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 moral aspects of caring for the health of individuals and populations, and organisational ethics on moral aspects of organisations’ strategies and operations. So, these two disciplines converge in so far as they bring moral argument to bear on applied normative or value issues.

In addition, when organisational ethics addresses ethical issues in specifically healthcare organisations — such as government health departments, pharmaceutical companies, or private hospital groups — there is a more specific convergence of bioethics and organisational ethics in so far as both are concerned with the ethics of healthcare, and thus of health.