فصلنامه اخلاق در علوم و فناوری
سال نهم شماره 4 (پیاپی 30، زمستان 1393)

To define the task of IT ethics, IT and society relationship should be analyzed through some possible philosophical approaches. Each philosophical approach as a conceptual framework may be considered for analyzing and explaining the relationship. In this article, IT and society relationship is studied according to the technological determinism approach, so that the task of IT ethics is explicated and redefined. According to the soft technological determinism, the task of IT ethics is to predict and analyze the impact of IT on human and social practices in the framework of existing or new moral theories, as well as providing universal guidelines or policies for guiding ethical issues that result from development of this technology.

Medical liability systems play an important role on doctors’ everyday practices and their relationship with patients. They can be established in two ways, fault-based and non-fault. Basing medical liability upon the element of fault links it to various issues of medical ethics. In this paper, we have studied the possible ways each system, could affect the applicability of values and principles of medical ethics. In order to achieve that, we have ethically analyzed the different aspects of civil medical liability law, using the four medical ethics principles and the issue of physician-patient relationship. The less prominent the element of fault in a medical liability system, the more it can succeed to apply ethical principles and hence to flourish the virtues and moral values in the medical society. Adversarial nature, creating stress and tension in physician-patient relationship due to patients’ complaints, a blame atmosphere toward medical errors and failure to provide access to fair compensation for medical injury, are among the most important ethical problems with the fault-based medical liability systems.

One of the issues in medical ethics is the prescribing placebo to patients by doctors. A placebo is an inert substance like sugar pills, distilled water, vitamins and other substances that does not have any pharmacological effect on the patient. The use of placebos in medicine, in principle, is to evaluate the effects of new drugs on patients who are the controlled group for testing new drugs. But according to some of its effects on the patients, the prescribing of placebos has become common in medicine. On ethical view, the challenge here is whether using placebo is deceiving the patient. Is it ethical to deceive a patient? Is it permissible to use a deception which is for the benefit of the person who is being deceived? It seems that prescribing placebos is not regarded as a case of which deceiving others is permissible. Even with regard to the cases in which prescribing placebos and deceiving the patient is for their benefit, since this is a case of disregarding the human dignity, it is morally problematic.

like informational society, Iran needs to step toward e-voting. E-voting can be studied from different dimensions such as: engineering, security, lawful, social, economical, political, psychological, and environmental dimensions. If the necessary equipment be all ready, despite decreasing costs, the issue of security is an important factor that inhibit e-voting. This study aimed to answer the worries of voters, candidates and executers. Answering and criticizing the questions is based on the existing strategies of information security. Findings show that positive techniques of e-voting like, validity and information security lead to a modern perspective and using electronic in elections. However, network and security framework are the most preconditions of e-voting. Future studies should be focused on deficits and reinforcement of e-voting.

Hypothesizes of humanistic, enlightenment and melirism back to fundamental approaches about cultural schema, individualism, freedom, cognition, education and understanding viewpoint. Developing critique about these schools and major ideas in social life areas help us in understanding peripheral perception and its development. This critique has four dimensions: freedom, critique of theoretical intellect, critique of practical intellect and improvement of human life. Current study aims to review the literature of humanistic, enlightenment and melirism approaches about ethics. Humanistic, enlightenment and melirism being sought through life experiences and optimistic changes provide an optimistic description of human being. Individualism, freedom, experience, ethics, enlightenment and peace are considered as global and meta-cultural issues. Major approaches of theoretical practical intellect are basics of transcendental. Enlightenment instead of meta-cultural approach is regarded to cultures and acquired schema from experiences and it is looking for self-awareness, civil society and reasonable thoughts.

Spirituality in the workplace and employees organizational commitment is the most important variables of organizational behavior that affecting the job performance and behavior of employees in organizations. This study was carried out to determine the relationship between organizational commitment and spirituality in the workplace with ethical behavior of employees. The present research is a descriptive research of correlation type. Population consisted of all Kharazmi University staffs in 2013 which 250 persons were selected through simple random sampling. The instruments were three questionnaires included organizational commitment, workplace spirituality and ethical behavior of the employees. Data were analyzed by using multiple regression and SPSS software. Results indicate that the relationship between organizational commitment and spirituality in workplace with ethical behavior of employees was positive and significant. The results of regression analysis show that the dimensions of organizational commitment, affective commitment and continuance commitment can significantly predict the ethical behavior; also, the analysis showed that the dimensions alignment with the organizations values and meaningful work of spirituality in the workplace can significantly predict variance of staff's ethical behavior. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that organizational commitment dimensions and the spirituality of workplace affect on ethical behavior of employees.Therefore, it is important for manager to focus on the variables of organizational commitment and spirituality in the workplace in order to enhance the staffs’ ethical behavior in the organization and organization development.

Today's increasingly complicated organizations and increase of unethical and illegal behaviors at workplaces, creating and sustaining an ethical workplaces and institutionalizing ethical behaviors across all organizations is of paramount importance for leaders and managers. This study aims to examine the effect of ethical work climate and person-organization fit on customer orientation of service organization's employees through the mediating role of organizational commitment. The methodology of this research is descriptive-correlative. Population of study includes the line staff at Mellat bank who had participated in training Courses bank in November-December 2012.Using random sampling, 120 employees were selected from the research population consisting of 400 employees. Data was collected through questionnaire. Organizational commitment, ethical work climate and person-organization fit questionnaires were used for operating the research variables. Data was analyzed using SPSS 18 and structural equations modeling tests in Lisrel 8.5. Results indicate that ethical work climate and person- organization Fit have significantly positive effect on commitment. Also, the significant and positive impact of organizational commitment on customer-orientation was confirmed. Creating ethical work climate and person and organization fit, lead to organizational commitment of employees and subsequently lead to improved customer-oriented staff.

In most of the contemporary organizations, employees avoid declaring their comments and concerns about the problems of organization. This plural-organizational phenomenon is named “organizational silence” which may influence on employees’ desired performance. Therefore, this study intends to investigate the relationship between organizational silence and employees’ performance in order to provide strategies to develop and improve staffs performance. This research was descriptive-correlation. Statistical population was the medial level staffs of the Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences which were 340 persons and among them, based on Krejcie and Morgan table, 181 people were randomly selected as the samples. The data of the research were gathered by two organizational silence questionnaires and the employees’ performance. Data was analyzed using the descriptive statistics (i.e. mean and standard deviation) as well as inferential statistics (i.e. one sample t test, Pearson correlation coefficient and multivariate regression). Findings show that there was a negative significant relationship between organizational silence and employees’ performance; also there was negative significant relationship between employees’ performance and role clarity, organizational support, motivation of staff, partnership in the decisions, evaluation, and organizational environment. But there was no significant relationship between organizational silence and the staff ability. Findings from multiple variable regressions show that organizational environment; partnership in the decisions, and role clarity was predictors of organizational silence. Findings revealed that there was negative significant relationship between organizational silence and employee performance which means that with an increase in silence, performance decreases and vice versa. Therefore, managers should be aware of this issue so their behavior and management approach do not create a silence climate and subsequent decrease in employee performance.

Ethical perspective and personality characteristics are effective in tendency and behavior of people. Therefore, in this study, the relation between corporate ethics, Social responsibility and Machiavellianism and financial managers’ willingness to participate in tax avoidance schemes have been studied. Method of current study was descriptive-correlation. Population of research was 310 financial managers of listed companies at Tehran Stock Exchange in year of 2013 that 100 person selected as final sample with random sampling method. The instrument used in this study is questionnaire. To test the hypotheses of this study, Spearman correlations analyze has been used. Results show that there is no significant relationship between the amount of financial managers’ believe in the importance of corporate ethics and social responsibility and the extent of their opposition to tax avoidance schemes, But there is a direct relationship between the amount of financial managers’' opposition to tax avoidance schemes and the extent of their participation in tax avoidance schemes. Also Machiavellianism has indirect effect on tax financial managers’ expressed viewpoints toward the importance of corporate ethics and social responsibility, as well as Machiavellianism has indirect effect on tax financial managers’ opposition to tax avoidance schemes. On the basis of results, With revision of tax laws and how to Tax Assessors deal with the taxpayers and also attention to financial managers’ personality, Iran will lead to improvement in tax revenues.

Ethical issues in marketing are in fact the most important marketing issues. Now other promotional activities not only attract customers but also to show the status of the company in the field of ethical conduct. This research Try the of moral values Principles such as (honesty, transparency, human dignity, note to health and hygiene, The principle of economic healthy competition (Observe that in the advertising and its impact on consumer behavior has been tested. This study is a descriptive-correlation research. In this study, from all consumers of Golrang products in Kermanshah as population of study, 384 customers were selected as the sample. Sampling was done Stratified random method. Questionnaire was used for collect data. The Spearman correlation is used to answer the research questions. Regression model is used for investigating the relationship between variables and Friedman test for the ranking components (By using SPSS software). Results showed that there is a significant positive relationship between the values of Golrang in advertising and consumer behavior of these products. In Ranking among ethic values, note to consumer health and hygiene had the greatest relationship with consumer behavior. The results show that observance of ethical values had significantly positive relationship with consumer behavior.

The Pathology of the science institution in the internal reports represents the gap between the present situation and desirable professional ethics. In order to get the codes of research ethics with emphasize on the self- given of elites, By an Indigenous approach, current study seeks to achieve the experienced apprehensions, coding and classifying them. The approach is a qualitative-quantitative method. Populations are 182 elites (professors and PhD students) in social sciences in eight universities in Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz. Sampling is availability and sample size includes 130 elites. Data collected through questionnaires with opened and closed questions are analyzed with qualitative content analysis technique. On the basis of results, in scientific community of élites, negative traits of research ethics are bailment weakness (63%), integrity weakness (21%) and research management weakness (16%) orderly. The higher rate of experienced apprehensions is attributed to the weakness of interpersonal relationships and individual morality of research agents (84%), while the lower one is due to the research management structure (16%); In other words, the emphasize is on the micro level. Converting negative traits to positive ones, three codes are achieved: professional bailment, professional integrity and rational management.

Professional Accounting accepts such method of reporting that considered all benefits of users. On the other hand, with regarding to the definition of earnings management, managers reported a profit so that the problem does not comply with the general interests of users. The aim of this study is the consideration of relations between professional commitment and ethical perspective with earning management behavior. This study is a descriptive- correlation research. Population of study includes all financial manages of accepted companies in sock exchange in 2010-2011. With simple randomized method some companies selected as a sample. The instrument of study is a questionnaire. Structural equation model based on PLS method is used for analyzing acquired data. Results suggest a significant relation- ship between an individual’s ethical orientation and decision. Subjects with professional commitment seem to be less likely to engage in earnings management behavior and less likely to behave opportunistically. The study showed that when people have a personal interest, the personal interest will affect on Professional Commitment, but the personal interest will not affect on commitment and relativism. With regard to the impact ethical orientation financial Managers and their professional commitment on Earnings management behavior, It is essential that professional institutions and bodies responsible mange the ethical perspective of managers toward idealism and improving accounting profession and increasing reliance on reports provided by them.