Family therapists' ethical decision-making processes in two duty-to-warn situations

This quantitative study investigated the ethical decision-making process of 177 Missouri members of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy using two in-session duty-to-warn scenarios of child abuse and HIV transmission. The components of the critical-evaluative level of ethical decision making include the lower-level decision components of personal/therapeutic response, professional ethics, and legal considerations/laws of the State, and the components of the higher-level decision base, the meta-ethical principles, which are nonmaleficence, autonomy, beneficence, fidelity, and justice. Statistical results indicated that in the child abuse scenario, professional ethics and legal considerations/laws of the State were considered most important, whereas in the HIV scenario, professional ethics were the preferred lower-level decision base. Across scenarios, the preferred higher-level decision base was nonmaleficence. There were differences across the child abuse and HIV scenarios in the perceived significance of the remaining lower-level decision base items as well as differences in perceived significance and ordering of the remaining meta-ethical principles. Limitations are discussed.     

Reflexive Research Ethics for Environmental Health and Justice: Academics and Movement-Building

Community-engaged research on environmental problems has reshaped researcher-participant relationships, academic-community interaction, and the role of community partners in human subjects protection and ethical oversight. We draw on our own and others' research collaborations with environmental health and justice social movement organizations to discuss the ethical concerns that emerge in community-engaged research. In this paper we introduce the concept of reflexive research ethics: ethical guidelines and decision-making principles that depend on continual reflexivity concerning the relationships between researchers and participants. Seeing ethics in this way can help scientists conduct research that simultaneously achieves a high level of professional conduct and protects the rights, well-being, and autonomy of both researchers and the multiple publics affected by research. We highlight our research with community-based organizations in Massachusetts, California, and Alaska, and discuss the potential impacts of the community or social movement on the research process and the potential impacts of research on community or social movement goals. We conclude by discussing ways in which the ethical concerns that surface in community-engaged research have led to advances in ethical research practices. This type of work raises ethical questions whose answers are broadly relevant for social movement, environmental, and public health scholars.     

There are no Answers,Only Choices: Teaching Ethical Decision Making in Social Work

Abstract

In teaching students about ethical decision making in social work, it is essential that the students are able to recognise the moral implications of their work and develop a deep understanding about ethical issues and their personal responsibility for making ethical choices. Thus, more than a “how to do it” approach is needed and teaching students about values and ethics is an essential thread that runs through our experience-based social work education program. The present paper describes a learning unit that sought to teach students about ethical decision making as a critical thinking process and, in so doing, to integrate students’ knowledge and experience of values, ethics, policy, and research in the final year of study. The relationship between values, ethics, policy, research, and social work practice provided an ideal context within which students could learn to integrate their knowledge and experience and apply it directly to their fieldwork practice. The paper ends with our critical reflection on this teaching experience and a critique of decisionist ethical frameworks.     

Facilitated Disclosure versus Clinical Accommodation of Infidelity Secrets: An Early Pivot Point in Couple Therapy. Part 1: Couple Relationship Ethics, Pragmatics, and Attachment

A critical and potentially polarizing decision in treating infidelity is whether facilitating partner disclosure or accommodating nondisclosure is most beneficial following private disclosure of infidelity to the therapist. Given couple distress and volatility following disclosure, understandably some therapists judge accommodating an infidelity secret both efficient and compassionate. Employing Western ethics and an attachment/intimacy lens, we consider ethical, pragmatic, and attachment intimacy implications of accommodating infidelity secrets. Issues bearing on the decision to facilitate disclosure or accommodate nondisclosure include (a) relationship ethics and pragmatics; (b) attachment and intimacy consequences; and (c) prospects for healing. We conclude that facilitating voluntary disclosure of infidelity, although difficult and demanding, represents the most ethical action with the best prospects for renewed and vital attachment intimacy.     

The Ethical Practitioner in Formation: Issues of Courage,Competence and Commitment

This article reports on a small study exploring students' accounts of ethically difficult situations. Participating students were studying professional qualifying programmes in social education and social work at three higher education institutions in Finland, France and the UK. Variations in how students describe ethically difficult situations are noted—including whether they feature the student as an active moral agent facing a difficult ethical decision and the extent to which they utilise recognisably ‘ethical’ language and concepts. The types of situations reported as ethically difficult are identified as focusing on: the difficulties of challenging service users and colleagues; the power and responsibility of the worker; and defining the boundaries of the professional relationship. Similar types of situations were raised by students in the different countries, although there is some variation in how they describe their ethical difficulties and the specific concerns they raise. Implications for teaching include the need to develop skills and qualities in students that enable them to recognise the ethical dimensions of difficult situations and to develop the courage to act on their decisions.     

Ethics and Elder Mistreatment:

This chapter focuses on the meaning of ethics in elder mistreatment. More specifically, ethical issues are distinguished from non-ethical issues and ethical dilemmas. The primary objective is to demystify ethics for elder-serving practitioners and to show how ethics can be a part of the treatment decision-making process. This process details "doing" ethics in the practice setting. It proposes a method for developing ethical practice in the multidisciplinary level. The multidisciplinary level starts with the client and professional ends with the community-based multidisciplinary team. The latter include human services professionals who have the important task of transforming ethical protocols into practice.     

Moments of Uncertainty: Ethical Considerations and Emerging Contaminants

Science on emerging environmental health threats involves numerous ethical concerns related to scientific uncertainty about conducting, interpreting, communicating, and acting upon research findings, but the connections between ethical decision making and scientific uncertainty are under‐studied in sociology. Under conditions of scientific uncertainty, researcher conduct is not fully prescribed by formal ethical codes of conduct, increasing the importance of ethical reflection by researchers, conflicts over research conduct, and reliance on informal ethical standards. This article draws on in‐depth interviews with scientists, regulators, activists, industry representatives, and fire safety experts to explore ethical considerations of moments of uncertainty using a case study of flame retardants, chemicals widely used in consumer products with potential negative health and environmental impacts. We focus on the uncertainty that arises in measuring people's exposure to these chemicals through testing of their personal environments or bodies. We identify four sources of ethical concerns relevant to scientific uncertainty: 1) choosing research questions or methods, 2) interpreting scientific results, 3) communicating results to multiple publics, and 4) applying results for policy making. This research offers lessons about professional conduct under conditions of uncertainty, ethical research practice, democratization of scientific knowledge, and science's impact on policy.     

Mindful Ethics: Comments on Informant-Centered Practices in Sociological Research

In this article, I introduce the concept of “mindful ethics” to describe my experiences as a feminist qualitative researcher who has confronted ethical dilemmas in my sexuality research. Mindful ethics is informed theoretically by mindful inquiry, grounded theory, ethics in practice, and ethically important moments. Mindful ethics has been useful in dealing with ethical considerations throughout all stages of my sexuality research. Shifting my attention to the takenfor-granted social contexts and circumstances surrounding informants’ life experiences has helped me deal with ethical concerns that otherwise may have resulted in harm to informants.     

Towards Customized Deliberations

ABSTRACT

The profession of social work has important contributions to make in the rapidly developing dialog about medical care decision making and to the evolution of hospitals as systems that engage with people as patients, for whom illnesses create increased vulnerability (Gruber, 1998). Professional ethics clearly states that the individual professional social worker has a responsibility to influence processes involving vulnerable populations. Articulating social work's responsibility and potential contributions in the area of medical care decision making begins with an application of social work's mission and values, and then continues with consideration of the profession's evolving role in hospitals. Pertinent aspects of the health care industry, including current models for continuum of care and for provider-patient relationships, are discussed in terms of opportunities to modify the models used to guide interactions with patients. Finally, the impact of a growing number of distinct treatment options is also considered. The objective of the article is to offer social workers in health care settings a conceptual framework for considering professional ethical obligations and for participating in the contemporary dialog regarding medical care decision-making.     

Ethical assessment and moral reasoning in child therapy

Social workers find it hard to operationalize the profession's Code of Ethics, and few professionals even rely on the Code, as a point of reference in making judgments when faced with ethical dilemmas. Children and adolescents hold a special position in clinical practice. Issues requiring ethical judgments are more complex, because any intervention involves people other than the child. How the professional meets the interests of the parents and those of the child, is frequently a cause for conflict. This article presents philosophical models of moral reasoning, and ethical assessment, to assist clinicians in identifying and resolving frequently faced practice dilemmas, with the goal of improving the quality of patient care, in terms of both the process and the outcome. Emphasis is not only on the ethics of the actual decision but also on the ethics of the decision-making process itself.This article is based on the author's unpublished dissertation, seminars, and grand rounds presentations on applied ethics in clinical social work. Additionally, this author has had consultative and collaborative contact with the Hastings Center, Institute of Society, Ethics and Life Science.     

Aristotle’s virtue ethics as a conceptual framework for the study and practice of social work in modern times

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to highlight the importance of Aristotle’s model of virtue ethics for today’s social workers and students, as it can help them to build an ethical character and promote ethical conduct in both their personal and professional lives. In doing so, the paper first provides an overview of virtue ethics theory and its revival over the last decades in western societies and then, discusses the basic tenets of Aristotle’s ethics theory in relation to the social work profession. In addition, the main types of Aristotelian virtues are presented including cardinal virtues (courage, justice, practical wisdom/phronesis, temperance) and the concepts of eudaimonia and golden mean in relation to their applications in social work practice are described. The paper briefly explains cardinal virtues and provides a case example of moral courage that will help social workers and students to better understand the concept of Aristotle’s golden mean. Finally, it discusses and responds to the main criticisms of Aristotle’s virtue ethics, considering alternative ways to discuss and think about this approach to social work.     

ETHICS, REGULATION AND THE NEW ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, PART I: ACCOUNTABILITY AND POWER

A generation ago, there was a major debate about the social and ethical implications of artificial intelligence (AI). Interest in that debate waned from the late 1980s. However, both patterns of public risk perception and new technological developments suggest that it is time to re-open that debate. The important issues about AI arise in connection with the prospect of robotic and digital agent systems taking socially significant decisions autonomously. Now that this is possible, the key concerns are now about which decisions should be and which should not be delegated to machines, issues of regulation in the broad sense covering everything from consumer information through codes of professional ethics for designers to statutory controls, issues of design responsibility and problems of liability.     

The role of narrative in public relations ethics pedagogy

Competence in ethical decision making is one of the most important issues in the industry and practice of public relations, yet professionals entering the discipline overestimate their knowledge and skills related to ethical principles. This article features a pedagogical approach to strengthen ethics education in public relations through the use of collaborative student-professional ethics narratives. This technique attempts to move beyond a traditional case study approach and transcend traditional classroom boundaries through the development of narratives featuring real ethics situations experienced by public relations professionals. The project involved the development, implementation and assessment of the pedagogical approach that required students to interview local communication professionals (mostly in public relations) and to craft narratives that explore ethical dilemmas these professionals faced. Pre- and post-test surveys and group feedback helped explore the impact of narrative inquiry in helping students internalize ethical lessons.     

Organizational ethics, decision making, undecidability

In this paper we develop a conceptualisation of organizational decision‐making as a practice that is, necessarily, ethical. The paper starts with a discussion of the notion of decision‐making as it relates to organizational rationality and the relationship between management and control. Drawing on Derrida's discussions of undecidability and responsibility, we suggest that as well as being able to consider organizational decision‐making as an instance of (albeit bounded) rationality or calculability, it can also be regarded as a process of choice amongst heterogenous possibilities. On that basis, we follow Derrida in arguing that for a decision to be considered an instance of responsible action it must be made with neither recourse to knowledge of its outcome nor to the application of pre‐ordained rules. Illustrating our argument with a discussion of Eichmann's ‘I was just following orders’ defence, we suggest that rules for ethical decision making, rather than ensuring ethical outcomes, can work to insulate organizations from moral responsibility. We conclude with a discussion of ethics and democracy in relation to responsible decision making in organizations.     

Ethics of care in action: Overview of holistic framework with application to employee engagement

At the heart of public relations is the act of creating relationships that facilitate dialog, collaboration, and ongoing trust. This paper aims to conceptualize a framework based on ethics of care (EoC) that harnesses these core underpinnings, which propel the public relations industry, to enhance employee engagement. The ethics of care applied to employee engagement (EoCAEE) framework combines the success found within the EoC phases, along with the landscapes presented in the Applied Model of Care Considerations (AMCC), to ensure ethical, holistic decision making. EoCAEE repositions employee engagement as an ethical practice for organizations to prioritize with actionable steps.     

Socially Responsible Roles of Professional Ethics: Inclusivity,Psychotherapy and ‘the Protection of the Public’

The remit of the apparatus of professional ethics in the field of psychotherapy can be appropriately expanded so as to make the profession more socially responsible and thereby contribute to the ‘protection of the public’ that is said to be the main purpose of statutory regulation. Using ideas culled from the sociology of the professions, political theory and ethical discourse, it is proposed that ethical psychotherapy cannot take place if its overall social framework is itself profoundly unethical. Inclusivity and diversity are reframed as ethical professional practices. Questions of wealth, gender, sexuality and ethnicity are not only ‘social’ or ‘political’—they are also part of a morally imaginative expansion of what we mean by professional ethics. Attention is paid to the dangers of self-righteousness and moral tyranny.     

Characteristics and Dimensions of Ethical Leadership in Public Relations

This study explores the characteristics of leadership in developing and managing ethics in public relations, based on in-depth interviews with 20 public relations executives in the United States. Systematic analysis of the interview data identified multiple dimensions of ethical leadership and ethical knowledge, and suggested that ethical leadership is grounded in personal rather than professional characteristics. Personal ethics, interpersonal behaviors, and articulation of ethical standards emerged as 3 salient characteristics of an ideal leader in facilitating knowledge transfer of ethics in public relations organizations. Ethical knowledge is implicit, intangible, personal, and often difficult to identify or articulate, posing a challenge for the transfer of knowledge through structured and formalized approaches. Theoretical implications and practical recommendations are discussed.     

Making waves: trauma and ethics in the work of lars von Trier

The cinema of Lars von Trier can be characterised in diverse ways, but one of the most striking and memorable aspects of his work in the “Europa trilogy” (Element of Crime 1984; Epidemic 1987; Europa 1991) and the more recent “Goldheart trilogy” (Breaking the Waves 1996; The Idiots 1998; Dancer in the Dark 2000) is the centrality of trauma in both narrative and form and the corresponding emphasis on ethics. Each of these trilogies sets out to scrutinise ambiguities and ambivalences around binaries such as good/evil and guilt/innocence through the exploration of socio‐cultural trauma such as war and plague in the earlier trilogy, and through more individually‐inflected trauma in the latter one. Interestingly, von Trier flags the inter‐relation between the success of the ideals that are central to his narrative forays and the gender of his protagonists (Smith , p. 24). How, then, might it be possible to make sense of the slippages and confusions implicit in von Trier’s film‐making in order to discern his ethical concerns, and how might these concerns be articulated through cultural assumptions about gender and ethical identities? This essay explores the ethical assumptions and imperatives that mark out von Trier’s work, signalling the role of the spectator in the formation of the ethics of his cinematic project. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory and feminist notions of ethics, the paper asks whether von Trier’s work is merely to be framed in terms of postmodern provocation or whether his manipulations of cinema and all its accoutrements ought rather to be understood in terms of a radical artistic endeavour designed to foreground the importance and potential of cinema as a site of scrutiny of the inter‐relation between ethics, trauma and gender.     

Morals,Ethics and practice — in search of social justice

Abstract

This paper reports a study of sources of influence on moral and ethical decision-making in social work practice. Practitioners from ten government and five non government agencies kept journals about the main moral issues they faced over a one-month period and were then interviewed about the nature of those issues, their resolution and the influences that shaped those resolutions. Practitioners' personal moral perspectives were found to be the main sources of influence on resolutions to a wide range of dilemmas and most of those resolutions did not conform to accepted social wok ethical practice principles. Even though the results of this study are drawn from a small sample, some implications are suggested for practitioner development, professional ethics and social work education.     

Observing the lighthouse

This paper discusses the nature of codes of ethics in social work. The desirability of defining rights and obligations in social services is widely accepted, but formal ethical codes often seem both excessively ambitious and insufficiently precise. Their usefulness is thus cast into doubt. The paper considers the influence of major traditions of moral theory and examines the nature of professional codes. It is argued that the precepts embodied in codes of ethics are of limited value unless supported by practical social institutions which attend to the proper implementation of ethical principles. The profession's code of ethics is likened to the function of the lighthouse: to serve as a point of reference and warning of danger, but not to work out one's course or one's destination.