Ethics of Care for Software Engineering

TL;DR

This paper advocates for integrating ethics of care into software engineering to foster more meaningful, context-aware relationships between researchers and practitioners, aiming to enhance industrial impact.

Contribution

It introduces the ethics of care as a framework for software engineering research, emphasizing caring for individuals in specific contexts rather than abstract impacts.

Findings

Highlights the gap between caring about and caring for in research practices.

Proposes ethics of care as a means to improve collaboration and impact.

Discusses implications for researchers and conference organizers.

Abstract

Software engineering researchers repeatedly argue that the impact of their research on industrial practice, while desired and intended, is rarely achieved. We believe that a possible explanation of this phenomenon is the opposition of "caring about" and "caring for", based on the ethics of care. Indeed, while software engineering is collaborative and hence builds on interpersonal relations, researchers tend to care about "industrial impact" and "practitioners" in abstract terms, but rarely care for specific individuals working in specific contexts facing specific challenges. In this position paper, we advocate for the adoption of ethics of care in software engineering and discuss the implications of this adoption for researchers and conference organizers.