Original scientific paper
A Pyramid of Professional and Business Responsibility in Croatian Dental Medicine
Gordana Cerjan-Letica
; School of Dental Medicine, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Just as their colleagues in European and other developed countries, Croatian dentists, especially owners/carriers of private dental medicine practice, those leasing premises and equipment for private practice, as well as employees in private practice, encounter on a daily basis a series of ethical and moral dilemmas that regularly turn into multiple conflicts of interests: a) they must strictly follow and respect the legal, ethical and other professional norms (as well as those imposed by customs), b) they must run a successful business and be profitable, c) they must demonstrate a socially desirable and business feasible level of social and environmental responsibility. The article attempts to prove the thesis that a rich tradition of theoretical and empirical research into phenomenology of corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate responsibility (CR), corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSER), civil corporation (CC), corporate citizenship (CC) and ethical corporations (EC) serve as an excellent conceptual and theoretical starting point when seeking an answer to the question how is it possible to achieve the desirable balance between business, professional (clinical) and social (and environmental) responsibility in dental education and in private and public practice of dental medicine. Based on comparative analysis
of different general theories about corporate social responsibility (CSR) that have been envisaged and implemented in business practice and business ethics of modern companies in the past few decades, we chose a theory that we consider the most suitable for the use in dental medicine and in dental profession. We chose the pyramid of social responsibility, a theory published by Archie B. Carroll in 1991. Using this theory as a general conceptual starting point and applying the knowledge of sociology of dental profession, we propose in the article a specific pyramid of social responsibility for practitioners of dental medicine in private and public sector. Unlike the general CSR pyramid, which starts from the thesis that economic (business) responsibility is a precondition and necessary for other forms of legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibility, this article defends the thesis that in dentistry ethical responsibility is necessary and a precondition for all other forms of responsibility that follow: legal, economic and philanthropic responsibility.
Keywords
Ethics, Dental; Ethics, Business; Ethics, Institutional; Social Responsibility; Conflict of Interest; Education, Dental
Hrčak ID:
55644
URI
Publication date:
18.6.2010.
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