions to the consent approach. We audio recorded, transcribed, and coded interviews using a deductively and inductively derived codebook. We reviewed coded excerpts as a team to identify overarching themes. RESULTS: We conducted 32 interviews, including 12 (38%) in Spanish. Most (69%) enrolled without assistance from study staff, usually on a mobile phone. Those who completed enrollment in one day spent an average of 12 minutes on the consent portion. Interviewees found the information simple to read but comprehensive, were neutral to positive about the multimedia support, and identified increased access to testing in the study as the key difference from clinical care. CONCLUSIONS: This study showed that interviewees found our literacy-focused, web-based consent approach acceptable; did not distinguish the consent materials from other online study processes; and valued getting access to testing in the study. Overall, conducting empirical bioethics research in an ongoing clinical trial was useful to demonstrate the acceptability of our novel consent approach but posed practical challenges.

Principlism is arguably the dominant recognised ethical framework used within medicine and other Western health professions today, including the UK paramedic profession. It concerns the application of four principles: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice. This article examines the theory and practice of principlism, and shows how it is used in daily paramedic practice and decision-making. Practical guidance on applying ethics in paramedicine, illustrated with scenarios, is also provided. This is the first in a series of three articles on paramedic ethics. This series complements the Journal of Paramedic Practice's concurrent CPD˚series on paramedic law in the UK. Later articles in this series will examine the complex ethical issues that can accompany end-of-life care, and ethical considerations relating to treatment of vulnerable persons including children.

This article examines the increasing tendency towards governance of people through their representation via data. In its most contemporary iteration, the COVID-19 pandemic has seen the release of contact tracing apps – in Australia, COVIDSafe. While public discourse about the apps has focused principally on the important issue of data privacy, there are other possible effects whereby participation in such schemes might become a prerequisite to accessing services or basic rights – either from government or from corporations. The pathway to acceptability of applying our data in this way is already paved, through fitness monitors and other technologies by which we represent ourselves. This article sets out the foundation of such technologies and their application, before outlining their effect on the recognised boundaries of governance and the conception of the holder of rights and the substance of those rights.

The Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient (LCP) was an integrated care pathway for patients in the final days or hours of life, developed at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital in conjunction with the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute, Liverpool. The LCP became increasingly the normative style of care for patients in the terminal stage across NHS England from the 1990s onwards. Following significant questions raised in Parliament, by the media and other stakeholders, an independent review panel was established under Baroness Neuberger in 2013 to investigate the LCP. The findings of the panel were published as More Care Less Pathway: a Review of the Liverpool Care Pathway identifying significant failings in the delivery of the LCP thus leading to it being phased out some six months later. Rather than being euthanasia through the backdoor, many of the criticisms of the LCP and its poor implementation are indicative of poor communication, limited knowledge of the dying process and a paucity of death education.

This article focuses on the perception of the importance of business ethics among Czech and Slovak entrepreneurs (this includes business owners and managers) within the SME sector. The comparison is based on an analysis of the approach to business ethics according to a set of parameters, namely company size, years in business, and the gender and education of the entrepreneurs. Empirical research was conducted in 2020 on a sample set consisting of 454 respondents in the Czech Republic and 368 respondents in Slovakia. The most important outcome of the research was the finding that business ethics is considered extremely important in both countries. The research results not only revealed that just over 90% of Czech entrepreneurs and 88% of Slovak entrepreneurs within the SME sector agreed that they should take into account the moral and ethical consequences of their decisions, but that the structure of their answers was very similar. Also, of interest were the findings that women were more aware of business ethics than their male counterparts, as were those entrepreneurs who possessed a higher education over those with a secondary education.

The paper discusses inappropriate (futile) treatment by analyzing the casuistics of palliative patients in the terminal stage of illness who are hospitalized at the Department of Internal Medicine and Geriatrics of the Faculty hospital with policlinic (FNsP). Our research applies the principles of palliative care in the context of bioethics. The existing clinical conditions of healthcare in Slovakia are characteristic of making a taboo of the issues of inappropriate treatment of palliative patients. Inductive-deductive and normative clinical bioethics methods of palliative care and ethical strategy are applied for defining issues found in inappropriate hemodialysis treatment. An algorithm of hemodialysis treatment requires the definition of those lege artis criteria which, in the context of a patient’s autonomy and his/her decision, precondition the avoidance of the situation in which hemodialysis treatment is inappropriate (futile). Futile treatment in a terminal condition is ethically inappropriate medical treatment that extends the suffering of patients and their relatives. Its definition is determined by the relevant legislation and the methods of bioethics. An active palliative strategy is aimed at managing the process of incurable diseases in the patient’s bio-psycho-socio-spiritual continuity in the process of special bioethics. The global bioethical objective of general bioethics for palliative care is based on the paradigm of social harmony and solidarity in the context of an authentic modus of the patient’s existence as a constitutive principle for the phenomenon of the patient’s being to finite being (death).

Despite pain as the fifth vital sign in adult and pediatric care, many still dismiss the fact that immature human beings (whether a fetus, a preterm, or term baby) are capable of being affected by pain. Studies have demonstrated that avoiding, minimizing, and treating pain in babies, particularly when premature, improves their outcomes. Informed by the evidence, treating neonatal pain has become the medical standard of care for physicians in neonatology and anesthesiology. This article provides a brief overview of relevant publications that explain the clinical evolution that has led to the treatment of neonatal pain. This article also examines three arguments against the existence of fetal pain and presents evidence that refutes them. Informed by the research, a revised definition of pain is offered.

SummaryContemporary bioethics was fledged and is sustained by challenges posed by new technologies. These technologies have affected many lives. Yet health informatics affects more lives than any of them. The challenges include the development and the appropriate uses and users of machine learning software, the balancing of privacy rights against the needs of public health and clinical practice in a time of Big Data analytics, whether and how to use this technology, and the role of ethics and standards in health policy. Historical antecedents in statistics and evidence-based practice foreshadow some of the difficulties now faced, but the scope and scale of these challenges requires that ethics, too, be brought to scale in parallel, especially given the size of contemporary data sets and the processing power of new computers. Fortunately, applied ethics affords a variety of tools to help identify and rank applicable values, support best practices, and contribute to standards. The bioethics community can in partnership with the informatics community arrive at policies that promote the health sciences while reaffirming the many and varied rights that patients expect will be honored.

This contribution examines deprivation of liberty in Belgian healthcare within the frameworks of the ECHR and CRPD. We develop and apply an ECHR-based framework to demonstrate that it is not the admissions to care facilities based on Belgium’s involuntary commitment law that give rise to the unjustified deprivation of liberty, but those based on representation regimes. This can be remedied by broadening Belgium’s involuntary commitment law. However, doing so would go against a CRPD-based framework, which is incompatible with the ECHR; the former opposes disability-based laws. Building on the right to legal capacity and to liberty, the scope of the CRPD’s approach is uncovered. It is suggested that to reconcile the two frameworks, Belgium’s involuntary commitment law should be abolished, and representation regimes should be changed to avoid (rather than to justify) deprivation of liberty. Although its desirability is open for discussion, this could solve a problem that occurs worldwide.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is, in part, an information handling system that can remove humans from the information handling process. The particular problem explored is how we are to understand privacy when considering informational systems that handle personal information in ways that impact people’s lives when there is no human operator in direct contact with that personal information. I argue that these new technologies need to take concepts like privacy into account, but also, that we ought also to take these technologies into account to reconsider and perhaps reconceptualise privacy. This paper argues that while an inhuman system like the IoT does not necessarily violate theinterpersonalprivacy of people, if the IoT is used as part of a state surveillance program, apoliticalnotion of privacy may be violated.

Published by Lumen Publishing House from Iași, Romania, in 2016 and included in the Social Development book series, the volume ”Etică și dezvoltare comunitară” [Ethics and community development], authored by Ana Caras (Frunză) addresses those who are active in the social and humanistic field or who are interested in the specific approach of social anthropology regarding community development in the context of the active and responsible involvement of community members. In its second edition, the paper brings into debate an important issue, that of the synergy between the community and its members, the role of individual involvement in the development of the community from an economic, social, cultural point of view and the social role of the individual.

This text is the review of the volume "Către o nouă expertiză etică. Deconstruind valorile etice” [Towards a new ethical expertise. Deconstructing ethical values] by Ana Frunză, published by Lumen Publishing House from Iași, Romania, in 2016. I came across this volume much too late, for it brings great value to the field of ethics and ethical expertise. The arguments are easy to follow, especially for those who want to step into the field of ethical expertise. The combination of familiar texts, with more technical ones and with solid and concise arguments, allows any type of reader to approach the field and deepen it.

One of the primary, if not most critical, difficulties in the design and implementation of autonomous systems is the black-boxed nature of the decision-making structures and logical pathways. How human values are embodied and actualised in situ may ultimately prove to be harmful if not outright recalcitrant. For this reason, the values of stakeholders become of particular significance given the risks posed by opaque structures of intelligent agents. This paper explores how decision matrix algorithms, via thebelief-desire-intentionmodel for autonomous vehicles, can be designed to minimize the risks of opaque architectures. Primarily through an explicit orientation towards designingforthe values of explainability and verifiability. In doing so, this research adopts the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) approach as a principled framework for the incorporation of such values within design. VSD is recognized as a potential starting point that offers a systematic way for engineering teams to formally incorporate existing technical solutions within ethical design, while simultaneously remaining pliable to emerging issues and needs. It is concluded that the VSD methodology offers at least a strong enough foundation from which designers can begin to anticipate design needs and formulate salient design flows that can be adapted to the changing ethical landscapes required for utilisation in autonomous vehicles.

In Romania, the literature in the field of applied ethics is not one of the most popular and vast. However, lately there is an increasingly serious concern of both young people for research and writing about this issue, as well as for specialists in this field. Also, bioethics is among the topics that are more and more of interest to the general public, as well as professionals specialized in ethics, possibly with studies in medical research. The present review refers to the publication at Tritonic publishing house, Bucharest, 2018, in "Ethics and integrity in education and research" (Antonio Sandu, Bogdan Popoveniuc, editors) of the work "Bioethics: history and significance", authored by university professor Ph.D. Mircea Leabu. The work "Bioethics: History and Significance" is the result of the presentation of the author’s scientific work at the International Conference "Ethics and Values in Education, Research and Innovation", Suceava, Romania, October 19-29, 2018. The paper that addresses a theme of applied ethics in the medical field presents, for the first time, ideas about professional ethics. Thus, the author introduces the reader to the reality of the existence in the history of science of "great spirits" whose characters are under question, here mentioning authors about which there have been suspicions of plagiarism of works authored by other researchers.

There is substantial published evidence showing that countless people enroll each year in ethically deficient clinical trials. Many of the trials are problematic because the quality of the science used to justify their launch may not be sufficiently vetted while many other trials may lack requisite social value. This poses the question: why do people volunteer for them? The answer resides in large part in the fact that informed consent practices have historically masked, rather than disclosed, the information that would alert research candidates to the ethically problematic nature of the trials. The “reasonable person” and “key information” provisions in the revised US Common Rule create the opportunity to correct this historical shortcoming. Two sources are employed to shed light on what the “key information” is that should be disclosed to a “reasonable person”: the original disclosure aims of the Nuremberg Code, as well as an extensive body of meta-research evidence. Those sources jointly support a range of new disclosures in the informed consent process that would unmask the heretofore undisclosed information. The resulting proposed new disclosures pertain to the overall success prospects of clinical trials, the quality of the prior research that both forms the basis of clinical trials and informs assessment of their risks and benefits, the potential social value of clinical trials, and the commercial purposes of clinical trials.

In this paper I try to define business ethics, the importance and the need for it and discuss what is possible and necessary. I understand business ethics as a subset of applied ethics relating to business activity of human beings.

Mechanisms that help people in their lives have existed for centuries, and every year they become not only more and more complex and perfect, but also smarter. It is impossible to imagine modern production without smart machines, but today, with the advent of robotic android robots, their participation in our private lives and, consequently, their influence on us, becomes much more obvious. After all, the robots that are increasingly taking root in our lives today, are no longer perceived by us simply as mechanisms, we endow them with human properties of character and often experience different emotions in relation to them. The appearance of a robot capable of experiencing (or still imitating?) emotions can be considered a qualitatively new step in the life of a person with robots. With such robots, it will be possible to be friends with them, to look for (and probably get) support from them. It is expected that they will be able to brighten up the loneliness of a variety of people, including disabled people, lonely old people, to help in caring for the sick and at the same time entertain them with communication. Speaking about the relationship with robots, it is difficult not to mention such an important aspect of human communication as sex, which, on the one hand, is not only a need, as in all living beings, but also the highest form of human love and intimacy, and on the other - can exist and be satisfied completely separate from love. It is this duality of human nature that has contributed to the transformation of sex and the human body into a commodity and the development of prostitution, pornography and the use of sexual images in advertising. The emergence of android robots can radically change our lives, including the most intimate areas of life. The development of the artificial intelligence sex industry opens up a whole new era of human-machine interaction. When smart machines become not only comfortable and entertaining, but literally enter our flesh, become our interlocutors, friends and lovers who share our feelings and interests, what will be the consequences of this unprecedented intimacy between man and machine?

This study investigates the influence of formal and informal institutions on firm innovation in transitional economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEEs) by explicitly differentiating between corruption and bribery as distinct informal institutions. We integrate institutional theory and legitimacy theory to explain that the failure of formal institutions creates an environment of corruption which encourages firms to use bribes to facilitate economic exchange. We test our hypotheses on the innovation performance of a sample (n = 1603) of firms in 11 CEEs. The results show that weak rule of law and ineffective business regulations in CEEs propagate the perception of corruption that inhibits firm innovation. However, the use of bribery enables firms to transform this environment of corruption into innovation outcomes. The policy and managerial implications of our research for differentiating between corruption and bribery and our findings that bribery acts as the glue that binds formal and informal institutions are fully discussed.

H παρούσα διατριβή σκοπό έχει, να συνδέσει την αειφόρο ανάπτυξη, αλλά και την εφαρμογή της στη χώρα μας και ειδικότερα στην τοπική αυτοδιοίκηση, με την περιβαλλοντική ηθική, αλλά και να αποδείξει πως δίχως την περιβαλλοντική ηθική και τις θεωρίες αυτής δε δύναται να επιτευχθεί η αειφορία. Στα δύο πρώτα κεφάλαια γίνεται εκτενής παρουσίαση της περιβαλλοντικής ηθικής. Αρχικά αναλύονται οι έννοιες της ηθικής, του ήθους, της εγγενής και εργαλειακής αξίας, οι κυριότεροι κλάδοι τις εφαρμοσμένης ηθικής, καθώς και η διαγενεακή, η περιβαλλοντική και η κοινωνική δικαιοσύνη. Ακολουθεί αναφορά στην περιβαλλοντική ηθική και σε θεωρίες αυτής, όπως η ανθρωποκεντρική, η βιοκεντρική, η οικοκεντρική ηθική κλπ. Στα τέσσερα επόμενα κεφάλαια γίνεται αναφορά στην αειφόρο ανάπτυξη και πως επηρεάζεται αυτή από την περιβαλλοντική ηθική. Γίνεται προσδιορισμός των περιβαλλοντικών προβλημάτων αλλά και των αιτιών που τα προκαλούν, αποτυπώνονται οι αρχές της αειφόρου ανάπτυξης καθώς και οι στόχοι αυτής, ενώ γίνεται εκτενείς αναφορά στην περιβαλλοντική εκπαίδευση, σε διεθνείς πρωτοβουλίες – σταθμούς και στο τρίπτυχο της αειφορίας (τους τρεις πυλώνες που τη στηρίζουν ισότιμα). Κλείνοντας στα τελευταία κεφάλαια, γίνεται αναφορά στην αειφορία στην Ελλάδα και στην τοπική αυτοδιοίκηση με χαρακτηριστικό παράδειγμα το Δήμο Καλαμάτας.

Data analytics and data-driven approaches in Machine Learning are now among the most hailed computing technologies in many industrial domains. One major application is predictive analytics, which is used to predict sensitive attributes, future behavior, or cost, risk and utility functions associated with target groups or individuals based on large sets of behavioral and usage data. This paper stresses the severe ethical and data protection implications of predictive analytics if it is used to predict sensitive information about single individuals or treat individuals differently based on the data many unrelated individuals provided. To tackle these concerns in an applied ethics, first, the paper introduces the concept of “predictive privacy” to formulate an ethical principle protecting individuals and groups against differential treatment based on Machine Learning and Big Data analytics. Secondly, it analyses the typical data processing cycle of predictive systems to provide a step-by-step discussion of ethical implications, locating occurrences of predictive privacy violations. Thirdly, the paper sheds light on what is qualitatively new in the way predictive analytics challenges ethical principles such as human dignity and the (liberal) notion of individual privacy. These new challenges arise when predictive systems transform statistical inferences, which provide knowledge about the cohort of training data donors, into individual predictions, thereby crossing what I call the “prediction gap”. Finally, the paper summarizes that data protection in the age of predictive analytics is a collective matter as we face situations where an individual’s (or group’s) privacy is violated using dataotherindividuals provide about themselves, possibly even anonymously.

Background The pursuit of a cure for HIV is a high priority for researchers, funding agencies, governments and people living with HIV (PLWH). To date, over 250 biomedical studies worldwide are or have been related to discovering a safe, effective, and scalable HIV cure, most of which are early translational research and experimental medicine. As HIV cure research increases, it is critical to identify and address the ethical challenges posed by this research. Methods We conducted a scoping review of the growing HIV cure research ethics literature, focusing on articles published in English peer-reviewed journals from 2013 to 2021. We extracted and summarized key developments in the ethics of HIV cure research. Twelve community advocates actively engaged in HIV cure research provided input on this summary and suggested areas warranting further ethical inquiry and foresight via email exchange and video conferencing. Discussion Despite substantial scholarship related to the ethics of HIV cure research, additional attention should focus on emerging issues in six categories of ethical issues: (1) social value (ongoing and emerging biomedical research and scalability considerations); (2) scientific validity (study design issues, such as the use of analytical treatment interruptions and placebos); (3) fair selection of participants (equity and justice considerations); (4) favorable benefit/risk balance (early phase research, benefit-risk balance, risk perception, psychological risks, and pediatric research); (5) informed consent (attention to language, decision-making, informed consent processes and scientific uncertainty); and (6) respect for enrolled participants and community (perspectives of people living with HIV and affected communities and representation). Conclusion HIV cure research ethics has an unfinished agenda. Scientific research and bioethics should work in tandem to advance ethical HIV cure research. Because the science of HIV cure research will continue to rapidly advance, ethical considerations of the major themes we identified will need to be revisited and refined over time.

This article makes a case for a data interest analysis of artificial intelligence (AI) that explores how different interests in data are empowered or disempowered by design. The article uses the EU High-Level Expert Group on AI’s Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI as an applied ethics approach to data interests with a human-centric ethical governance framework and accordingly suggests ethical questions that will help resolve conflicts between data interests in AI design

BackgroundECMO is a particularly scarce resource during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its allocation involves ethical considerations that may be different to usual times. There is limited pre-pandemic literature on the ethical factors that ECMO physicians consider during ECMO allocation. During the pandemic, there has been relatively little professional guidance specifically relating to ethics and ECMO allocation; although there has been active ethical debate about allocation of other critical care resources. We report the results of a small international exploratory survey of ECMO clinicians’ views on different patient factors in ECMO decision-making prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We then outline current ethical decision procedures and recommendations for rationing life-sustaining treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic, and examine the extent to which current guidelines for ECMO allocation (and reported practice) adhere to these ethical guidelines and recommendations.MethodsAn online survey was performed with responses recorded between mid May and mid August 2020. Participants (n = 48) were sourced from the ECMOCard study group—an international group of experts (n = 120) taking part in a prospective international study of ECMO and intensive care for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey compared the extent to which certain ethical factors involved in ECMO resource allocation were considered prior to and during the pandemic.ResultsWhen initiating ECMO during the pandemic, compared to usual times, participants reported giving more ethical weight to the benefit of ECMO to other patients not yet admitted as opposed to those already receiving ECMO, (p p = 0.002). If the clinical team recommends that ECMO should cease, but family do not agree, the majority of participants indicated that they would continue treatment, both in usual circumstances (67%) and during the pandemic (56%).ConclusionsWe found differences during the COVID-19 pandemic in prioritisation of several ethical factors in the context of ECMO allocation. The ethical principles prioritised by survey participants were largely consistent with ECMO allocation guidelines, current ethical decision procedures and recommendations for allocation of life-sustaining treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We explore why and how corporations seek to build community resilience as a strategic response to grand challenges. Based on a comparative case study analysis of four corporations strategically building community resilience in five place-based communities in South Africa, as well as three counterfactual cases, we develop a process model of corporate practices and contingent factors that explain why and how some corporations commit to community resilience building and whether they try to do so directly or indirectly. We thus help explain corporations’ strategic contributions to community resilience, and we emphasise the role of place-specific resources, social-ecological system viability, and limited statehood in motivating such organisational responses to grand challenges.

© 2019 British Educational Research Association Artificial intelligence and data analysis (AIDA) are increasingly entering the field of education. Within this context, the subfield of learning analytics (LA) has, since its inception, had a strong emphasis upon ethics, with numerous checklists and frameworks proposed to ensure that student privacy is respected and potential harms avoided. Here, we draw attention to some of the assumptions that underlie previous work in ethics for LA, which we frame as three tensions. These assumptions have the potential of leading to both the overcautious underuse of AIDA as administrators seek to avoid risk, or the unbridled misuse of AIDA as practitioners fail to adhere to frameworks that provide them with little guidance upon the problems that they face in building LA for institutional adoption. We use three edge cases to draw attention to these tensions, highlighting places where existing ethical frameworks fail to inform those building LA solutions. We propose a pilot open database that lists edge cases faced by LA system builders as a method for guiding ethicists working in the field towards places where support is needed to inform their practice. This would provide a middle space where technical builders of systems could more deeply interface with those concerned with policy, law and ethics and so work towards building LA that encourages human flourishing across a lifetime of learning. Practitioner Notes What is already known about this topic Applied ethics has a number of well-established theoretical groundings that we can use to frame the actions of ethical agents, including, deontology, consequentialism and virtue ethics. Learning analytics has developed a number of checklists, frameworks and evaluation methodologies for supporting trusted and ethical development, but these are often not adhered to by practitioners. Laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) apply to fields like education, but the complexity of this field can make them difficult to apply. What this paper adds Evidence of tensions and gaps in existing ethical frameworks and checklists to support the ethical development and implementation of learning analytics. A set of three edge cases that demonstrate places where existing work on the ethics of AI in education has failed to provide guidance. A “practical ethics” conceptualisation that draws on virtue ethics to support practitioners in building learning analytics systems. Implications for practice and/or policy Those using AIDA in education should collect and share example edge cases to support development of practical ethics in the field. A multiplicity of ethical approaches are likely to be useful in understanding how to develop and implement learning analytics ethically in practical contexts.

Spirituality is considered to be an essential nature of human being that strengthens their purpose and mental power to do something for the betterment of many people. Spirituality is considered as a part of theology or other divine disciplines. Spirituality is becoming an important topic in Management and Economics, particularly in entrepreneurship. It is an animating force and vital principle that motivates entrepreneurs to run a business which is not merely for making profit but, enabling them to better serve people. A real spiritual entrepreneur is not just looking for their own benefit, but for the betterment of others. Any business which is beneficial and helpful to others will grow better and enjoy economic benefits. Spirituality is in line with the core principle of entrepreneurs, which is doing business to meet customers’ need. One characteristic of spirituality is seeking to transcend the ego or their own self-centered interests. That is why spirituality is very important for entrepreneurs. It can be considered as a capital that has a number of core elements such as being driven by deep values, having a clear sense of purpose, and involving applied ethics in service.

This article uses the post-modern Nietzsche affirmation as a criterion for an analysis of the philosophical concept of the Constitution for the Earth (Šmajs, 2015) and other texts by Josef Šmajs, the principal author of the theory of evolutionary ontology. The author draws the attention of the group of authors of the Constitution for the Earth to the risk of the modernist and nihilist application of evolutionary ontology and proposes that the theory be extended to include new criteria and methods to enable it to be applied in a more acceptable manner. The author places efforts aimed at the biophilic transformation of culture into the value-based and ethical framework of moderate anthropocentrism instead of the ecocentric approach preferred by the creators of evolutionary ontology. The author also underlines the risk of the application of an ecocentric approach through the application of recent analysis of media presentations of those who support and deny climate change in the work entitled Environmental Ethics and Behavioural Change (Franks, Hanscomb & Johnston, 2018).

The presented study focuses on the role of applied ethics(cist) in managing the quality of life in the post-risk society. Given that, from an ethical point of view, it is appropriate to reflect the quality of life also through other than quantitative, i.e. objective and therefore also measurable indicator, it is important to be also focused on the action of a person that leads to increasing his/her satisfaction, the feeling of happiness as a subjective indicator. The aim of this study is to point out the importance of ethical parameterization of the quality of life as well as the search for suitable concepts in its fulfilment.

Objective In this article, we offer an extended critical review of a new conception of bioethics, presented by Darlei Dall'Agnol, in the book Care and Respect in Bioethics. Methods Critical philosophical analysis of background assumptions of a new approach to bioethics, enriched with critical discussion of related philosophical literature. Results In Care and Respect in Bioethics, through an approach filled with hard cases, Dall'Agnol argues that the metaethics of respectful care has theoretical advantages over the intuitionist metaethics of principlism and the particularism of casuistry, offering an original comprehensive approach that crosses the three dimensions of ethical inquiry: metaethical, normative, and applied ethics. Conclusions Dall'Agnol offers an insightful and persuasive account of how the single attitude of respectful care can express practical moral knowledge in healthcare. In this paper, we evaluate, criticize, and suggest refinements. One of them concerns Dall'Agnol's interpretation about Stephen Darwall's views on care and respect as two attitudes supported, respectively, by a third- and a second-personal moral point-of-view. Other is about the Dall'Agnol's Wittgensteinian description of the moral language-games of Clinical Bioethics, adding to the approach the "language-game of rights."

The Cashless Debit Card ( CDC) was triggered by a recommendation in the 2014 Forrest Review, ostensibly to address substance abuse and gambling issues. The CDC applies to a broad range of social security payments, defined as ‘trigger’ payments, including a Disability Support Pension ( DSP). This article contends that people with disabilities are likely to encounter a range of specific issues with the CDC, and that the scheme squares poorly with Australia's international human rights obligations to persons with disabilities. We argue that the CDC has pernicious effects in terms of deprivation of autonomy, subjection to stigma and denial of dignity.

For many people the expression “applied ethics” sounds like a pleonasm. They tend to claim that ethics by its very nature is about practical matters. It deals with human actions and their motivations and there is no need to create an additional discipline with special practical bias. However, at least since the 1970s, there has been a growing movement of applied ethics which resulted not only in the increase of enrolment to the academic courses but also in the demand for consulting services in this field. And yet the question still remains to what extent applied ethics inherits philosophical tradition and style of thinking. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the applied ethics is a continuation of philosophical inquiry in the way adjusted well to the demands of the pluralistic and democratic societies. Publication of English-language versions of the volumes of the “Annales. Ethics in Economic Life” financed through contract no. 501/1/P-DUN/2017 from the funds of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education devoted to the promotion of scholarship.

Purpose With reference to the methodology of Prof Choudhry in his book “Tawhidi Epistemology and its Applications: Economics, Finance, Science, and Society” in 2014, in a different context, this study aims to present the conceptual fundamental of Islamic finance investment, where investment decisions are governed by Divine law and Islamic jurisprudence, followed by the empirical nature of real-world issues where investment decisions are governed by only financial indicators, using the Amman Stock Exchange as a case study. Design/methodology/approach As pointed out by Raderbauer (2011), research and industry initiatives mainly focus on environmental measures while ignoring the economic and socio-cultural dimension of sustainability. Recognizing the importance of a holistic understanding to define sustainable business practices for the accommodation industry. Financial markets are no exception; moral and values either coming from secular or religious understanding help to examine relationships between attitudes and actions, as well as differences in attitudes and actions related to the business’ characteristics. In business, ethical considerations apply to a broad list of virtues that companies, their managers and employees customarily seek to adopt. These include, but are not limited to, the encouragement of honesty, integrity and efficiency, as well as diversity and communication skills. One of the most common sources of ethical considerations is religion. In these cases, religious doctrine imparts a sense of applied ethics, where one considers what right conduct is, how to live a life pleasing to the Divine and how one should treat him/herself and others in accordance with those teachings. Again, as ethical considerations is a broad philosophical concept, it can apply to any situation where the person ponders the nature of right and wrong, how to recognize the difference and the meaning those conclusions carry for everyday life. Findings It can be concluded that the overall the quantitative and qualitative statistics showed that accommodation business manager’s decision has had a very little positive attitude toward sustainability and the implementation of sustainable business practices in ASE financial transaction, no matter what classification, type of business, ownership or size of business. Only rules and regulations govern the attitude and behavior when making financial transactions with profit is the main target. Moral indicators could not be seen throughout the analysis and test used to achieve objectives of the study at hand. One can imagine that the combined two factors together “Moral-Material” in implementing financial transactions will produce a more beneficial outcome. Achieving a material and holistic objective will produce an optimum situation, which can contribute positively to sustainable development. Originality/value Islamic alternatives to traditional investment tools have been driven by the fact that such tools do not conform to the Islamic general principles of the Shari’ah (Usmani, 2002). There has been a growing desire to have funds in which profits are not based on riba or interest, which is prohibited in Islam. Muslims deem that profit should come because of efforts; this is not the case in interest-dominated investments. In addition, there is a desire to have investment portfolios, which are morally purified. Thus, investments in companies that are not in compliance with the Shari’ah are not permitted and are eliminated from the portfolio. To ensure compliance with the forgoing condition, Shari’ah advisory boards whose role is mainly to give assurance that money is managed within the framework of Islamic laws govern Islamic mutual funds (Hassan, 2001; Hassan, 2002). On the other hand, dealing with the applied part, the paper will deal with a case study from Jordan (Amman Stock Exchange), where, code of ethics is issued by virtue of the provisions of Article 26 (e) of the Securities Law No. 23 of 1997. The Amman Stock Exchange operates as an exchange for the trading of securities. The company lists securities such as equities and bonds. Its activities include providing enterprises with a means of raising capital by listing on the exchange; encouraging an active market in listed securities based on the determination of prices and trading; providing facilities and equipment for trading the recoding of trades and publication of prices; monitoring and regulating market trading; and coordinating with the Jordan Securities Commission as necessary. The company’s activities also include ensuring compliance with the law, fair market and investor protection; setting out and enforcing a professional code of ethics.