• A longitudinal study of United Kingdom pharmacists' misdemeanours--trials, tribulations and trends.

      Tullett, Julie; Rutter, Paul M.; Brown, David (Springer Verlag, 2003)
      BACKGROUND: Standards of UK pharmacy practice are maintained by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, which has the power to take a range of sanctions, including removal of the right to practice, against those found guilty of malpractice. This function is currently under review. OBJECTIVE: To conduct a longitudinal study in order to define trends and identify areas where remedial or preventative support could be focused. METHOD: Case analysis of reports of individuals' misdemeanours published in the British Pharmaceutical Journal over a 12-year period (September 1988-October 2000). Professional and personal misdemeanours were considered. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Nature of misdemeanour, conviction or disciplinary proceedings against individual, practising pharmacists in the study period. Reasons offered for committing the misdemeanour and penalties applied. RESULTS: 344 cases, involving a wide range of personal (162) and professional (590) misdemeanours were found. On an annual basis, the maximum incidence of pharmacists found guilty of any misdemeanour was extremely low (< 0.1 of 1% on the pharmaceutical register). The most common professional misdemeanour was failure to keep adequate written records. The most common personal misdemeanour was fraud. The most common reason cited for committing any misdemeanour was financial gain. Numbers in individual offence categories were persistent but low and there were few obvious trends with time. The odds of involvement ratio for male versus female pharmacists was 7.36 (CI: 5.23-10.35) and for ethnic minority versus Caucasian pharmacists was 3.8 (CI: 3.06-4.72). The most stringent penalties (either imprisonment or removal of the right to practice and frequently both) were applied to cases involving personal use or trafficking of drugs subject to abuse. CONCLUSIONS: The current self-regulation of pharmacy practice in the UK involves a wide range of misdemeanours of varying severity; but the incidence of reports of pharmacists found guilty of malpractice was extremely low. The nature of misdemeanours appeared to change little over the period of the study; this study therefore indicates the spectrum of misdemeanours likely to be encountered by a regulating board in the immediate to medium-term future. If regulatory changes such as competence-based practice rights are introduced, the spectrum may change.
    • Corporate Governance and Ethics: A Feminist Perspective.

      Machold, Silke; Ahmed, Pervaiz K.; Farquhar, Stuart S. (SpringerLink, 2008)
      The mainstream literature on corporate governance is based on the premise of conflicts of interest in a competitive game played by variously defined stakeholders and thus builds explicitly and/or implicitly on masculinist ethical theories. This article argues that insights from feminist ethics, and in particular ethics of care, can provide a different, yet relevant, lens through which to study corporate governance. Based on feminist ethical theories, the article conceptualises a governance model that is different from the current normative orthodoxy.
    • Ethical aspects of aesthetic labour, and links to an earlier concept: sprezzatura. Where next?

      Scarff, William (University Forum for Human Resource Development (UFHRD), 2008)
      The term aesthetic labour is considered with reference to earlier literature on the influence of attractiveness on recruitment, selection and retention issues for employees, for Human Resource managers and the processes of selecting candidates for training opportunities. The subjectivity and emotional nature of beauty are both noted. A link for future research is suggested to the term sprezzatura from the Italian Renaissance. An unsettling presence of power is considered as a link between aesthetic labour and sprezzatura. Both terms are considered from an employee choosing to use these methods for self advancement and in the case of aesthetic labour when role requires certain behaviour and image. A research question is posed around the tensions between creating the best image for an organisation and adhering to ‘correct’ Human Resource professional practice, with identification of conflict of personal and organisational ethics. A less well known framework for ethics is introduced. The paper is brought to a close by asking conference members about realistic linkages between aesthetic labour, sprezzatura ethics professionalism the role of the Human Resource manager and power.
    • Hospital discharge and the citizenship rights of older people: will the UK become a test-bed for Europe?

      Ford, Dierdre; Stepney, Paul M. (Carfax (Taylor & Francis), 2003)
      The authors are both experienced social workers and teachers in the field of community care. They draw on their UK and European experiences as well as the growing body of research on hospital discharges of older people to illustrate how citizenship rights and social justice cannot be upheld without ethical good practice in this field. Community Care in the UK now contains in-built tensions and potential conflicts between health and social services staff over continuing care. Entitlements and ethical considerations can be obscured by the economic interests of the agencies involved. These developments which are already evident in other European welfare states provide a warning to Eastern Europe about the dangers of importing managerial and market principles into the field of care for older people. Research evidence supported by case studies is used to illustrate how rights to health care and even human rights can be overridden when policies of cost containment combined with efficiency targets begin to shape decisions about care. Further, the recent proposal to fine UK social services departments 100 (140 Euros) per day for delayed discharge will only exacerbate the problem. The authors argue that research can provide guidance on the essential elements for good practice in inter-professional work, especially concepts of well-being that include justice, fairness, participation and autonomy to counteract the jeopardised citizenship of older people.
    • “I try to catch them right on the tip of his nose, because I try to punch the bone into the brain”: Ethical issues working in professional boxing.

      Lane, Andrew M. (Athletic Insight, Inc., 2008)
      Boxing can be a brutal sport. At face value, the intention is to win contests by injuring your opponent. The intent of boxers coupled with the serious medical effects of participation suggest it contravenes a number of ethical guidelines for an applied psychologist, including social responsibility, respect of the welfare of people’s right and dignity and avoiding harm (American Psychological Association, 2002, see http://www.apa.org/ethics/code2002.html#3_04). With this in mind, applied practitioners mish wish to avoid opportunities to work in professional boxing based on it being ethically unsound. This article explores some of these issues, drawing on experiences as a consultant working with professional boxers. Case study data is presented on the psychological preparation of boxers.
    • The Quality and Ethics Connection: Toward Virtuous Organizations.

      Ahmed, Pervaiz K.; Machold, Silke (Routledge (Taylor & Francis), 2004)
      Quality as a philosophy of management practice has become widely embedded in organizational mindsets. This paper looks at the fundamental theories of ethics and morality, and shows how these and a fuller consideration of these can lead to better practice of social responsibility through a higher platform of quality, which we call quality consciousness. The paper shows that business actions, and indeed the pedagogy of management theory, are not in themselves amoral. Rather, they are driven by a systematic reflection of the context. The paper develops the implication of this for the extension and strengthening of the concept of quality by delineating the definitional boundary of quality, and then scrutinizing the philosophy of quality and the philosophy of virtue and morality to examine conceptual inter-linkage and symbiosis. The paper promulgates a view of quality that explicitly incorporates virtue as part of the quality paradigm. The paper then charts how the rigorous incorporation of ethics and organizational morality can be made in quality management, and how this will lead to the next stage of evolution in quality theory and the role this new heightened sense will play in better managerial practice of corporate social responsibility. By critique, the paper develops a tentative framework to move toward the virtuous organization. This, the paper suggests, is the next stage of quality evolution.