Showing papers on "Situational ethics published in 2009"

Testing a Social-Cognitive Model of Moral Behavior: The Interactive Influence of Situations and Moral Identity Centrality

Abstract: This article proposes and tests a social-cognitive framework for examining the joint influence of situational factors and the centrality of moral identity on moral intentions and behaviors. The authors hypothesized that if a situational factor increases the current accessibility of moral identity within the working self-concept, then it strengthens the motivation to act morally. In contrast, if a situational factor decreases the current accessibility of moral identity, then it weakens the motivation to act morally. The authors also expected the influence of situational factors to vary depending on the extent to which moral identity was central to a person's overall self-conception. Hypotheses derived from the framework were tested in 4 studies. The studies used recalling and reading a list of the Ten Commandments (Study 1), writing a story using morally laden terms (Study 4), and the presence of performance-based financial incentives (Studies 2 and 3) as situational factors. Participants' willingness to initiate a cause-related marketing program (Study 1), lie to a job candidate during a salary negotiation (Studies 2 and 3), and contribute to a public good (Study 4) were examined. Results provide strong support for the proposed framework.

Student Evaluations of Teaching: Are They Related to What Students Learn?

Abstract: Although the student evaluation of teaching has been extensively researched, no general consensus has been reached about the validity of the process. One contentious issue has been the relationship between the evaluations and learning. If good instruction increases the amount of learning that takes place, then learning and the evaluations should be validly related to each other. A review of the literature shows that attempts to find such a nomological relationship has been complicated by practice, methodology, and interpretation. A meta-analysis of the literature shows that a small average relationship exists between learning and the evaluations but that the association is situational and not applicable to all teachers, academic disciplines, or levels of instruction. It is concluded that the more objectively learning is measured, the less likely it is to be related to the evaluations.

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Success

Abstract: Foreword. Acknowledgment. Preface. 1. A Different Kind of "Smart". Old Wine in New Bottles? Going Beyond IQ. EI, SI, or Both? From Toxic to Nourishing. Blind Spots, Lenses, and Filters. Social Halitosis, Flatulence, and Dandruff. The "Dilbert" Factor. Can We Become a Socially Smarter Species? S.P.A.C.E.:The Skills of Interaction. 2. "S" Stands for Situational Awareness. Situational Dumbness and Numbness. Ballistic Podiatry: Making the Worst of a Situation. Reading the Social Context. What to Look For. The Proxemic Context. The Behavioral Context. The Semantic Context. Navigating Cultures and Subcultures. Codes of Conduct: Violate the Rules at Your Peril. Building the Skills of Situational Awareness. 3. "P" Stands for Presence. Being There. Is Charisma Over-Rated? Do Looks Matter? Reading (and Shaping) the "Rules of Engagement". The Ugly American Syndrome. More of You, Less of Me. A Case of Attitude. Building the Skills of Presence. 4. "A" Stands for Authenticity. Take a Tip from Popeye. It's a Beautiful Day in the SI Neighborhood. The Snap-On Smile: Can You Fake Sincerity? Left-Handed Compliments. The Puppy Dog Syndrome. Narcissism: It's Really All About Me. Head Games, Power Struggles, and Manipulation. Building the Skills of Authenticity. 5. "C" Stands for Clarity. A Way with Words. Hoof-in-Mouth Disease: Sometimes Silence Works Best. Role-Speak and Real-Speak. Helicopter Language and Elevator Speeches. "Clean" Language and "Dirty" Language. Verbal Bludgeons. Taking a Brain for a Walk. The Power of Metaphor. E-Prime: the Language of Sanity. Building the Skills of Clarity. 6. "E" Stands for Empathy. What Destroys Empathy? What Builds Empathy? The Platinum Rule. The Irony of Empathic Professions. L.E.A.P.S.: Empathy by Design. Empathy in Four Minutes. Building the Skills of Empathy. 7. Assessing and Developing SI. Assessing Your Interaction Skills. Self-Awareness: Seeing Yourself as Others See You. Assessing Your Interaction Style: Drivers, Energizers, Diplomats, and Loners. The Strength-Weakness Irony. Priorities for Improvement. 8. SI in the World of Work: Some Reflections. The Real and Legal Consequences of Social Incompetence. Cultures of Conflict and Craziness. Hierarchies, Testosterone, and Gender Politics. Getting it Right at Work and Wrong at Home. The Diversity Puzzle. Ritual, Ceremony, and Celebration. Positive Politics: Getting Ahead with Your Value System Intact. 9. SI in Charge: Thoughts on Developing Socially Intelligent Leaders. The S.O.B. Factor. Executive Hubris: Its Costs and Consequences. Best Boss, Worst Boss. P.O.W.E.R.: Where It Comes From, How to Get It. How the Worst Bastards on the Planet Get and Keep Power. The Algebra of Influence. S.P.I.C.E.: Leading When You're Not In Charge. 10. SI and Conflict: Thoughts About Getting Along. The Double Spiral of Conflict. Why Argue? Crucial Conversations. Added Value Negotiating. Epilogue. SI and the Next Generation: Who's Teaching Our Kids? Our Children Are Not Our Children. The (Only) Ten Basic News Stories. Anxiety Drives Attention. Breaking the Addiction to Television. The Buying of Our Babies. Video Games:The New Sandlot. Teachers, Parents, or Neither? Belonging or Be Longing? The S.P.A.C.E. Solution for Schools. A Prescription for SI at Every Age. Index. About the Author.

Employee help-seeking: Antecedents, consequences and new insights for future research

Abstract: Although employee helping behaviors have been widely examined by organizational and human resource management scholars, relatively little is known about the antecedents and consequences of help-seeking in the workplace. Seeking to fill this gap, I draw from the social and counseling psychology literatures, as well as from research in epidemiology and health sociology to first conceptualize the notion of employee help-seeking and then to identify the variables and mechanisms potentially driving such behavior in work organizations. My critical review of this literature suggests that the application of existing models of help-seeking may offer limited predictive utility when applied to the workplace unless help-seeking is conceived as the outcome of a multi-level process. That in mind, I propose a model of employee help-seeking that takes into account the potential direct and cross-level moderating effects of a variety of situational factors (e.g., the nature of the particular problem, organizational norms, support climate) that might have differential influences on help-seeking behavior depending on the particular phase of the help-seeking process examined. Following this, I focus on two sets of help-seeking outcomes, namely, the implications of employee help-seeking on individual and group performance, and the impact of help-seeking on employee well-being. The chapter concludes with a brief examination of some of the more critical issues in employee help-seeking that remain to be explored (e.g., the timing of help solicitation) as well as the methodological challenges likely to be faced by those seeking to engage in such exploration.

Why Small Is Better: Advancing the Study of the Role of Behavioral Contexts in Crime Causation

Abstract: In this chapter we argue, both from a theoretical (Situational Action Theory) and methodological(homogeneity of environmental conditions) point of view, that smallenvironmental units are preferable to large in the study of environmentaleffects on crime

Making Sense of Whistle-Blowing's Antecedents: Learning from Research on Identity and Ethics Programs

Abstract: Despite a significant increase in whistle-blowing practices in work organizations, we know little about what differentiates whistle-blowers from those who observe a wrongdoing but chose not to report it. In this review article, we first highlight the arenas in which research on whistle-blowing has produced inconsistent results and those in which the findings have been consistent. Second, we propose that the adoption of an identity approach will help clarify the inconsistent findings and extend prior work on individual-level motives behind whistle-blowing. Third, we argue that the integration of the whistle-blowing research with that on ethics programs will aid in systematically expanding our understanding of the situational antecedents of whistle-blowing. We conclude our review by discussing new theoretical and methodological arenas of research in the domain of whistle-blowing.

Conceptualizing Learning Experiences: Contributions and Mediations of the Social, Personal, and Brute

Abstract: This article conceptualizes and elaborates what constitutes learning experiences. It does so from a perspective that centres on experiences as arising through relations between social and personal worldsyet also acknowledges the mediation of brute facts (i.e., nature). The social contributions are twofold, yet quite distinct. First, there are immediate social experiences that are projected by the particular socially and culturally derived events (i.e., activities and interactions) that individuals encounter, often in circumstances shaped by socially situational and physical factors. Second, there are socio-personal legacies, comprising individuals' cognitive experience, that arise through their ongoing engagements with social experiences throughout life histories. Although socially derived, these legacies are person dependent and may be personally idiosyncratic. Of importance, they shape how individuals construe and construct what they experience during, engage with, and learn from these events. Learning ...

Making Sense of Whistle-Blowing's Antecedents: Learning from Research on Identity and Ethics Programs

Abstract: Despite a significant increase in whistle-blowing practices in work organizations, we know little about what differentiates whistle-blowers from those who observe a wrongdoing but chose not to report it. In this review article, we first highlight the arenas in which research on whistle-blowing has produced inconsistent results and those in which the findings have been consistent. Second, we propose that the adoption of an identity approach will help clarify the inconsistent findings and extend prior work on individual-level motives behind whistle-blowing. Third, we argue that the integration of the whistle-blowing research with that on ethics programs will aid in systematically expanding our understanding of the situational antecedents of whistle-blowing. We conclude our review by discussing new theoretical and methodological arenas of research in the domain of whistle-blowing.

Violence as Situational Action

Abstract: Violence comes in many forms and occurs in many different circumstances for many different reasons. Is it really possible to develop a single theory that can explain all these disparate acts? In this paper, we argue it is. We make the case that acts of violence are essentially moral actions and therefore can, and should, be analysed and explained as such. We maintain that all acts of violence can be explained within the general framework of a theory of moral action. We present just such a theory – Situational Action Theory – and demonstrate how it can be applied to the explanation and study of violence.

Predicting teleworker success: an exploration of personality, motivational, situational, and job characteristics

Abstract: This study explored personality and motivational traits related to teleworker performance and satisfaction, including sociability, need for achievement and autonomy, diligence and organisation. Situational factors were also compared between teleworkers and non-teleworkers, such as number of children, job autonomy and job complexity. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Skepticism about Character Traits

Abstract: The first part of this article discusses recent skepticism about character traits. The second describes various forms of virtue ethics as reactions to such skepticism. The philosopher J.-P. Sartre argued in the 1940s that character traits are pretenses, a view that the sociologist E. Goffman elaborated in the 1950s. Since then social psychologists have shown that attributions of character traits tend to be inaccurate through the ignoring of situational factors. (Personality psychology has tended to concentrate on people’s conceptions of personality and character rather than on the accuracy of these conceptions). Similarly, the political theorist R. Hardin has argued for situational explanations of bloody social disputes in the former Yugoslavia and in Africa, rather than explanations in terms of ethnic hatred for example. A version of virtue ethics might identify virtues as characteristics of acts rather than character traits, as traits consisting in actual regularities in behavior, or as robust dispositions that would manifest themselves also in counterfactual situations.

Schools, neighborhoods, and adolescent conflicts: A situational examination of reciprocal dynamics

Abstract: Youths' exposure to school violence is ecologically patterned, occurring disproportionately in public schools located in urban disadvantaged communities. We know less, however, about how situational processes and environmental contexts shape school violence. In addition, limited research has examined the reciprocal nature of school and neighborhood conflicts. Here we draw from a qualitative study of violence in the lives of African American youths from a disadvantaged inner‐city community to examine young men's experiences with school‐based violence. Specifically, we investigate two questions: (1) how conflicts are shaped by the school setting, and (2) how and when such conflicts unfold and spill over between neighborhoods and schools. Our findings highlight the importance of examining the situational and ecological contexts of youth violence to further illuminate its causes and consequences.

Social Participation, Flow and Situational Involvement in Recreational Physical Activity

Abstract: Social factors and the concepts of flow and situational involvement have all been found to be influential in shaping leisure behavior. The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of dif...

A Great Many Things to Do and Not a Minute to Spare: Can Feedback From Supervisors Moderate the Relationship Between Skill Variety, Time Pressure, and Employees' Innovative Behavior?

Abstract: Workplace changes necessitate employees' innovative behavior. Developing and implementing new ideas can be enhanced by focusing on situational characteristics and adjusting them to improve employees' working conditions. To date, mostly interactions between situational and personal characteristics on innovative behavior have been researched. This study focused explicitly on the interaction between 3 situational characteristics: time pressure, skill variety, and feedback from supervisors. A questionnaire study was administered to 81 employees (age range 40–64 years) from different organizations. Results indicated direct positive correlations between time pressure and skill variety with idea generation and implementation. Feedback from supervisors moderated the positive relationships while controlling for effects of creative thinking abilities. Implications are explored.

Creativity Map: Toward the Next Generation of Theories of Creativity

Abstract: What is creativity and how should it be studied after more than 60 years of research? In this paper I call for more terminological clarity in creativity research, especially regarding the distinction between creative potential and creative behavior. The former concerns cognitive abilities and processes and personality dispositions facilitating creative expression. The latter refers to observable behavior, communicated ideas, or products that result from the interaction between individual potential and situational or cultural influences. Much research has focused on different attributes of creative potential, such as creative personality or divergent thinking abilities. I argue that future work in this area will have to specifically address domain-specific creative potential as well as the interaction between attributes of creative potential and situational or social attributes. The interaction of personal potential and social environment will determine whether creativity is expressed and how it is expressed.

Students' Anticipated Situational Engagement: The Roles of Teacher Behavior, Personal Engagement, and Gender.

Abstract: Among 9th-grade students (248 girls, 255 boys) from a large multiethnic school, the authors examined 2 aspects of anticipated situational engagement in relation to 3 types of hypothetical teacher behavior: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive. Furthermore, the authors investigated the moderating roles of students' personal (trait-like) engagement and gender. Multilevel analyses showed differential effects of teacher behavior type. Anticipated situational engagement was generally highest with the authoritative teacher and lowest with the authoritarian teacher. However, students' personal engagement and gender qualified these effects. The effects of the authoritative and authoritarian teachers versus the permissive teachers on anticipated situational engagement were more positive (or less negative) for students with high versus low personal engagement. Also, the positive effects of the authoritative and permissive teachers versus the authoritarian teacher were stronger for female students than for male students. Results show that anticipated situational engagement should be understood by examining the combined influences of contextual and individual characteristics.

Impact of situational framing and complexity on charismatic, ideological and pragmatic leaders: Investigation using a computer simulation

Abstract: Revisiting the work of Weber [Weber, M. (1921). The theory of social and economic organizations. New York: Free Press], Mumford and colleagues (e.g., [Strange, J. M., & Mumford, M. D. (2002). The origins of vision: Charismatic versus ideological leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 13, 343−377; Mumford, M.D. (2006). Pathways to outstanding leadership: A comparative analysis of charismatic, ideological and pragmatic leaders. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.]) explored the thesis that in addition to charismatic leadership, there exist at least two additional pathways to outstanding leadership: ideological and pragmatic. Despite the compelling results of initial studies, however, questions remain as to when and under what situational conditions these three leaders operate most effectively. As such, an experiment was conducted to investigate two noteworthy contextual influences: 1) situational congruence with a leader's mental model and 2) environmental complexity. The experiment made use of a computerized leadership simulation where participants took on the role of a university chancellor. Results indicate that leader type, complexity, and situational framing were critical factors in determining leader performance on multiple game performance criteria as well as creative process criteria. Implications and avenues for future research are discussed.

Children's and adolescents' intuitive judgements about distributive justice: Integrating need, effort, and luck

Abstract: This study investigated the principles that children and adolescents rely on when allocating a resource fairly. In a series of three experiments, 51 Swiss children (aged 7 and 9 years) and 309 German children (aged 6, 9, and 15 years) participated. A different situational context was presented in each experiment, where luck, need and effort of two protagonists were systematically varied. Primary-school children relied mainly on need when making distributive justice judgements. Effort became more prominent as the allocation principle in adolescence. Equality occurred rarely in all age groups. Integrational capacity and the ability to differentiate between the three situational contexts increased from childhood to adolescence. The data suggest the conclusion that the development of distributive justice decisions has both generalized and context-specific components.

Happy and Unhappy Competitors: What Makes the Difference?

Abstract: Interpersonal competition is present in all arenas of our life, i.e. within the family, in school, among peers, in the workplace, and in the sports ground. Competition can be an immensely joyful, exciting, and motivating experience that contributes to goal attainment, self-evaluation, development and improvement of the individual, the competing parties, the group and the society. However, it can also be an anxiety provoking, stressful, and exhausting negative experience that leads to interpersonal conflicts and has destructive consequences individually, to the group and ultimately to the society. Competition can be a friendly process in which the competitive parties mutually motivate and improve each other, but can also be a desperate fight full of aggression among the competitors who consider each other enemy. The result of competition can be winning or losing. Winning typically evokes positive emotions like happiness, satisfaction, and pride, but sometimes negative emotions emerge like guilt or embarrassment. Losing, as a potential result of competition, may result in sadness, disappointment, frustration, anger, shame, but can have positive consequences like learning about the self, realizing strengths and weaknesses and increased motivation for the future. There is not "one" competitive process. Competition can take qualitatively different forms and patterns that are determined by individual, situational and cultural factors. The paper will examine the factors that can be decisive in this respect: i.e., the characteristics of the competitive situation and the characteristics of the competing person. These situational and personality requirements will be further examined from a cultural perspective, taking examples from East-Asia (Japan), from North America (Canada) and from Europe (Hungary).

MEDIA AND CIVIC PARTICIPATION: On Understanding and Misunderstanding Communication Effects

Abstract: Inquiries into the health of civil society and engagement in public life have long rooted their accounts in citizens’ personal traits and social standing (Almond & Verba, 1963; Habermas, 1979; Rosenstone & Hansen, 1993; Tocqueville, 1835/1840; Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995). For many years, individuals’ characteristics and connections were considered the keys to understanding differences in involvement in the public sphere, with age, gender, education, race, employment status, church attendance, residential stability, and general sociability the key factors explaining participation. More recently, scholars such as John Coleman (1990), Robert Putnam (1992), and Francis Fukuyama (1995) have theorized that these dispositional and situational factors may in fact be discrete indicators of latent constructs such as community integration, network membership, and a commitment to civic virtues and values (see Friedland, 2001; Friedland & Shah, 2005).

The Effect of IT Failure Impact and Personal Morality on IT Project Reporting Behavior

Abstract: An individual's reluctance to report the actual status of a troubled project has recently received research attention as an important contributor to project failure. While there are a variety of factors influencing the reluctance to report, prior information systems research has focused on only situational factors such as risk, information asymmetry, and time pressure involved in the given situation. In this paper, we examine the effects of both situational and personal factors on an individual's reporting behavior within the rubric of the basic whistle-blowing model adapted from Dozier and Miceli . Specifically, we identify perceived impact of information technology (IT) failure as a situational factor and personal morality and willingness to communicate as personal factors, and investigate their effects on the assessments and decisions that individuals make about reporting the IT project's status. Based on the results of a controlled laboratory experiment, we found that perceived impact of IT failure directly affects an individual's assessment of whether a troubled project's status ought to be reported, exerting an indirect influence on willingness to report bad news, and that personal morality directly affects all three steps in the basic whistle-blowing model, as hypothesized. Willingness to communicate, however, was found not to affect an individual's willingness to report bad news. The implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

El fracaso escolar desde la perspectiva psicoeducativa : hacia una reconceptualización situacional

Abstract: In this paper, we describe the role that the school has historically played in school failure. In this sense, we address the problem of considering school failure as a psycho-educative problem, and we propose to reconceptualize the at-risk students in terms of the relations that are established between different groups and the usual schooling conditions. We criticize the pathological and individualistic model of school failure from situational and interactionist perspectives, therefore showing how the interpretation of school failure changes when other considerations are included in the analysis. These considerations are related to school practices as specific cultural practices that create special regimes of activity. We will analyze these practices as practices that are specialized in finding outstanding performances and that introduce specific courses during the development. As a final contribution to the discussion concerning school failure, we will systematize the definition of at-risk students, not in terms of subjective properties, but as the result of interaction with attributes of school activity, as it is organized in the school system.

Cross-Cultural Differences Concerning Heavy Work Investment:

Abstract: The study makes a cross-cultural comparison of heavy work investment, as well as its dispositional and situational types, based on data gathered through representative national samples of the adult...

Naive and Obvious Questions.

Abstract: Psychology is the luckiest of the sciences because it owns the most interesting questions, the foremost being, "Why do people do what they do?" Naively, one might expect that research addressing this question would focus on the most important behaviors, but instead most studies choose behavioral dependent variables on the basis of their procedural feasibility and suitability for theory testing. The cumulative result is an uneven and unrepresentative map of the behavioral terrain. Situational variables are chosen in a similar manner with a parallel result. (Personality variables, in contrast, typically are designed to capture intrinsically important individual differences.) In this article, I proposes a simple research agenda that measures situational and behavioral variables selected on the basis of their intrinsic interest and consequentiality. This agenda promotes descriptive empirical research that is more likely to address the obvious (and good) questions that are the foundation of the widespread interest in psychology and to aid the development of theories that are interesting and widely relevant.

Theories of Practice: Understanding the Practice of Educational Leadership

Abstract: Introduction Argyris and Schon (1974) first articulated the concept of theories of practice, and elements of the concept have become standard vocabulary in literature on organizational learning. Relatively few empirical studies, however, have explored the legitimacy of this concept for understanding how educators approach problems in their professional practice (Lipshitz, 2000). As accountability pressures for school improvement mount, the imperative for understanding effective school leadership behaviors makes the concept of theories of practice more appealing. The purpose of this article is to examine the structure of theories of practice as understood by Argyris and Schon and the implications for understanding the cognitive processes and behaviors that constitute effective instructional leadership in schools. The authors discuss a recent case study of successful school principals that mapped the principals' theories of practice of instructional leadership. The study illustrates the usefulness of the theory of practice framework for both research and improving professional practice (Houchens, 2008). Conceptual Framework Argyris and Schon's book, Theories in Practice (1974), explored the concept of organizational learning by articulating a rather elaborate framework that explained the cognitive structure and processes of problem solving that all people--not just professional practitioners--engage in. According to Argyris and Schon, theories are "vehicles for explanation, prediction, or control" (p. 5). All humans, whether they are conscious of it or not, operate according to thousands of theories to explain their experience, predict future events, and control outcomes in various situations. All theories are situational, and based on an underlying set of values, beliefs and assumptions that frame an individual's perception of the world, which include assumptions about desirable outcomes for a variety of situations. Theories appear in an "if ... then" format: if the individual faces a particular situation, then based on the individual's core assumptions about this situation, the individual should take a particular action to either explain, predict or control the situation or outcome. Argyris and Schon called this if-then formulation a theory of action. "A full schema of a theory of action, then, would be as follows: in situation S, if you want to achieve consequence C, under assumptions a1 ... an, do A" (p. 6). Argyris and Schon went on to define theories of practice as "special cases" of theories of action that are rooted in problems arising in a professional's specific work context. Theories of practice describe routines, procedures and specific practices for dealing with problems common to the practice environment. "A practice is a sequence of actions undertaken by a person to serve others, who are considered clients. Each action in the sequence of actions repeats some aspect of other actions in the sequence, but each action is in some way unique. In medicine, for example, a typical sequence would be a diagnostic work-up, treatment of acute illness, a well-baby visit, chronic care, and consultation" (p. 6). A theory of practice consists of a set of interrelated theories of action that specify for the situations of practice the actions that will, based on relevant assumptions, yield intended consequences. In addition to the basic theory of practice framework, Argyris and Schon identified models of how effective and ineffective learning takes place within individuals and groups. Because theories in use are (a) so deeply entrenched in the individual psyche, (b) usually subconscious to the individual, and (c) often at odds with espoused theories of action (how we say we behave to others or how we rationalize our behavior to others), they deeply affect the way individuals learn. Argyris and Schon (1978) described the typical, reflexive way we learn as single-loop learning, in which the individual sees that his or her behavior has not successfully resolved a problem. …

Empathy, social psychology, and global helping traits

Abstract: The central virtue at issue in recent philosophical discussions of the empirical adequacy of virtue ethics has been the virtue of compassion. Opponents of virtue ethics such as Gilbert Harman and John Doris argue that experimental results from social psychology concerning helping behavior are best explained not by appealing to so-called ‘global’ character traits like compassion, but rather by appealing to external situational forces or, at best, to highly individualized ‘local’ character traits. In response, a number of philosophers have argued that virtue ethics can accommodate the empirical results in question. My own view is that neither side of this debate is looking in the right direction. For there is an impressive array of evidence from the social psychology literature which suggests that many people do possess one or more robust global character traits pertaining to helping others in need. But at the same time, such traits are noticeably different from a traditional virtue like compassion.

Working with Children in End-of-Life Decision Making

Abstract: Traditionally, physicians and parents made decisions about children's health care based on western practices. More recently, with legal and ethical development of informed consent and recognition for decision making, children are becoming active participants in their care. The extent to which this is happening is however blurred by lack of clarity about what children - of diverse levels of cognitive development - are capable of understanding. Moreover, when there are multiple surrogate decision makers, parental and professional conflict can arise concerning children's 'best interest'. Giving children a voice and offering choice promotes their dignity and quality of life. Nevertheless, it also presents with many challenges. Case studies using pseudonyms and changed situational identities are used in this article to illuminate the complexity of ethical challenges facing nurses in end-of-life care with children and families.