My work analyses the legislation changes in the area of social and legal protection of children in the Czech Republic that have been introduced over the last two years. This work focuses on impacts of these changes in the practice of transferring children to substitute care as well as ethical aspects directly connected with this process. Laws impacting the social and legal protection of children are being compared in order to understand the legal rights of children. The consequences of the legislative changes have a direct effect on the processes of handing children to substitute care. The work is not only concerned with the practical impacts, but also with the ethical side of the problem which was identified as the most important in my thesis. Case reports from my own practice provide a complementary evidence to the reader to better understand the process of placement of children into substitute care both at professional and ethical levels.

This work is dealing with specific issue of work with gypsy clients of social settlements. The teoretic part is bordered on one side by characteristic of gypsy ethnic in Czech republic and its contemporary situation, and on the other side by general characteristic of social servicies and settlements and by activity of social settlements for children and youth. The end of theoretic part of this work is focused on example of good practice in the Center-Bohemian region, concretely in social settlements for children and youth {--} called {\clq},Domek``. The practic part contains results gained from semi-structured interviews with Center-Bohemian social settlements' workers, who are dealing directly with gypsy users. The results show that the majority of inquiered workers reflect the difference in servicies-provision of social settlemets for children and youth for gypsy and not-gypsy users. They consider as a specific attitude mainly understanding in communication and the respect of different emotional displays during communication. The majority of inquired workers confirmed the use of mentioned specific methods of work towards gypsy users. The next finding was that the work with gypsy users estimates a certain knowledge and skills of worker in social settlements for children and youth.

D’une juridiction à l’autre, les modèles législatifs encadrant la procréation médicalement assistée (PMA) diffèrent, allant de l’absence de directives nationales à des agences réglementaires supervisant les cliniques de fertilité. De 2010 à 2015, le Québec finançait les services de PMA pour ses résidents sans définir de critères d’accessibilité. Alors que l’adoption de critères d’accessibilité représente un défi éthique complexe, les candidats souhaitant obtenir des services de PMA peuvent être confrontés à un refus par des professionnels sur la base d’une évaluation subjective. Déterminer les critères présentement utilisés par les professionnels en l’absence de directives législatives peut éclaircir les décisions difficiles auxquelles ils font face quotidiennement. Un tel travail peut aussi informer la réflexion éthique quant à l’étude normative de directives dans ce domaine. La présente étude décrit les critères d’accessibilité utilisés par les professionnels travaillant dans des cliniques de fertilité, privées ou publiques, au Québec. Des entrevues semi-dirigées ont été réalisées avec quatre médecins et quatre psychologues. Une recension des écrits a permis de regrouper les critères reportés dans la littérature selon leurs similitudes, puis d’analyser les entrevues selon ces regroupements. De façon générale, les professionnels du Québec utilisent des critères similaires à ceux des professionnels d’autres pays, mais des critères non recensés dans la littérature ont aussi été utilisés par les participants. Les critères utilisés les plus communs étaient la relation conjugale, l’état de santé mentale ainsi que l’âge des candidats. Une découverte importante est que les professionnels n’utilisaient pas un seul critère pour refuser un candidat, mais plutôt une combinaison de facteurs en tenant compte de son contexte de vie. Une autre découverte intéressante est l’utilisation du « rejet temporaire », c’est-à-dire le report des traitements à un meilleur moment pour les candidats selon le professionnel. Les entrevues ont permis de déterminer que les professionnels agissent en tant que gatekeepers et doivent souvent prendre des décisions qui dépassent l’évaluation clinique en se basant sur un jugement personnel. Ce rôle n’est pas facile et les participants ont exprimé des doutes et des remises en question de leurs propres décisions. / From 2010 to 2015, Quebec offered comprehensive public funding for assisted reproductive technologies (ART), allowing access to any female resident ‘of reproductive age’ without specifying eligibility criteria. Other jurisdictions have different models ranging from absence of criteria to regulatory agencies overseeing fertility clinics. While establishing eligibility criteria is an ethically daunting task, candidates wishing to access ART may be confronted with professionals who reject them based on subjective criteria. Exploring what criteria are used in practice, in the absence of regulatory guidance, can shed light on the challenges faced by professionals and their decision-making needs. It can also inform our ethical reflection regarding the normative positions required for establishing guidelines in this sensitive area. This qualitative study describes eligibility criteria used by healthcare professionals working in fertility clinics in Quebec, based on semi-structured interviews conducted with four physicians and four psychologists working in both public and private clinics. An extensive literature review on the topic allowed the separation of criteria into groups under overarching themes, which were then used to analyze the interviews. Findings suggests that overall, professionals in Quebec are using similar criteria to those used by professionals in other countries. They also referred to criteria not found in the literature, which required the creation of new groups for analysis. Among the criteria used by interviewees, the researchers found that the relationship status was the most common, followed by candidates’ mental health and their age. A major finding was that professionals never considered one isolated criterion to reject candidates, but rather based their decision on a combination of factors while considering the context of the candidate’s life. Another important element was the repeated phenomenon of “temporary rejection”, i.e. a professional postponing treatment until a later date describing it as a “better time” for candidates who did not seem ready to undergo treatments. Overall, decisions were made by analyzing the context in which candidates were living and in which the prospective child would be raised. The interviews lead to the conclusion that professionals act as gatekeepers and often need to make normative decisions that go beyond a clinical assessment, based on a personal judgement call. These decisions were not easily taken and participants expressed doubts and decisional conflict.

With the arrival of automated vehicles (AVs) on our streets virtually around the corner, this thesis explores advances in automated driving technology with a focus on ethical decision making in dilemmatic traf- fic situations. In a total of five publications, we take a multi-facetted approach to analyse and address the core challenges related to auto- mated ethical decision making in AVs. In publications one through three, we conduct a series of immersive virtual reality studies to analyze human behavior in traffic dilemmas, explore mathematical approaches to model the decision making process, investigate how the assessment methodology can affect moral judgment, and discuss the implications of these studies for algorithmic decision making in the real-world. In publication number four, we provide a comprehensive summary of the status quo of AV technology and legislation with regard to automated ethical decision making. Here, we discuss when and why ethical deci- sion making systems become necessary in AVs, review existing guide- lines for the behavior of AVs in dilemma situations, and compile a set of 10 demands and open questions that need to be addressed in the pursuit of a framework for ethical decision making in AVs. Finally, the basis for automated ethical decision making in AVs will be provided by accurate assessments of the immediate environment of the car. The pri- mary technology used to provide the required information processing of camera and LiDAR images in AVs is machine learning, and in particular deep learning. In publication five, we propose a form of adaptive acti- vation functions, addressing a central element of deep neural networks, which could, for instance, lead to increased detection rates of relevant objects, and thus help to provide a more accurate assessment of the AVs environment. Overall, this thesis provides a structured and compre- hensive overview of the state of the art in ethical decision making for AVs. It includes important implications for the design of decision mak- ing algorithms in practice, and concisely outlines the central remaining challenges on the road to a safe, fair and successful introduction of fully automated vehicles into the market.

Unmanned aircraft vehicles were primarily used for military purposes and are still used for them. Not only for this reason is their introduction for humanitarian aims disputable, raising various dilemmas. Supporters of humanitarian drones put emphasis on/emphasize their speed, security, data amount and the possible employment of new technology in extreme environments. Critics of humanitarian technologization stress the loss of neutrality and impartiality, politicization and militarization of humanitarian aid. Consensus does not even exist amongst academics in the field. Contemporary literature is primarily targeted on the controversy of dual-usage of UAVs and on potential technical advantages with emphasis on immediate assistance. The literature dealing with ethical issues of humanitarian drones in connection to humanitarian and development practice outside the conflict zone is almost absent, and only marginally or indirectly treats the issue. The aim of this paper is to analyse potential advantages and disadvantages of humanitarian drones' proliferation within the theoretical framework of The Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and Non-Governmental Organizations in Disaster Relief, which deals with basic dilemmas in humanitarian aid. This thesis does not...

Samhällsutvecklingen går i en riktning där människor arbetar i allt närmare samarbete med artificiella agenter. För att detta samarbete ska vara på användarens villkor är det viktigt att förstå hur människor uppfattar och förhåller sig till dessa system. Hur dessa agenter bedöms moraliskt är en komponent i denna förståelse. Malle m.fl. (2015) utförde en av de första studierna kring hur normer och skuld appliceras på människa respektive robot. I samma artikel efterfrågades mer forskning kring vilka faktorer hos agenter som påverkar de moraliska bedömningarna. Föreliggande studie tog avstamp i denna frågeställning och avsåg att undersöka hur moralisk godtagbarhet och skuldbeläggning skiljde sig beroende på om agenten var en person, en humanoid robot eller ett autonomt intelligent system utan kropp (AIS). Ett mellangrupps-experiment (N = 119) användes för att undersöka hur agenterna bedömdes för sina beslut i tre olika moraliska dilemman. Deltagares rättfärdigaden bakom bedömningar samt medveten hållning utforskades som förklaringsmodell av skillnader. Medveten hållning avser Dennetts (1971) teori kring huruvida en agent förstås utifrån mentala egenskaper. Resultaten visade att person och robot erhöll liknande godtagbarhet för sina beslut medan AIS fick signifikant lägre snitt. Graden skuld som tillskrevs skiljde sig inte signifikant mellan agenterna. Analysen av deltagares rättfärdiganden gav indikationer på att skuldbedömningarna av de artificiella agenterna inte grundade sig i sådan information som antagits ligga till grund för denna typ av bedömningar. Flera rättfärdiganden påpekade också att det var någon annan än de artificiella agenterna som bar skulden för besluten. Vidare analyser indikerade på att deltagare höll medveten hållning mot person i störst utsträckning följt av robot och sedan AIS. Studien väcker frågor kring huruvida skuld som fenomen går att applicera på artificiella agenter och i vilken utsträckning distribuerad skuld är en faktor när artificiella agenter bedöms.

The South African property sector is characterised by property practitioner firms that fail to comply with the Estate Agency Affairs Board (EAAB) code of conduct and firms having inefficient systems which are unable to combat hacking and cybercrime in the sector. Although property practitioner firms have systems and processes in place, there are still instances of unethical behaviour. Failure to prevent client personal information from being leaked is still a major problem in the sector, this issue can be addressed by demonstrating due diligence with respect to safeguarding sensitive information. The accuracy of information is also a problem in the sector and requires firms to resort to analysing collected data before capturing it, in order to maintain accuracy. The sector encounter illegal access to systems including breaking the password protected websites and password protection on a computer system. The objectives for this study were to investigate the extent to which firms enforce Information Ethics (IE), explore the systems and processes put in place by firms to enforce IE and to explore the challenges experienced by the firms in the Gauteng province when enforcing IE. The study was qualitative in nature and indepth interviews were conducted to gather information from five managers and five employees within the firm situated in Gauteng province. The study found that these property practitioner firms enforce IE to a certain extent. These firms use (22) systems and processes to enforce IE and experienced (5) challenges during the enforcement of IE. The study concludes that these property practitioner firms enforce IE using different systems and processes and experience challenges during enforcement. The list of IE enforcement systems and processes and challenges identified in this study will assist policy makers in compiling IE policies. The findings will also assist firms in IE enforcement and reduction of IE enforcement challenges. / Business Management / M. Com. (Business Management)

The master thesis focuses on caring facilities and service, specifically the Charity care service of the regional charity of Klatovy. The Master thesis points out how necessary and at the same time demanding is the work of caregivers. The Master thesis also includes the characteristics of the clientele with whom Caritas care facility most often cooperates - seniors. It also contains an analysis of ethical dilemmas and problems which arose from semi-structured interviews with respondents,who are employees of specific centers of Caritas care service. The thesis also contains improvement suggestions and coments of the ethical dilemmas and problems which are made using 4 ethical theories - utilitarianism, deontology, ethic of care and situational ethic.