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416 Chapter 12

Box 12.3
(continued)

Knowledge Administrator
• Purpose: To manage the acquisition and provision of external business information
• Objectives: To identify and maintain links with corporate sources of business
information
• Department: Servicing the business information needs of the entire company in the UK
• Responsibilities: Management of external resources. Serials management. Journal and
report circulation. Acquisitions, maintaining records, providing invoicing service, shelving
and fi ling and general offi ce duties. Maintaining links with knowledge administrators in
business support departments.
• Education: At least “ A ” Level standard. Experience: Six months to a year administrative
experience.
• Skills: General offi ce or library administration skills, networking and communication
skills
• Personality: Initiative, confi dence, and sense of humor

supports a set of values centering on personal success, power, and popularity, and
tends not to care about the means by which they are achieved.
The fi eld of ethics, also called moral philosophy, involves systematizing, defending,
and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior (The Internet Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/ethics.htm.) Philosophers today usually
divide ethical theories into three general subject areas:
• Metaethics investigates where our ethical principles come from, and what they
mean. Are they merely social inventions? Do they involve more than expressions of
our individual emotions? Meta-ethical answers to these questions focus on the issues
of universal truths, the will of God, the role of reason in ethical judgments, and the
meaning of ethical terms themselves.
• Normative ethics takes on a more practical task, which is to arrive at moral standards
that regulate right and wrong conduct. This may involve articulating the good habits
that we should acquire, the duties that we should perform, or the consequences of
our behavior on others.
• Applied ethics involves examining specifi c controversial issues, such as environmen-
tal concerns, how whistleblowers will be treated, and so on. By using the conceptual
tools of metaethics and normative ethics, discussions in applied ethics try to resolve
these controversial issues.