Critical Commentary 1245 he character and motives of the individual people involved and from the organization, policy, political and social context. This influences how prac- titioners conceive of and demarcate the domain of ' the ethical and their perceptions of their ability to act. The focus on difficult cases makes it seem as if 'ethical'issues arise only when a problematic case or difficul dilemma is experienced. As Rossiter et al.(2000) point out, this can result in practitioners regarding the more contextual and policy-related issues in their work(such as hierarchical management structures), which are not framed as'cases, as to do with 'politics and therefore not part of heir sphere of decision-making influence. It also leads to ignoring the ethical dimensions of other aspects of practice, which are not immediately about action and decision making, such as motives, qualities of character, professional wisdom and moral perception, as precursors to invoking prin ciples or making decisions Concluding comments Social work ethics is at an interesting stage in its development. Other areas of professional and applied ethics, particularly medical, bio- and health care ethics, are much more well developed, so provide interesting sources of ideas and lessons for social work ethics in its developmental trajectory. Social work ethics, if it continues to broaden its scope beyond traditional professional ethics(focusing on codes and difficult cases)to ethics in professional life(including virtues, relationships of and the critical moral competence for everyday and transformator practice), will benefit from more serious engagement with moral, political and religious philosophy. Signs of these developments are emerging, as of the early Social Welfare, demonstrates, with articles on existentialist, care, virtue 9 and Habermasian discourse ethics, as well as the role of religion in social work(Banks, 2008). There is also the potential to link some of he sociological ethnographic and discourse analytic studies of everyday social work practice (e.g. de Montigny, 1995; Taylor and White, 2000: White and Stancombe, 2003; Hall et aL., 2006) with the large body of moral philosophical work on personal integrity, moral distress, moral perception, imagination and the ethics of commitment and resistance In conclusion, this brief and partial account of certain aspects of the current literature and thinking in this field suggests that we can look forward to a flourishing and diverse literature on social work ethics ove the comin Accepted: June 2008the character and motives of the individual people involved and from the organization, policy, political and social context. This influences how prac￾titioners conceive of and demarcate the domain of ‘the ethical’ and their perceptions of their ability to act. The focus on difficult cases makes it seem as if ‘ethical’ issues arise only when a problematic case or difficult dilemma is experienced. As Rossiter et al. (2000) point out, this can result in practitioners regarding the more contextual and policy-related issues in their work (such as hierarchical management structures), which are not framed as ‘cases’, as to do with ‘politics’ and therefore not part of their sphere of decision-making influence. It also leads to ignoring the ethical dimensions of other aspects of practice, which are not immediately about action and decision making, such as motives, qualities of character, professional wisdom and moral perception, as precursors to invoking prin￾ciples or making decisions. Concluding comments Social work ethics is at an interesting stage in its development. Other areas of professional and applied ethics, particularly medical, bio- and health care ethics, are much more well developed, so provide interesting sources of ideas and lessons for social work ethics in its developmental trajectory. Social work ethics, if it continues to broaden its scope beyond traditional professional ethics (focusing on codes and difficult cases) to ethics in professional life (including virtues, relationships of care and the critical moral competence for everyday and transformatory practice), will benefit from more serious engagement with moral, political and religious philosophy. Signs of these developments are emerging, as an overview of the early contributions to the new journal, Ethics and Social Welfare, demonstrates, with articles on existentialist, care, virtue and Habermasian discourse ethics, as well as the role of religion in social work (Banks, 2008). There is also the potential to link some of the sociological ethnographic and discourse analytic studies of everyday social work practice (e.g. de Montigny, 1995; Taylor and White, 2000; White and Stancombe, 2003; Hall et al., 2006) with the large body of moral philosophical work on personal integrity, moral distress, moral perception, imagination and the ethics of commitment and resistance. In conclusion, this brief and partial account of certain aspects of the current literature and thinking in this field suggests that we can look forward to a flourishing and diverse literature on social work ethics over the coming decade. Accepted: June 2008 Critical Commentary 1245 at Fudan university on January 6, 2011 bjsw.oxfordjournals.org Downloaded from