Are we ethical? Approaches to ethics in management and organisation research

an article by Emma Jeanes (University of Exeter Business School) published in Organization Volume 24 Issue 2 (March 2017)

Abstract

We are currently witnessing two concurrent trajectories in the field of research ethics, namely the increasingly explicit and formalised requirements of research governance and the ongoing debate around the implicit nature of ethics, which cannot be assured by these methods, and related – for some – the role that reflexivity can play in research ethics.

This article seeks to address two questions.

First, given the focus of these discussions is often theoretical rather than on practice, how do our colleagues engage with research ethics and what is their ethical position?

Second, given reflexivity is typically focused on knowledge construction, to what extent does it influence (if at all) their ethics throughout the research process?

Interviews were undertaken with senior colleagues who have established modes of research practice and ethical approaches. Drawing on understandings of reflexivity and ethics, this article explores an ethical subjectivity that was typically reflective and sometimes reflexive and was usually related to personal rather than procedural ethics.

It demonstrates contrasting ethical concerns of society, participant and researcher community, and how some researchers saw their ethical obligation as focused on producing meaningful research at the expense of more traditional concerns for the research participant.

References

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Studying cyborgs: re-examining internet studies as human subjects research

an article by Ulrike Schultze (Southern Methodist University & Lund University, Dallas, USA) and Richard O Mason (Southern Methodist University, Dallas, USA) published in Journal of Information Technology Volume 27 Issue 4 (December 2012)

Abstract

Virtual communities and social networks assume and consume more aspects of people’s lives.

In these evolving social spaces, the boundaries between actual and virtual reality, between living individuals and their virtual bodies, and between private and public domains are becoming ever more blurred.

As a result, users and their presentations of self, as expressed through virtual bodies, are increasingly entangled. Consequently, more and more Internet users are cyborgs. For this reason, the ethical guidelines necessary for Internet research need to be revisited.

We contend that the IS community has paid insufficient attention to the ethics of Internet research.

To this end, we develop an understanding of issues related to online human subjects research by distinguishing between a disembodied and an entangled view of the Internet.

We outline a framework to guide investigators and research ethics committees in answering a key question in the age of cyborgism: When does a proposed Internet study deal with human subjects as opposed to digital material?

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