Digital Reading Communities and Book Influencers

Tradition and Trend in Literary Consumption

Abstract

In high-risk engineering systems—especially nuclear power—the ethical quality of decisions cannot be separated from organizational knowledge, safety culture, and learning mechanisms. In this paper, I present and operationalize my Adaptive Systems Ethics (ASE) model—originally elaborated in my PhD dissertation—as a normative decision framework that articulates five pillars—anticipation, participation, justice, adaptivity, and reflexivity—to describe the system-level conditions of responsibility. I argue that ASE functions as a usable “ethical compass” only if its principles are linked to concrete decision procedures and feedback practices (incident and near-miss reporting, independent review, and the incorporation of lessons learned). Methodologically, I combine a critical synthesis of classical ethical paradigms with insights from high-reliability organizations (HRO) and a case-based illustration. I show that ASE can simultaneously address prospective risk appraisal, the integration of stakeholder perspectives, and learning from error, while fixing moral minimum constraints and reducing responsibility diffusion across complex organizational chains. Theoretically, I clarify the conceptual structure of the “moral ecosystem” of engineering responsibility; practically, I offer a knowledge-management-compatible decision support framework that strengthens transparency, traceability, and learning-driven improvement in safety critical industries.