Professional Ethics

General resources

Applied ethics resources on WWW An excellent starting point for the topic is this website maintained by the Centre for Applied Ethics at the University of British Columbia.
Of particular interest to us are links to separate pages of resources on ethics in the fields of Health, Business, Media, Science & technology and Professional ethics.
There is a separate page Professional ethics with links to codes of ethics, online publications and various relevant topics such as ethics in policing, legal ethics, and so on.
The site has, understandably, a slight Canadian bias, but this does not detract from its overall usefulness.

Ethics updates Provides updates on current literature, both popular and professional, relating to ethical theory and applied ethics. A wide range of topics is covered and for each one there is a link to Internet resources, a bibliography and discussion topics.
An inbuilt search engine is a useful way to find out what is available on a particular ethics topic.

Glossaries of ethics terminology

Glossary A handy list of definitions issued by the publishers of Ethics Updates.

Glossary for Business ethics Compiled by Dr. Mark Smillie, Carroll College, Montana.

Professional ethics associations

Association for Practical and Professional Ethics The Association for Practical and Professional Ethics is committed to encouraging high quality interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching in practical and professional ethics by educators and practitioners who appreciate the theoretical and practical impacts of their subjects.

Institute for Global Ethics The Institute seks to promote ethical behavior in individuals, institutions, and nations through research, public discourse, and practical action. It divides its efforts into three primary areas of concern: Corporate Services, Education Programs, and Public Policy Programs.

Institute for Applied & Professional Ethics The Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics at Ohio University is dedicated to promoting the application of fundamental ethical techniques to decision-making in an ever-changing world. Brings together faculty from Ohio University's Department of Philosophy, College of Business, and School of Journalism.

Australian associations

Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics The purpose of CAPPE is to conduct ground-breaking research, provide policy input and promote community discussion and professional dialogue in relation to these and other important and pressing matters of public and political concern. It constitutes the largest concentration of philosophers working on applied philosophy and public ethics in Australia, and one of the largest such concentrations in the international philosophical community.

Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics (AAPAE) The broad purpose of the AAPAE is to encourage awareness of applied or professional ethics as a significant area of concern, and to foster discussion of issues.

St James Ethics Centre St James Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation based in Sydney which provides a forum for the promotion and exploration of ethics. The Centre seeks to encourage individuals and organisations to include the ethical dimension in their daily lives. It is independent of any religious or political affiliations. Their website provides a large number of ethics-related articles and information produced by the Centre, along with a discussion forum, links page, etc. - there's even a blog...

Codes of ethics

Codes of ethics online A very useful compilation of codes of ethics of professional societies, corporations, government, and academic institutions by the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Business ethics

Business ethics resources on WWW Part of the invaluable Centre for Applied Ethics site, you'll find this page provides links to many useful business ethics resources, including codes of ethics, online publications and pages of links to specific topics such as advertising and whistle-blowing.

Business ethics A comprehensive article with multiple hyperlinks to related topics. From Wikipedia: therefore treat all statements with caution.

Yahoo! Directory: Business Ethics and Responsibility Links to general sites as well as sites in various categories such as Corporate Acciuntability, Sweatshops, Whistleblowing and so on. Lots to explore from here!

Center for Ethics and Business The Center for Ethics and Business at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles aims to provide an environment for discussing issues related to the necessity, difficulty, costs and rewards of conducting business ethically. There's a useful toolbox of ethical issues in business as well as a pretty comprehensive list of links to other business ethics sites.

Business ethics A long listing of websites arranged under headings such as Articles and Publications; Case Studies; Corporate Codes of Ethics, and so on.
Well maintained and kept up to date by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign librarian, Sharon Stoerger.

Institute of Business Ethics A British organisation: 'The aims of the Institute are to emphasize the essentially ethical nature of wealth creation, to encourage the highest standards of behaviour by companies and to publicise the best ethical practices.'

Better Business Bureau A voluntary self-regulation and consumer education-focused organisation, based in The U.S.A. Useful information on topics such as truth in advertising and consumer and business education.

International Business Ethics Institute The Institute aims to increase public awareness and dialogue about international business ethics issues and works closely with companies to assist them in establishing effective international ethics programs.

Carol and Lawrence Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research The mission of the Center is to sponsor and disseminate leading edge research on critical topics in business ethics. The Center's broad research focus includes global business ethics, corporate governance, social contracts, deception, disclosure, bribery and corruption. They publish working papers on business ethics topics on their site.

Police ethics

Police Ethics A good starting point is this site hosted by the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics, at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. There are links to useful websites, online reports and articles relevant to the topic, and police codes of ethics from a number of international organisations.

Legislation online: Police International norma and standards on police. You can search under headings such as United Nations, Council of Europe, OSCE and others, or you can search by country. For example, you can find the text of Recommendation (2001) 10 adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on 19 September 2001 and an Explanatory memorandum.

Australian New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency ANZPAA works with its partners on the current law enforcement priorities of Australian and New Zealand police.

Legal ethics

Legal ethics An excellent Australian site from the Law Institute of Victoria.
The Links page includes pdf files of the Rules of professional conduct for all States, including South Australia.

Legal Ethics A good starting point is this site hosted by the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics, at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. There are links to useful websites, online reports and articles relevant to the topic, and legal codes of ethics from a number of international organisations.

Texas Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism One of the primary functions of the Center is to furnish resources and materials which assist in malpractice and grievance prevention. The Center serves lawyers and the public by being a clearinghouse for information and a learning center. The Center maintains an extensive online library of resources related to legal ethics and professionalism. Among the materials available are publications of the Center and bar journal and law review articles.

American Bar Association: Center for Professional Responsibility Links to codes of conduct and other useful documents, but heavily oriented, as you would expect, to American practice.

Medical ethics

BioethicsWeb BioethicsWeb is a gateway to evaluated, high quality Internet resources relating to biomedical ethics, including ethical, social, legal and public policy questions arising from advances in medicine and biology, issues relating to the conduct of biomedical research and approaches to bioethics.
BioethicsWeb is affiliated to Intute, but it is developed and managed by the Wellcome Library.

Health care ethics resources on WWW A mixed bag of links from the Center for Applied Ethics at the University of British Columbia.

Australian Health Ethics Committee AHEC is a principal committee of the National Health and Medical Research Council. AHEC's functions are to advise NHMRC on ethical issues relating to health and developing guidelines for the conduct of medical research involving humans, the promotion of community debate on health ethics issues, monitoring the work of human research ethics committees (HRECs) and monitoring and advising on international developments in health ethics.

American Medical Association: Medical ethics A page of resources, including the AMA Code of Medical Ethics. The AMA's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA) provide the substance of the Code of Medical Ethics and represent official ethics policy of the AMA.

World Medical Association: International Code of Medical Ethics Adopted by the 3rd General Assembly of the World Medical Association, London, England, October 1949 and amended by the 22nd World Medical Assembly Sydney, Australia, August 1968 and the 35th World Medical Assembly Venice, Italy, October 1983 and the WMA General Assembly, Pilanesberg, South Africa, October 2006.

There are many more useful links to explore on the Bioethics page of the Public Health Resources website.

Research ethics

Centre of Research: Ethical Campaign The Centre of Research: Ethical Campaign works with colleagues in the UK to maintain a UK-wide system of ethical review that protects the safety, dignity and well being of research participants, whilst facilitating and promoting ethical research within the NHS.

Do No Harm: the coalition of Americans for research ethics A national coalition of researchers, health care professionals, bioethicists, legal professionals, and others dedicated to the promotion of scientific research and health care which does no harm to human life. The emphasis is on stem cell research.

National Health and Medical Research Council: Ethics The NHMRC provides support and advice on health and human research ethics, including information for Human Research Ethics Committees.

Reference collection resources

There are several very useful published titles for professional ethics researchers. Here I've listed a few of the major works and their call numbers. Find them in the Barr Smith Library's Reference collection on Level 2 North.

The Encyclopedia of ethics, 2nd edn. Ed. Lawrence C. Becker and Charlotte B. Becker. London, Routledge, 2001. 4 vols.
Reference collection 170.3 B395e.2

Encyclopedia of applied ethics. Ed. Ruth Chadwick. San Diego, Calif., Academic Press, 1998. 4 vols.
Reference collection 170.3 C432e

Encyclopedia of bioethics. 3rd edition, ed. Stephen G. Post. N.Y., Macmillan, 2003. 5 vols.
Reference collection 174.203 E563.3

There are some slightly older reference works in the Main collection that you may find useful:

International encyclopedia of ethics Ed. John K. Roth. London, Fitzroy Dearborn, 1995.
Main collection 170.3 R845i

Cooper, Thomas W Television & ethics: a bibliography. Boston, G.K. Hall, 1988.
Main collection 174.97914016 C778t

Dictionary of medical ethics, revised and enlarged edition. Ed. A.S.Duncan, G.R.Dunstan and R.B.Welbourn. London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1981.
Main collection 174.203 D554.2

Hedges, Richard Bioethics, health care, and the law: a dictionary. Santa Barbara, Calif. ; Oxford,ABC-CLIO, 1999.
Main collection 174.203 H453b

Books on professional ethics

The Library has a good collection of books on the topic of professional ethics. To see what is available do a Subject Heading search for Professional ethics.
For specific areas of this topic you can search under Subject Headings such as: