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--- - |2 The capacity of an organization to innovate, change, and be effective depends on the skills and abilities of employees, highlighting the importance of developing individual capabilities. The 70:20:10 framework is used by practitioners to guide them when developing effective learning and development programs. Although the framework has been adopted globally in both private and public sectors, its effectiveness has not been assessed in relation to the transfer of learning. Using qualitative data from the Australian public sector, this study explores how the framework is being implemented and whether it facilitates the transfer of learning to build middle management capability. Results showed that despite middle managers' awareness of, and willingness to take part in, ongoing skill development, attempts to develop capability through learning transfer by implementing the 70:20:10 framework were not achieving the desired outcomes. The research suggests that learning transfer and managerial capability development was hindered through four misconceptions regarding the framework's implementation. These are: an overconfident assumption that unstructured experiential learning automatically results in capability development; a narrow interpretation of social learning; the expectation that managerial behavior would automatically change following formal training and development activities without the need to actively support the process; and a lack of recognition of the requirement of a planned and integrated relationship of all three aspects of the framework. We suggest future research seeks to explicate the role of social learning in supporting the efficacy of both formal and experiential learning. - Human Resource Development Quarterly, EarlyView.

--- - |2 This study explores how entrepreneurs develop human resources within their firms. Based on an analysis of interviews with entrepreneurs and new venture consultants, we describe entrepreneurs' human resources development (HRD) approaches. We found that entrepreneurs rely on networking and creativity, aim to leverage employees' interest and competencies, and allow cocreation by employees; current requirements and situational conditions shape entrepreneurs' HRD decisions. To elaborate on our findings, we draw on the distinction between causation and effectuation. We describe an entrepreneurial HRD process that combines both a causation‐based and an effectuation‐based HRD approach. - Human Resource Development Quarterly, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Following the 2007/2008 global financial crisis, the UK public sector has experienced major funding cuts resulting in staffing reductions and a dilution in the employment deal. Consequently, the aim of this study is to understand how i‐deals, which are unique conditions of employment negotiated between an individual and their employer (Rousseau, 2005), may be used to accept a new psychological contract and foster employee engagement during austerity. Four qualitative team case studies were conducted comprising senior, middle‐line, and first‐line managers, and either professional or nonprofessional employees, within one English local authority (LA). Methods included 29 × one‐to‐one and three focus group semistructured interviews incorporating the critical incident technique. By examining i‐deals through the lens of social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), this research demonstrates the role of reciprocity in the form of i‐deals to accept the new psychological contract and foster engagement. Here, for some employees, once concrete and universal resources were available to a certain level (e.g., pay), the difference (e.g., universal resources such as a pay rise, external training) was substituted by more particularistic resources (e.g., flexibility and developmental i‐deals) herewith extending Foa and Foa's (1976, 1980, and 2012) resource theory. Furthermore, resultant economic or social exchange may be due to the individual attribution of why the i‐deal was agreed, rather than the i‐deal content. Finally, when i‐deals are denied, action to lower the risk of psychological contract breach is advised. - Human Resource Development Quarterly, EarlyView.

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--- - |2 Extant literature draws numerous links between aspects of human resource development (HRD) activity and organizational creativity/innovation, noting that investments in learning positively impact creative output. Within this research base, studies suggest that the ability to self‐direct learning activity can influence creative performance, but we do not yet understand how such processes operate, particularly in small‐medium enterprise (SME) contexts. Given the positive economic and social impacts generated by SMEs, themselves often being sources of breakthrough product or service innovation, this is an important research problem that requires our collective attention. This article argues that while the ability to self‐direct learning activity does contribute to the generation of ideas in SME contexts, the presence of multiple stakeholder voices in the learning conversation suggests that learning is better conceptualized as codirected rather than self‐directed. This study finds that codirected approaches to learning operate through a mechanism termed “participative dialogue,” whereby both employees and managers contribute to learning conversations. It also highlights the role of employee critical self‐appraisal in driving self‐directedness and contributing to the generation of ideas. Findings ultimately suggest that codirection of learning benefits idea generation because such approaches facilitate the emergence of unexpected patterns of thinking, which drive the divergence that creativity depends upon. - Human Resource Development Quarterly, EarlyView.

--- - |2 This is a methodological presentation of the relationship between semantics and survey statistics in human resource development (HRD) research. This study starts with an introduction to the semantic theory of survey response (STSR) and proceeds by offering a guided approach to conducting such analyses. The reader is presented with two types of semantic algorithms and a brief overview of how they are calculated and how they can be accessed by interested researchers. Subsequently, we use semantic data to reanalyze a previously published study on the relationships between perceptions of a trainee program, intrinsic motivation, and work outcomes. The semantic algorithms can explain between 31 and 55% of the variation in the observed correlations. This article shows how the statistical models originally used to explore the survey data can be replicated using semantics either alone or as an identifiable source of variation in the data. All the steps are presented in detail, and the datasets as well as the statistical syntax necessary to perform the analyses are made available to the readers. Implications for methodology and the improvement of predictive validity in HRD research are discussed. - Human Resource Development Quarterly, EarlyView.

--- - |2 According to the U.S. Department of Justice (2007), over 10,000 formerly incarcerated individuals are released each week from federal and state prisons. The purpose of this study is to draw upon human capital theory to examine the relationships between the types of training programs and gainful employment for formerly incarcerated individuals. Three types of training programs considered in this study are school‐based training programs, pre‐employment training programs, and postemployment training programs. Generalized linear mixed models are used to determine if each type of training program is related to employment status and income. Based on a sample from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), postemployment training programs are positively related to gainful employment for formerly incarcerated individuals. This result emphasizes the pivotal role of employers in addressing mass incarceration through human resources development (HRD). - Human Resource Development Quarterly, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 263-286, Fall 2018.

--- - |2 This study examined the extent to which the factor structure of the Knowledge‐Creation Practice Inventory (KCPI) is invariant across different occupational groups in South Korea, based on the studies of Song et al in 2011 and 2012. Inspired by Nonaka's (1994) knowledge‐conversion theory, the inventory consists of four dimensions (i.e., knowledge sharing, creating concepts, justifying concepts, and building prototypes), measured by 11 items. A total of 2,364 responses collected from school teachers (n = 1,864), public‐sector employees (n = 214), and private‐sector employees (n = 286) were utilized to examine the measurement invariance, using a series of hierarchical multigroup confirmatory factor analyses. The results indicated that the four‐factor, 11‐item measurement model is equivalent across the three groups, supporting configural invariance, metric invariance, scalar invariance, and factor variance/covariance invariance, except factor mean invariance. A series of post‐hoc tests were additionally conducted to identify the factor mean differences among the three groups. Based on the results of this study, future researchers should use more diverse samples including a wide range of cultures or different subcultural groups (e.g., occupations, genders, and educational backgrounds) to expand the universality of the factor construct. Relevant organizations can utilize the inventory to assess their current capacity of knowledge creation and design for appropriate human resource (HR) or organizational development interventions to nurture and enhance employees' learning‐related behaviors. Since the generalizability and validity of the KCPI were supported in this study, at least among these three groups, more reliable, rigorous group comparisons are available for future research utilizing this inventory. - Human Resource Development Quarterly, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 243-262, Fall 2018.

--- - |2 Managerial coaching (also known as the leader‐as‐coach model) is becoming prevalent as a new management paradigm to develop and empower employees and help them increase their performance. At the same time, the composition of the workforce has changed, with female employees reaching almost 50% of workers and around 30% of managers. Accordingly, scholars have set out to understand if gender affects managerial behaviors and employee responses. The goal of this study is to evaluate if significant differences in performance should be expected when coaching female and male employees. The results suggest that female and male responses to managerial coaching are more complex than expected. Managerial coaching positively affects female behavioral and result performance and male behavioral performance, but—contrary to expectations—no significant effect was found for coaching on male result performance. Additionally, female and male employees differ in their self‐evaluation of the focal performance constructs, with females evaluating their contribution to performance at lower levels than their male counterparts. The results suggest that, to be an effective developmental tool, the approach taken with coaching should take into consideration the recipient's gender and address different areas of performance. - Human Resource Development Quarterly, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 219-241, Fall 2018.

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--- - |2 From the perspective of a person‐centered approach, the purpose of this study is to identify and analyze latent profiles of employees according to the employees' levels of work‐to‐family conflict (WFC) and family‐to‐work conflict using latent‐profile analysis. This study utilized work, family, and health study (WFHS) data compiled from 823 employees at select Fortune 500 information technology (IT) companies. The data were examined using multinomial logistic regression analysis to determine whether individuals could be grouped into certain profiles according to their demographic characteristics. The group differences in the outcome variables of the WFC were also considered using the analysis of variance technique. The results suggest that HR/HRD professionals should consider how various types and intensities of conflicts combine to influence employees and should deploy this information when designing strategies and interventions to reduce WFCs. - Human Resource Development Quarterly, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 203-217, Fall 2018.

--- - |2 The development of leaders and building of leadership capacity are central concerns of HRD research and practice, yet the large and high‐impact area of leadership education provided by U.S. universities to undergraduate students is missing from the domain literature. Over the past 20 years, leadership education has become a common feature at universities and colleges in the United States and is experiencing strong demand and institutional support. Leadership development operates in parallel to the traditional curriculum shaping the career trajectories of university graduates and adding to the talent pool of hiring organizations. This article outlines the status of university‐based leadership education in the United States, offers a critical assessment, and highlights areas in need of investigation and scholarship of relevance to HRD. - Human Resource Development Quarterly, EarlyView.

Many people believe that the abortion debate will end when at some point in the future it will be possible for fetuses to develop outside the womb. Ectogenesis, as this technology is called, would make possible to reconcile pro‐life and pro‐choice positions. That is because it is commonly believed that there is no right to the death of the fetus if it can be detached alive and gestated in an artificial womb. Recently Eric Mathison and Jeremy Davis defended this position, by arguing against three common arguments for a right to the death of the fetus. I claim that their arguments are mistaken. I argue that there is a right to the death of the fetus because gestating a fetus in an artificial womb when genetic parents refuse it violates their rights not to become a biological parent, their rights to genetic privacy and their property rights. The right to the death of the fetus, however, is not a woman's right but genetic parents’ collective right which only can be used together.

There is no abstract available for this paper.

The asylum system faces problems on two fronts. States undermine it with populist politics, and migrants use it to satisfy their migration preferences. To address these problems, asylum services should be commodified. States should be able to pay other states to provide determination and protection‐elsewhere. In this article, I aim to identify a way of implementing this idea that is both feasible and desirable. First, I sketch a policy proposal for a commodification of asylum services. Then, I argue that this policy proposal is not only compatible with the right to asylum, but also supported by moral considerations. Despite some undesirable moral features, a market in asylum facilitates the provision of asylum to those who need it.

In this article, I ask whether a principle analogous to the principle of clinical equipoise should govern the design and conduct of RCTs evaluating the effectiveness of policy interventions. I answer this question affirmatively, and introduce and defend the principle of policy equipoise. According to this principle, all arms of a policy RCT must be, at minimum, in a state of equipoise with the best proven policy that is also morally and practically attainable and sustainable. For all arms of a policy RCT, policy experts must either (1) reasonably disagree about whether the trial arms are more effective than this policy, or (2) know that they are.

Crowdsourcing has attracted increasing attention as a means to enlist online participants in organisational activities. In this paper, we examine crowdsourcing from the perspective of its ethical use in the support of open innovation taking a broader system view of its use. Crowdsourcing has the potential to improve access to knowledge, skills, and creativity in a cost‐effective manner but raises a number of ethical dilemmas. The paper discusses the ethical issues related to knowledge exchange, economics, and relational aspects of crowdsourcing. A guiding framework drawn from the ethics literature is proposed to guide the ethical use of crowdsourcing. A major problem is that crowdsourcing is viewed in a piecemeal fashion and separate from other organisational processes. The trend for organisations to be more digitally collaborative is explored in relation to the need for greater awareness of crowdsourcing implications.

Given the comprehensive influence of mindfulness on human thought and behavior, and the importance of moral reasoning in business decisions, we examine the role of mindfulness as an antecedent to moral reasoning through two studies. In Study 1, we propose and test a theoretically derived model that links mindfulness and moral reasoning, mediated by compassion and egocentric bias using a survey design. In Study 2, we examine whether mindfulness training enhances moral reasoning using an experimental design with graduate students of business management. The findings of Study 1 substantiate the positive association of mindfulness with moral reasoning. We found that this relationship is fully mediated by compassion and egocentric bias. The results of Study 2 suggest that mindfulness meditation training has a positive impact on individuals' states of mindfulness, compassion, and moral reasoning, and decreases egocentric bias. We relate the findings of the study with contemporary neurological research and discuss the theoretical, pedagogical, and managerial implications.

There is a growing phenomenon of brand advocacy, where brands pressure a producer country government to take pro‐worker actions such as respecting the rights of activists and raising minimum wages. This article examines the potential and limits of brand advocacy by developing a conceptual framework and analysing three recent cases of brand advocacy in Cambodia's garment industry. The study shows that brands' action and influence are shaped by issue salience, mobilization structures, political opportunities/contexts, and resource dependency. This article makes both empirical and theoretical contributions. This is one of the first studies delving into the advocacy role of brands in promoting labour rights and conditions vis‐à‐vis government. Moreover, the article develops a testable framework specifying the conditions under which brands are likely to respond, act collectively, and influence government for pro‐worker change. It also offers novel insights by applying social movement lenses and casting brands as social movement actors.

This article examines the state of research on the learning organization in the field of HRD and future directions that hold promise for enriching our understanding of organizational learning and the learning organization. The article differentiates these two streams of research and explores areas where one body of research may be useful to the other. The article draws heavily on studies using the Dimensions of a Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ©). Emerging work testing cross‐cultural validity and levels of analysis, as well as social network analyses, shows promise in deepening our understanding of the construct. Finally, a case is made for the need for studies of learning organization interventions in order to continue to test the usefulness of the construct of a learning organization for HRD practitioners.

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Empirical studies have now established that many patients make clinical decisions based on models other than Anglo American model of truth‐telling and patient autonomy. Some scholars also add that current medical ethics frameworks and recent proposals for enhancing communication in health professional‐patient relationship have not adequately accommodated these models. In certain clinical contexts where health professional and patients are motivated by significant cultural and religious values, these current frameworks cannot prevent communication breakdown, which can, in turn, jeopardize patient care, cause undue distress to a patient in certain clinical contexts or negatively impact his/her relationship with the community. These empirical studies have now recommended that additional frameworks developed around other models of truth‐telling; and which take very seriously significant value‐differences which sometimes exist between health professional and patients, as well as patient's cultural/religious values or relational capacities, must be developed. This paper contributes towards the development of one. Specifically, this study proposes a framework for truth‐telling developed around African model of truth‐telling by drawing insights from the communitarian concept of ootọ́ amongst the Yoruba people of south west Nigeria. I am optimistic that if this model is incorporated into current medical ethics codes and curricula, it will significantly enhance health professional‐patient communication.

Shelly Kagan argues in his ‘What's Wrong with Speciesism?’ for four provocative claims: 1. speciesism is not necessarily a mere prejudice; 2. most people are not speciesists; 3. ‘modal personism’ more closely reflects what most people believe, and 4. modal personism might be true. In this article, I object to Kagan's account of what constitutes a ‘mere prejudice’, and I object to the sort of argument he uses to show that most people are not speciesist. I then attempt to motivate, and defend what I take to be the best version of modal personism; answer several problems for the view; and raise other problems that I think are harder to answer.

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The Big Five personality test is used to generate psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism scores using a large UK individual level micro dataset. These scores show that high levels of narcissism and Machiavellianism can be associated with a higher incidence of employment in managerial occupations, while high levels of psychopathy are related to higher employment in the other services sector. The article finds a wage premium to Machiavellianism that is largest at the 90th percentile, over and above all productivity‐related explanations. The average hourly wage increase for a one‐point move up the Machiavellianism scale is around 2.1 per cent.

This study focuses on the effects of socially responsible human resource management (SR‐HRM) practices on female employees’ turnover intentions and the moderating effect of supervisor gender on this relationship. With a sample of 212 female employees from eight different industries in Finland, the results indicate that SR‐HRM practices promoting equal career opportunities and work–family integration play a significant role in reducing women's turnover intentions. The study adds to the academic discourse of corporate social responsibility by highlighting the impact of the organizational‐level HRM determinants on the individual‐level outcome. In addition, supervisor gender makes a difference in the studied relationship: female supervisors have a stronger and more significant impact on the relationship than male supervisors. Our findings suggest that organizational measures which support work–family integration should be taken seriously to decrease female employees’ turnover intentions. Male supervisors could adopt some gender‐incongruent leadership behaviors, such as individualized emotional concern and caring when dealing with female employees. In the future, other gender combinations in the supervisor–employee relationship would merit research.

This study is the first to examine the relationships among Machiavellianism, social norms and taxpayer intentions to fraudulently overstate their deductions. We theorize and empirically document that (a) high Machiavellian taxpayers report significantly less ethical social norms, suggesting that reported social norms are influenced by cognitive biases such as social projection and Machiavellian cynicism; (b) reported social norms are, in general, significantly associated with tax evasion intentions; (c) social norms partially mediate the relationship between Machiavellianism and evasion intentions. Our findings imply that experimental research that controls for key personality traits such as Machiavellianism will be necessary to test the effectiveness of potential interventions designed to enhance social norms and tax compliance. Our findings also raise questions regarding the validity of certain social norm measures used in recent studies, particularly in the case of high Machiavellians. In contrast to much prior research, gender was not associated with the likelihood of committing tax fraud in our multivariate models, suggesting that the higher levels of tax compliance often associated with females may be eroding.

One of the most challenging issues in cross‐cultural bioethics concerns the long‐standing socio‐cultural practice of female genital circumcision (FGC), which is prevalent in many African countries and the Middle East as well as in some Asian and Western countries. It is commonly assumed that FGC, in all its versions, constitutes a gross violation of the universal human rights of health, physical integrity, and individual autonomy and hence should be abolished. This article, however, suggests a mediating approach according to which one form of FGC, the removal of the clitoris foreskin, can be made compatible with the high demands of universal human rights. The argument presupposes the idea that human rights are not absolutist by nature but can be framed in a meaningful, culturally sensitive way. It proposes important limiting conditions that must be met for the practice of FGC to be considered in accordance with the human rights agenda.

We address the issue of whether, why and under what conditions, quarantine and isolation are morally justified, with a particular focus on measures implemented in the developing world. We argue that the benefits of quarantine and isolation justify some level of coercion or compulsion by the state, but that the state should be able to provide the strongest justification possible for implementing such measures. While a constrained form of consequentialism might provide a justification for such public health interventions, we argue that a stronger justification is provided by a principle of State Enforced Easy Rescue: a state may permissibly compel individuals to engage in activities that entail a small cost to them but a large benefit to others, because individuals have a moral duty of easy rescue to engage in those activities. The principle of State Enforced Easy Rescue gives rise to an Obligation Enforcement Requirement: the state should create the conditions such that submitting to coercive or compulsive measures becomes a fundamental moral duty of individuals, i.e. a duty of easy rescue. When the state can create such conditions, it has the strongest justification possible for implementing coercive or compulsive measures, because individuals have a moral duty to temporarily relinquish the rights that such measures would infringe. Our argument has significant implications for how public health emergencies in the developing world should be tackled. Where isolation and quarantine measures are necessary, states or the international community have a moral obligation to provide certain benefits to those quarantined or isolated.

In Unfit for the Future, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu argue that our collective existetial predicment is unprecedentedly dangerous due to climate change and terrorism. Given these global risks to human prosperity and survival, Persson and Savulescu argue that we should explore the radical possibility of moral bioenhancement in addition to cognitive enhancement. In this article, I argue that moral bioenhancements could nontrivially exacerbate the threat posed by certain kinds of malicious agents, while reducing the threat of other kinds. This introduces a previously undiscussed complication to Persson and Savulescu's proposal. In the final section, I present a novel argument for why moral bioenhancement should either be compulsory or not be made available to the public at all.

Whether to treat autism as exculpatory in any given circumstance appears to be influenced both by models of autism and by theories of moral responsibility. This article looks at one particular combination of theories: autism as theory of mind challenges and moral responsibility as requiring appropriate experience of the reactive attitudes. In pursuing this particular combination of ideas, we do not intend to endorse them. Our goal is, instead, to explore the implications of this combination of especially prominent ideas about autism and about moral responsibility. These implications can be quite serious and practical for autists and those who interact directly with autists, as well as for broader communities as they attend to the fair, compassionate, and respectful treatment of increasing numbers of autistic adults. We find that these theories point to a limited range of situations in which autists should not be blamed for transgressive actions for which neurotypical individuals should be blamed. We build on what others have written on these issues by bringing in a recent cognitive model of the role theory of mind plays in empathy, by discussing the social implications of the theoretical findings, and by raising questions about the compatibility of reactive attitude theories of moral responsibility with the neurodiversity approach to autism.

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This article focuses on the initial reactions to the Zika epidemic by national and international public health agencies. It presents and analyzes some responses public officials made about sexual and reproductive health at the inception of the epidemic. It also describes the different challenges and obligations faced by local and international public health agencies, as these have not been clearly outlined. The article argues that these agencies have different obligations and should fulfill them despite existing obstacles. While international agencies should honor their leadership role and make recommendations at a meta‐level, local agencies should provide, in the case of Zika, a framework for empowerment and grant women the freedom to achieve sexual and reproductive health so that they can avoid the consequences of this epidemic.

Several philosophers have recently argued that policies aimed at reducing human fertility are a practical and morally justifiable way to mitigate the risk of dangerous climate change. There is a powerful objection to such “population engineering” proposals: even if drastic fertility reductions are needed to prevent dangerous climate change, implementing those reductions would wreak havoc on the global economy, which would seriously undermine international antipoverty efforts. In this article, we articulate this economic objection to population engineering and show how it fails. We argue, first, that the economic objection paints an inaccurate picture of the complicated relationship between demographic change and economic growth, and second, that any untoward economic effects of fertility reduction can be mitigated with additional policies. Specifically, we argue that supplementing fertility reduction with policies that facilitate the emigration of younger people from developing nations to developed nations could allow for both global reductions in GHG emissions and continued economic stability. Further, we show that moral arguments against such unprecedented increases in immigration are unsuccessful. We conclude that population engineering is a practical and morally justifiable tool for addressing the twin evils of climate change and global poverty.

Current practices of identifying and treating small indolent thyroid cancers constitute an important but in some ways unusual form of overdiagnosis. Overdiagnosis refers to diagnoses that generally harm rather than benefit patients, primarily because the diagnosed condition is not a harmful form of disease. Patients who are overdiagnosed with thyroid cancer are harmed by the psycho‐social impact of a cancer diagnosis, as well as treatment interventions such partial or total thyroidectomy, lifelong thyroid replacement hormone, monitoring, surgical complications and other side effects. These harms seem to outweigh any putative benefit of knowing about a cancer that would not have caused problems if left undiscovered. In addition to harms to patients, thyroid cancer overdiagnosis leads to significant opportunity costs at a societal level, due to costs of diagnosis and treatment. Unlike many other overdiagnosed cancers, accurate risk stratification is possible with thyroid cancer. At the individual patient level, use of this risk information might support informed choice and/or shared decision‐making, as mandated by clinical ethics frameworks. And this approach might, to some extent, help to reduce rates of diagnosis and intervention. In practice, however, it is unlikely to stem the rising incidence and associated harms and costs of overdiagnosed thyroid cancer, especially in situations where health professionals have conflicts of interest. We argue in this article that thyroid cancer overdiagnosis may be usefully understood as a public health problem, and that some public health approaches will be readily justifiable and are more likely to be effective in minimising its harms.

Medical decisions for children are usually justified by the claim that they are in a child's best interests. More recently, following criticisms of the best interests standard, some advocate that the family's interests should influence medical decisions for children, although what is meant by family interests is often not made clear. I argue that at least two senses of family interests may be discerned. There is a ‘weak’ sense (as the amalgamated interests of family members) of family interests and a ‘strong’ sense (that the family itself has interests over and above the interests of individuals). I contend that there are problems with both approaches in making medical decisions for children but that the weak sense is more plausible. Despite this, I argue that claims for family interests are not helpful in making medical decisions for children.

Many believe that the treatment‐enhancement distinction (TED) marks an important ethical boundary that we should use to shape public policy on biomedical interventions. A common justification for this purported normative force appeals to the idea that, whereas treatments respond to genuine medical needs, (most) enhancements can only satisfy mere preferences or “expensive tastes”. This article offers a critique of that justification, while still accepting the TED as a conceptual tool, as well as some of the key ethical axioms endorsed by its proponents. I begin by laying out the TED, the practical implications that tend to be drawn from it, and the justification just sketched for these implications. Using examples drawn from preventive medicine, biomedical technology, and other categories of biomedical interventions, I then go on to challenge both the presupposition of a fundamental dichotomy between treatments and enhancements, and the assumption that enhancements – barring rare exceptions – cannot serve legitimate medical needs. Finally, I consider some ways in which supporters of the TED might try re‐formulating the distinction to blunt the force of my critique. I conclude that such a move cannot fully succeed, and that while the TED does have some degree of normative force, it nevertheless cannot play the role that its advocates expect from it. Seeking to justify a general presumption against enhancements based on the rationale I critique here would mean ignoring their various potential benefits, including medical or therapeutic, and would reflect a prejudice – which I refer to as “treatment fetishism”.

How to engage the public in a reflection on the most pressing ethical issues of our time? What if part of the solution lies in adopting an interdisciplinary and collaborative strategy to shed light on critical issues in bioethics? An example is Art + Bioéthique, an innovative project that brought together bioethicists, art historians and artists with the aim of expressing bioethics through arts in order to convey the “sensitive” aspect of many health ethics issues. The aim of this project was threefold: 1) to identify and characterize mechanisms for the meeting of arts and bioethics; 2) to experiment with and co‐construct a dialogue between arts and bioethics; and 3) to initiate a public discussion on bioethical issues through the blending of arts and bioethics. In connection with an exhibition held in March 2016 at the Espace Projet, a non‐profit art space in Montréal (Canada), the project developed a platform that combined artworks, essays and cultural & scientific mediation activities related to the work of six duos of young bioethics researchers and emerging artists. Each duo worked on a variety of issues, such as the social inclusion of disabled people, the challenges of practical applications of nanomedicine and regenerative medicine, and a holistic approach to contemporary diseases. This project, which succeeded in stimulating an interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration between bioethics and arts, is an example of an innovative approach to knowledge transfer that can move bioethics reflection into the public space.

This article is critical of “bioethics” as it is widely understood and taught, noting in particular an emphasis given to philosophical justification, reason and rationality. It is proposed that “balancing” bioethics be achieved by giving greater weight to practice and the aesthetic: defined in terms of sensory perception, emotion and feeling. Each of those three elements is elaborated as a non‐cognitive capacity and, when taken together, comprise aesthetic sensitivity and responsiveness. This is to recognise the aesthetic as a productive element in bioethics as practice. Contributions from the philosophy of art and aesthetics are drawn into the discussion to bring depth to an understanding of “the aesthetic”. This approach is buttressed by philosophers – including Foucault and 18th century German philosophers (in particular Kant) – who recognized a link between ethics and aesthetics. The article aims to give substance to a claim that bioethics necessarily comprises a cognitive component, relating to reason, and a non‐cognitive component that draws on aesthetic sensibility and relates to practice. A number of advantages of bioethics, understood to explicitly acknowledge the aesthetic, are proffered. Having defined bioethics in conventional terms, there is discussion of the extent to which other approaches to bioethics (including casuistry, virtue ethics, and narrative ethics) recognize aesthetic sensitivity in their practice. It is apparent that they do so to varying extents although not always explicitly. By examining this aspect of applied ethics, the paper aims to draw attention to aesthetic sensitivity and responsiveness as integral to ethical and effective health care.

The inclusion of children in research gives rise to a difficult ethical question: What justifies children's research participation and exposure to research risks when they cannot provide informed consent? This question arises out of the tension between the moral requirement to obtain a subject's informed consent for research participation, on the one hand, and the limited capacity of most children to provide informed consent, on the other. Most agree that children's participation in clinical research can be justified. But the ethical justification for exposing children to research risks in the absence of consent remains unclear. One prevalent group of arguments aims to justify children's risk exposure by appealing to the concept of benefit. I call these ‘benefit arguments’. Prominent versions of this argument defend the idea that broadening our understanding of the notion of benefit to include non‐medical benefits (such as the benefit of a moral education) helps to justify children's research participation. I argue that existing benefit arguments are not persuasive and raise problems with the strategy of appealing to broader notions of benefit to justify children's exposure to research risk.

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