Ethics and codes of ethics

Abstract

Every code must be treated as a hypothesis to be tested and adapted while following it. John Kultgen Over the past hundred years – though particularly in the early decades of this century and from the 1960s on – associations of engineers, accountants, insurance agents, financial planners, realtors, public administrators, lobbyists, football coaches, journalists, social workers and psychologists, and organizations such as hospitals, chain stores, and credit unions have published “codes of ethics.” In these public statements, they have sought to articulate standards that should characterize their membership or operations and that would therefore mediate their provision of goods or services. The precise reasons for this burgeoning interest in codes are probably various, though a confluence of social factors is likely to have had considerable influence. Advances in technology, increasing specialization, occupational autonomy and professionalization, rising corporatism, population growth, and rapid urbanization have considerably affected our social life. We are required increasingly to put our trust in people and organizations to whom we are significantly vulnerable and over whom we are able to exercise relatively little control. It is, as we have learned, a fragile trust, easily and far too often betrayed. The formation of occupational and professional associations, whose members are bound by a code of ethics, has been a partial response to this social breakdown.