Volume 27 (2019): Edizione 2 (June 2019)
Special Edizione: Technological Innovations in the Socio-Humanistic Context

The issue of innovation has also been pursued in social sciences and subsequently specifically in the field of application of socio-scientific knowledge. It is not just about professional engineering ethics but we perceive it in a complex and wider social context. Doing good as well as good practice are more than the professional code of ethics or an effort for technical or managerial excellence. Innovative changes should not be parameterized solely by economic efficiency or performance. With regard to new knowledge and technology development, their ethical aspects become more important and focus more on good life. In the context of social sciences with interdisciplinary trends, applied ethics and its subdisciplines (professional ethics, business ethics, ethics of science and research) can take over and play an important practical role. Innovative processes are increasingly becoming the focus of applied ethics, especially in terms of ethical risks. Our mission is to offer an interdisciplinary view of innovation as discussed in the ethics aspect. Based on these considerations, we conclude that ethics need to be integrated into individual innovation processes and adopted as an important condition for eliminating (mitigating) social risks. In our theoretical considerations we offer a view of the scientific risks and forms of prevention related to innovative change in important areas including engineering practice or health protection.

The presented study focuses on the role of applied ethics(cist) in managing the quality of life in the post-risk society. Given that, from an ethical point of view, it is appropriate to reflect the quality of life also through other than quantitative, i.e. objective and therefore also measurable indicator, it is important to be also focused on the action of a person that leads to increasing his/her satisfaction, the feeling of happiness as a subjective indicator. The aim of this study is to point out the importance of ethical parameterization of the quality of life as well as the search for suitable concepts in its fulfilment.

The aim of the article is to outline the relationship of the concept of CSR with the issue of digital transformation. Significant advancements in technology and wide access to the Internet has resulted in what is named the Digital age. In the Digital age, CSR and digital transformation are becoming one of the main factors of the company’s competitiveness. Digital transformation is currently the most important element of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that changes the way of doing business. It requires the necessity of deep changes in the sphere of awareness of people working in the businesses. Digital transformation seems to be an effective solution to the main problems that appear in the competitive business environment. Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) is standing out as the new direction changing the relationship between labour and technology as well as shaping the ethical use of new technologies.

The article is devoted to the importance of the virtue of prudence and attempts to adapt it in the contemporary discourse on innovation and sustainable development. The authors come from ancient roots, recalling the positions of Socrates, Plato and, above all, Aristotle. They point to the renewed interest of contemporary researchers in the ethics of virtues and point to the important roles of prudence, prudence and responsibility in the approach to innovation. Innovations are captured as an instrumental value and a tool to shape better living conditions, work, study, rest, all forms of human activity and environmental protection. Therefore, their positive character has been exposed, although the authors also pay attention to the risk and possibility of negative effects if the virtues of nature, such as prudence, caution and responsibility are not well-formed. The authors point out that this is particularly important in the education of engineers who shape the innovative landscape of the present, and prove that this applies to mechatronics or robotics specialists, as well as production engineering specialists, because the ethical approach allows for the appropriate design of the entire team of activities from recognizing the need to satisfy it through an efficient, well-prepared, organized and properly managed production process, taking into account the basic principles of sustainable development.

Contemporary world brings people more and more dangers. Creation of the Internet made it even easier to harm other users without consequences. However we still can do something about it. We can learn how to protect ourselves in the network. That is why it is so important to disseminate the main goals of safety management while using Internet. The paper presents main dangers awaiting for network users – both the youngest and the older ones, such as cyberbullying or phishing. The authors also point to the more frequent Internet addiction. The main goal of this paper is to indicate on how the on-line safety management should look like and how people can protect themselves from the dangers, of which they are sometimes even not aware. Children and adults shall be educated about the dangers in the Internet, and how to avoid them. Only then will they know, how to properly manage their on-line safety.

The results of social-and-economic order analysis in the context of formation and representing organizational interaction between managing subjects of production management are considered in the article. It was proved that social-and-economic order, as a type of social order, is acting as the determinative prerequisite of formation efficient organizational interaction in any system of present-day management. It was well-grounded that social-and-economic order of organizational interactions is caused by economic requirements and economic interests of production subjects has a relevant legal content, and its determinative element stands for ordering ownership relations, i.e., order between people as far as owning and managing means of production are concerned. The author’s models of representing organizational interaction in the systems of production management depending on forms and methods of division relations of ownership for means of production are presented in the article.

This article presents the quality, safety and assessment system as the important tools to supervise the health care organization. Quality is the sum of the properties and characteristics of a product, process or service that is appropriate to meet the complex requirements. In the case of health care is difficult to valuate quality, the universal indicators become useful tool. The development of quality indicators requires collecting of data and their proper processing. The high quality of medical services requires continuous improvement and adaptation to patients’ needs. The quality indicators, for example, refer directly to the effects of therapy and are used to measure the success or failure of the applied therapeutic methods. Measuring the results of activities indicates only the level of quality of the services provided. The data helps to analyze information and improve the quality and safety of health care services.

How do socio-economic change and technological revolution change the way we manage people. How does the development of AI (Artificial Intelligence) affect the process of talent acquisition? The author will present the concepts of technological unemployment, creative class, millennials (generation Y), humanistic management, sustainable development, CSR and new managerial models in light of current social changes. Humanistic management as a broader concept, and humanistic talent attraction as its direct implication, will be presented as an answer to the current technological development. The author presents a narrower topic of human resources management but sees potential in the topic to develop a discussion on future of work in a broader sense.

Countless people and organisations have been wrestling with the practical application of sustainability and sustainable development. Yet there is no rigorous and unequivocal template that can be followed for management because the meaning of the key concepts of sustainability and development in particular haven’t been properly identified. Although the fundamental meaning of the word sustainability is continuance, the concept has its controversies especially when it drifts into the ‘abstract’ and even becomes confused with sustainable development. For our purposes it is the ability of development and of its associated processing activities to continue that is being managed. For management effectiveness, a system framework is necessary but more importantly what goes into that system has to be rigorously and unambiguously defined. In our case, the mechanisms describing the practicalities that govern the sustainability of development have been clearly identified in this paper and called by name. The concept of development needs clarification, while the accepted popular ‘three pillar’ depiction of sustainable development is also fundamentally flawed when compared with the form of words of the ‘Brundtland’ definition. This well-known ‘Venn representation’ implies a type of ‘balance’ or ‘synergy’ at the heart of sustainability management. In fact, because of the fundamentally unsustainable nature of current development processes, the ‘balance’ turns into a trade-off amongst the three sustainability players. For real sustainable development there can be no such trade-off. Once the misunderstandings are clarified the true basics of sustainability and sustainable development are fed into a standard ISO14001 iteration loop for management to commence.

The article presented the scientific research of buildings construction optimization problems on the basis of interdisciplinary approach that provides synergy of modern approaches of construction organization and technology, economic theory and political economy, as well as applied mathematics. The formation and realization of the economic-mathematical model of optimal sequence groups of construction objects are considered on the basis of a method of sequential analysis of variants, based on dynamic programming. According to the provided research results the proposals were made for acceleration of these processes in construction through the development of program complex “Optimization of object construction process by the criterion of time” on the basis of mathematical modeling methods, which provided the opportunity to further optimize and obtain consistency and reduce the construction terms of this buildings groups for almost a year (360 days or 61%).