The book concludes with a reflection on the challenge of grey zones as being one of first principles, which represents a risk to the integrity and long-term future of the organisation. It emphasises that the populations in areas of conflict and contestation are the most vulnerable rights holders in Europe, yet the most isolated. The Council of Europe must address this systematic problem as a matter of urgency and with the decisive attention of Member States and both statutory and non-statutory actors.

This chapter describes and expands upon virtue ethical and virtue theoretical approaches to moral education in and for virtual spaces. Building on existing claims that virtual spaces call for new kinds of virtues, we argue that structural constraints make risks and vices especially hard to overcome in these contexts. We organize these constraints around a threefold approach to integrity, according to how they hinder knowledge, self-efficacy, and self-unity. We then turn to positive recommendations for removing these barriers. We outline implications for end users by exploring the need for the development of the “burdened virtues”, applying ideas from Lisa Tessman. We also consider what it would look like for this kind of moral development to be supported by educators, policy-makers, and other leaders within the tech ecosystem. We suggest that the way forward will be to educate for and build spaces in which the online and offline worlds are drawn into closer alignment, supporting integrity in all its forms.

This chapter explores the nature of the work that researchers in the social and behavioral sciences do through a discussion of the ethical principles that ought to guide their work. Since academic researchers have different perceptions and attitudes regarding what constitutes (un)ethical research, we offer an overview of what is considered best practices in social and behavioral science research. This work focuses primarily on the ethical issues related to the design, development, implementation, and publication of research projects. It concludes with a guide for assisting research teams and research ethics committees in assessing the honesty, authenticity, and accountability of their research programs.

This chapter provides an introduction to the concept of corruption, presents an overview of the major stakeholders and strategies involved in the business response to the corruption challenge and explains how this all relates to corporate sustainability.

More specifically, the chapter starts out by proposing a workable definition for corruption and explains what different forms corruption can take and what its consequences are for business and society at large. In a second step, we map the key actors, rule frameworks and initiatives that shape anti-corruption governance relevant to the business environment. We then zoom in on the company perspective and review the common approaches deployed by businesses to tackle corruption and their evolution over time, as well as some of their weaknesses and challenges ahead. The concluding section shows how the business response to corruption is linked to broader concerns about corporate sustainability, highlighting that corporate anti-corruption efforts can be considered as part and parcel of a comprehensive corporate sustainability agenda.

This chapter discusses the role of ethical reflection in the context of corporate sustainability. It starts by reviewing the relevance of four normative ethical theories (utilitarian ethics, duty-based ethics, virtue ethics and posthuman ethics) for corporate sustainability. Next, the chapter discusses how people in organisations make ethical decisions and which cognitive biases impact our decision-making. In the following section, the chapter asks two essential questions: Why do we need ethics when discussing corporate sustainability? and Can corporations engage in ethical reflection or is this something that only individuals can do? The final section discusses how firms can manage ethics, and we distinguish two orientations that can guide such management: compliance and integrity.

‘Negligence’ is frightening to think about, but accepting the possibility of making mistakes as lawyers does not mean we ought to give up on a desire to perform to the best of our ability, and at the peak of our moral consciousness. This chapter applies morality to our technical competence. In the hothouse atmosphere of competitive law firms, the underlying conflict between commercialism and professionalism leads to moral as well as financial risk. Only true professionalism – which emphasizes the dual virtues of integrity and competence – will sustainably support your future. Too much concentration on the business of law and profit can and does lead to the temptation to ‘borrow’ clients’ money and to carelessness. There are extensive conduct and accounting rules that focus on accounting honestly for clients’ money, especially for lawyers who practise across international borders, and we should back that up by arranging professional indemnity (malpractice) insurance against any negligence. In addition, risk management, continuing legal education and specialist accreditation courses are all available through the internet to support you, even if not available through a bar association

This chapter explores the place of compromise in transitional justice. While all-pervasive in politics, compromise is a neglected topic, almost a non-topic, within the current transitional justice literature. The chapter is an attempt to reverse this tendency and rehabilitate the notion of compromise. If, as pluralists hold, we are often faced with cases of hard moral choices where, whatever we do, something of value is irreparably lost, then the best we can hope for is some kind of acceptable compromise between clashing goods. The question about the limits of compromise thus features centrally in this chapter. How far should transitional societies go in their willingness to compromise? When is a compromise acceptable, fair, guided by principle, and when is it rotten to the core, simply illegitimate? To what extent is it acceptable to compromise deeply held values such as justice and truth for the sake of other equally important values such as, say, civil peace and democracy? While doubtful that we can settle such issues once and for all, the chapter identifies a range of questions that should be part of the collective conversation about when a political compromise is acceptable and when it is not. The discussion begins, however, with a concrete historical figure, the communist leader Joe Slovo, who played a critical role in South Africa’s negotiated transition from apartheid to democracy. Slovo’s reflections on the nature and limits of compromise in the South African context serve as a central reference point for my discussion throughout this chapter.

The discipline of “diplomatics” – originating in the seventeenth century to systematically test the authenticity of medieval documents – has more recently been adapted to the study of digital records and their systems. In establishing the necessary elements for the long-term preservation of authentic records, archival diplomatics provides one possible (and powerful) analytic framework and methodology for analyzing the trustworthiness of records, including those to be found in blockchain and distributed ledgers. Regardless of the type of blockchain and distributed ledger system under examination, each relies upon trust in the ledger and in the records the ledger contains. Yet each type of blockchain and distributed ledger system still has limitations when judged against archival diplomatic standards of records’ trustworthiness, which demands the accuracy, reliability, and authenticity of records. By gaining an understanding of the elemental requirements for trust in records (and in record systems), there is hope that the designers of blockchain and distributed ledger systems might continue to improve the evidentiary quality of blockchain records and recordkeeping.

This chapter draws upon Australian prime ministers and their attempt to (re)build trust through their actions regarding two long-term policy issues, asylum-seekers and climate change, as well as an immediate major event occurring during their respective prime ministerships. To help us further ground this analysis, we draw upon data from three prime ministers’ press conferences, examining their responses to questioning within the theoretical lens of trust. The research reveals that building or rebuilding trust is essential in any relationship, but especially so today in terms of political leadership in liberal democracies. They illustrate how competence is regarded as crucial in building trust with colleagues and the public, while integrity is especially important for leaders who enter the job with less perceived legitimacy than a leader who was elected and hence has a mandate to implement their policy platform. Crucially though, a leader who ignores integrity does so at their own peril, as it gives a potential challenger ammunition for a tilt at the leadership position. The leadership needs to send positive messages of unity rather than division and individual aspirations if trust is to be built or rebuilt. In earlier research, we revealed that what one says and how one says it can be important. Politicians who tended to acknowledge successes due to the collective group of their own party, rather than themselves, benefitted greatly in the situations at hand. Thus, (re)building trust becomes more important than ever for political leaders but, perhaps, also more difficult than ever.

This chapter discusses Cicero’s views on the relation between ethical theory and the good human life, focusing on his main work on ethical theory, De finibus. Cicero’s critique of Stoic and Epicurean ethics has a common element, all the more striking given the differences between the two doctrines, namely that neither theory is livable with integrity in social contexts. This critique is a reflection both of Cicero’s belief that ethics should engage with lived human experience and of the commitment, in varying degrees, of the Stoics and Epicureans to a conception of the good human life as inherently social. The pluralism of the Old Academy’s ethics discussed in the final part of De finibus escapes this critique but is in danger, through lack of a single supreme value, of failing to offer a basis on which we may structure our lives. Taken as a whole, De finibus can thus be seen to cast a skeptical eye on the viability of ethical theory itself.