The study of the specific problems of insurance ethics remains relatively undeveloped, either from sociological or business ethical perspectives. More recently, sociologists and socio-legal scholars have given a sustained new wave of attention to insurance (see, e.g., Baker and Simon 2002; Baker 2010; Ericson et al. 2003; Doyle and Ericson 2010) while the particular problems of insurance ethics have also received fresh scrutiny (see, e.g., Flanagan et al. 2007). These disciplinary approaches begin to meet in the collection of articles in this special issue, which examine diverse contexts and dimensions of insurance business ethics at both empirical and normative levels. Insurance arrangements are very important to consider from an ethical perspective, as they not only reconfigure risk but also reshape ethical responsibilities (Baker 2002; Brinkmann 2005). As Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen and Jyrri Liukko explore in their article in this special issue, private insurance creates an important kind of social solidarity among those in the risk pool, although this solidarity is not necessarily evident to or understood by the insured; such solidarity was perhaps clearer to participants in early forms of insurance featuring small pools of people in relatively closely knit communities sharing risks, compared to the much vaster and more institutionally complex forms that insurance often takes today. Yet, insurance remains a crucial element of the contemporary social fabric, though this may be taken for granted by many, and is perhaps most evident to those who cannot afford adequate coverage. Indeed, micro-insurance in developing countries, as discussed by Ralf Radermacher and Johannes Brinkmann in their article, represents something of a return to the historical communitarian roots of insurance. On the other hand, several of the articles in this volume might be seen as beginning to suggest that the core values that were more easily evident in early, simpler forms of insurance may have sometimes become corroded as a result of the contemporary ways in which insurance is now organized. For example, Bill Lesch and Johannes Brinkmann raise important questions in their article about the responsibility of insurers as co-contributors to problems of insurance fraud. It is also important to note also that insurance ethics is not just about insurance: insurance also governs (Ericson et al. 2003) and reshapes responsibility among insured individuals and organizations in a huge variety of other social and institutional settings, for example, playing a crucial role in the evolution and direction of tort law as Christian Lahnstein argues in his piece, or facilitating risky technological megaprojects like the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon oil venture in the Gulf of Mexico, as Alexandros Kyrtsis examines in his article. Gathered at the world headquarters of Munich Re, near the famous English Gardens in Munich, for 2 days in February 2011, a small and interdisciplinary group of academics and insurance professionals from seven countries grappled with ethical questions in diverse contexts of the world of insurance. The articles that make up this special issue were all presented at that workshop. The remainder of this short introduction gives a quick overview of the issues that are addressed in each article, and then briefly ends with a call for dialog and future work to start to distill more general principles of insurance business ethics. The articles that follow are wide-ranging but can be broadly situated in three groups. A first group of articles addresses the particular ethical challenges facing different A. Doyle (&) Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada e-mail: aaron_doyle@carleton.ca

/pdf/introduction-insurance-and-business-ethics-3nfmedxft5.pdf

Introduction: Insurance and Business Ethics

The insurance industry has been marked by exponential growth over the recent decade with more and more individuals and corporations appealing to the long-term security, which this service sector provides. As facts about ethical lapses and outright fraud emerge; however, the refuge that insurance companies were entrusted to provide may not be as embracing as first appears. As insurance CEOs and management teams are paraded before cameras into courtrooms, details about payoffs and kickbacks are disseminated, and financial reporting practices are scrutinized by authorities, public trust in this industry wanes. At best, public perception is tentative in light of recent scandals.

Introduction: Insurance Ethics for a More Ethical World

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

William L. Ferguson

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Introduction: Insurance Ethics for a More Ethical World