The construction industry is usually characterized as a fragmented system of multiple-organizational entities in which members from different technical backgrounds and moral values join together to develop a particular business or project. The greatest challenge in the construction process for the achievement of a successful practice is the development of an outstanding reputation, which is built on identifying and applying an ethical framework. This framework should reflect a common ethical ground for myriad people involved in this process to survive and (...) compete ethically in today’s turbulent construction market. This study establishes a framework for ethical judgment of behavior and actions conducted in the construction process. The framework was primarily developed based on the essential attributes of business management identified in the literature review and subsequently incorporates additional attributes identified to prevent breaches in the construction industry and common ethical values related to professional engineering. The proposed judgment framework is based primarily on the ethical dimension of professional responsibility. The Ethical Judgment Framework consists of descriptive approaches involving technical, professional, administrative, and miscellaneous terms. The framework provides the basis for judging actions as either ethical or unethical. Furthermore, the framework can be implemented as a form of preventive ethics, which would help avoid ethical dilemmas and moral allegations. The framework can be considered a decision-making model to guide actions and improve the ethical reasoning process that would help individuals think through possible implications and consequences of ethical dilemmas in the construction industry. (shrink)

As information technologies have become synonymous with progress in modern society, several ethical concerns have surfaced about their societal implications. In the past few decades, information technologies have had a value-laden impact on social evolution. However, there is limited agreement on the responsibility of businesses and innovators concerning the ethical aspects of information technologies. There is a need to understand the role of business incentives and attitudes in driving technological progress and to understand how they steer the ethics discourse on (...) technology. In the information technology industry, there is an observed trivialization of ethics supported by a business driven and technology-centric approach to ethics. This trivialization rests on hardened beliefs, ideologies, and arguments which hint at reduced accountability for business and tend to individualize social responsibility. The phenomenon of ethics trivialization needs to be duly addressed to resolve the tensions between business needs and ethical concerns. This paper has identified from literature and conceptually analyzed the beliefs and ideologies underlying ethics trivialization which undermine ethics in business contexts. The paper has attempted to address the business concerns indicated by this phenomenon as well as highlight the weaknesses of its assumptions, rhetoric, and justifications. The aim of this paper is to systematically present the justifications in favor of and against the practice of ethics trivialization in the information technology domain, thereby highlighting the need to develop frameworks for assessment of ethical responsibility, accountability, and democratization of the value trade-offs involved in the design of technologies. (shrink)

Albinism is a global public health issue but it assumes a peculiar nature in the African continent due, in part, to the social stigma faced by persons with albinism in Africa. I argue that there are two essential reasons for this precarious situation. First, in the African consciousness, albinism is an alterity or otherness. The PWA in Africa is not merely a physical other but also an ontological other in the African community of beings, which provides a hermeneutic for the (...) stigmatising separateness or difference of the PWA. The second reason hinges on a distinction drawn by Jürgen Habermas between the ethical point of view and the moral point of view. While the former consists of the ethos, customs, or idea of the good shared by a group of persons with a shared tradition or way of life, the latter consists of what is good for all and transcends particular traditions or ways of life. Consequently, the African ethical point of view, the ethics of solidarity, justifies within the African worldview the established alterity and, by implication, stigmatization of PWAs. On this view, actions that promote harmony and prevent discord and disequilibrium among accepted beings in the African community are permissible. I further show that unless there is a change in the physical and ontological conception of PWAs and a leap from the ethical point of view to the moral point of view, the negative attitudes toward PWAs will not change. The leap to the moral point of view does not suggest an abandonment of the ethical point of view but only recommends that the two meet halfway in respect for universally accepted norms of human actions. To achieve this, I will show that much needs to be done in the areas of policy formulation, law, health care services, and education. (shrink)

The recent distribution of nude photos of a number of high profile Hong Kong celebrities has provoked intense discussion about the state of Hong Kong's obscenity and indecency laws. In this paper, I argue that Hong Kong's laws prohibiting the transfer of obscene and indecent information and images between consenting adults are both under-inclusive and over-inclusive. The Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance is under-inclusive in that it does not adequately criminalise grave violations of privacy. It is also over-inclusive (...) because it is a blanket prohibition against the transfer by all parties (including consenting adults) of all forms of obscene and indecent materials. The laws unnecessarily violate the free expression rights of both the producer and consenting viewer of the offensive materials. The producer/publisher of such materials does not harm his or her audience as they willingly view such materials. The justification for maintaining a blanket prohibition against all transfers of such materials is invalid and utterly and totally out of touch with modern life in Hong Kong. The proponents of such laws have used Victorian positive morality considerations to justify continued criminalisation. These laws should be abrogated and replaced with a new piece of legislation that is narrowly tailored to deal with those types of offensive displays that are wrongful in a critical rather than a mere positive morality sense. Criminalisation should be limited to those offences that target children or use children in the production process, violate the rights of non-consenting adult audiences not to receive certain intimate information in certain public contexts, and violate privacy rights by publishing a person's private and intimate information without consent. If x obtains y's profoundly private information and publishes it without y's consent, then x violates y's privacy rights in a grave way. The violation in the right circumstances will justify a criminal law response rather than a mere civil law response. Similarly, if x and y copulate on a public bus they subject the captive audience to an offensive display which violates the non-consenting audience's right not to receive certain intimate information. I argue below that these types of privacy violations give the lawmaker a legitimate justification for invoking the criminal law. (shrink)