The Ethical Project

Principles of right and wrong guide the lives of almost all human beings, but we often see them as external to ourselves, outside our own control. In a revolutionary approach to the problems of moral philosophy, Philip Kitcher makes a provocative proposal: Instead of conceiving ethical commands as divine revelations or as the discoveries of brilliant thinkers, we should see our ethical practices as evolving over tens of thousands of years, as members of our species have worked out how to live together and prosper. Elaborating this radical new vision, Kitcher shows how the limited altruistic tendencies of our ancestors enabled a fragile social life, how our forebears learned to regulate their interactions with one another, and how human societies eventually grew into forms of previously unimaginable complexity. The most successful of the many millennia-old experiments in how to live, he contends, survive in our values today. Drawing on natural science, social science, and philosophy to develop an approach he calls "pragmatic naturalism," Kitcher reveals the power of an evolving ethics built around a few core principles-including justice and cooperation-but leaving room for a diversity of communities and modes of self-expression. Ethics emerges as a beautifully human phenomenon-permanently unfinished, collectively refined and distorted generation by generation. Our human values, Kitcher shows, can be understood not as a final system but as a project-the ethical project-in which our species has engaged for most of its history, and which has been central to who we are.

Ethics plays a critical role in project management, but all too often, its importance is overlooked. This benign neglect can result in serious consequences to individuals and organizations, ranging from tarnished reputations to civil and criminal liability. Ethics and Project Management demonstrates the importance of making ethics a key consideration in managing projects and describes the impacts that occur when ethical transgressions arise. Providing the tools necessary for project managers to avoid an ethical lapse that can put themselves and their organization at risk, this volume: Defines ethics and places it within the project management context Discusses the contents of the Project Management Institute’s code of ethics Enables project managers to recognize the trends that precipitate ethical dilemmas on a project Demonstrates how ethical concerns permeate the entire project life cycle Provides tips on establishing a governance protocol to ensure ethical compliance Explores legal issues that arise from unethical behavior Examines how ethical concerns on a project can have global implications, and how to operate in international settings with cultural differences Each chapter ends with a Getting Started Checklist, facilitating immediate application of the concepts discussed and making it easy for project managers to determine whether they are in compliance with ethical standards. Providing a solid roadmap for the ethical health of a project, this volume is essential reading for all those concerned with avoiding the disastrous consequences of a cavalier approach to ethics. Praise for the book: ... a great desktop reference for any project manager. It is a must-have title to complete any project management library and I recommend it to both new and highly experienced project managers. —Gregg D. Richie, PMP, MCTS, CNP, Managing Principal, P8, LLC

What does it mean to carry out "good work"? What strategies allow people to maintain moral and ethical standards at a time when market forces have unprecedented power and work life is being radically altered by technological innovation? These questions lie at the heart of this eagerly awaited new book. Focusing on genetics and journalism-two fields that generate and manipulate information and thus affect our lives in myriad ways-the authors show how in their quest to build meaningful careers successful professionals exhibit "humane creativity," high-level performance coupled with social responsibility. Over the last five years the authors have interviewed over 100 people in each field who are engaged in cutting-edge work, probing their goals and visions, their obstacles and fears, and how they pass on their most cherished practices and values. They found sharp contrasts between the two fields. Until now, geneticists' values have not been seriously challenged by the demands of their work world, while journalists are deeply disillusioned by the conflict between commerce and ethics. The dilemmas these professionals face and the strategies they choose in their search for a moral compass offer valuable guidance on how all persons can transform their professions and their lives. Enlivened with stories of real people facing hard decisions, Good Work offers powerful insight into one of the most important issues of our time and, indeed, into the future course of science, technology, and communication.

How relevant is ethics to project management? The book - which aims to demystify the field of ethics for project managers and managers in general - takes both a critical and a practical look at project management in terms of success criteria, and ethical opportunities and risks. The goal is to help the reader to use ethical theory to further identify opportunities and risks within their projects and thereby to advance more directly along the path of mature and sustainable managerial practice. Project Ethics opens with an investigation of the critical success factors in project management. It then illustrates how situations can arise within projects where values can compete, and looks at how ethical theories on virtue, utility, duty and rights can be used as competence eye-openers to evaluate projects. The reader is challenged to think of their project management experiences where questions of competing values surfaced, and mirror them in short vignettes taken from real practice from all round the globe. Finally, a new method is introduced, based on classical ethical theory, which can help project owners, project managers, project teams and stakeholders, to identify, estimate and evaluate ethical opportunities and risks in projects.

An up-to-date edition of a foundational collection

Ethics is rarely a topic in project management research, despite its increasing popularity in the general management literature in recent years. Many of the recent scandals are traced back to questionable ethical behaviors of individuals or organizations. The work of these individuals and organizations is done to a large extent in projects. Thus, a better understanding of ethics and its implications in the context of projects helps building awareness about ethics within the project management community and helps preparing project managers to tackle ethical issues when they arise. Ethics - the justification of actions and practices in specific situations - is a reasoning process, a philosophical reflection on the moral life and the principles embedded in that life and their application to a given situation. The moral life and its principles develop from the traditions or beliefs that have evolved over several years or even centuries in societies concerning right and wrong conduct (Buchholz & Rosenthal, 1996). Thus, the moral principles is what we bring with us to projects, and their application to project situations constitute the ethical reasoning process.

Leadership, Ethics, and Project Execution provides a masterclass in the project and people management skills that set apart the most accomplished design and construction professionals. This textbook for graduate and advanced undergraduate students distils the insights gleaned over the authors’ decades of experience in academia and industry into actionable principles for success in a notoriously demanding field. Combining real life case studies with original research, Leadership, Ethics, and Project Execution points the way from the classroom to the jobsite. Interactive exercises allow readers to take the role of junior project managers and other emerging professionals and reason through the ethical dilemmas surrounding building projects from the initial bid to completion. Chapters on stakeholder alignment, productivity, and project success ensure that aspiring leaders’ business decisions are as economically sound as they are ethically correct. From its accessible, conversational tone to the lifetime’s worth of construction wisdom it shares, Leadership, Ethics, and Project Execution offers an extended mentoring session with three giants of the building industry.

Charles Hirschkind's unique study explores how a popular Islamic media form the cassette sermon has profoundly transformed the political geography of the Middle East over the last three decades. An essential aspect of what is now called the Islamic Revival, the cassette sermon has become omnipresent in most Middle Eastern cities, punctuating the daily routines of many men and women. Hirschkind shows how sermon tapes have provided one of the means by which Islamic ethical traditions have been recalibrated to a modern political and technological order to its noise and forms of pleasure and boredom, but also to its political incitements and call for citizen participation. Contrary to the belief that Islamic cassette sermons are a tool of militant indoctrination, Hirschkind argues that sermon tapes serve as an instrument of ethical self-improvement and as a vehicle for honing the sensibilities and affects of pious living. Focusing on Cairo's popular neighborhoods, Hirschkind highlights the pivotal role these tapes now play in an expanding arena of Islamic argumentation and debate what he calls an "Islamic counterpublic." This emerging arena connects Islamic traditions of ethical discipline to practices of deliberation about the common good, the duties of Muslims as national citizens, and the challenges faced by diverse Muslim communities around the globe. The Ethical Soundscape is a brilliant analysis linking modern media practices of moral self-fashioning to the creation of increasingly powerful religious publics.