Organizational Ethics

Organizational ethics is an emerging field of inquiry into the ethics dimensions of decision-making in health organizations. This includes enabling people to utilize shared values to set goals and direct actions as well as to clarify and evaluate policies and practices.

Issues of particular research interest for Drs. Kirby and Simpson include: analysis of the use and misuse of power in organizations; justice-based priority-setting in the allocation of scarce health resources; and development of innovative ways to instantiate ethics in large health care organizations.

Related research by Dr. Simpson focuses on the implications of a rural context for: (1) the nature and types of ethics issues that arise, and (2) the adequacy and applicability of standard (urban-developed) approaches for ethics support in rural settings. From an organizational ethics perspective, questions about the context of ethics issues and support should not be ignored.