JANE DIAZ

MR. PAJO

BS-IM

ITHETHICS

BOOKREVIEW # 12

BUSINESS & SOCIETY

by: A. Carroll, A. Buchholtz

HF 5387

Chapter VII - Personal and Organizational Ethics

Those responsible for organizational ethics may have had experience in clinical

health care ethics, but if they apply whole cloth, common methods of clinical ethics;

perhaps moral reasoning based on autonomy and beneficence to organizational

problems, they quickly become dissatisfied. Even if handy tools to sort out moral

problems in organizational ethics existed, questions would remain. An obvious and

frequent example occurs when a clinician must balance business and patient care

concerns in the same decision. If professionals fulfill their clinical responsibilities, they

protect their patients; at first blush, this appears to contribute to fulfilling the

organization’s mission, since serving the patient is strongly connected to the mission of

health care. It is less clear to the professional what obligation there is to meet business

demands. Implementing organizational ethics in this case might mean identifying what

checks and balances exist within an organization to ensure that the professional

appropriately balances competing interests.

These and similar benefits that can emerge from helping the eyes to see, the

consciousness to understand, and the will to respond to problems in organizational

ethics become apparent in the pages that follow. Anyone who is committed to the

success of a health care organization will see throughout this book clear example of how

inattention to problems and poor response to them can undercut a health care

organization’s mission. Ecology is a helpful analogy for thinking about organizational

ethics because of similar complexities in the study

of the two. Ecology takes into account interactions among cells; individual organisms;

and groupings of individuals, ecosystems, and the entire biosphere. Similarly,

organizational ethics takes into account interaction among individuals, teams of health

care workers, institutions, integrated delivery systems, and the entire health care

environment. Any account of organizational ethics that focuses only on one level of the

environment, such as the team or

the institution, without examining and accounting for interaction among the levels of the

environment, is inadequate.

Chapter VIII - Business Ethics and Technology

One potential way to improve decision-making during the design process

according to such criteria might be to apply some of the formal, prescriptive design

models and methods that have been developed in the literature. Such models and

methods usually promote a more structured approach, taking into account different

options and making explicit decisions at a number of relevant points in the design

process. Nevertheless, such models and methods are not a panacea to all problems in

design. In fact, such methods will be built on ethical presuppositions that may turn out be

problematic. And what looks like a good design and decision-making process on paper

may not be one in reality. The responsibility for this type of issue could be organized in

different ways. One way would be to make someone explicitly responsible for such

aspects. This has the advantage that taking care of these `collective' concerns is

someone's task and that that person may be held accountable afterwards. However, the

danger of such an approach is that others may not feel a responsibility for issues like

safety, while their attention may be crucial to achieve a safe design. Moreover, much

depends on the person doing the integration in this approach. Even if this person is of

good will, the important question is whether she/he will be able to gather and understand

all the relevant information in order to make the `right' decision.

Many professors, staff members, and even administrators see campus

computers and e-mail accounts as their own private property a type of employment

benefit provided with no constraints on use. The fact is, universities "assign" computer

equipment to us as tools to help us perform our jobs more effectively and efficiently, in

the same way that institutions assign offices to faculty members, laboratory space to

scientists, or photocopy machines to departments. Computer equipment, far from being

personal property, is owned and maintained by the university, with restrictions on how it

may be used.

Chapter X - Ethical Issues in the Global Arena

We believe that it is important to work with governments to contribute to

constructive debate on issues surrounding pharmaceuticals and healthcare. In limited

circumstances and only where permitted by law we may make political donations as part

of this engagement. All of our interactions are governed by the Group policies.

Researchers have found that punishment of wrongdoing and awareness of sanctions

against wrongdoers are significant positive influences when promoting ethical behavior

in a community.

All organizations collect personal data on employees, data that if not properly

safeguarded can result in significant negative implications for individuals. Information

such as compensation and background data and personal identification information,

such as social security number and account identifiers, all have to be maintained and

accessed by authorized personnel. Systems that track this data can be secured, but at

some point data must leave those systems and be used. Operational policies and

procedures can address the proper handling of that data but if they're not followed or

enforced, there's hardly any point in having them. Organizations routinely share data

with each other, merging databases containing all kinds of identifiers. Such sample

issues that can occur in such business.