Ethics in Science and Technology
Year:2011 | Volume:5 | Issue:3-4|Papers Count:17

Backgrounds: Present day knowledge, such as biology, medicine, astronomy, physics, mathematics, ethics, religious studies all began with experiences, then as skills and gradually were presented as science.How would be the state of science, particularly empirical sciences, in the next hundred or even thousand years? To what extent answers to endless queries and questions can be provided, we cannot say, but probably even more unknowns will be found.This is the reason for ethical considerations to provide an umbrella coverage for this progress, as an inhibiting factor, or at least reducing element for diversions and damages human society and planet earth.It should be reminded that it may be agreed upon that none of these rules and anti-rules have absolute applications. They may have varied and mixed reservations by different scientists in different occasions and times.Conclusions: Values and anti values in academic relations, as suggested by Menton (CUDOSHUR), or revised by Mitroff (SPINODINR), have been provided in the frameworks of two tables that can make comparison, judgment and acceptance of these on contradictory scientific behaviors easier.

Background: Organizational justice as an ethic issue has a special status in management research. One of the factors studied in relation to justice is the cons tract of "culture". The aim of this research was to explain and test the relation between culture as an independent variable and Justice perception of employees as a dependent variable within a model for Iranian organizations.Method: This survey-based research was implemented in three Iranian banks (Mellat, Tejarat and Agriculture) and included 325 random samples from the employees of the mentioned banks. The analysis of model was implemented through factor analysis and structural equations.Findings: The elements of culture and justice perception model were: 1. organizational culture including constructive, offensive/defensive and passive/defensive culture, among these elements offensive/defensive has more factor loading and the relation of all three factors to the justice perception was significant. 2. individual culture including power distance, uncertainty Avoidance, collectivism, equalitarian, materialism and seniority orientation, among of these elements, only collectivism has significant relation to the justice perception.Conclusion: results showed that culture factor had a main role in development of justice perception of employees and organizational culture was more important than individual culture.

Background: Ethical behaviors is the concept associated with ethical and humanity values.For this reason, attention to unethical behaviors is a foundamental research topic in many domains. The aim of this research was to study the model of relations between managers, unethical behaviors with perceived organizational support, emotional exhaustion and deviant behaviors.Methods: The statistical population, were male’s personnel of a productive and industrial company in Shiraz city; among them 300 persons were selected using convenience sampling.The instruments of research were: managers’ unethical behaviors (with 9 items), perceived organizational support (with 2 items), emotional exhaustion (with 9 items) and organizational deviant behaviors (with 8 items). Data was analyzed with the use of Pearson’s correlation coefficient, structure equation modeling and mediation regression analysis.Results: The results of mediation regression analysis and structure equation modeling showed that perceived organizational support was a partial mediator variable in relation between managers’ unethical behaviors with emotional exhaustion, and emotional exhaustion was a partial mediator variable in relation between manager’s unethical behavior with organizational deviant behaviors. Also the results of final model revealed that there was direct relation between manager’s unethical behaviors with organizational deviant behaviors.Conclusion: The results of this research presented a particular model for the role of manager’s unethical behaviors on perceived organizational support, emotional exhaustion and organizational deviant behaviors. The important conclusion was that managers, unethical behaviors, in addition to weakening the perceived organizational support and reinforcing personnel emotional exhaustion, had direct effect, on tendency of personnel for deviant behaviors.

Background: Identifying an ethical approach which is accepted by the organization employees, not only guarantees the survival and growth of the organization, but helps managers with human resource development and improvement policies as well. Using the Moral Compass Model, the present article tried to provide an appropriate context to design the ethics charter for the university staff and to institutionalize the ethics throughout the university.Methods: The present study was a descriptive research based on survey method, by implementing stratified sampling and questionnaire to identify the employees’ organizational ethics.Results: The findings of the present study indicated that there was a great tendency toward utilitarianism among the university employees, while gender, education level, age as well as tenure showed to have no significant influence on the employees’ tendency.Conclusion: Taking into account the employees’ tendency toward the utilitarianism, the managers of the university should take appropriate actions such as drawing an appropriate ethics charter, a proper rewarding system, and etc.

Background: Recent corporate scandals have renewed interest in the ethical climate and culture of big corporations. Accountants have received considerable criticism for their failure to warn about unethical management behavior and for behaving unethically themselves by shredding documents and obstructing the investigation. Earnings management practices have been labeled as legitimate by some accountants and as fraudulent by others.Methods: The current study examined corporate ethical values as a potential determinant of earning management ethics. The study was motivated by the significant interest in corporate scandals and earning management. The study also examines the possibility that accountants in different occupations hade different perceptions of their organization’s ethical values. This study was a kind of applying research. The ways of data gathering were questionnaire and previous studies. Society of this survey consisted of academic and professional accountants.Results: After analysing the receiving answers, it was concluded that Accountants employed in organizations with high (low) ethical values would perceive earning management actions as more unethical (ethical). Females compared to males, were more in agreement with existence of positive ethical environment in their firm, in other words, in Iran females believed in more corporate ethical values. Among academic people, young men perceive more ethical values.Also people with higher educational degree believed in more ethical values. And among professional accountants, big companies believed in more ethical values compared to small companies.Conclusion: According to the findings, it seemed that corporate ethical values or corporate culture was an important measurement of perceptions of earnings management.

Background: In this paper, the Multidimensional Ethics Scales (MES) was introduced. This instrument have been using for measuring the ethical orientation, ethical intention Band ethical sensitivity. Ethical sensitivity is the ability of the decision maker to recognize an existing ethical problem, interpret the situation and to understand how that proposed action would affect others. Ethical orientation is the perception about which ethical philosophy is more suitable for explaining an ethical dilemma. Ethical intention is the degree of commitment to taking an ethical action. In this paper, at first, the concepts of ethics, in general, and accounting ethics, in special, was considered and then the Multidimensional Ethics Scales was introduced.Methods: Writing the research has been done with the use of the various libraries. In order to doing that, a lot of texts and papers were studied and summarized.Results: A lot of studies and researches about various aspects of the ethics and measuring them, were done with the using of this instrument. It showed the importance of the ethics discussions and their measuring.Conclusion: In accordance to the results from past researches, it was suggested that for improving the various aspects of ethics of accounting students, they must be familiar with the ethical issues by ethical educating. Thus, in order to improve the ethical sensitivity, ethical intention, and ethical orientation of accountants and auditors, it should be necessary to emphasis to continuing training of professional ethics.

Background: The widespread use of the Internet and Its convenient mechanism that provides easy access to data resources has made many types of unethical behaviors specially among the university students, easy. This study seeked to investigate the extent to which students at Payame Noor University in Tehran were engaged in such unethical behaviors and also the extent of unethical Internet behavior relationship with the big five personality models (Goldberg).Methods: This study was conducted using a survey - descriptive method. The data used in this study was collected from 250 students of Payame Noor University of Tehran. Then data was analyzed by using statistical software.Results: The findings indicated that personality traits such as intellect were significantly and negatively correlated with unethical Internet behavior and personality traits such as extraversion, agreeableness and emotional stability had less correlation with unethical Internet behavior. Also, according to analysis of varianc, we concluded that there was a significant relationship between personality traits and Internet triggered academic dishonesty.Conclusion: This research provided significant contributions to understand aberrant Internet behavior. In addition, organizations and relevant centers can use this research to formulate policies and rules related to scientific activities which are done by using computer and Internet.

Background: Ethical values along with moral based leadership have various functions in industries and organizations. One of these functions is the reduction of stress and tension. In this research, the role of ethical values and moral based leadership were investigated on employees’ job tension in Esfahan Zoob Ahan Joint-stock company.Methods: Research statistical population were the total of Joint-Stock Zoob Ahan company employees in fall 2009 (approximately 7000 persons) Amonythem.385 persons were selected vsing stratified random sampling. Instruments which were used for research variable assessment were job tension questionnaire with 15 items (with three subscales named: tension resulted from perceived non-efficacy, tension resulted from ambiguity and limitation of responsibility and choice and tension resulted from conflict), moral based leadership with 9 items and ethical values questionnaire with 4 items. Data were analyzed using Pearson' s correlation coefficient and regression analysis.Results: Results showed that there were significant relationships between ethical values with tension resulted from ambiguity and limitation of responsibility and choice, tension resulted form conflict and total job tension. Moral based leadership also had negative significant relation (P<0.01) with total job tension and their dimensions. The results of regression analysis showed that moral based leadership had predicted tension resulted from perceived non-efficacy, tension resulted form ambiguity and limitation of responsibility and choice and total job tension. But both of the ethical values and moral based leadership had predicted tension resulted from conflict (P<0.01).Conclusion: The results of this research revealed that following the ethical and value standards in the form of moral based leadership could reduce job tension.

Background: The most important policy in administrative system of Iran is focusing on the philosophy of customer orientation that has been used to improve office states by accomplishing veneration plan. Health system by focusing on the development of continuous quality of services pays special attention to customer's satisfaction.Methods: This study was an intervention study in 2009. There were 231 people in 15 health treatment centers as The statistical society of this research, and among them, 66 people were selected randomly and intervened by training workshop. Data was collected by check list and questionnaires and analyzed by SPSS-16 statistical software and descriptive statistical and inferential methods were used.Results: There was meaningful relation between the amount of staff knowledge in relation to veneration plan in all of four mentioned fields before and after educational intervention, and this relationship increased.In intuition span, there is no meaningful relation among job behavior, administrative space (climate) and informing fields, but this relation is meaningful in re-engineering of providing service methods and client's opinion poll and their view has been improved as a consequence of educational intervention. In performance span, there was no meaningful relation in fields following intervention practices.Conclusion: According to the research results, it can be stated that training staff and improving their awareness for developing motivation and applying knowledge and decisions in this field was necessary but was not enough and in addition to identifying and applying suitable motivating factors, facilities and necessary work environment should be provided for staff activities.

Background: Animal utility in the field of medicine and laboratory sciencse has always been common throughout human history. Regarding animals as creatures incapable of thinking or feeling has led scientists to use them without any moral criteria. Today, however, what turns out to be a challenging issue is the new set of scientific and moral concerns that reflect the unpleasant outcomes of such uses of animals. At present, use of alternative methods instead of animal utility, reduction in the number of animals used for experimental purposes as well as application of methods that meet animal welfare demands either before, during or after conducting the experiments are some of the major issues that come up along with the discussion on the method of conducting an experiment and its authenticity. Behavioral and moral codes concerning laboratory animals - alternatives- have been introduced as solutions to achieve such objectives.Methods: In this paper, through proposing and defining such codes, we have tried to give an overall picture of their nature and ultimate objectives so that the extent to which they can prove applicable and effective becomes clear.Conclusion: Rapid improvement of science and technology and the need human beiy to verify the scientific authenticity and immunity of these methods clarify the necessity of animal use in experimental processes. In this regard, novel alternative methods can render such uses methodical. Today, however, due to many limitations, we do not have the means to apply them to the optimum efficiency level. At any rate, it is expected that through excessive efforts to apply such methods, we can reduce the rate of animal use in labs and hence, witness the use of limited number of animals in better conditions arranged to meet animal welfare demands.

Background: Two phenomena of the moral basics and social responsibilities are gifted to the individual and organization nature. They are the reflection of their existence appearance.Furthermore, the external beneficiary groups can also affect on the standards or criteria that are called moral basics and social responsibilities. Business ethic and social responsibility of the firm are of the subjects that the organizations should take attention for considering the sake of the social groups, the environment and the nature.Method: The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of business ethics on the corporate social responsibility from the viewpoint of manufacturers in automobile part making industry in East –Azerbaijan. In this paper, the business ethics and corporate social responsibility literature reviewed initially. Then a field study has used to examine the effect of business ethics on the corporate social responsibility. The survey's population is the bosses of 175 part making firms that are members of Tabriz automobile part making council. The number of 50 firms were selected for survey sample using the sampling formula. Two questionnaires were used to collect data. The validity of the questioners was tested by face validity. The Cronbach coefficient & retest method were used for reliability test. Regression analysis was used to test the hypothesis.Conclusion: Survey findings showed that the business ethics had effects on the corporate social responsibility. So it is recommended to reinforce the business ethics in the organization to improve the corporate social responsibility.

Background Considering the excellent impact of architecture on different fields of human such as culture, psychology, sociology, Observance of moral standards in the architerchural designs is essential. Meanwhile architecture as an engineering profession must be in the conformity with Professional ethics. Ethics architecture in both artistic and technological fields can be investigated.Method: Present paper's method is based on review of ethics and similar principles of different moral philosophies and its relationship with architectural professional ethics. Mutual cooperation between moral philosophers and architects as a suitable method for extraction of architectural ethics principles is recommended. As a result of this collaboration two type of global and local moral values is extractable. Architect role in respect of sustainable development and environment criteria can be indicated as global principles for architectural ethics. Comparing modern and traditional architectural educational systems and its impact on morality has considered and using the traditional architectural patterns as a method to develop architecture ethical codes has proposed.Conclusion: Due to unique nature of architecture and its impact on society, codifying ethical codes for architecture independent of other engineering is Required. Considering the importance of education in the propagation of moral values, holding affidavit formalities for archietecture seniors and developing special course titled “ethics in architecture” in the universities is proposed and ultimately using architectural ethical codes will be affective on revision or Codification of architectural Legal rules for Legal Experts in jurisdiction applications.