1. Designed to be used for teaching
Each chapter corresponds to a two-hour lecture. The ten chapters make up a full course that has been proven in use.
2. Questions and homework
Questions and homework are included. Most of them assume a familiarity with the Internet, and address modern, real-world questions.
3. Real cases of unethical behaviour
Cases from oil, pharmaceuticals, computing, auditing, banking etc are cited in the text.
4. Real cases of good ethical behaviour
Referenced cases include the Red Cross and several businesses. All have performed well.
5. Major unsolved questions
Governance of climate and finance, major outstanding challenges for humanity, are discussed.
6. Extending ethics to organisations
This has been covered previously only in two books, both addressing US Health systems. This is the first attempt at a general methodology. Holistic methods like systems theory and complexity are covered.
7. Integrating social responsibility into ethics
This too has been covered before, but without addressing the implicit logical difficulties, eg when addressing human rights. This is the first book to include ISO 26000 (Crane and Matten 2010 references an early version that was later radically altered).
8. Integrating governance into ethics
Governance is an area in development, with conflicts between the US model (which prioritises ‘freedom’) and the European one (which places greater emphasis on ‘stakeholder orientation’). This is written from a European point of view, while referencing a major work from South Africa.
9. Integrating modern management
Many texts, especially in business ethics, assume old management methods are still in use, such as US mass production from the 1950s. This book incorporates Japanese production, service management, and ethics and governance concerns to make it full up to date.
10. Integrating philosophy
The text includes philosophical topics like methodology, Philosophy of Science, logic and Theory of Knowledge. It also covers modern concepts like complexity, chaos, fractals, alternatives to ‘peer reviews’ etc.
11. Decisions
The book covers ethics for decision-making; shortcomings of normal human decisions; challenges to decision support systems; and ethics as a basis for computer systems.
The author participates in the development of future standards in Human Resources, project management and finance.
Fjellhamar June 13 2013
Tore Audun Høie