The bioethical relevance of the ethics of healthcare organisations

Abstract

Bioethics and organisational ethics* are applied ethics disciplines with different objects of investigation. Bioethics focuses on the moral aspects of caring for the health of individuals and populations, and organisational ethics on the moral aspects of organisations' strategies and operations. So these two disciplines converge insofar as they bring moral arguments to bear on applied normative or value issues. Additionally, when organisational ethics impinges on ethical issues in, specifically, health care organisations – such as government health departments, pharmaceutical companies and private hospital groups – there is a more concerted convergence of bioethics and organisational ethics in that both are concerned with the ethics of health care and, consequently, of health.

South African Journal of Bioethics and Law Vol. 1 (1) 2008: pp. 20-23