RT Article
T1 Locating a Space for Ethics to Appear in Decision-making: Privacy as an Exemplar
JF Journal of business ethics
VO 70
IS 3
SP 221
OP 234
A1 Bonner, William
LA English
YR 2007
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1785627007
AB Using concepts from Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society, this paper argues that as expertise proliferates questions of ethics in decision-making fall through gaps between domains of expertise. As a consequence, unethical outcomes are unattached to actions taken with no one accountable or responsible for these outcomes. Using Actor-Network Theory (ANT), a case study is presented showing how the sale of students’ personal information by the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) escaped questions of ethics. The sale of student information was the product of the convergence of narrowly focussed technology and education expert actions and decisions with an earlier two-stage translation of privacy from a potential ethical issue to an issue of expert rule creation and interpretation. The purpose of this paper is to show, through an example, how questions of ethics are displaced in expert decision-making and to enable the public, managers, individuals and experts to recognize displacements and, through this, create a space for ethics to appear.
K1 Responsibility
K1 Accountability
K1 Experts
K1 Actor-network Theory
K1 Privacy
K1 Ethics
DO 10.1007/s10551-006-9107-4