Driven by interests in workforce planning and patient safety, a growing body of literature has begun to identify the reality and the prevalence of missed nursing care, also specified as care left undone, rationed care or unfinished care. Empirical studies and conceptual considerations have focused on structural issues such as staffing, as well as on outcome issues – missed care/unfinished care. Philosophical and ethical aspects of unfinished care are largely unexplored. Thus, while internationally studies highlight instances of covert rationing/missed care/care (...) left undone – suggesting that nurses, in certain contexts, are actively engaged in rationing care – in terms of the nursing and nursing ethics literature, there appears to be a dearth of explicit decision-making frameworks within which to consider rationing of nursing care. In reality, the assumption of policy makers and health service managers is that nurses will continue to provide full care – despite reducing staffing levels and increased patient turnover, dependency and complexity of care. Often, it would appear that rationing/missed care/nursing care left undone is a direct response to overwhelming demands on the nursing resource in specific contexts. A discussion of resource allocation and rationing in nursing therefore seems timely. The aim of this discussion paper is to consider the ethical dimension of issues of resource allocation and rationing as they relate to nursing care and the distribution of the nursing resource. (shrink)

Surgical devices are often marketed before there is good evidence of their safety and effectiveness. Our paper discusses the ethical issues associated with the early marketing and use of new surgical devices from the perspectives of the six groups most concerned. Health Canada, which is responsible for licensing new surgical devices, should amend their requirements to include rigorous clinical trials that provide data on effectiveness and safety for each new product before it is marketed. Industry should comply with all Health (...) Canada requirements to obtain licenses for new products. Until Health Canada requires effectiveness and safety data, industry should cooperate with physicians in appropriate studies before releasing new products and should make balanced presentations of all the available evidence. Surgeons should, before using a new surgical device, assess the evidence on its effectiveness and safety and ensure they are properly trained and competent in using the device. Surgeons should provide their patients with an evaluation of the available evidence and inform them about possible complications and the surgeon's level of experience with the new device. Patients, who should be given an honest evaluation of the available evidence, possible complications, and the surgeon's experience, should be encouraged to evaluate the evidence and information to their own satisfaction to ensure that fully informed consent is given. Health institutions, responsible for regulating practice within their walls, should review new devices for safety, effectiveness, and economic impacts, before allowing their use. They should also limit the use of new surgical devices to surgeons trained and competent in the new technology. Professional societies should provide guidance on the early adoption of new surgical devices and technologies. We urge all those involved in the development, licensing, and use of new surgical devices to aim for higher ethical standards to protect the health and safety of patients requiring surgery. The lowest acceptable ethical standard would require device manufacturers to provide surgeons with accurate and timely information on the efficacy and safety of their products, allowing surgeons and patients to evaluate the evidence (and the significance of information not yet available) before surgery. (shrink)

Business schools are frequently blamed for corporate ethical scandals by failing to develop integrity and critical ethical thinking skills in managers. What should business schools teach to address this? The paper proposes a framework for the development and evaluation of a business ethics curriculum, which is grounded on the AACSB learning goals of ethical understanding, reasoning abilities, managerial knowledge and ethical capacities. The framework is two building blocks in the form of tests, which together provide quality measures for business ethics (...) content and a definition of the scope and depth of knowledge an ethics curriculum should contain. Overall, the framework is a supplement to the AACSB guidelines and its purpose is to be a curriculum development tool. (shrink)

Business schools are frequently blamed for corporate ethical scandals by failing to develop integrity and critical ethical thinking skills in managers. What should business schools teach to address this? The paper proposes a framework for the development and evaluation of a business ethics curriculum, which is grounded on the AACSB learning goals of ethical understanding, reasoning abilities, managerial knowledge and ethical capacities. The framework is two building blocks in the form of tests, which together provide quality measures for business ethics (...) content and a definition of the scope and depth of knowledge an ethics curriculum should contain. Overall, the framework is a supplement to the AACSB guidelines and its purpose is to be a curriculum development tool. (shrink)

This paper presents a philosophical critique of intuitionism and other current theories of rationality that underlie and, in some cases, question the cogency of codes of ethics. A classical theory of rationality is defended and a concept of ‘reasonableness’ is developed as an ideal-type in setting out the principles for an effective ethical education that can form the basis for implementing a code of conduct.

For-profit degree granting institutions are a growing and under-researched market segment that represents an extreme level of business involvement in academe. Permitting such institutions to grant degrees is a concern because the profit motive gives an incentive to operators to misrepresent the quality and benefits of such degrees. This paper addresses the issue of how adequately government quality assurance processes are able to protect the public interest. The degree program approval processes in three countries are evaluated using the UNESCO guidelines (...) for cross-border quality provision in higher education as an internationally accepted standard of quality assurance. (shrink)

Many years ago Wilamowitz desiderated a systematic collection of the texts which relate to the different types of poetry composed by the great lyric poets of Greece. He hoped that if we could only crystallize our admittedly scanty information about the characteristics of, say, the Paean or the Dirge, we might be able to reach a slightly better understanding than we have now of the formal structure and artistic design of the poems and fragments which have come down to us (...) under these titles. Indeed, this kind of knowledge is very important. (shrink)

One of the ways in which a poet may show his quality is by discrimination and originality in his choice of adjectives. Poetry likes to adorn the bare noun; a noun such as ‘the sky’ calls out for an attribute. But in practice the poet has to take care to avoid the cliche. He can seldom write ‘the blue sky’; even ‘the azure sky’ has become trite. He has to search for the epithet which will be both apt and original.

For-profit universities are degree-granting institutions that are owned and operated by business corporations. This paper addresses two related public policy questions about for-profit universities. First, should governments and appropriate regulatory bodies permit for-profit universities to grant degrees in their jurisdiction? Second, should higher education policy be developed to create for-profit universities? In this paper, a property rights argument is presented to demonstrate that a corporation should have the right to offer degrees if certain regulatory tests can be met. In limited (...) circumstances, governments might consider establishing for-profit universities, but only if they promote public goods. (shrink)

AT the conclusion of his recently published paper on Corinna1 Professor Page leaves open the question whether the poetess was a contemporary of Pindar or of Moschus-whether she belongs to the middle of the fifth century or the end of the third. He gives excellent reasons for believing that these two dates exhaust the possibilities: they are far more probable than a date either outside or between them; but there seems to be no sure criterion by which we can decide (...) between the two, and Professor Page has to end his researches with a suspension of judgement. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEnvironmental ethics research pays much attention to the rights of individuals, future generations, and nonhuman stakeholders to have a clean environment. Moral condemnation is directed at polluters for violation of stakeholder rights. However, little consideration is given in the research literature to those who are harmed by well‐intended progressive environmental legislation. This article addresses the moral entitlements of small, remote resource‐based communities not to be harmed by environmental legislation that results in the elimination of the major employer that economically sustains (...) them. It is argued that these communities are morally entitled to the best attempt by a government to mitigate the harm or compensate for it. The article shows how a government can go beyond compensation to form collaborative public–private partnerships to promote strategically viable future directions for communities. (shrink)

Investment in financially distressed companies has taken place since the end of the depression. But a new breed of predatory activist investors called "vultures" has emerged in recent years. They take sizable debt positions in insolvent companies with the intention of significantly increasing the value of their investment through aggressive negotiation either in bankruptcy or in pre-bankruptcy restructurings. Predators thrive on adversarial conflict. Vulture investment is legal, but is it morally acceptable? This paper argues that the strategies and tactics of (...) vultures may be very unpleasant, but in themselves these are insufficient grounds for moral censure. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The pioneering sociologist William Graham Sumner was a prolific and astute historian of the early American republic, whose work was informed by his classical liberalism and his understanding of economics. He authored seven major works including biographies and thematic studies concentrating on the vital subjects of currency, banking, business cycles, foreign trade, protectionism, and politics. Although his works are out of print, and hardly mentioned or referred to by historians or economists, they are quite valuable for understanding the politics and (...) major economic issues of the first century of the republic.1 They are: History of American Currency, Lectures on the History of Protection, Andrew Jackson, Alexander Hamilton, The Financier and Finances of the American Revolution, 2 vols., Robert Morris, History of Banking in the United States. As one can see, Sumner was most interested in the history of money and banking in America. He was a resolute opponent of inflation, inconvertible currencies, legal tender laws, bimetallic standards, and the American practice of fractional-reserve banking. His theory of the business cycle was built on the work of antebellum political economists such as Condy Raguet. Sumner’s understanding of it is sophisticated and proto- Austrian. (shrink)

In this research, we examine the effects that customer perceptions of employee deception have on the customers’ attitudes toward an organization. Based on interview, archival, and observational data within the international airline industry, we develop a model to explain the complex effects of perceived dishonesty on observer’s attitudes and intentions toward the airline. The data revealed three types of perceived deceit (about beliefs, intentions, and emotions) and three additional factors that influence customer intentions and attitudes: the players involved, the beneficiaries (...) of the deceit, and the harm done by the perceived lie. We develop a model with specific propositions to guide organizations with respect to apparently deceitful behavior of their employees. Implications and directions for future research are provided, focusing on the question of whether organizations should consistently encourage honesty or train their employees to be effective liars. (shrink)

Managers in Peru, South Africa, and the United States were classified into four groups along Singhapakdi et al. (J Bus Ethics 15:1131–1140, 1996) Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility (PRESOR) scale. In Peru and the United States, individuals in the ethics and social responsibility first category reported greater satisfaction with organizational performance than did those in the profits first category. Moral capitalists—individuals who report high emphases on both social responsibility and profits—reported the highest satisfaction with performance in the United (...) States. Managers in the United States are more likely than their counterparts in Peru and South Africa to reject the mutual exclusivity of prioritizing social responsibility and profits simultaneously. Directions for future research are outlined. (shrink)