Socially enacted ethics: The inner life of an ethical advisory board

Abstract

AbstractThis article addresses the need to grasp the actual processing of health ethical issues in ethics organisations by analysing the work of the Finnish National Advisory Board on Social Welfare and Health Care Ethics (ETENE). ETENE's ethics is approached ethigraphically: the advisory board enacts ethics in its social life, through its own norms and values. It is asked how this internal ethics is performed in the board practice and how ethical debate eventually becomes bounded in this practice. Based on the analysis of the board members' textual reflections and on‐site observations of board meetings, ETENE's ethics appears as a tandem of a particular discussion culture and multi‐perspectivity: mutual recognition and respect among board members are nurtured in the meetings, and a tactful mode of reflection is established throughout all terms of office. This shared discussion culture enables ETENE's forte—weighing multiple perspectives—by preventing asymmetries and avoiding merely technical decision‐making procedures. Consequently, ETENE's ethics is not threatened by being externally bounded and formalised but is at risk of watering down endogenously, through the notable tactfulness of its discussion mode, which threatens to attenuate both substantial debate and the social shaping of board members' values in the discussion.