Principles of Ethics for Emergency Managers

This article reviews several alternatives in ethical theory available as possible criteria for the development of ethical principles for the emergency management profession. It also examines the basic elements (core values) of existing codes of professional ethics for emergency managers in the context of these criteria. The developing emergency management profession, it is suggested, requires more scholarship directed to the establishment of a more complete ethical theory and a more clearly articulated set of ethical principles for emergency managers. The discussion concludes with a suggestion as to what a more comprehensive, informative, and functional statement of ethical principles for the emergency management profession might look like. But this proposed formulation, offered for discussion purposes, assumes the need for more effort at defining the moral criteria that will give these principles their ultimate meaning