Undesigning Culture. A brief reflection on design as ethical practice

This essay furthers the understanding of design as ethical practice.\ud Based on a perspective on the relationship between humans and technology as a\ud material-discursive practice, an argument is developed in which the meaning and\ud matter of a technology is not perceived as the effect of use only. Matter and\ud meaning emerge in each iteration in the design process of a technology. A design\ud strategy is presented in which ethics becomes an integral part of the design\ud process

Preparing millennials as digital citizens and socially and environmentally responsible business professionals in a socially irresponsible climate

As of 2015, a millennial born in the 1990's became the largest population in the workplace and are still growing. Studies indicate that a millennial is tech savvy but lag in the exercise of digital responsibility. In addition, they are passive towards environmental sustainability and fail to grasp the importance of social responsibility. This paper provides a review of such findings relating to business communications educators in their classrooms. The literature should enable the development of a millennial as an excellent global citizen through business communications curricula that emphasizes digital citizenship, environmental sustainability and social responsibility. The impetus for this work is to provide guidance in the development of courses and teaching strategies customized to the development of each millennial as a digital, environmental and socially responsible global citizen

The Ethical Implications of Personal Health Monitoring

Personal Health Monitoring (PHM) uses electronic devices which monitor and record health-related data outside a hospital, usually within the home. This paper examines the ethical issues raised by PHM. Eight themes describing the ethical implications of PHM are identified through a review of 68 academic articles concerning PHM. The identified themes include privacy, autonomy, obtrusiveness and visibility, stigma and identity, medicalisation, social isolation, delivery of care, and safety and technological need. The issues around each of these are discussed. The system / lifeworld perspective of Habermas is applied to develop an understanding of the role of PHMs as mediators of communication between the institutional and the domestic environment. Furthermore, links are established between the ethical issues to demonstrate that the ethics of PHM involves a complex network of ethical interactions. The paper extends the discussion of the critical effect PHMs have on the patient’s identity and concludes that a holistic understanding of the ethical issues surrounding PHMs will help both researchers and practitioners in developing effective PHM implementations

An exploratory investigation of aberrant consumer behaviour in Libya: a sociocultural approach

Studies concerning aberrant consumer behaviour (ACB) are dominated by research conducted in the West. By examining the impact social and cultural factors have on the management and understanding of ACB in Libya, a Muslim country, this paper extends knowledge by exploring this issue in a different setting. Materials were collected by conducting in-depth interviews with 26 sellers in Libya and ACB was explored in three different contexts: grocery stores, computer stores and hotels. The study finds that the sellers use alternative marketplace behaviours to manage ACB to that described in the literature, namely informal, community based approaches which reflect accepted societal and cultural norms. Furthermore, the study finds that not all activities reported to be ACB in the literature are perceived to be misbehaviour by the Libyan sellers

Comparative Philosophies in Intercultural Information Ethics

The following review explores Intercultural Information Ethics in terms of comparative philosophy, supporting IIE as the most relevant and significant development of the field of Information Ethics. The focus of the review is threefold. First, it will review the core presumption of the field of IIE, that being the demand for an intermission in the pursuit of a founding philosophy for IE in order to first address the philosophical biases of IE by western philosophy. Second, a history of the various philosophical streams of IIE will be outlined, including its literature and pioneering contributors. Lastly, a new synthesis of comparative philosophies in IIE will be offered, looking towards a future evolution of the field. Examining the interchange between contemporary information ethicists regarding the discipline of IIE, the review first outlines the previously established presumptions of the field of IIE that posit the need for an IE as grounded in western sensibilities. The author then addresses the implications of the foregoing presumption from several non-western viewpoints, arguing that IIE does in fact find roots in non-western philosophies as established in the concluding synthesis of western and eastern philosophical traditions

What Should We Share? : Understanding the Aim of Intercultural Information Ethics

The aim of Intercultural Information Ethics (IIE), as Ess aptly puts, is to “(a) address both local and global issues evoked by ICTs / CMC, etc., (b) in a ways that both sustain local traditions / values / preference, etc. and (c) provide shared, (quasi-) universal responses to central ethical problems” (Ess 2007a, 102). This formulation of the aim of IIE, however, is not unambiguous. In this paper, I will discuss two different understandings of the aim of IIE, one of which advocates “shared norms, different interpretations” and another proposes “shared norms, different justifications”. I shall argue that the first understanding is untenable, and the second understanding is acceptable only with qualification. Finally, I shall briefly suggest an alternative way to understand the aim of IIE

The Emergence of Law Consultants

In this paper we study a slightly subcritical Choquard problem on a bounded domain A. We prove that the number of positive solutions depends on the topology of the domain. In particular when the exponent of the nonlinearity approaches the critical one, we show the existence of cat (A) + 1 solutions. Here cat (A) denotes the Lusternik–Schnirelmann category

Ethical Dilemmas In Management: An African Perspective

The modern workplace is composed of people with diverse backgrounds in terms of nationality, culture, religion, age, education and socioeconomic status. Each of these people enters the work with different values, goals, and perceptions of acceptable behaviours. The diverse background creates ethical challenges for individuals as well as managers. There are issues and decisions that are to be made by workers in the organization that have implications for their job security and salary, and success of the organization. Pressure may be on the workers to protect their own interests, sometimes at the risk of losing personal and corporate integrity. This paper attempts to evaluate ethical dilemmas and conflicts from an Africa perspective, bearing in mind different value systems between western and African nations

Professional Ethics and Social Responsibility: Military Work and Peacebuilding

The paper considers a number of important questions related to the involvement of engineers in peacebuilding and military work, including the preference of many countries for high tech weapons based security over peacebuilding, whether and in what circumstances, if any, it is justified for engineers to be involved in military work; and how engineers can persuade their colleagues to apply their skills to support peacebuilding. It is introduced by an overview of what is meant by the term military work and the extent and consequences of the use of military technology worldwide. This is followed by the applications of different approaches and theories of ethics to discuss the questions presented in the introduction. The approaches and theories applied include considerations of micro-and macro-ethics, codes of ethics, virtue ethics, considerations of gender and paradigms and the ethical imperative. Initial insights include the importance of considering the associated context and the need to avoid othering, which can make different treatment of minority groups, including the use of high tech weapons against them, seem acceptable