We investigate the relationship of corporate social responsibility (CSR) (often assumed to reflect corporate voluntarism) and government (often assumed to reflect coercion). We distinguish two broad perspectives on the CSR and government relationship: thedichotomous(i.e., government and CSR are / should be independent of one another) and therelated(i.e., government and CSR are / should be interconnected). Using typologies of CSR public policy and of CSR and the law, we present an integrated framework for corporate discretion for engagement with public policy for (...) CSR. We make four related contributions. First, we explain the dichotomous and the related perspectives with reference to their various assumptions and analyses. Second, we demonstrate that public policy for CSR and corporate discretion coexist and interact. Specifically, we show, third, that public policy for CSR can inform and stimulate corporate discretion and, fourth, that corporations have discretion for CSR, particularly as to how corporations engage with such policy. (shrink)

While a substantial amount of the literature describes corporate benefits of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, the literature is silent concerning why some companies announce CSR initiatives, yet fail to implement them. The article examines company delistings from the UN Global Compact. Delistings are surprising because the CSR agenda is seen as having won the battle of ideas. The analysis proceeds in two parts. I first analyze firm-level characteristics focusing on geography while controlling for sector and size; I find that (...) geography is a significant factor while small firms are more likely to be delisted than large firms and some sector characteristics determine delistings. Next, I proceed to uncover country-level characteristics including the degree of international economic interdependence as well as the quality of governance institutions. Multivariate regression analysis shows that companies are less likely to be delisted from countries where domestic governance institutions are well-functioning. To a lesser extent, I find that firms from countries with international economies are more willing to comply with the UN Global Compact requirements. Countries with a high share of outward FDI/capita have a lower share of delisted firms as do countries that are internationally competitive. (shrink)

Multinational corporations (MNCs) have come under pressure to adopt private regulatory initiatives such as supplier codes of conduct in order to address poor working conditions in global supply chain factories. While a well-known literature explores drivers and outcomes of such monitoring schemes, this literature focuses mainly on large firms and has ignored the growing integration of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) into global supply chains. Furthermore, the literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in SMEs primarily emphasizes domestic initiatives and not (...) global challenges. Focusing on the Business for Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI), this article examines the positions of private actors, who demand and supply private regulation as well as the positions of those firms, who are the targets of such schemes. As the BSCI has grown its membership, MNCs increasingly request that SMEs meet BSCI requirements in global supply chains even though compliance is a “mission impossible” for many smaller firms. As a result of this development, the private regulatory system is facing growing strain. (shrink)

The article examines the effects of non-financial disclosure on corporate social responsibility. We conceptualise trade-offs between two ideal types in relation to CSR. Whereas self-regulation is associated with greater flexibility for businesses to develop best practices, it can also lead to complacency if firms feel no external pressure to engage with CSR. In contrast, government regulation is associated with greater stringency around minimum standards, but can also result in rigidity owing to a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. Given these potential trade-offs, we ask (...) how mandatory non-financial disclosure has been shaping CSR practices and examine its potential effectiveness as a regulatory instrument. Our analysis of 24 OECD countries using the Asset4 database shows that firms in countries that require non-financial disclosure adopt significantly more CSR activities. However, we also find that NFD regulation does not lead to lower levels of corporate irresponsibility. Furthermore, our analysis demonstrates that, over time, the variation in CSR activities declines as firms adopt increasingly similar practices. Our study thereby contributes to understanding the impact of government regulation on CSR at firm level. We also discuss the limits of mandatory NFD in addressing regulatory trade-offs between stringency and flexibility in the field of corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

Little is known about when corporate social responsibility (CSR) leads to a sustainability case (i.e., to improvements in environmental and social performance). Building on various forms of decoupling, we develop a theoretical framework for examining pathways from institutional pressures through CSR management to sustainability performance. To empirically identify such pathways, we apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to an extensive dataset from 19 large companies. We discover that different pathways are associated with environmental and social performance (non)improvements, and that pathways (...) to success and failure are for the most part not symmetrical. We identify two pathways to improved environmental performance: an exogenous and an endogenous one. We find two pathways to improved social performance that both involve integrating social responsibility into the core business. Pathways to nonimprovements are multiple, suggesting that failure can occur in a number of ways, while there are only a few pathways to sustainability performance improvements. (shrink)

It has often been observed that color is a highly preferred attribute for use in distinguishing descriptions, that is, referring expressions produced with the purpose of identifying an object within a visual scene. However, most of these observations were based on visual displays containing only colors that were maximally different in hue and for which the language of experimentation possessed basic color terms. The experiments described in this paper investigate whether speakers’ preference for color is reduced if the color of (...) the target referent is similar to that of the distractors. Because colors that look similar are often also harder to distinguish linguistically, we also examine the impact of the codability of color values. As a third factor, we investigate the salience of available alternative attributes and its impact on the use of color. The results of our experiments show that, while speakers are indeed less likely to use color when the colors in a display are similar, this effect is mostly due to the difficulty in naming similar colors. Color use for color with a basic color term is affected only when the colors of target and distractors are very similar. The salience of our alternative attribute size, manipulated by varying the difference in size between target and distractors, had no impact on the use of color. (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive treatment of basic mathematical logic. The author's aim is to make exact the vague, intuitive notions of natural number, preciseness, and correctness, and to invent a method whereby these notions can be communicated to others and stored in the memory. He adopts a symbolic language in which ideas about natural numbers can be stated precisely and meaningfully, and then investigates the properties and limitations of this language. The treatment of mathematical concepts in the main body (...) of the text is rigorous, but, a section of 'historical remarks' traces the evolution of the ideas presented in each chapter. Sources of the original accounts of these developments are listed in the bibliography. (shrink)

It has often been observed that color is a highly preferred attribute for use in distinguishing descriptions, that is, referring expressions produced with the purpose of identifying an object within a visual scene. However, most of these observations were based on visual displays containing only colors that were maximally different in hue and for which the language of experimentation possessed basic color terms. The experiments described in this paper investigate whether speakers’ preference for color is reduced if the color of (...) the target referent is similar to that of the distractors. Because colors that look similar are often also harder to distinguish linguistically, we also examine the impact of the codability of color values. As a third factor, we investigate the salience of available alternative attributes and its impact on the use of color. The results of our experiments show that, while speakers are indeed less likely to use color when the colors in a display are similar, this effect is mostly due to the difficulty in naming similar colors. Color use for color with a basic color term is affected only when the colors of target and distractors are very similar (yet still distinguishable). The salience of our alternative attribute size, manipulated by varying the difference in size between target and distractors, had no impact on the use of color. (shrink)

Summary Influenced by the account of K. Popper and, moreover, of C. G. Hempel and P. Oppenheim, it is generally assumed, that a prediction can be logically deduced from hypotheses, i. e. lawlike propositions, and initial conditions. It is not clear, in which respect a prediction can correctly be supposed to be a proposition which is either true or false. From a logical point of view, serious difficulties arise in assuming that the deductive-nomological model consists of a valid argument. Further (...) objections to this account are developed with regard to lawlike propositions. Since a lawlike proposition is — by definition — not true or definitely true, but only supposed to be true, it cannot function as a true premise among other true premises for the purpose of deduction. Special difficulties arise with regard to predictions: A predictive argument does not give any reason for the truth of the predictionK, but only — if at all — for the prediction of the truth ofK. In the latter case, the conclusion K clearly does not consist of a proposition (which could be either true or false) but rather of a predicting proposition. (shrink)

This book explores the relationship between people living relatively simple lives and the cultural complexity of their live worlds by rethinking culture in terms of complexity theory.

This inclusive cross-cultural study rethinks the nexus between engineering education and context. In so doing the book offers a reflection on contextual boundaries with an overall boundary crossing ambition and juxtaposes important cases of critical participation within engineering education with sophisticated scholarly reflection on both opportunities and discontents. Whether, and in what way engineering education is or ought to be contextualized or de-contextualized is an object of heated debate among engineering educators. The uniqueness of this study is that this debate (...) is given comprehensive coverage - presenting both instrumentally inclined as well as radical positions on transforming engineering education. In contextualizing engineering education, this book offers diverse commentary from a range of disciplinary, meta- and interdisciplinary perspectives on how cultural, professional, institutional, and educational systems contexts shape histories, structural dynamics, ideologies and challenges as well as new pathways in engineering education. Topics addressed include examining engineering education in countries ranging from India to America, to racial and gender equity in engineering education and incorporating social awareness into the area. Using context as "bridge" this book confronts engineering education head on. Contending engineering ideologies and corresponding views on context are juxtaposed with contending discourses of reform. The uniqueness of the book is that it brings together scholars from the humanities, the social sciences and engineering from Europe - both East and West - with the United States, China, Brazil, India and Australia. (shrink)

Dad jokes, I argue, are a manifestation of a much older fatherly impulse to tease one’s children. On the surface, dad jokes are puns that are characterized by only violating a pragmatic norm and nothing else, which makes them lame and unfunny. Only violating a pragmatic norm and nothing else, however, is itself a violation of the norms of joke-telling, which makes dad jokes a type of anti-humor. Fathers may in turn seek to embarrass their children by purposively violating the (...) norms of joke-telling in this way, thus weaponizing the lame pun against their children as a type of good-natured teasing. Given their personality profile, it makes sense that fathers should be particularly prone to weap­onize dad jokes teasingly against their children like this, with the phenomenon bearing an illuminating resemblance to the rough-and-tumble play that fathers have engaged their children in since before the dawn of our species. (shrink)

Background: In modern society, death has become ‘forbidden’ fed by the medical technology to conquer death. The technological paradigm is challenged by a social-liberal political ideology in postmodern Western societies. The question raised in this study was as follows: Which arguments, attitudes, values and paradoxes between modern and postmodern tendencies concerning treatment and care of older persons with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator appear in the literature? Aims: The aim of this study was to describe and interpret how the field of (...) tension concerning older persons with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator – especially end-of-life issues – has been expressed in the literature throughout the last decade. Methods: Paul Ricoeur’s reflexive interpretive approach was used to extract the meaningful content of the literature involving qualitative, quantitative and normative literature. Analysis and interpretation involved naive reading, structural analysis and critical interpretation. Ethical considerations: The investigation complied with the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki. Findings and discussions: The unifying theme was ‘Normativity under change’. The sub-themes were ‘Death has become legitimate’, ‘The technological imperative is challenged’ and ‘Patients and healthcare professionals need to talk about end-of-life issues’. There seems to be a considerable distance between the normative approach of how practice ought to be and findings in empirical studies. Conclusion: Modern as well as postmodern attitudes and perceptions illustrate contradictory tendencies regarding deactivation of the implantable cardioverter defibrillator and replacement of the implantable cardioverter defibrillator in older persons nearing the end of life. The tendencies challenge each other in a struggle to gain position. On the other hand, they can also complement each other because professionalism and health professional expertise cannot stand alone when the patient’s life is at stake but must be unfolded in an alliance with the patient who needs to be understood and accepted in his vulnerability. (shrink)

Steen Brock paints a cross-disciplinary picture of the philosophical and scientific background for the rise of the quantum theory. He accounts for the unity of Kantian metaphysics of Nature, the Helmholtzian principles, and the Hamiltonian methods of modern pre-quantum physics. Brock shows how Planck's vision of a generalization of classical physics implies that the original quantum mechanics of Heisenberg can be regarded as a successful attempt to maintain this modern unity of physics.However, for Niels Bohr, the unity of science (...) and metaphysics did not end in the world of physics. The development of quantum physics had general implications both for other sciences and for various philosophical issues. Brock discusses these matters with respect to recent topics within the philosophy of science and major interpretations of Bohr's ideas. The author invites the reader to follow a long andwinding route of thought which, in the end, culminates in Bohr's ideas of complementarity, culture and Spirit. (shrink)

Mainstream nursing history often positions itself in opposition to philosophy and many nursing historians are reticent of theorizing. In the quest to illuminate the lives of nurses and women current historical approaches are driven by reformist aspirations but are based on the conception that nursing or caring is basically good and the timelessness of universal values. This has the effect of essentialising political categories of identity such as class, race and gender. This kind of history is about affirmation rather than (...) friction and about the conservation of memory and musealization. In contrast, we will focus on how we imagine nursing history could be used as a philosophical, critical perspective to challenge the ongoing transformations of our societies. Existing reality must be confronted with strangeness and the historically different can assume the function of this counterpart, meaning present and past must continuously be set in relation to each other. Thus, critical history is always the history of the present but not merely the pre‐history of the present – critique must rather present different realities and different certainties. In this paper, we use this approach to discuss the implementation of the nursing process (NP) in Germany. The nursing process appears to be a technology that helped to set up an infrastructure ‐ or assemblage ‐ to transform nursing interventions into a commodity exchangable between consumers and nurses in a free market. In our theoretical perspective, we argue that NP was a step in the realization of the German ordoliberal program, a specific variety of neoliberalism. In order to implement market‐orientation in the healthcare system it was necessary to transform hospitals into calculable spaces and to make all performances in the hospital calculable. This radically transformed not just the systems, but the ways in which nurses and patients conveived of themselves. (shrink)

The idea that we must move beyond anthropocentrism to overcome interspecies injustice and environmental collapse is widespread within the environmental humanities. Yet, the concept of anthropocentrism remains ambiguous, and so do some of the arguments raised against it. What exactly should we move beyond and why? The article attempts to answer these questions and clarify the merits and limitations of both anthropocentric and post-anthropocentric views within ethics and ontology. This article proposes that although some implausible and morally problematic forms of (...) anthropocentrism should be denounced, there are other ways in which we must remain anthropocentric. The article disambiguates the concept of anthropocentrism and assesses the key arguments against it, before it goes on to outline a minimal form of anthropocentrism that we call ostensive humanism. Ostensive humanism is compatible with many post-anthropocentric ideas but suggests that the ethical and political project aimed at ending interspecies injustice and the climate crisis inevitably points to human beings as its moral addressees. (shrink)

The correspondence view of memory is not a metaphor. However, correspondence is the essential feature of the archaeology metaphor, which harks back to Freud and Neisser. A modern version of this metaphor and some of its implications are briefly described. The archaeology metaphor integrates the idea of stored traces in a nonmechanistic framework.

We describe a novel Internet-based method for building consensus and clarifying con icts in large stakeholder groups facing complex issues, and we use the method to survey and map the scienti c and organizational perspectives of the arti cial life community during the Seventh International Conference on Arti cial Life (summer 2000). The issues addressed in this survey included arti cial life’s main successes, main failures, main open scienti c questions, and main strategies for the future, as well as the (...) bene ts and pitfalls of creating a professional society for arti cial life. By illuminating the arti cial life community’s collective perspective on these issues, this survey illustrates the value of such methods of harnessing the collective intelligence of large stakeholder groups. (shrink)

John Adams vs Thomas Paine: Rival Plans for the Early Republic by historian Jett B. Conner explores how the two rivals helped shape America's first constitutions--the Articles of Confederation and those of several states-- and how they continued contributing to American political thought as it developed during the so-called "critical period" between the adoption of the Articles of Confederation and the start of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. It also focuses on the creation of our democratic republic and compares Paine's (...) and Adams's approaches to structuring constitutions to ensure free government while guarding against abuses of power and the excesses of democratic majorities. (shrink)

What makes a cell? How are cells able to replicate themselves in a stable manner? How did cellular life emerge on our planet? The answer to these fundamental questions lies at the base of biology. Cellular life is the basic unit of living organization and defines the presence of a stable information reservoir connected through the external world by a well-defined boundary. Inside the cell, chains of computations and chemical reactions take place, sustained by self-assembled molecular machines. At the cell (...) membrane, the environment and the cell communicate with each other through proteins that are able to detect small concentration changes and send the appropriate signals. But modern cells are very sophisticated entities and extracting the logic of cell organization from them is a gigantic effort. In order to answer these questions, we need to look at cells in a more basic level: a reduction of complexity is needed. Protocells, roughly defined as the simplest instances of autonomous cell-like structures, have been a matter of exploration for decades. Although most of the original work in this area was largely theoretical, the end of the twentieth century was marked by very active experimental research on minimal cells. One approach has been the top-down strategy, where living organisms (the simplest life forms) are being selectively modified to reduce their genome complexity. Such a minimal genome would be the smallest one able to sustain reproduction and growth under a given set of external constraints (mainly available molecules). The second approach is the bottom-up one, very much in the tradition of research into the origins of life. Under this approach, extremely simple life forms are built from basic chemical components, including lipids and a basic.. (shrink)

Current research findings on metaphor in language and thought may be interpreted as producing a paradox of metaphor; that is, most metaphor is not processed metaphorically by a cross-domain mapping involving some form of comparison. This paradox can be resolved by attending to one crucial aspect of metaphor in communication: the question whether metaphor is used as deliberately metaphorical or not. It is likely that most deliberate metaphor is processed metaphorically (by comparison), as opposed to most nondeliberate metaphor, which may (...) be assumed to be typically not processed metaphorically (that is, by categorization). This resolves the paradox of metaphor because it suggests that all “metaphor in communication” (all deliberate metaphor) is processed metaphorically. Detailed comments are offered on the notion of metaphor deliberateness and on the nature of a three-dimensional model of metaphor in discourse involving metaphor in language, thought, and communication. (shrink)

That any filled location of spacetime contains a persisting thing has been defended based on the ‘argument from vagueness.’ It is often assumed that since the epistemicist account of vagueness blocks the argument from vagueness it facilitates a conservative ontology without gerrymandered objects. It doesn't. The epistemic vagueness of ordinary object predicates such as ‘bicycle’ requires that objects that can be described asalmost‐but‐not‐quite‐bicycleexist even though they fall outside the predicate's sharp extension. Since the predicates that begin with ‘almost’ are vague (...) as well, epistemicism's ontological backdrop is far from the conservative picture it is thought to enable. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that the following Rule should be part of any characterization of science: Claims concerning specific disputed facts should be endorsed only if they are sufficiently supported by the application of validated methods of research or discovery, and moreover that acceptance of this Rule should lead one to reject religious belief. This paper argues, first, that the Rule, as stated, should not be accepted as it suffers from a number of problems. And second, that even if (...) the Rule were to be acceptable, it should not lead one to reject religious belief. (shrink)

Before WW2 Danish geologists had found traces of uranium in Greenland. But being squeezed from both sides in the escalating Cold War between East and West, in the first decade after WW2 the Danish government did not support expeditions to explore Greenland's potential uranium deposits. The situation changed abruptly after President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace address in December 1953, as a result of which a Danish Atomic Energy Commission (AEK) was set up in early 1955. Besides building a large atomic (...) energy research facility (Risø) one of AEK's first initiatives was to support big scale uranium expeditions to South-West Greenland. The ultimate goal for the leaders of AEK was to liberate Denmark from its dependence on imported fossil fuels by developing Danish nuclear reactors, fuelled by natural uranium from Greenland. In the late 1960s, after more than a decade of uranium explorations, this was still a goal, albeit much more long term. For many reasons the hunt for uranium in Greenland after WW2 was unsuccessful, but the main ones were Danish sovereignty concerns, techno-scientific nationalism and devastating institutional clashes of interests. The present paper will explore these problems. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility was historically a business-oriented idea that companies should voluntarily improve their social and environmental practices. More recently, CSR has increasingly attracted governments’ attention, and is now promoted in public policy, especially in the European Union. Conflicts can arise, however, when advanced welfare states introduce CSR into public policy. The reason for such conflict is that CSR leaves key public welfare issues to the discretion of private business. This voluntary issue assignment contrasts starkly with advanced welfare states’ traditions (...) favoring negotiated agreements and strong regulation to control corporate conduct. This article analyzes the conflicts and compatibilities arising when advanced welfare states introduce CSR, focusing on how the two traditions diverge and on how conflicts are reconciled. Empirically the study focuses on four Nordic countries—Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden—widely recognized as the most advanced welfare states, and increasingly as leaders in CSR public policy. From interviews of 55 officials of government ministries, nongovernmental organizations, labor unions, and employer associations, the authors conclude that tension indeed exists between CSR public policies and advanced welfare state traditions in all four countries. Whereas CSR’s aims are compatible with Nordic institutional traditions, the means promoted in CSR is in conflict with such Nordic traditions as corporatist agreements and rights-based welfare state regulation of social and environmental issues. There is harmony of goals, but conflict in means between the four Nordic countries studied. (shrink)

This paper investigates the roles that Danish government has played in the development of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Denmark has emerged as a first mover among the Scandinavian countries when it comes to CSR. We argue that government has played a pivotal role in making this happen, and that this reflects strong traditions of regulation, corporatism and active state involvement. However, there is no unitary “Danish model of CSR” being promoted by government. Although Danish society is often associated with a (...) model of consensus, our claim is that Danish government policy on CSR is characterized by a lack of common direction and that we need to approach it on such terms. In order to provide a critical account of ‘the Danish model’ we apply a governmentality perspective that allows us to stress political difference. We argue that Danish government policy consists of three distinct regimes of practice and show how they subject CSR to different modes of rationalization and action. We conclude that the problem with public policy being split into three is not different as such, but the failure of each regime to recognize the value of the others. As a result, government tends to add to the confusion and opaqueness of CSR. (shrink)

Asymmetric cell division generates cell diversity and contributes to cellular aging and rejuvenation. Here, we review the molecular mechanisms enabling budding yeast to recognize spindle pole bodies (SPB, centrosome equivalent) based on their age, and guide their non‐random mitotic segregation: SPB inheritance requires the distinction of old from new SPBs and is regulated by the SPB‐inheritance network (SPIN) and the mitotic exit network (MEN). The SPIN marks the pre‐existing SPB as old and the MEN recognizes these marks translating them into (...) spindle orientation. We next revisit other molecules and structures that partition depending on their age rather than their abundance at mitosis as, for example, DNA, centrosomes, mitochondria, and histones in yeast and other systems. The recurrence of this differential behavior suggests a functional significance for numerous cell types, which we then discuss. We conclude that non‐random segregation may facilitate asymmetric cell fate determination and thereby indirectly aging and rejuvenation. (shrink)