Everyday ethics in professional life: social work as ethics work

ABSTRACT This article outlines and develops the concept of ‘ethics work’ in social work practice. It takes as its starting point a situated account of ethics as embedded in everyday practice: ‘everyday ethics’. This is contrasted with ‘textbook ethics’, which focuses on outlining general ethical principles, presenting ethical dilemmas and offering normative ethical frameworks (including decision-making models). ‘Ethics work’ is a more descriptive account of ethics that refers to the effort people put into seeing ethically salient aspects of situations, developing themselves as good practitioners, working out the right course of action and justifying who they are and what they have done. After identifying seven features of ethics work, including work on framing, roles, emotion, identity, reason, relationships and performance, each element is illustrated with reference to two case examples from social work practice. It is argued that the concept of ethics work, with its focus on the practitioners as moral agents in context, is an important antidote to the rules-based managerialism of much contemporary practice.

[1]  M. Nussbaum.  Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions , 2001 .

[2]  E. Goffman.  Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience , 1974 .

[3]  J. Oakley,et al.  Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles , 2001 .

[4]  C. Koggel,et al.  Care Ethics: New Theories and Applications , 2010 .

[5]  Sarah Banks.  Negotiating personal engagement and professional accountability: professional wisdom and ethics work , 2013 .

[6]  Stephen A. Webb,et al.  Virtue Ethics and Social Work: Being Lucky, Realistic, and not Doing ones Duty , 2002 .

[7]  C. Gilligan.  In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press) 1982. , 1982 .

[8]  Peter J. Smith.  The Emotional Labour of Nursing Revisited , 2012 .

[9]  R. Hugman.  New approaches in ethics for the caring professions , 2005 .

[10]  Martha C. Nussbaum.  Upheavals of Thought: Frontmatter , 2001 .

[11]  E. Olsen,et al.  Uranus: Variability of the Microwave Spectrum , 1982, Science.

[12]  T. Beauchamp,et al.  Principles of biomedical ethics , 1991 .

[13]  M. Barnes.  Abandoning Care? A Critical Perspective on Personalisation from an Ethic of Care , 2011 .

[14]  A. Hochschild.  The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes From Home and Work , 2004 .

[15]  Robert J. Richards,et al.  :Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong , 2008 .

[16]  C. Leeson.  The emotional labour of caring about looked‐after children , 2010 .

[17]  Anthony Appiah,et al.  Experiments in Ethics , 2008 .

[18]  L. Trinder.  Practising Reflexivity in Health and Welfare , 2001 .

[19]  F. Miller,et al.  What Makes Placebo-Controlled Trials Unethical? , 2002, The American journal of bioethics : AJOB.

[20]  J. Tronto.  Partiality Based on Relational Responsibilities: Another Approach to Global Ethics , 2012 .

[21]  Kirsi Juhila,et al.  Ethics in Professional Interaction: Justifying the Limits of Helping in a Supported Housing Unit , 2010 .

[22]  Merlinda Weinberg.  The ideological dilemma of subordination of self versus self-care: Identity construction of the ‘ethical social worker’ , 2014 .

[23]  Marcel Urner,et al.  Frame Reflection Toward The Resolution Of Intractable Policy Controversies , 2016 .

[24]  A. Gallagher,et al.  Ethics in Professional Life: Virtues for Health and Social Care , 2008 .

[25]  S. Slembrouck,et al.  Language Practices in Social Work: Categorisation and Accountability in Child Welfare , 2006 .

[26]  T. D. Wilson.  Review of: Wooffitt, R. Conversation analysis and discourse analysis: a comparative and critical introduction. London: Sage Publications, 2005 , 2005, Inf. Res..

[27]  S. Slembrouck,et al.  Moral construction in social work discourse , 1997 .

[28]  A. Tversky,et al.  The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. , 1981, Science.

[29]  A. Molewijk,et al.  Teaching ethics in the clinic. The theory and practice of moral case deliberation , 2008, Journal of Medical Ethics.

[30]  A. Molewijk,et al.  Enacting Ethics: Bottom-up Involvement in Implementing Moral Case Deliberation , 2011, Health Care Analysis.

[31]  C. Swanton.  Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View , 2003 .

[32]  Virginia Held,et al.  The ethics of care : personal, political, and global , 2006 .

[33]  Robin Wooffitt,et al.  Conversation analysis and discourse analysis : a comparative and critical introduction , 2005 .

[34]  Taylor,et al.  Practising Reflexivity in Health and Welfare , 2001 .

[35]  Sarah Banks.  Ethics in an age of austerity : social work and the evolving new public management. , 2011 .

[36]  Merlinda Weinberg.  The Social Construction of Social Work Ethics: Politicizing and Broadening the Lens , 2010 .

[37]  C. Gilligan.  In a different voice: Women's conceptions of self and of morality. , 1977 .

[38]  Robin Williams,et al.  Accounting for Ethical Difficulties in Social Welfare Work: Issues, Problems and Dilemmas , 2005 .

[39]  C. Clegg.  Towards Professional Wisdom: Practical Deliberation in the People Professions , 2011 .

[40]  J. Haidt.  The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. , 2001, Psychological review.

[41]  K. Svensson.  Practising Social Work Ethics Around the World: Cases and Commentaries , 2012 .

[42]  T. Watson,et al.  Managing Identity: Identity Work, Personal Predicaments and Structural Circumstances , 2008 .

[43]  S. Keinemans.  Be Sensible: Emotions in Social Work Ethics and Education , 2015 .

[44]  J. Geoghegan.  Return to Reason! , 1942, Nature.

[45]  E. Goffman.  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , 1959 .

[46]  M. Nussbaum,et al.  Upheavals of Thought: The Romantic Ascent: Emily Brontë , 2001 .

[47]  Sarah Banks.  Ethics and Values in Social Work , 1995 .

[48]  Terrance C. McConnell,et al.  Moral Perception and Particularity , 1995 .

[49]  Mats Alvesson,et al.  Managing Managerial Identities: Organizational Fragmentation, Discourse and Identity Struggle , 2003 .

[50]  D. Snow,et al.  Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment , 2000 .

[51]  A. Gallagher,et al.  Ethics in professional life , 2009 .

[52]  Joan Cocks,et al.  The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global , 2006, Perspectives on Politics.

[53]  D. Edmonds.  Would You Kill the Fat Man?: The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us about Right and Wrong , 2013 .

[54]  Peter J. Smith.  The Emotional Labour of Nursing Revisited: Can Nurses Still Care? , 2011 .

[55]  Victor Yaznevich.  Problems and Dilemmas , 2014 .

[56]  M. Walker,et al.  Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics , 1997 .

[57]  A. J. Vetlesen.  Perception, Empathy, and Judgment: An Inquiry into the Preconditions of Moral Performance , 1993 .

[58]  Sarah Banks.  Critical Commentary: Social Work Ethics , 2008 .

[59]  S. Halford,et al.  New identities? Professionalism, managerialism and the construction of self , 1998 .

[60]  J. Haidt,et al.  The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion , 2014, Utilitas.

[61]  Nancy J. Hirschmann,et al.  Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. By Joan Tronto. New York: Routledge, 1993. 242 pp. $173.00 (hardcover), $53.95 (paperback). , 2018, Politics & Gender.

[62]  J. Millie.  Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language, and Action , 2012 .

[63]  Peter Goldie,et al.  The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration , 2000 .

[64]  Sarah Banks,et al.  Ethics, Accountability and the Social Professions , 2004 .

[65]  Sarah Banks.  From professional ethics to ethics in professional life : implications for learning, teaching and study. , 2009 .

[66]  Ana P. Gantman,et al.  Moral Perception , 2015, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[67]  N. McGlynn.  Thinking fast and slow. , 2014, Australian veterinary journal.

[68]  N. Levy.  Neuroethics: A New Way of Doing Ethics , 2011, AJOB neuroscience.

[69]  S. Tascón.  Ethics of responsibility , 2010 .

[70]  Mariël Kanne,et al.  The Practice of Moral Action: A Balancing Act for Social Workers , 2013 .