Board of Ethics Decisions

Hospital pharmacists' ethical exposure and decision-making.

From the presumed biological evolutionary origins of a urmorality, there eventually developed a conscious set of morality concepts and rules that became less immediate and more abstract, and increasingly shaped by social factors. Today the concepts and precepts of morality have come to form a complex system in which each specialized professional ethics respond with a certain degree of latitude to conditions within its own domain. The raison d'etre of morality is the connection between actions and their possible outcomes, which embodies the concept of risk. The risk considerations underpinning an ethical decision can ultimately lead to better decisions. They can also lead to a better understanding of the evolutionary underpinnings and trajectory of our morality, from that of ancestral species to its present complex construct of ethics rules and beliefs. Determination of possible scenarios, their probabilities, and their consequences, as an essential component of a rational assessment of risk, presents difficulties, especially in connection with a new process or a new technology. These inherent complexities in reaching and carrying out an ethical decision can be made more tractable by developing methodologies that can help to learn how to think about difficult issues. For example, a biosoma-environmental paradigm can help insure that in making ethics decisions all necessary components of a rational risk assessment are considered. Rationality, however, is not the only base for ethical decisions. Factors such as emotion, instinct, and tradition, specific to a situation, a societal group or subgroup, or to a profession, can exert a powerful influence on ethics decisions, especially in the realm of health and psychology. An understanding of the interplay between these factors and rational assessment of the risks should be at the base of any ethical decision.

From the presumed biological evolutionary origins of a urmorality, there eventually developed a conscious set of morality concepts and rules that became less immediate and more abstract, and increasingly shaped by social factors. Today the concepts and precepts of morality have come to form a complex system in which each specialized professional ethics respond with a certain degree of latitude to conditions within its own domain. The raison d'etre of morality is the connection between actions and their possible outcomes, which embodies the concept of risk. The risk considerations underpinning an ethical decision can ultimately lead to better decisions. They can also lead to a better understanding of the evolutionary underpinnings and trajectory of our morality, from that of ancestral species to its present complex construct of ethics rules and beliefs. Determination of possible scenarios, their probabilities, and their consequences, as an essential component of a rational assessment of risk, presents difficulties, especially in connection with a new process or a new technology. These inherent complexities in reaching and carrying out an ethical decision can be made more tractable by developing methodologies that can help to learn how to think about difficult issues. For example, a biosoma-environmental paradigm can help insure that in making ethics decisions all necessary components of a rational risk assessment are considered. Rationality, however, is not the only base for ethical decisions. Factors such as emotion, instinct, and tradition, specific to a situation, a societal group or subgroup, or to a profession, can exert a powerful influence on ethics decisions, especially in the realm of health and psychology. An understanding of the interplay between these factors and rational assessment of the risks should be at the base of any ethical decision.

HCI scholars have become increasingly interested in describing the complex nature of UX practice. In parallel, HCI and STS scholars have sought to describe the ethical and value-laden relationship between designers and design outcomes. However, little research describes the ethical engagement of UX practitioners as a form of design complexity, including the multiple mediating factors that impact ethical awareness and decision-making. In this paper, we use a practice-led approach to describe ethical complexity, presenting three varied cases of UX practitioners based onin situ observations and interviews. In each case, we describe salient factors relating to ethical mediation, including organizational practices, self-driven ethical principles, and unique characteristics of specific projects the practitioner is engaged in. Using the concept of mediation from activity theory, we provide a rich account of practitioners' ethical decision making. We propose future work on ethical awareness and design education based on the concept of ethical mediation.

During pandemics, there are considerable ethical dilemmas. It is imperative that nurses are involved in ethical decision-making bringing nursing theory, practice and perspectives to better advocate for patients. In order to prepare nurses to be partners in ethical dilemma decision-making during pandemics, it is vital to understand the extent that nurses are involved in such decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this concept analysis is to identify nurse involvement in ethical decision-making during pandemics. Concept analysis methodology based on literature searches used bibliographic databases: PubMed - 20 papers; Google Scholar - 8120 papers; EMBASE - 25 papers; Science Direct - 246 papers and hand searches. Nurse involvement in ethical decision-making during pandemics focused on nurses' physical and emotional stress, communication challenges, saturation and collapse of limited resources and allocation of scarce resources. Additional dilemmas included, changing nature of nurses' relationships with patients and families, questionable ethical equipoise preforming COVID-19 research, triage patient decisions receiving scarce resources, partner participation during labour and delivery and end-of-life decisions. In order to protect and sustain nurses' well-being and competency, nurses should establish a framework for nurses' involvement in ethical policy development in emergencies, pandemics, education and preparedness and decision-making to be able to deal with public health emergencies.

Ethical decision-making in school administration has received considerable attention in educational leadership literature. However, most research has focused on principals working in secondary school settings while studies that explore ethical reasoning processes of academic deans have been significantly few. This qualitative study aims to describe the ethical decision-making processes employed by a select group of Filipino college deans in solving ethical dilemmas using the ethical paradigms proposed in the works of Starratt (Educ Adm Q 27:185–202, 1991) and Shapiro and Stefkovich (Ethical leadership and decision-making in education: applying theoretical perspectives to complex dilemmas, 2005) as frameworks for the analysis. Data was gathered using semi-structured interviews and field text was analyzed using deductive thematic analysis. Findings of this study show that majority of the deans chose to share ethical dilemmas involving students and teachers. The findings also show the ethical frameworks of care, justice, and profession as the dominant paradigms utilized by Filipino deans and their preference for adopting multiple ethical frameworks when making their decisions. Most of the ethical dilemmas which the deans narrated relate to their tasks of academic administration such as monitoring student performance, faculty evaluation and maintaining school discipline. Interestingly, only a few dilemmas involving university administrators were expressed, and dilemmas that refer to broader societal issues usually associated with school administrators’ utilization of the ethic of critique were also significantly left out in the narratives of this study. This paper intends to contribute to current literature by expanding research to administrators working in the context of higher education in the Philippine setting. The findings of this study could serve as knowledge base in designing ethics courses to enhance educational leaders’ ethical decision-making skills. The study also provides useful insights of ethical decisions and reasoning processes employed by academic administrators in resolving real life ethical dilemmas that could be useful at the practical level for aspiring and practicing deans.

Organizations that encourage a trusting culture are believed to have a competitive advantage on ethical decision-making. Part of a leader’s functions is to work with employees to find problems within an organization and solve them. The ease at which a leader gains access to the information they need to make ethical decisions and solve problems depends on how much employees trust them, and how much they (leaders) trust employees. This study examines the role of employee trust on ethical leadership decision making. It explores the role of employees trust towards their leaders’ ethical decision making and how a lack of employee trust (mistrust) in an organization affects ethical leadership decision making. The research methodology employed in this study is literature review and it was aimed at addressing critically the role of employee trust (and lack of that) towards leadership ethical decision making. The findings of this study indicate that when leaders are trusted by their employees, they are forced to prove their competence and ethics in the decisions they make. It also shows that when employees are trusted by their leaders, they encounter a feeling of indefinite responsibility to show signs of goodness towards their leaders and this influences ethical decision making. A lack of trust between employees and their leaders weakens relationships, causes suspicion, deception and affects a leader’s decision making ethics.

The purpose of this study is to develop a conceptual model to examine the two dimensions of personal moral philosophy (Idealism and Relativism) and its influences on the Ethical Decision Making. The study use the Forsyth's Taxonomy of Personal Moral Philosophy and the Rest's Ethical Decision Making Model serves as the starting points to develop the conceptual model. Two dimensions of PMP and 4 main components of Ethical Decision Making were used to construct the model from the extensive literature. The developed model will provide the base for assessing the level of Ethical Decision Making by studying the influences of the level of Personal Moral Philosophy. This finding further the insight of the understanding of the philosophical and ethical analysis of managerial dilemmas. The model provides an insightful for the analysis of Personal Moral Philosophy on Ethical Decision Making. The model examines the independent influences of Personal Moral Philosophy on Ethical Decision Making and treats Ethical Decision Making as dependent variables. Given that Ethical Decision Making are often detrimental to organizational functional efficiency, it is appropriate for the management to have better understanding to diagnose effects of the Personal Moral Philosophy on the Ethical Decision Making. For this analysis, this model will prove valuable.

If we want to grasp the essence of information, then we must take its emer­gence into account. [1],[2],[3] This requires an interaction between form (syntax), con­tent (semantics) and effect (pragmatics) of information as three qualitatively different, interdependent process sta­ges of information production and its utili­zation: mapping, interpreting, evaluating. The emergence of information is a new category in the theory of biology [4] and organization. Cybernetics (1st order), control technology, always presupposed information. Informatics, which developed later, also recognizes the concept of information processing, but until now, the concept of information emergence was not or insufficiently acknowledged. When we compare technical control with the regulation processes of cell metabolism, a comparison arises between the technical automaton and the living organism. This leads us to a central con­clusion: The living, developing organism is principally distinguished from the technical automaton by the processes of emerging information and formation of values in a process of self organization. [5] The principle of creativity, of information generation, provides epistemological and methodological guidance. The principle of the generation of information has been of fundamental importance for the building of models and theories at the transition zone of physics, chemistry and biology. These questions about the characteristic features of information are par­ticularly topical in molecular biology, in the neuron sciences, in linguistics, in the para­digm controversy of cognitive science and in AI research, and even in the mod­ern theory of enterprise organization. This clearly shows that information emer­gence and value formation are very important categories for the the­ory development in the boundary between physics/chemistry and biology (to understand the origin of life) and between computers (software) and the human mind, information systems and creative learning social organization. [6] The notion of complementarity was first presented by Niels Bohr 1927 to harmonize the conflicting views taken by different physicists. Bohr gradually extended the complementarity concept to a much wider domain, and it took on the character of a general theory on the nature of human knowledge, sometimes called the "Copenhagen Spirit". Many scientists, including Schrodinger and Delbrück, were fascinated by Niels Bohr's lecture 'Light and Life', and conjectured that for the ultimate understanding of life, some novel, fundamental property of matter must first be found, most likely via the discovery of an intuitively paradoxical biological phenomenon. The development of molecular biology showed that such a paradox does not exist. It should be said, that N. Bohr, in his 1962 lecture: "Light and Life Revisited," acknowledged that meanwhile the success of molecular biology has transcended the instrumental limits on the understanding of life that he had foreseen thirty years earlier. Manfred Eigen [1] clearly said [7] that we do not need a 'new physics' but something 'new in physics' – that is 'information'. We have an information theory but not a theory of 'information generation'. The role that the concept of information generation plays in the theory of the origin of life as well as in model and theory formation at the boundaries between physics, chemistry and biology, and also between computer science and the humanities [7, [5], [1], [8], [9] has to be investigated still much more. The epistemological and methodological implications of the concept of creativity, of information generation, can inspire ideas in nearly all areas of human interest. It provides methodological guidance to navigate between the Scylla of crude reductionism: reduction of life to pure physics and chemistry (physicalism) and 'mind–brain identity' (neurophilosophy), strong connectionist AI research, and the Charybdis of dualism: of mind-and-matter dualism and hardware-software-dualism, of strong cognitivist AI research. With the example of the "molecular biologist and the chicken," we intend to il­lustrate the emergence of the biological information, for to show the basic ideas underlying our evolutionary stages concept of informa­tion. In this respect, we arrived at general affirmation: Information is not a substance; it exists as relation between a sender and a receiver. A special aspect of this relation is the structure of the information carriers, generated by evolution [9],[10],[11] as e.g. DNA-Code. The information phenomenon cannot be reduced to the map­ping or syntactic aspect on any of the different levels of complex systems. In­deed there is no information concept that can be reduced to one of the process stages: mapping, interpreting, evaluating. It is not possible to reduce the prag­matics of information to semantics, or semantics to syntax. Humans and hu­manity can not be reduced to machines With the "evolutionary stage concept of information" developed by us, we consider the processes of information emergence and value formation in the processes of the self organization The realization of a function has a complex structure as prerequisite, which can only be formed on the basis of information, which however in turn, is only created and preserved by this special function. This connection of structure and function is arranged by meanings, which are formed only in this process of interaction. Information therefore arises first, when with the realization of the function, by the effect, an assessment (and with that a selection) has been made, by which the information gets its meaning. It is a circle process - this process has information as prerequisite, which is generated only in this process. This chicken or egg problem dissolves in this complex circle interaction. [7] Information is indeed on the one hand a condition for the origin of the life and information arises first with the origin of the life Figure 1. (see PDF version for the Figure). We represent the evolution of information, the emergence of the meaning of information, in the interaction of (syntactic) pattern, (semantic) meaning and (pragmatic) evaluation, as an evolution of different (5) levels of organismic/human and social communication processes. Level Macromolecules, 2. Nervous system, 3. Consciousness of environment, 4. Consciousness of society, 5. Consciousness of values. Figure 2. (see PDF version for the Figure). We have to recognize a relatively new form of universal interconnection. Just as quantum physics had to learn that the motion of an electron is only one aspect of the whole, and just as biology had to learn that living organization does not simply consist of parts which can be analyzed and subsequently recomposed, we need to take into account the interconnection of mapping, interpretation and evaluation as specific and interrelated process stages in the generation, use and preservation of information. In this paper we specially look at the fifth level. As the level of self-awareness, it can also be described as the consciousness of the values. If we are concerned with the self-development of the human personality, we proceed from the assumption that human beings live in society and follow the social values which have been formed in the process of social development. Values serve to reduce the complexity of human behavior, of human actions and interests. At the same time, the development of society is also the development of its system of values. With the development of social information and communication, also a development of societal and of self-confidence, of social and individual values takes place. This signifies that indeed the information proc­essing approach (of cognitionistic and connectionist AI research) provides too narrow an understanding of infor­mation and values. In the case of the "New AI", the development of relatively autonomous systems like robots, it is necessary to differentiate between pre-rational (intuitive), rational , post-rational (intuitive) and irrational action. Only the objective rational actions are the subject of rationalization and only formalized actions are the subject of automation. Analytic (rule-based) ap­proaches use in novel situations or when problems occur a selection of known possible actions. The paradox of safety shows; that by increasing the degree of automation we derive more safety and stability but at the same time we create vulnerability of society as a whole, by its increased dependence on such sophisticated technological systems. [12] The paradox of safety makes clear that informatics has to adopt a different image of man: The concept of complete or super-automation in the sense of a complete reduction (or exclusion) of human participation is misleading. The concept of Man as a faulty living being, as the unsafe element to be replaced is misleading. Man must not be seen as a disturbing factor which can be more ore less completely replaced by modern information technologies, but rather as the only creative productive force, as the subject of all progress and of all development. "Since information generation is a process that allows novelty to emerge, it goes beyond a mechanical process that can be formalised, expressed by mathematical function, or carried out by a computer." [3 S. 171] The intuition of man represents an essential component for coping with complex tasks. Human intuition extends the possibilities of decision making beyond what would be possible with rational abilities alone. Differentiation of actions and the value of intuition Intuition as essential component to master complex tasks. Human intuition extends the possibilities of decision making beyond what would be possible rational (formalized) abilities alone. Figure 3. (see PDF version for the Figure). Also ethical decisions of Man are not only based on (formal) rules, the possibilities of making ethical decisions goes beyond the (formal) rational abilities of the computers - the war robots. This is especially important to respond to alarm or fault conditions in a battle. The Five-Stage of the Skill-Acquisition Model of Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus has also ethical implications. [13] Parallelism between the acquisition of skills ( H. Dreyfus, S. Dreyfus [13]) and the levels of performance (J.R. Blau, K. Fuchs-Kittowski [12]) At a low level of complexity, the response is likely to be linear and parallel to the complexity of the situation. As complexity increases, however, the response to alarm or fault conditions become unstable and eventually will become unbounded. The only way to bound the response is to introduce the post rational criteria into the system design. A differentiation between pre rational, rational, post rational and irrational actions is necessary. Figure 4. (see PDF version for the Figure). We assume with Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus [14] that acting ethically is a skill. We use their phenomenological description of the five stages of skill acquisition to show that an ethics based on principles corresponds to a beginner's reliance on rules and so is developmentally inferior to an ethics based on expert response that claims that, after long experience, the ethical expert learns to respond appropriately to each unique situation. Also civilian autonomous vehicles can get into complicated accident situations. They must be programmed to behave so, that as many human life's as possible are spared. Is this already a moral behaviour? Of course one can programme a war robot that he stops shooting, if a man stands with raised hands in front of him, certainly it is possible to teach an armed drone to stop with bombing, if it sees a Red Cross on the roof of a house. Is this however really moral behaviour, do these systems follow ethical principles? Are they thus really equal to the complex situations in the combat mission? Surely not! Ethics often exists in terms of a set of rules that are intended to supplement the basic laws of the community. Such rules, like those of professional societies, e.g. the "A.C.M. Code of Ethics And Professional Conduct" are important, but certainly not designed, to help in such serious ethical decisions as Joseph Parnas ore Edward Snowden had to make. But also if we not follow the phenomenological approach and think, like I. Kant and others, that there is a rational basis of morality and ethics, so that also complicated, deeper ethical decisions are based on rules and principles, one is not able to teach the computer moral behavior, because the basic principles are very general, can only be followed with a deep understanding of the situation. On the basis of the evolutionary stage concept of Information it becomes obviously, that the level of self-awareness or consciousness of the values is a meta-level of information generation and value formation, based on the syntax of syntax, the semantic of semantic and the pragmatics of pragmatics. Ethical values are rooted in empathy that has "its real depth and width in the deep respect for life," as was pointed out above all by A. Schweitzer, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo,1954 [15]. However, computers are not participants in a social process; they are not personalities whose development is shaped by living a life that involves an interweavement of biological, psychological and social processes. As can be demonstrated on the basis of the evolutionary stage concept of in­formation, on the stage of self- consciousness, (the "stage of values"), on the level of ethical expertise the ethical decision-making requires post-rational ac­tions which are not the subject of automation, because they include intuition, information generation. Expert (ethical) decisions, no longer rely on rules, guidelines or maxims, they rely on intuitive grasp of situations, based on deep tacit understanding. Some scientists therefore have an unrealistic claim that they could teach ethics to war robots. It is an idle but wrong attempt! Deeper reflections on the relationship between technology and intelligence, computer (software) and the human mind in its social context show that the process of information generation and value formation is far more complicated. To ensure an interhuman understanding, to be able to generate social mean­ings and meta meanings, to form social values, the robot would require a long period of socialization in the human community. War robots, armed drones will not have any ethics; they should be banned as soon as possible, to prevent a new senseless arms race! References [1] Fuchs-Kittowski, K.; Reflections on the essence of information, Chr. Floyd, H. Züllighoven, R. Budde, R. Keil-Slawik Editors, Software Development and Reality Construction, Springer Verlag, Berlin, New York: 1992. p.p. 416 - 432 [2] Fuchs-Kittowski, K.; Information neither Matter nor Mind – On the Essence and on the Evolutionary Stages Concept of Information, W. Hofkirchner, Editor, The Quest for a Unified Theory of Information, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Foundations of Information Science. Vienna University of Technology, 11-15 June 1996, World Future, Gordon and Breach Publishers, Australia, Canada, 1997, Vol. 50. p.p. 551 – 570. [3] Hofkirchner, W.; Emergent Information – A Unified Theory of Information Framework, World Scientific, New Jersey, London, 2013 [4] Fuchs-Kittowski, K.; Information und Biologie: Informationsentstehung – eine neue Kategorie für eine Theorie der Biologie. – In: Biochemie – ein Katalysator der Biowissenschaften. Kolloquium der Leibniz-Sozietät am 20. November 1997 anlässlich des 85. Geburtstages von Samuel Mitja Rapo­port. Sitzungsberichte der Leibnitz - Sozietät. Berlin, Leibniz-Sozietät, 22 (1998) 3. S. 5- 17 [5] Fuchs-Kittowski, K.; Probleme des Determinismus und der Kybernetik in der molekularen Biologie, VEB Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena 1976 [6] Fuchs-Kittowski, K.; Heinrich, L. J.: Rolf, A.; Information entsteht in Organisa­tionen: - in kreativen Unternehmen- wissen­schaftstheoretische und methodologische Kon­sequenzen für die Wirt­schaftsinformatik. In: Wirtschaft­sinformatik und Wissenschafts­theorie - Bestand­saufnahme und Per­spektiven, J. Becker, W. König, R. Schütte, O. Wendt, S. Zelewski, Ed., Wiesbaden: Betrieb­swirtschaftlicher Verlag Dr. Th. Gabler GmbH 1999, 329-361 [7] Eigen, M.; Self organization of Matter and the Evolution of Biological Macromolecules', Naturwis­senschaft en, 58:10 (1971), pp. 465–523. [8] Kuppers, P.-O.: Der Ursprung biologischer Information, Piper, München 1986 [9] Ebeling, W.; Freund, J.; Schweizer, S.; Entropie – Information – Komplexität, Stuttgart, Leipzig, 1998 [10] Ebeling, W.; Evolution of strings – On the borderline between order and chaos, in: H.-M. Voigt: Evolution and optimization, Serries Mathematical Ecology, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1989 [11] Ebeling, W.; Feistel, R.; Selforganisation of Symbols and Information, G. Nicolis, V. Basios, Editors, Chaos, Information Processing and Paradoxial Games: To the memory of John S. Nicolis World Scientific, 2014, S.141 – 184 [12] Fuchs-Kittowski, K.; System design, design of work and of organization. The paradox of safety, the orgware concept, the necessity for a new culture in information systems and software development, in: P. van den Besselare, A. Clement, P. Jarvinen, Editors, North – Holland, Amsterdam, 1991 [13] Dreyfus, H. L.; What is Moral Maturity? Towards a Phenomenology of Ethical Expertise." In James Ogilvy, ed., Revisioning Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York, 1992. [14] Dreyfus, H. L.; Dreyfus, S. E.; Mind over Machine – The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer, The Free Press A Devision of Macmillian, Inc. New York, 1968 [15] Schweizer, A.; Das Problem des Friedens in der heutigen Zeit . Rede bei der Entgegennahme des Nobel- Friedenspreises in Oslo am 4. November 1954, Verlag C.H. Beck München 1955

Despite a growing body of research by management scholars to understand and explain failures in ethical decision making (EDM), misconduct prevails. Scholars have identified character, founded in virtue ethics, as an important perspective that can help to address the gap in organizational misconduct. While character has been offered as a valid perspective in EDM, current theorizing on how it applies to EDM has not been well developed. We thus integrate character, founded in virtue ethics, into Rest’s (1986) EDM model to reveal how shifting attention to the nature of the moral agent provides critical insights into decision making more broadly and EDM specifically. Virtue ethics provides a perspective on EDM that acknowledges and anticipates uncertainties, considers its contextual constraints, and contemplates the development of the moral agent. We thus answer the call by many scholars to integrate character in EDM in order to advance the understanding of the field and suggest propositions for how to move forward. We conclude with implications of a character-infused approach to EDM for future research.

The relationship between moral sensitivity and professional values and ethical decision-making in nursing students

BackgroundEthical decision-making in nursing is crucial for care quality and patient safety. Nursing interns, being in a critical transition from students to professional nurses, have ethical decision-making abilities that are susceptible to environmental and individual factors. It is necessary to explore the latent profiles of ethical decision-making among interns and their influencing factors to provide targeted educational interventions.AimTo identify latent profiles of ethical decision-making in clinical nursing interns and analyze their influencing factors.Study DesignA cross-sectional study design was adopted.Participants and SettingIn August 2025, 640 nursing interns were recruited from four medical universities in China using convenience sampling. Data were collected via the Questionnaire Star platform, including a general information questionnaire, the Ethical Decision-Making Competence Scale (EDM-CS), the Perceived Social Support Scale (PSSS), and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index-C (IRI-C). Latent profile analysis was conducted based on the four dimensions of the EDM-CS, and multivariate logistic regression was used to analyze influencing factors.Ethical ConsiderationsWe obtained ethical approval from the First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University (Approval number: [2024]710).ResultsThree latent profiles of ethical decision-making were identified: Ethical Decision-making Basic Type (35.47%, n = 227), Ethical Decision-making Intermediate Type (52.81%, n = 338), and Ethical Decision-making Integration Type (11.72%, n = 75). Multivariate logistic regression showed that male interns were less likely to belong to the Ethical Decision-making Intermediate Type (OR = 0.46, p = .008) and the Ethical Decision-making Integration Type (OR = 0.26, p = .017). A positive hospital teaching environment significantly promoted membership in both the Ethical Decision-making Intermediate Type (OR = 1.84, p = .009) and the Ethical Decision-making Integration Type (OR = 9.12, p < .001). Clinical work pressure (OR = 2.22, p = .008) and an internship duration of 3-6 months (OR = 1.96, p = .017) increased the likelihood of belonging to the Ethical Decision-making Intermediate Type.ConclusionEthical decision-making among nursing interns can be categorized into three distinct profiles. Optimizing the teaching environment and reducing work pressure are key to promoting moral integration. Tailored educational strategies based on profile characteristics, internship stage, and gender differences are recommended to enhance ethical decision-making competence.

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the role of affect and tolerance of ambiguity on ethical decision-making of management and accounting students. Design/methodology/approach Weisbrod’s (2009) questionnaire on ethical decision-making in individual and organizational situations, McDonald’s (1970)16-factor questionnaire on tolerance of ambiguity and Watson et al.’s (1988) Positive and Negative Affect Schedule were used to study the students’ views toward research hypotheses. The population used in this study includes graduate and PhD students of accounting and management during the academic year 2014-2015. The number of samples is 398 and sample members selected using simple random sampling method. Hypotheses test using structural equation modeling in the AMOS software version 18. Findings Results of hypotheses shows that individual characteristics of positive and negative affect and tolerance of ambiguity have no effect on accounting students’ ethical decision-making, but there is a significant positive relationship between management students’ negative affect and ethical decision-making, and a significant negative relationship between management students’ increased level of tolerance of ambiguity and ethical decision-making. The findings also show that affect (positive and negative) and tolerance of ambiguity have no interactive effect on accounting students’ ethical decision-making, whereas among students of management, there is a significant relationship between interactive effect of negative affect and tolerance of ambiguity on ethical decision-making. The results show that there is a significant difference between students of management and accounting based on negative effects and tolerance of ambiguity on ethical decision-making. Originality/value The current paper is almost the first paper which was conducted in developing countries.

DISCUSSION OF A Cross-Cultural Study of the Influence of Country of Origin, Justice, Power Distance, and Gender on Ethical Decision Making

Decisions in the Gray Zone: Evidence-Based or Culture-Based?