Operations Research and Ethics: Responsibility, Sharing and Cooperation. European Journal of Operational Research, in press (2003) Jonathan Rosenhead. One sided practice - can we do better

After a discussion on the relevance of ethics in Operations Re-search, two approaches to the ethical discourse, one based on rules and the other based on principles and values, are analyzed. Then, two ethical principles, which can help O.R. researchers and practitioners in their activity are discussed in some detail. The first is the “responsibil-ity principle”, proposed in a more general context by the philosopher Hans Jonas, which in our case suggests to take into account in our work not only the point of view of the “client”, but also the point of view of all the “stakeholders”, i.e. the ones who can directly or indirectly be affected by the results of our activity. The second, which can be called the “sharing and cooperation principle”, calls for a more ∗ A first version of this paper has been presented at a workshop held on occasion of the eightieth birthday of prof. Enzo Luigi Aparo, who has taught me to value quality, sharing and cooperation in my research activity, and to whom the paper is dedicated