All people face moral choices, it can be in private life, work, school or daily life. There are often rules and laws that guide us and declare how we should act in a specific situation. But how should we act in the "gray zone”, where there are no clear guidelines and rules, where the boundaries between right and wrong are not so clear. Like other industries, the construction industry is subjected to moral problems, and it is not always obvious what is right and wrong. Ethics and responsibility have become more important in the construction industry in the last years. Today, people have higher demands on their work situation and are more likely to pay attention to irregularities. Many construction companies are working with ethical issues, and develop systems and strategies in order to achieve better ethical actions. The thesis is about ethics and responsibility in the construction industry. The thesis investigates problems and practical cases that have connections to ethical and moral issues. That has been done by choosing five different fields. These fields are “Environmental Threats”, “Gender”, “Security and accidents”, “Corruption”, and “Procurement and Tende r”. Each field consists of a background part where facts and information are presented, after this a case is presented that represents an ethical problem for each field. The study also investigates which factors that the construction industry should work with in order to achieve better ethical actions. This part is mainly based on interviews with researchers and people that are active in the construction industry.

Traffic congestion (TC) is a complex issue having an adverse impact on the environment, business operations and health. Many cities are taking action to curb it. Corporations have increasingly engaged in corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions. Using corporations headquartered in the top-rated traffic congested cities in the United States, this study examines the relationship between TC and CSR. The quantitative research employed a general linear model with two datasets, traffic speed data and CSRHub ratings. The speed data was used to calculate travel time index (TTI), a measure of TC. Using Atlanta BeltLine Inc. as a case study, a phenomenological thematic approach was utilized to assess stakeholders’ viewpoints of congestion mitigation efforts in Atlanta, GA. This study adds to research on CSR by examining the effects that CSR actions have on a specific local event, e.g., TC. In addition, research reflecting on the impact of CSR on TC has not been conducted. This study aims to fill this gap. Of the four areas of CSR studied in the quantitative phase, the community, environment, and governance ratings are significantly related to TTI, with community and environment having an inverse relationship to TTI. The qualitative study showed that stakeholders struggle with TC, and that the relationship between CSR and TC is not obvious to them. This quantitative study was conducted on eighteen top-rated congested cities. Further study on other major congested cities may shed more light on CSR and TC. A future qualitative analysis can explore the viewpoint of city government. Findings in this study are expected to be a leverage point for public-private TC mitigation and to inform policies that incorporate TC reduction as a CSR indicator. Although the quantitative analysis showed that a relationship exists between CSR and TC, the literature and DOT reports revealed increased and continuous congestion in these cities. The case study of the ABI project in the qualitative research indicated that TC is an area where CSR can have a major local impact. Some corporate respondents acknowledged that TC has a business cost, however no serious steps are taken to tackle TC.

The aim of this work is to determine whether the concept of Responsibility to Protect is able to explain why in case of the Syrian civil conflict the international community did not intervene in a similar manner as it did in Libya. Primarily, the theoretical framework is defined using the concept of Responsibility to Protect. In order to answer the research question, all criteria applied in the analysis were operationalized in accordance with the Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty and the Outcome Document from 2005. At the same time, concept of state sovereignty and humanitarian intervention is designed. Although the conflicts in Libya and Syria started simultaneously in 2011 during the rule of authoritarian regimes, the intrastate situations were not identical. Based on the analysis of two case studies, I came to the conclusion that the concept of Responsibility to Protect is able to sufficiently explain the different reaction of the international community, which confirmed my hypothesis. Specifically, it is the principle of right authority, which was not fulfilled in Syria, while it is necessary to note the criterion of reasonable prospect becomes with the gradual development of the conflict more and more problematic. In contrast, the intervention in...

Many problems in software development can be traced to a narrow understanding of professional responsibility. The author examines ways in which software developers have tried to avoid accepting responsibility for their work. After cataloguing various types of responsibility avoidance, the author introduces an expanded concept of positive responsibility. It is argued that the adoption of this sense of positive responsibility will reduce many problems in software development.

This thesis examines the excusing and exempting conditions in Strawsonian accounts of moral responsibility. More specifically, it notes some concerns for Strawsonian accounts with regards to exempting individuals on the basis of psychological abnormalities, namely that the excusing/exempting distinction is unclear, and more importantly that treating a person's brain as an entity distinct from the person suggests a dualistic picture of the self that is not consistent with neuroscientific accounts of the brain. If we redraw the distinction to be between external/internal features, and focus on brain processes as the responsible entities for any given action, we can avoid these worries and have a more empirically accurate account of responsibility. / Master of Arts

Gold mining communities in Ghana have experienced destruction of vegetation, water pollution, and soil contamination by activities of mining due to rapid growth and dependency on mining of natural resources within the catchment areas of the mining activities. These circumstances with repercussions of corruption and inefficient management of corporate social responsibility places organizational goals above the community and the nation. These setbacks necessitate the successful practice of corporate social responsibility to benefit stakeholders within mining communities. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between corporate social responsibility, environmental policies, and community complaints, and the fiduciary responsibility to stakeholders. The research questions addressed whether a relationship existed between corporate social responsibility, environmental impact, community complaints, and the fiduciary responsibility to shareholders within gold mining companies in Ghana. Social exchange theory was the theoretical base of this quantitative correlational study, which included point-biserial and Spearman correlations to examine archival data from 10 active gold mining companies in Ghana. Results indicated a significant inverse relationship between community complaints and fiduciary responsibility, meaning that companies with positive report of community complaints tend to have lower fiduciary responsibility. Findings may inform policymakers, regulatory agencies, and mining organizations regarding the fiduciary effects of corporate social responsibility in the Ghanaian mining industry, and thereby influence positive business practices, living standards, and quality of life of Ghanaian citizens.

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Immigrant businesses represent a very large percentage of SMEs in Canada. Significant attention has been given to the phenomenon of immigrant entrepreneurship and their economic contribution to developed countries. However, little is known about the social contributions of these immigrant entrepreneurs to the host country. While the values of immigrant entrepreneurs are rooted in their home culture, they continue to evolve their beliefs and values to integrate into the host country. Emerging literature also affirms that the behaviour of second generation is different from the first generation immigrants. It is known that immigrants’ small business social responsibility (SBSR) is influenced by their home context, but how the host country context influences the SBSR behaviour of different generations is rarely explored. The objective of this study is to understand how society and culture integrate to shape immigrant social responsibility behavior and contributions, with focus on comparing first and second generation. Drawing from mixed embeddedness approach and culture values lens, I theorize about the influence of home country culture and host country context on immigrants SBSR behaviour and the potential consequences of differences in embeddedness on their contributions to the host country. Drawing on 20 detailed semi-structured interviews, I find that irrespective of the differences in generation, immigrants SBSR contributions are influenced by their home culture, their network composition, and the extent to which they are embedded in the host county. At the theoretical level, the mixed embeddedness approach has been augmented by applying it in the field of SBSR. In addition, the study fills a gap by introducing second generation immigrant entrepreneurs’ in SBSR context.

Taking the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) as its empirical focus, this study engages in a critical analysis of (capitalist) state regulation and corporate social responsibility as it relates to the Canadian extractive industry. Using a theoretical-analytical combination of Marx’s ideology theory and critical discourse analysis, the study explores discourses pertaining to the introduction, creation, and role of the CORE – the Canadian state’s most recent response to corporate harms and crimes within the industry – to uncover the factors that shaped this process. Further informed by critical criminological literature on corporate crime, the study found that dominant neoliberal capitalist narratives prevailed in determinations of which regulatory approach should be adopted by the state. Dominant voices sidetracked counter-hegemonic claims in debates about human rights and international development by prioritizing the economy, leaning on Canada’s “good” global reputation, downplaying the violence of the industry, and redirecting blame. Ideological assumptions about the nature of state regulation, corporations, and capitalist law and politics further influenced which knowledge claims “won out.” Despite the emergence of the CORE as a logical state response to corporate crime and impunity, however, debates about its role are ongoing. This not only reinforces the idea that (capitalist) dominance is never absolute but signals the ever-present nature of resistance and possibility for change.

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