Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Foreword -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- About the Author -- Abbreviations -- Chapter 1: Introduction: Expanding the Horizon of Post-modern Ethics: Ethical Questions in Education and Health Care -- Part I: The Ethical Terrain for Organizations in the Post-modern World -- Chapter 2: Organizations and Moral Failure -- 2.1 Examples of Organizations and Moral Failure -- 2.2 Organizations and Morality in Contemporary Secular Society -- 2.2.1 Civil Society -- 2.3 From the Personal to Organizations and the Bureaucratic -- 2.3.1 A Theory of Bureaucratic Organizations -- 2.3.1.1 Mission -- 2.3.1.2 Moral Responsibility -- 2.3.1.3 Trust -- 2.3.1.4 Dealing with Vulnerable Populations -- 2.3.1.5 Structures for Ethics: Accountability -- 2.4 Health Care and Education as Moral Concepts for Organizations -- 2.5 Organizations and Vulnerable Populations -- 2.6 Organizations and Social Sins -- 2.7 Conclusions -- Chapter 3: Ethics in Postmodern Secular Societies: The Context for Ethics and Organizations -- 3.1 Morality and Ethics: A Distinction for Clarity in Analysis and Argument -- 3.2 Understanding a "Secular" Society: The Context for Moral Pluralism -- 3.3 Ethical Appeals in a Multicultural Secular Society -- 3.3.1 Secularization and Moral Pluralism -- 3.3.2 Philosophical Appeals -- 3.3.2.1 Consequentialism and Utilitarianism -- 3.3.2.2 Deontological Approaches -- 3.3.2.3 Contract Theory -- 3.3.2.4 Virtue Theory -- 3.3.2.5 Casuistry -- 3.3.2.6 Summary Observations -- 3.4 Ethical Challenges for Organizations in Education and Health Care in Postmodern Society -- 3.5 Structural Biases in Organizations and Society -- 3.6 Summary and Conclusions -- Chapter 4: Organizations in Postmodern Society -- 4.1 From the Personal to Organizations and the Bureaucratic -- 4.1.1 A Theoretical Understanding of Bureaucratic Organizations.

This book explores an undeveloped area in postmodern thought: organizational ethics. Ethical debates and analysis usually focus on a particular act or action, an actor, and/or how a secular society should address any of those particular persons or events. In the Post Modern age, ethical decisions and policies are characterized by moral and cultural pluralism. However, there is a second factor that complicates ethical and policy decisions even further. This book argues that in the postmodern age ethical decisions often need to be understood as part of the decision making of organizations and bureaucracies. Organizational decisions often have direct bearing on the choices made by individuals. Two areas that exemplify postmodern issue are the areas of health care and education. For example the decision making of Admissions Officers in American higher education, are influenced by decisions that have been made by the university about the size of the class and the diversity of the class. Health Care organizations make policy decisions that affect every aspect of a patients care from admission to treatment and the types of care that are or are not offered. Both education and health care are the object of the significant investment of resources, both areas are value laden in postmodern, pluralistic societies, and yet we do not have a comprehensive method to understand them or evaluate them. This book is of interest to bioethicists, physicians, nurses, health care policy students, educational policy experts, students and government regulators.

When many people think of bioethics, they think of gripping
issues in clinical medicine such as end-of-life decision-making,
controversies in biomedical research such as that over work
with stem cells, or issues in allocating scarce health-care
resources such as organs or money. The term "bioethics"
may evoke images of moral controversies being discussed on news
programs and talk shows. But this "controversy of the
day" focus often treats ethical issues in medicine
superficially, for it addresses them as if they could be examined
and discussed in isolation from the context in which they are
situated. Such a focus on the latest controversies fails to
take into account that medicine is a social institution and
that the controversies in bioethics often reflect deeper social
and moral issues that transcend the boundaries of medicine and
ethics. If one moves beyond the issue-of-the-day approach to
bioethics, one can see that the field must address these deeper
issues.

"The Edge of Life: Human Dignity and Contemporary Bioethics resituates bioethics in fundamental outlook by challenging both the dominant Kantian and utilitarian approaches to evaluating how new technologies apply to human life. Drawing on an analysis of the dignity of the human person, both as an agent and as the recipient of action, The Edge of Life presents a ""theoretical"" approach to the problems of contemporary bioethics and applies this approach to various disputed questions. Should conjoined twins be split, if the division will end the life of the weaker twin? Was Bush's stem cell research decision morally acceptable? Are the 'quality of life' and 'sanctity of life' ethics irreconcilably incompatible? Accessible to both scholars and students, The Edge of Life focuses particularly on the controversial issues surrounding the beginning and ending of human life, tackling some of the toughest practical questions of bioethics including new reproductive technologies (artificial wombs), stem cell research, abortion and physician assisted suicide, as well as many of its vexing theoretical disputes."