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    Ethics Management in Libraries and Other Information Services
    Ethics Management in Libraries and Other Information Services
    Ethics Management in Libraries and Other Information Services
    Ebook244 pages2 hours

    Ethics Management in Libraries and Other Information Services

    By Margarita Pérez Pulido

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    About this ebook

    Ethics Management in Libraries and Other Information Services presents professional ethics from a managerial point-of-view, explaining how to implement ethical management systems in libraries and information services and presenting the necessary tools needed to understand the practical application of a system of ethical management based on ISO 26000: 2010. The examples and selected case studies will be helpful to professionals, teachers and students who want to both explore and apply ethics now and in the future.

    • Provides insights to help incorporate knowledge and the implementation of professional ethics into the context of the organization
    • Presents a practical application of a system of ethical management based on ISO 26000: 2010
    • Includes examples and case studies to help professionals and students understand the practical application of ethics
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherElsevier Science
    Release dateSep 28, 2017
    ISBN9780081018958
    Ethics Management in Libraries and Other Information Services
    Author

    Margarita Pérez Pulido

    Margarita Pérez Pulido is a Professor at the University of Extremadura in Spain. She has a PhD in Documentation from the University of Salamanca, Spain, and over 20 years of experience as a teacher at the University of Extremadura and more than 12 years of experience as a professional in libraries and documentation services. She has conducted professional work for the Government of Extremadura and was the Director of the Documentation Service. Margarita has published three handbooks on librarianship and library management, and planning, and numerous articles on information ethics in national and international professional journals.

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      Ethics Management in Libraries and Other Information Services - Margarita Pérez Pulido

      Responsibility

      Chapter 1

      Why Implement Organisational Ethics?

      Abstract

      This chapter tries to justify the importance of the organisational ethics at present, on the basis of the development of the concepts of sustainability and Social Responsibility (SR). The presence of the SR in an organisation implies adopting an ethics management model compatible with the existing quality management system. This confers an inseparable character to the ethics and the quality.

      Keywords

      Social responsibility; sustainability; organisational ethics; ethics management system in the organisation; ethics management model in the organisation

      When thinking about ethics in general, the etymological meaning of the term comes to mind, in Greek ethos (character building), and in Latin mos (costume, habit); as an idea of character building, a way of being, that shapes in time and becomes an acquired habit. The historical evolution of the definition of ethics itself incorporates the concepts of good or evil, of what is right or wrong, of freedom of choice for decision making (autonomy), of justice, and duty or obligation. Therefore until now we can state that ethical behaviour is based on the building of a character or way of being for incorporating good behavioural habits and making prudent decisions, this is, analysed, balanced and fair that can result in a duty or obligation to act correctly in a particular context.

      This takes us to a first approach of what organisational ethics is: a character shaped in time that determines the behaviour of an organisation as an institution of the environment with which it interacts and the people that take part in it as components of itself. Here is where one of the great conflicts of organisational ethics is found: the usual confusion between individual actions and actions of the organisation. Authors such as Compte-Sponville (2004) (cited by Navarro, 2012) stand against organisational ethics considering that these lack awareness and freedom. But, in the opinion of Navarro (2012), organisations act freely and voluntarily, with an ethics integrated by the sum of different people and their individual ethics (that build a common character and way of being based on behavioural patterns and internal documents adopted voluntarily) where the rest of the interested parties also have something to contribute. This would be the base of the Social Responsibility (SR) of an organisation from an ethical point of view: a free and voluntary phenomenon of decision making that affects other people in the pursuit of continuous improvement.

      We can find three answers to the question why implement organisational ethics. Firstly, organisations are subjected to internal and external demands, they must be responsible for their acts, and there must be an awareness that this responsibility exists. Being responsible, for Hartman, Desjardins, and Espinoza (2014), means having a commitment that requires operating in a specific way according to three types of duties: duty or obligation, to prevent damage without owning the duty or obligation to do so and to do good voluntarily. Those organisations that possess a robust ethical culture anticipate by establishing the adequate institutional means. When this culture does not exist, an institutional reflection is needed for translating the corporative values into ways of being and specific actions.

      Secondly, organisational ethics are considered one more matter of management, like those others of technical, legal, economic or quality nature. It is about establishing a long-term commitment to the ethical principles and values included in the strategic plan of the organisation, adopting a values-based management model. Thirdly, it is justified by the necessity of counting on stakeholders for collective decisions making, according to procedures that allow a balanced debate between the ones affected for reaching an agreement (dialogical ethics).

      What characterises the organisational ethics is its holistic nature, the incorporation of a management system and the participation of all the parties in the modes of behaviour. Francés, Borrego, and Velayos (2003) express pretty well how it must be understood: (1) the formation of a character after a process of reflection and self-criticism; (2) that takes part in the corporative life in time; (3) that incorporates mechanisms of ethical commitment in the whole management; (4) that represents the awareness of its actions based on ethical principles and values and (5) that appears expressed in its mission and vision. Similarly, there must exist willing to submit to permanent assessment and to improve according to the evolution of the society itself. We talk about applied, organisational and public ethics.

      The institutionalisation of ethics in organisations started historically in the United States and the United Kingdom. Francés, Borrego, and Velayos (2003) justify it by the features of the Anglo-Saxon world with regard to their tendency to reflect the pluralism of society, the demands of civil society and its activism taking part in pressure groups and associations and, in the case of the private sphere, the characteristics of the companies in the way they are conceived (magnitude and multinational). Since the 1990s there has been a generalised tendency to distinguish between compliance-based organisations and those based on values. SR integrates norms and values that the organisation assumes voluntarily and that, once assumed, begin to have internal regulatory force. It also inspires new legal measures adapted to the moral conscience of society.

      The Context of Sustainability

      Addressing the concept of sustainability, we must draw the first distinction between sustainability and sustainable development (Jiménez, 2002). It is meant by sustainability, a set of guiding principles that allow reaching an ideal status of excellence in economy, society, and environment if specific management systems are applied. The first reference of the term sustainable development is found in the report Our common future elaborated by the Brundtland Commission Environment and Development in 1987. The definition of the term is completed with the actions of this Commission in 1992, 1996 and 2002 when the so-called Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005–14 is announced. We can state then that sustainable development is the practical application of sustainability and that it involves a positive change from an economic, social and environmental perspective without compromising the capacity of future generations for satisfying their needs.

      Nolin (2010) considers sustainable information as an area of information ethics, focused on the access to information, the development of new technologies and education. In his opinion, sustainable information refers to two questions. On one side, information for the sustainable development, as a resource for sustainability projects and contribution to communicative aspects of the sustainable development. On the other side, the development of the sustainable information as a contribution to the efficient use of communication and information technologies, in the variety of practices and functions of the knowledge production, equal access to information and technologies, information storage, decisions making and the development of indicators and specific norms. Education is an essential instrument towards the sustainable society, supported by Global Learning (Hovland, 2014) and the new models of interactions based on networks, technologies and the Internet.

      In recent years, different norms and regulations at global, European, national and professional level lead to sustainability. In the field of libraries and information services, we can highlight the labour of the International Federation Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) through the Committee on Free Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE) and the Environmental Sustainability and Libraries Special Interest Groups. The documents and statements published, such as the Statement on libraries and sustainable development (2002), the updating of the IFLA Internet Manifesto (IFLA, 2014b) or the Lyon Declaration (IFLA, 2014c), among others, recommend promoting the sustainable development focusing on the access to information, the Information Literacy, the rights of the citizen to be informed and the transparency in governments. In 2014 the United Nations on its Post-2015 Development Agenda, recognised the importance of the access to information as one of the seven great Millennium Development Goals (MDG). These objectives have turned into 17 in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations, 2015) and in this new regulatory framework, the access to information have gained a higher prominence for helping the governments to make informed decisions and improving people’s quality of life.

      For this reason, IFLA has published the document Governance, Access to Information on the Agenda at Open Working Group 8 (OWG) in Sustainable development (2014a). This group, as a contribution to the new goals for 2030, keeps working on the importance of access to information as a human right, the improvement of policies of data gathering and the role of intermediaries in the fostering of transparency. Other contributions of IFLA towards sustainable development are the IFLA Manifesto on Transparency, Good Governance and Freedom from Corruption (FAIFE, 2008) and the elaboration of Learning materials for workshops on the IFLA Manifesto on Transparency, Good Governance and Freedom from Corruption on the part of the Committee FAIFE (2016). Also the contributions in different global conferences that take place annually, or the official pronouncements in case of severe universal conflicts, as is the case of the document Open societies are healthy societies about the disapproval of policies that set up barriers to the free movement of refugees or migrants

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