Abstract
The chapter proposes to philosophically ground the ethics expertise in social work, starting from a series of ethics theories: utilitarian ethics, deontological ethics and ethics of virtues. During the foundation of ethics expertise we made conceptual distinctions between the theoretical and practical nature of expertise, between the ethical and the moral one, in order to justify the need for a new model of ethics expertise. In our approach, we debate the influence of such theories in the field of social services, which we consider to be representative in the context of the construction of a new model of ethics expertise, which underlies the constitutive values of social practice. The normativity of the ethical theories is extended to the level of certain different behavioural models and moral reasoning, summing up in practice the frameworks of the moral conduct the individuals can apply, when making an ethical decision, in social or organisational context, namely to determine whether the decision is morally acceptable or not.
TopIntroduction
The issue of ethics in the organisations is a current and increasingly developed topic, involving all social actors responsible for their good functioning, however, the theoretical and empirical evaluation of the ethical decision are less exploited.
The role of ethical theories was the subject of different researches, aiming to apply certain ethical procedures in the practices of human resources (Schumann, 2001), of implementing the policies of corporatist social responsibility, or checking the ethical evaluations undertaken by managers within the organisation (Reidenbach & Donald, 1990; Södergren, 2014). The majority of the research conducted in the field of ethics have the main purpose of identifying those rules, principles, values, that the professionals adopt and translate into practice. Another important aspect in the field of ethics of the professions is drawing the frameworks of the ethical principles, on whose considerations and implications the process of ethical decision-making can be developed. The models of making ethical decisions are grounded on a series of central ethical theories, further presenting a few basic characteristics of certain ethical theories, such as those of welfare/good – the utilitarian ethics, and ethical theories of justice: deontological ethics, ethics of justice (Rawlsian theory of justice as equity), as well as the theory of ethics of virtue.