Ethics in Science and Technology
Year:2016 | Volume:11 | Issue:2|Papers Count:18

Background: Convergence of science and technology has emerged toward response to increasing problems and accelerating the process of progress. Advances of growing convergence lead to a revolution in the society and it is caused new challenges. Ethics is one of the highlighted challenges. Advances in technology and its using by society should be based on code of ethics. Therefore, the aim of this study was to review the theories of ethics in convergence of science and technology.Conclusion: There are four fundamental principles for ethics in interaction with human beings and creatures that should be regarded in convergence of science and technologies: autonomy, justice, beneficence and non-maleficence. Also, there are specific principles and traditions in each culture that they should be matched with innovations of science and technologies. There are two main perspectives in consideration of ethics in convergence: Materialistic perspective and Islamic/Qurani Perspective. According to the specific traits of Iranian society, perspective of Islamic/Qurani should be proper considered.

Background: "communication" is a concept beyond technical and linguistic tools and mechanisms. The highest level of "communication" is conducted through "conversation" or "dialogue" where a common concept is created by the parties involved in the conversation. Conversation in Masnavi is a process which is defined by applying codes, analogies, stories and humor. In this process, language is considered both as a communication and an anti-communication tool. Communication, in Rumi’s view, is "audience-oriented" and "polysemous" and is formed by an emphasis on "morality" and extra-linguistic and extraphysical understanding. After selecting a "mystical thought theme" in the research, the conversation content in Masnavi was pursued with an emphasis on tales, stories, and linguistic and ethical concepts.Conclusion: In Rumi’s communicative thought, cultural and social context impacts on the possibility or the impossibility of communication and therefore "conversation" takes shape as a phenomenon beyond language restrictions and structural constraints, sometimes with "eloquence" and sometimes "in silence". In fact, dialogue is a "polysemous, spiritual and moral" category and to be achieved it requires believing in and exercising the ethics of conversation.

Background: The depths of words itself stand to convey serious and exact concepts and meaning to the minds of human. Culture and cultural heritage are two long and familiar words to our mind. By considering culture in all fields, an important role of knowing ethical characteristics documents and recognizing the whole society will be gathered. Intellectual property is the main aspect of culture with conjunction of spiritual heritage of society. The fundamental structure of cultural heritage consists of ethical discussion and human ethics and behaviors in larger level such as the realms of territory. In this article the related ethical subjects with Iranian cultural heritage by focusing on intellectual property and traditional knowledge are followed.Conclusion: The relation between ethics and cultural heritage is multi faces. In this article with emphasizing on ethical features of encountering cultural heritage and governmental activities, two domains of intellectual property and traditional knowledge have been appeared. The age of functional aspects of these two in our country are short. But, since they were transmitted to international and ethical principles for defending traditional sciences and arts of different parts of the world, all nations who have civilization and cultural heritage must obey from those rules to defend, protect and register their arts and cultural heritage.

Background: According to scientific progress that has been made in recent years, presence of the librarians in cyberspace is inevitable. But given the changing nature of cyberspace and the lesser known issues in the field of library and information professional ethics, less specialized research, especially is discussed the librarians ethics roles in cyberspace. So, this paper discusses the ethical responsibilities of librarians in the cyberspace.Conclusion: The literature showed that the ethic and technology are necessary for development of digital libraries. Therefore, digital librarians for successful interact in the virtual environment should be able to use ethic elements such as personal ethical responsibility, job ethical responsibilities, and library ethical responsibilities.

Background: Work ethic is the most important factor in success of the hotel industry. This paper is aims to investigate the role of general attitude to ethics in professional activities of employees and as well as the effect of demographic factors on their work ethics in Persian hotels complex of Ramsar.Method: This paper is applied descriptive-survey research. The populations of this study consist of reception staff, cashiers, food and beverage department, housekeepers, and security guards that they are 105 subjects. Among all, 82 participants were selected with use of Cochran formula. Data were collected through two standard questionnaires. Data were analyzed by SPSS software, and to determine goodness of the research model, Lisrel software and Confirmatory factor analysis were used.Results: The results showed that between employees’ general attitude to ethics and work ethics of hotel employees and its entire dimension is positive and significant relation. Moreover, it was found that, there are significant differences between the factors of gender, age and education level with the work ethic and the ethic of employees.Conclusion: Generally, employees’ general attitude to ethics effect on their profession activities, it means that manager of the complex can through understanding of general attitude to ethics, forecast employees professional activities and behaviors. Also, given that there are significant differences between the factors of gender, age and education level with the work ethic and the ethic of employees, this point should be important for managers of hotel that know about all of employees characteristics to reduce to zero, Deviance of professional Activities.

Background: One of the most efficient elements of general physical education lessons in colleges is teachers’ efficacy, and this will not come true unless they pay enough attention to professional ethics. So, the purpose of the present study was to investigate professional ethics elements of general physical education teachers.Method: population of study consists of all students in University of Isfahan (n=12954) that 375 were selected based on Curgesy and Morgan table and randomly. The questionnaire was designed based on library studies and conclusion of expert professors’ opinions by Delphi Technique. Face and content reliability of questionnaire and its validity were approved by professors’ comments and exploratory factor analysis, respectively. Moreover, Cronbach alpha of 0.85 showed desirable stability.Results: Results of study showed that from 27 indices of study, just the average index of opportunity to communicate with the teacher in compare with communication with students’ element, was lower than moderate. Moreover, indices related to every element were classified using Friedman test.Conclusion: Using proper and standard trainings, making students interested in sports, avoiding inappropriate jokes, using relative assessment of student’s skill performance and humility are the most important professional ethics’ elements in general physical education teachers.

Background: One of the requirements which nowadays look vital for organizational is organizational agility that can in light of professional ethics and cognitive empowerment can be developed. By understanding these issues, present study aims to evaluate the relationship between professional ethics on organizational agility with the role of empowerment cognitive as mediator.Method: The current research method is descriptive-correlation. Population of study includes all faculty members of Hamadan Medical Science University. Among all, 163 subjects were selected by stratified random sampling. Data were gathered through three questionnaires. Data were analyzed using statistical software LISREL and SPSS.Results: Relationship between professional ethics and organizational agility is positive and significant. Relationship between professional ethics and cognitive empowerment is positive and significant. The direct effect cognitive empowerment on organizational agility is positive and significant. Relationship between of professional ethics and organizational agility with role of mediator cognitive empowerment was positive and significant.Conclusion: As a result, for increasing organizational agility in universities, attention to professional ethics and empowerment of faculty members should be focused.

Background: Faculty members’ appropriate educational ethic with students lead to positive approach in them about educational situation in consider with justice and progressive. The purpose of this research was to determine the relationship between educational justices and educational dynamic with improvement of perceived educational ethic based upon mediation of education patience.Method: Methodology of research was descriptive-correlation. Population of study includes all of Mahallat Branchs’ students (2013-2014) (N=1950). Sample of study were selected by stratified random method (n=321). Instruments of research consist of four questionnaires: the questionnaire of educational justice that made by researcher, the questionnaire of educational dynamic that made by researcher, Improved questionnaire of educational patience, the perceived improvement of educational ethic that made by researcher. Data were analyzed by Pearson correlation test, structural equation modeling.Results: The results revealed that there were significance and positive relationship between educational justice (distributive, interactional, procedure, and informational) and educational dynamic (educational technology and learning styles) with improvement of perceived educational ethic (p<0.05). Educational patience mediates relationship between educational justice and educational dynamic with improvement of perceived educational ethic (p<0.05).Conclusion: The justice behavior of faculty members has significant impact on motivation and ability of students.

Background: While the nature of the leader’s interactions with subordinates and the ethical climate of organization affect on and organizational outcomes, the aim of this study was to analyze the relationships between secure based leadership, organizational trust and ethical climate.Method: This study was descriptive - correlation. Statistical population includes all bank employees' of Saderat and Keshavarzi in Sanandaj city (250 people), among all of employees, 110 subjects were selected as sample, randomly. Data were gathered by three questionnaires: Secure Base Leadership Questionnaire, Organizational Trust Questionnaire and Ethical Climate Questionnaire. Data were analyzed by Pearson correlation test, simple and multiple regression and path analysis.Results: There was a significant positive correlation between secure based leadership with ethical climate and organizational trust. There was a significant positive correlation between ethical climate and organizational trust. Ethical climate has the role of mediator in relationship between some dimensions of secure based leadership and organizational trust.Conclusion: Based on the findings, Banks administrators can improve ethical leadership and organizational trust by acceptance of subordinates, the use of intrinsic motivation, and showing the potential of employees.

Background: One of the most important factors in improving corporate citizenship is business ethics that several factors might affect on it. This article aims to explain the relationship between business ethics and corporate citizenship in regard to the role of social responsibility and corporate governance as mediators.Method: The method of study was correlation. Population of study includes all staffs of corporate company in Kurdistan province. Among all, 152 staffs were selected by simple random method as sample of study. Data were gathered by questionnaire. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and path analysis model in LISREL software.Results: The results of this study showed that business ethics directly and indirectly has significant relationship with corporate citizenship as well as business ethics indirectly have meaningful relationship with corporate citizenship through intermediary variables.Conclusion: According to the data analysis, the strong adherence to the principles of ethical business in the population has led to the proper condition in their corporate citizenship. Formation of a Code of corporate citizenship based on business ethics provide necessary conditions for obtaining credit, competitive advantage and increase the productivity of the companies.

Background: Organizational ethical culture is anticipator of ethical decision. The present study aimed to analyze simple and multiple relationships between organizational ethical culture and ethical decision of managers and employees of general administration of sport and youth of Isfahan province.Method: Research method is correlation. Statistical population of the research includes 171 managers and employees of general administration of sport and youth of Isfahan province that among them, a sample size of 118 subjects was selected through simple random sampling. Research tools of this study were organizational ethical culture and efficacy management questionnaires. Data analysis was done at descriptive and inferential statistics through SPSS18.Results: The findings showed that there was a significant relation between the first and the third dimension of organizational ethical culture and the whole scale with ethical relative judgment (r=0.51, r=0.46, r=0.48), the first and the third dimension of organizational ethical culture and the whole scale with absolute ethical judgment (r=0.44, r=0.39, r=0.45) and there was no significant relation between the second dimension with absolute and relative ethical judgment. The first dimension has power of prediction for dimensions of ethical decisions (b=0.42, p£0.05). There was no significant difference in terms of demographic variables between ethical decisions of managers and employees.Conclusion: The results suggest that organizational ethical culture is an effective factor in ethical decision making process. So, if more attention paid to reinforcement of ethical culture of organization, the status of ethical decision will be better in organizations.

Background: Seeking solutions for enhance of efficiency and employing maximum capabilities of the staffs to substantiate the organizational goals is one of the challenges of the managers and scholars of management. The aim of this research is to define practical and scientific framework for improvement of the performance of the staffs in University of Tabriz based on workplace spirituality.Method: The present research is applied descriptive-correlation. The statistical population of this research consisted of 820 employees of University of Tabriz. Among all, 260 participants were selected randomly. The data were collected by questionnaire and analyzed by using structural equations modeling.Results: The results showed that workplace spirituality with standard coefficient (0.75) and significance (5.69) has a positive relationship with performance.Conclusion: It can be concluded that workplace spirituality plays a positive role in improvement of the performance of the staffs in University of Tabriz.

Background: The moral and ethical behavior from postmodern prospect (especially in financial area) is a new issue which is presented in behavioral context recently. The main issue of this study is the differences between auditors’ beliefs and practices based on the postmodern ethical prospect (Foucault).Method: The present study is classified under causal-comparative, ex post facto researches. To conduct this study, 214 subjects of all employed auditors and auditing students (as a control sample) were chosen using random stratified sampling. The questionnaire of this research was standard questionnaire. This has two main orientations investigating the beliefs and practices. Data were analyzed by paired test & equality of two means tests.Results: The findings showed that there are significant differences between the beliefs of auditors to ethical issues and doing it in practice, that practice’ morality rates to beliefs is lower. Code of ethics cannot guide and improve auditor’s behavior pretty well.Conclusion: There are significant difference between auditors’ believes and practice. On the other hand, development of code of ethics, rules and regulations regardless to auditors’ ethical development though is necessary but not enough.

Background: In institutes, what is known (intellectual capital) is great importance than what is possessed (physical capital). Today auditing institutes are increasingly involved in an ethical dilemma, i.e. the conditions that misdeed and right acts should be defined once again. Hence, the aim of this study was to study the effect of environment consequences on auditors’ ethical behavior based on their amount of intellectual capital.Method: The method of this study is practical survey. Statistical population includes all of employed members in auditing institutes of Iranian association of certified public accountants. Among all, 142 subjects were chosen using Morgan table. The study tool was questionnaire and gained data were analyzed using average comparison test.Results: Research findings suggested that decision consequences and also managers’ intention effect on auditors’ ethical sensitivity with high intellectual capital and on auditors’ ethical judgment. Finally, despite decision consequences and managers’ intents, auditors’ intellectual capital doesn’t effect on punishment against other auditors.Conclusion: Audit environment consequences effect on ethical behaviors (other than choosing punishment against other auditors that trouble shortcoming in their duties) with high intellectual capital. Also, Iranian association of certified public accountants and auditing institutes can give priority to intellectual capital increase level in their planning.