Professions in Ethical Focus – Second Edition
  • Publication Date: May 10, 2021
  • ISBN: 9781554814442 / 1554814448
  • 536 pages; 7¾" x 9¼"

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Professions in Ethical Focus – Second Edition

  • Publication Date: May 10, 2021
  • ISBN: 9781554814442 / 1554814448
  • 536 pages; 7¾" x 9¼"

This second edition of Professions in Ethical Focus comprises over seventy-five readings complemented by twenty case studies with corresponding discussion questions. These resources are organized into several thematic units, including “conflicts of interest,” “honesty, deception, and trust,” “privacy and confidentiality,” and “professionalism, diversity, and pluralism.” An alternative table of contents is also provided, identifying readings that bear on particular professions such as engineering, journalism, medicine, law, and policing. The book’s introductory unit offers short selections from classic and contemporary ethical theory, including non-Western traditions. All of the readings have been introduced by the editors and carefully excerpted for relevance, always with the needs of student readers in mind.

Comments

“The second edition of Professions in Ethical Focus is an excellent text for any professional ethics course. Readings are smartly arranged by topic but also cross-listed by profession. The options have been greatly expanded as well and cover a variety of new professions (military, politics, public relations, religion, technology, etc.) in addition to the ‘classic’ professions of medicine, law, engineering, and finance. I also commend the editors’ commitment to diversity. Selections for this volume include voices that are often underrepresented, and they touch on topics such as Eastern and African philosophy. This book answers needs that have gone unaddressed in the field of professional ethics for some time.” — Brian Gatsch, University of New Mexico

“This book effectively tackles key ethical principles by applying them to an expansive range of professions, including the business, education, engineering, journalism, law, police, social work, and technology sectors. Longstanding ethical issues—privacy and confidentiality, honesty and trust, as well as diversity and pluralism—are especially timely. Students and scholars will benefit considerably from the ideas and concepts presented within.” — Timothy Dewhirst, University of Guelph

“If you’ve spent time looking for useful case studies before, you’ll appreciate everything about the twenty cases in this book. They are clear and interesting, and many deal with topics that current students will know about or at least have heard of. Their length makes them manageable for students of all abilities, and they carry a few discussion questions.” — Bryce Gessell, Teaching Philosophy

Contents, Organized by Profession

  • Accounting
  • Education
  • Engineering
  • Finance/Business
  • Journalism
  • Law
  • Medicine
  • Military
  • Police
  • Politics/Leadership
  • Public Relations
  • Religion
  • Science/Research
  • Social Work
  • Technology

Introduction: Why Study Professional Ethics? Fritz Allhoff, Jonathan Milgrim, and Anand J. Vaidya

UNIT 1: ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE

  • Unit Editor: Jonathan Milgrim
  • Introduction
  • 1. Robert Audi, “Some Approaches to Determining Ethical Obligations”
  • 2. Immanuel Kant, “Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals”
  • 3. John Stuart Mill, “Utilitarianism”
  • 4. Virginia Held, “The Ethics of Care as Moral Theory”
  • 5. Daryl Koehn, “What Can Eastern Philosophy Teach Us about Business Ethics?”
  • 6. Thaddeus Metz, “Toward an African Moral Theory”
  • 7. Yuri Cath, “Reflective Equilibrium”
  • 8. John P. Anderson, “Sophie’s Choice”
  • Case Study: Anna M. Kietzerow, “The Trolley Problem”
  • Case Study: Rebecca Cobern Kates, “Alligator River Story”

UNIT 2: PROFESSIONS AND PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

  • Unit Editor: Jonathan Milgrim
  • Introduction
  • 9. Ernest Greenwood, “Attributes of a Profession”
  • 10. Don Welch, “Just Another Day at the Office: The Ordinariness of Professional Ethics”
  • 11. John T. Sanders, “Honor among Thieves: Some Reflections on Professional Codes of Ethics”
  • 12. Michael Davis, “Professional Responsibility: Just Following the Rules?”
  • 13. Avery Kolers, “Am I My Profession’s Keeper?”
  • 14. Bob Brecher, “Against Professional Ethics”
  • Case Study: Jonathan Milgrim, “Determining Professional Authority: The Canadian Amber Light Case”
  • Case Study: Jonathan Milgrim, “Refusing to Work: Weighing Patient Safety against Long Hours”

UNIT 3: PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY

  • Unit Editors: Jonathan Milgrim and Fritz Allhoff
  • Introduction
  • 15. Bowen H. McCoy, “The Parable of the Sadhu”
  • 16. Josie Fisher, “Social Responsibility and Ethics: Clarifying the Concepts”
  • 17. Simon Robinson, “The Nature of Responsibility in a Professional Setting”
  • 18. Sissela Bok, “Whistleblowing and Leaks”
  • 19. Theodore L. Glasser, “Objectivity Precludes Responsibility”
  • 20. Michael S. Pritchard, “Responsible Engineering: The Importance of Character and Imagination”
  • 21. Kenneth Kipnis, “Ethics and the Professional Responsibility of Lawyers”
  • 22. Kathy Fitzpatrick and Candace Gauthier, “Toward a Professional Responsibility Theory of Public Relations Ethics”
  • Case Study: Joanne Lau, “The West Gate Bridge: Who Was Responsible?”
  • Case Study: Dale Brown, “Snowden, Security, and Civil Liberties: The Ethics of Whistleblowing”

UNIT 4: CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

  • Unit Editors: Fritz Allhoff and Alexander Hoffman
  • Introduction
  • 23. Neil R. Luebke, “Conflict of Interest as a Moral Category”
  • 24. Michael Davis, “Conflict of Interest Revisited”
  • 25. Andrew Stark, “Comparing Conflict of Interest across the Professions”
  • 26. Catherine Gowthorpe and Oriol Amat, “Creative Accounting: Some Ethical Issues of Macro- and Micro-Manipulation”
  • 27. Judith Lichtenberg, “Truth, Neutrality, and Conflict of Interest”
  • 28. Neil R. Luebke, “Conflict of Interest in Engineering”
  • 29. Stephen Coleman, “Conflict of Interest and Police: An Unavoidable Problem”
  • 30. Fritz Allhoff and Jonathan Milgrim, “Conflicts of Interest and the Presidency”
  • Case Study: Fritz Allhoff, “Pharmaceutical Payments and Opioid Prescriptions”
  • Case Study: Alexander Hoffman, “The Sandusky Assault”

UNIT 5: HONESTY, DECEPTION, AND TRUST

  • Unit Editors: Fritz Allhoff and Jonathan Milgrim
  • Introduction
  • 31. Harry Frankfurt, “On Truth, Lies, and Bullshit”
  • 32. Jonathan E. Adler, “Lying, Deceiving, or Falsely Implicating”
  • 33. Andreas Eriksen, “What Is Professional Integrity?”
  • 34. Patricia H. Werhane, “The Ethics of Insider Trading”
  • 35. Lori Robertson, “Ethically Challenged”
  • 36. David C. Thomasma, “Telling the Truth to Patients: A Clinical Ethics Exploration”
  • 37. David Geronemus, “Lies, Damn Lies and Unethical Lies: How to Negotiate Ethically and Effectively”
  • 38. Christopher Nathan, “Liability to Deception and Manipulation: The Ethics of Undercover Policing”
  • Case Study: Daniel J. Wirth, “Earnings and Ethics: Thinking about Enron”
  • Case Study: Patrick Lin, “The Ethics of Bluffing: Oracle’s Takeover of PeopleSoft”

UNIT 6: PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIALITY

  • Unit Editors: Erika Versalovic and Anna Bates
  • Introduction
  • 39. Adam D. Moore, “Privacy: Its Meaning and Value”
  • 40. Mary Beth Armstrong, “Confidentiality: A Comparison across the Professions of Medicine, Engineering, and Accounting”
  • 41. Dennis F. Thompson, “Privacy, Politics, and the Press”
  • 42. Bruce M. Landesman, “Confidentiality and the Lawyer-Client Relationship”
  • 43. Lee A. Pizzimenti, “Informing Clients about Limits to Confidentiality”
  • 44. Kenneth Kipnis, “A Defense of Unqualified Medical Confidentiality”
  • 45. Bo Brinkman, “An Analysis of Student Privacy Rights in the Use of Plagiarism Detection Systems”
  • 46. Ira S. Rubinstein and Nathaniel Good, “Privacy by Design: A Counterfactual Analysis of Google and Facebook Privacy Incidents”
  • Case Study: Aaron Quinn, “Breaking a Promise to Prevent a Lie”
  • Case Study: Erika M. Versalovic, “To Share or Not to Share: When Patient Confidentiality and Physicians’ Duties to Protect Conflict”

UNIT 7: PROFESSIONALISM,
DIVERSITY, AND PLURALISM

  • Unit Editor: Jill Gatfield
  • Introduction
  • 47. Carina Fourie, Fabian Schuppert, and Ivo Wallimann-Helmer, “The Nature and Distinctiveness of Social Equality”
  • 48. Anita M. Superson, “A Feminist Definition of Sexual Harassment”
  • 49. Caitlin Flanagan, “The Problem with HR”
  • 50. Ronald Dworkin, “Why Bakke Has No Case”
  • 51. Clarence Thomas, “Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin Concurrence
  • 52. John Corvino, “‘Under God’s Authority’: Professional Responsibility, Religious Accommodations, and the Culture Wars”
  • 53. Michael S. Merry, “Should Educators Accommodate Intolerance?: Mark Halstead, Homosexuality, and the Islamic Case”
  • 54. Thomas A. Hemphill and Waheeda Lillevik, “U.S. Pharmacists, Pharmacies, and Emergency Contraception”
  • Case Study: Wally Siewert, “The Schiavo Case and End-of-Life Decisions”
  • Case Study: T.J. Broy, “Religious Commitments in the Workplace”

UNIT 8: PROFESSIONALISM IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

  • Unit Editors: Kyle J. Yrigoyen and Anand J. Vaidya
  • Introduction
  • 55. Vivian M. Weil, “Professional Standards: Can They Shape Practice in an International Context?”
  • 56. Thomas Donaldson, “Values in Tension: Ethics Away from Home”
  • 57. Curtis E. Clements, John D. Neill, and O. Scott Stovall, “The Impact of Cultural Differences on the Convergence of International Accounting Codes of Ethics”
  • 58. Michael Perkins, “International Law and the Search for Universal Principles in Journalism Ethics”
  • 59. Andrew Boon and John Flood, “Globalization of Professional Ethics? : The Significance of Lawyers’ International Codes of Conduct”
  • 60. Hengli Zhang and Michael Davis, “Engineering Ethics in China”
  • 61. Ndungi wa Mungai, Gidraph G. Wairire, and Emma Rush, “The Challenges of Maintaining Social Work Ethics in Kenya”
  • 62. Nurbay Irmak, “Professional Ethics in Extreme Circumstances: Responsibilities of Attending Physicians and Healthcare Providers in Hunger Strikes”
  • Case Study: Jonathan Milgrim, “Standing on Principle: Tech Workers Refusing Projects with Military Applications”
  • Case Study: Chad Watson, “Rights and Responsibility: Arrests of International Journalists”

UNIT 9: CLIENT-BASED PROFESSIONS

  • Unit Editors: Luke Golemon and T.J. Broy
  • Introduction
  • 63. Michael Bayles, “The Professional-Client Relationship”
  • 64. Edmund D. Pellegrino, “The Virtuous Physician and the Ethics of Medicine”
  • 65. Pamela J. Grace, “Nursing Ethics and Professional Responsibility”
  • 66. Michael Davis, “Is There a Profession of Engineering?”
  • 67. Yotam Lurie and Shlomo Mark, “Professional Ethics of Software Engineers: An Ethical Framework”
  • 68. Domènec Melé, “Ethical Education in Accounting: Integrating Rules, Values, and Virtues”
  • 69. Frederic Reamer, “Social Work Values and Ethics: An Overview”
  • Case Study: Hans Allhoff, “Willful Ignorance and the Limits of Advocacy”
  • Case Study: Luke Golemon, “Professional Misconduct While Off-Duty”

UNIT 10: INSTITUTION-BASED PROFESSIONS

  • Unit Editors: T.J. Broy and Luke Golemon
  • Introduction
  • 70. G.R. (Dick) Chesley and Bruce Anderson, “Are University Professors Qualified to Teach Ethics?”
  • 71. David B. Resnik, “What Is Ethics in Research and Why Is It Important?”
  • 72. David Detmer, “The Ethical Responsibilities of Journalists”
  • 73. Patricia Cook, “The Military: A Profession Like No Other”
  • 74. Joanne B. Ciulla, “Leadership Ethics: Mapping the Territory”
  • 75. Seumas Miller, “Professional Ethics for Police”
  • 76. Kenneth Kipnis, “The Certified Clinical Ethics Consultant”
  • 77. Paul F. Camenisch, “Clergy Ethics and the Professional Ethics Model”
  • Case Study: T.J. Broy, “My Lai Massacre: Just Following Orders”
  • Case Study: T.J. Broy, “Church Sex Abuse”

Permissions Acknowledgments

Fritz Allhoff is Professor of Philosophy at Western Michigan University. Jonathan Milgrim is a doctoral student at the University of Washington. Anand J. Vaidya is Professor of Philosophy at San José State University.

  • • A comprehensive and up-to-date collection of over 75 readings and 20 case studies.
  • • Content is organized thematically, with units covering a broad range of important topics in professional ethics such as conflicts of interest, relationships of trust, and confidentiality.
  • • A secondary table of contents organizes the readings and cases according to the specific professions to which they are most relevant; these professions include: accounting, education, engineering, business, journalism, law, medicine, military, police work, and more.
  • • Readings have been thoughtfully edited so as to focus on the themes and topics most relevant to students.
  • • Each of the book’s units includes an introduction as well as case studies with corresponding discussion questions.
  • • Supplemental multiple choice and true-false quiz questions covering each of the book’s readings are available for instructor use.

This text has a companion site with quizzes for each of the book’s readings. The quizzes are available in Word format and as digital files that can be uploaded into Learning Management Systems such as Blackboard and D2L.

Professions in Ethical Focus – Second Edition is available as a digital courseware package on the Broadview Enhanced platform. This package combines the eBook with a set of auto-grading quizzes that integrate directly with your campus Learning Management System (LMS), such as Blackboard, D2L, or Moodle. This product is ideal for Inclusive Access and other First Day programs.

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