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The establishment of effective relationships is fundamental to good nursing practice and the fulfillment of nurses’ moral responsibilities. While intrapartum nurses are uniquely placed to establish relationships that can directly influence the woman’s experience of childbirth, there has been limited investigation of the relationships, identities and values that underlie nurses’ varied approaches and responses to labouring women. The purpose of this study was to explore intrapartum nurses’ understanding of their moral responsibilities from a social-moral perspective, using Margaret Urban Walker’s “expressive-collaborative” model of morality. Interviews were conducted with fourteen registered nurses working in a birthing unit of a Canadian teaching hospital. Four themes were identified that captured nurses’ moral responsibilities, including: organizing and coordinating care, responding to the unpredictable, recognizing limits of responsibilities to others, and negotiating care with women and families. Nurses enacted their moral responsibilities to labouring women in a variety of ways depending on their personal and professional experience, the circumstances, the people involved and the context of care. A key factor influencing responses to women was the degree to which understandings and expectations related to birth were deemed to be reasonable and mutually agreed upon among nurses, physicians, women and their families. Nurses also described limits on their responsibilities to others. Their choice of response to circumstances in which practice was constrained departed from the idealized expectations and ‘expert’ practices often reflected in professional guidelines. While nurses were able to identify contextual influences that constrained their ability to maintain effective relationships with women, the influence of their own values on the care they provided was less apparent. This suggests a need to challenge normative assumptions related to care of women in childbirth, including the provision of choice and family centred care, in order to create environments that can support and sustain practices that build understanding, mutuality and trust between nurses and birthing woman. In addition, given the contested nature of childbirth and the lack of shared understandings of what constitutes ‘best’ care, there is a need to develop collaborative models of inter-professional maternity care that include the voices of women as a central component.

The establishment of effective relationships is fundamental to good nursing practice and the fulfillment of nurses’ moral responsibilities. While intrapartum nurses are uniquely placed to establish relationships that can directly influence the woman’s experience of childbirth, there has been limited investigation of the relationships, identities and values that underlie nurses’ varied approaches and responses to labouring women. The purpose of this study was to explore intrapartum nurses’ understanding of their moral responsibilities from a social-moral perspective, using Margaret Urban Walker’s “expressive-collaborative” model of morality. Interviews were conducted with fourteen registered nurses working in a birthing unit of a Canadian teaching hospital. Four themes were identified that captured nurses’ moral responsibilities, including: organizing and coordinating care, responding to the unpredictable, recognizing limits of responsibilities to others, and negotiating care with women and families. Nurses enacted their moral responsibilities to labouring women in a variety of ways depending on their personal and professional experience, the circumstances, the people involved and the context of care. A key factor influencing responses to women was the degree to which understandings and expectations related to birth were deemed to be reasonable and mutually agreed upon among nurses, physicians, women and their families. Nurses also described limits on their responsibilities to others. Their choice of response to circumstances in which practice was constrained departed from the idealized expectations and ‘expert’ practices often reflected in professional guidelines. While nurses were able to identify contextual influences that constrained their ability to maintain effective relationships with women, the influence of their own values on the care they provided was less apparent. This suggests a need to challenge normative assumptions related to care of women in childbirth, including the provision of choice and family centred care, in order to create environments that can support and sustain practices that build understanding, mutuality and trust between nurses and birthing woman. In addition, given the contested nature of childbirth and the lack of shared understandings of what constitutes ‘best’ care, there is a need to develop collaborative models of inter-professional maternity care that include the voices of women as a central component.

The thesis aims at analyzing the responsibility corporations, which are extracting valuable minerals from conflict risk and conflict affected areas, have in terms of respecting human rights. The thesis analyzes corporate responsibility mostly from a moral but also a legal perspective. In terms of the moral responsibility, the thesis has strategically chosen to examine the moral responsibility of corporations to respect human rights through the moral responsibility of their employees. The stance, that the thesis launches, is that the moral responsibility of the employees as individuals does transcend upon corporations making the business enterprise responsible for respecting human rights. The legal obligation of corporations in this matter is referred to domestic court decisions, which have ruled that corporations through business decisions have violated the human rights of affected individuals.  The theoretical framework is based on the principle of due diligence, which has proven to be crucial when incorporating management policies and risk-assessment mechanisms within the structure of corporations. Through the analysis of the Kimberley Certification Scheme, which is a state-to-state agreement with the aim to hinder conflict-diamonds from entering into the international market, a lack of due diligence framework suitable for corporations has been revealed. The scheme is flawed as it does not provide corporations extracting diamonds from conflict risk and conflict affected areas with a due diligence framework. The thesis draws the conclusion that corporations are both morally and legally responsible to respect human rights. In addition, the Kimberley Certification Scheme is a step to hinder conflict diamonds from entering into the international market. However, the scheme must be re-examined and elaborated into a framework where due diligence is included. These measures will allow corporations to operate with clear guidelines on how to extract valuable minerals in conflict risk and conflict affected areas whilst performing due diligence. Such an adjustment will allow corporations to avoid either directly or indirectly to finance actions, which could lead to human rights abuses.