The globalized nature of modern organizations presents new and intimidating challenges for effective relationship building. Organizations and their employees are increasingly being asked to manage unfamiliar relationships with unfamiliar parties. These relationships not only involve working across different national cultures, but also dealing with different organizational cultures, different professional cultures and even different internal constituencies. Managing such differences demands trust. This book brings together research findings on organizational trust-building across cultures. Established trust scholars from around the world consider the development (...) and maintenance of trust between, for example, management consultants and their clients, senior international managers from different nationalities, different internal organizational groupings during times of change, international joint ventures, and service suppliers and the local communities they serve. These studies, set in a wide variety of national settings, are an important resource for academics, students and practitioners who wish to know more about the nature of cross-cultural trust-building in organizations"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Pt. 1. Conceputal issues -- pt. 2. Qualitative research -- pt. 3. Quantitative approaches.

With the growing interest in trust in the social sciences, this second edition of the Handbook of Research Methods on Trust provides a fully updated and extended account of quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods for empirical research. While many researchers have already drawn inspiration and insight from the previous edition, the dynamic development of trust research calls for further and deeper engagement with methodological issues, particular methods, practical research experience, and current challenges and innovations as offered by this new edition.

Downsizing is a process whereby human relations management emerges as a critical skill in its effective management. This paperis about perceptions of employees of a small-sized Turkish firm who survived successive downsizing decisions. It was found that downsizing affected the organizational justice-related perceptions of survivors. The questionnaire used to explore organizational justice-related perceptions involved three dimensions and was developed by Saunders and Thornhill (1999). Procedural, interactional and distributive justice-related perceptions of survivors were influenced by the way management handled the (...) process. Management credibility, communication and commitment were other variables studied. The findings supported the view that downsizing not only affects the victims but also the survivors. (shrink)

This paper lays out two recent accounts of Hegel’s practical philosophy in order to present a challenge. According to Robert Stern and Mark Alznauer, Hegel attempts to ground our ethical practices in ontological norms. I argue that we cannot ground our ethical practices in this way. However, I also contend that Stern’s and Alznauer’s conception of reality as both conceptual and normative can still play a useful role in practical philosophy, namely, to help defuse a sceptical worry about a (...) threat to ethics. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:This essay proposes an unconventional approach to teaching "religion and medicine" to American medical students. Received frameworks for such teaching—articulated around faith denomination or "spirituality"—may imply that religiosities and their health effects are grounded in theology or transcendence, respectively. These frameworks may reify, or misrepresent relationships between, religion and science—for example, in supporting notions of conflict, or of an essentially secular character of technical progress. They can neglect ways in which biomedicine and its institutions are themselves engaged with and productive (...) of religious values. In order to move toward fuller student appreciation of diverse religious materialities and embodiments in health and biomedicine, the essay proposes "the sacred, in practice" as an organizing rubric. This pedagogical intervention pivots on notions of sacrality in anthropologies of religion and offers students a wide path to consider a spectrum of material, gestural conditions, and activities—transformative techniques, intensely valued objects, trusted texts, rituals—that mark and propagate religious valences and commitments within and around contemporary biomedicine. This sacred-in-practice approach meshes with standard theological and spiritual framings of the religion/health/medicine nexus, yet offers more capacious and flexible connections to work for which medical students are training, involving vulnerable bodies and material technologies of tremendous life- and world-shaping potency. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Book Reviews Plato's Later Epistemology. By W. G. Runciman. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1962. Pp. 138. $3.75.) Although this work may be regarded as the sequel to an earlier article by the author ("Plato's Parmenides," in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, LXIV [1959], 89-120), his argument in this volume does not hinge upon the earlier analysis of the Parmenides. What Runciman proposes to do (and not do) is (...) made clear enough both in the Introduction and in his concluding remarks. His purpose is "to consider the logic and epistemology of Plato's Theaetetus and Sophist" (p. 1), to "give a coherent interpretation of [these dialogues] as a whole" (p. 127), and to show something of Plato's later attitude to the general problem of knowledge and truth. But this is done within the context of a reading of Plato and of Plato's concern with knowledge, truth, and error, marked by the raising of two particular questions--of interest to Runciman and to a great many others belong-' 9 ing to the Anglo-American tradition in philosophy. Accordingly, the interpretation of these two dialogues is presented as an attempt to throw light on just "how far did Plato arri~,e at a distinction between knowledge that, knowledge how, and knowledge by acquaintance?" And secondly, "how closely did he approach a conscious formulation of the notion of truth-value?" (p. 1). The vantage point for Runciman's interpretation of these dialogues is the not unfamiliar view of Plato's "later" works as being marked by an increasing selfcriticism of his earlier theories, that it is by the method of Division (rather than the method of Hypothesis) that Plato now undertakes his exposition of the Forms. And the Forms are now seen, no longer "as the isolated objects of hypothesis and deduction... [but rather as] members of a complicated structure of mutual interrelations" (p. 128). Here then, for Runciman, Plato appears as the philosopher of later years, as more the dialectician, less concerned with contemplation of the Forms than with correlation and the knowledge of the relational properties which the Forms possess. Plato is thus seen by Runciman as coming of philosophical age in these, the "later" dialogues. And if Plato is not the forerunner of the contemporary philosophy-of-language school or a sainted forefather of those who are convinced that progress has been made in philosophy in the name of "logical analysis," at least these "later" Platonic dialogues show the brilliance of a philosopher, Plato, who could have said such new and interesting things for philosophers today, and yet "within the framework of his misguided... Theory of Forms" (p. 133). The important assumption, for Runciman, is to recognize the gradual development and modification of earlier views by a Plato grown more "sophisticated" by the maturity of his later years. And Runciman enters upon an interpretation of the Theaetetus and the Sophist with this clearly in mind, and with the comment that these dialogues may best be understood in this way: that--however crippled philosophically by his adherence to the Forms--Plato is latterly struggling with philosophical problems of logic and language. Runciman's argument, within such a context, emphasizes the role of the Sophist: had Plato but understood clearly his subject-matter, this dialogue pre-eminently suggests how he might have broken through to the full vigor of a [contemporary] concern with the nature and structure of language. "If a philosopher can be said to be doing logic without knowing it, then we may say that Plato in the Sophist is doing logic" (p. 126). Runciman's little book, thus primarily concerned, contains chapters on the logic and epistemology of the Theaetetus and the Sophist, and he raises some interesting questions. E255] 256 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The book is both stimulating and provocative, and rather worth the reading, particularly by those who find Plato less philosophically "sophisticated" than Aristotle, less alert and relevant for some contemporary philosophical tastes. And it may be, of course, that some such readers will be led on to a larger sampling of the Platonic dialogues, with the result-doubtless pernicious---that their reading of Plato may corrupt their "understanding" of... (shrink)

The Politics is one of the most influential texts in the history of political thought, and it raises issues which still confront anyone who wants to think seriously about the ways in which human societies are organized and governed. The work of one of the world's greatest philosophers, it draws on Aristotle's own great knowledge of the political and constitutional affairs of the Greek cities. By examining the way societies are run - from households to city states - Aristotle establishes (...) how successful constitutions can best be initiated and upheld. For this edition Sir Ernest Barker's fine translation, which has been widely used for nearly half a century, has been extensively revised to meet the needs of the modern reader. The accessible introduction and clear notes by R F Stalley examine the historical and philosophical background of the work and discuss its significance for modern political thought. (shrink)

Category Theory has developed rapidly. This book aims to present those ideas and methods which can now be effectively used by Mathe­ maticians working in a variety of other fields of Mathematical research. This occurs at several levels. On the first level, categories provide a convenient conceptual language, based on the notions of category, functor, natural transformation, contravariance, and functor category. These notions are presented, with appropriate examples, in Chapters I and II. Next comes the fundamental idea of an adjoint (...) pair of functors. This appears in many substantially equivalent forms: That of universal construction, that of direct and inverse limit, and that of pairs offunctors with a natural isomorphism between corresponding sets of arrows. All these forms, with their interrelations, are examined in Chapters III to V. The slogan is "Adjoint functors arise everywhere". Alternatively, the fundamental notion of category theory is that of a monoid -a set with a binary operation of multiplication which is associative and which has a unit; a category itself can be regarded as a sort of general­ ized monoid. Chapters VI and VII explore this notion and its generaliza­ tions. Its close connection to pairs of adjoint functors illuminates the ideas of universal algebra and culminates in Beck's theorem characterizing categories of algebras; on the other hand, categories with a monoidal structure lead inter alia to the study of more convenient categories of topological spaces. (shrink)

On the basis of careful textual exegesis and philosophical analysis, and contrary to the received view, Mark R. Wheeler demonstrates that Aristotle presents and systematically explicates his definition of the essence of the truth in the Metaphysics. Aristotle states the nominal definitions of the terms "truth" and "falsehood" as part of his arguments in defense of the logical axioms. These nominal definitions express conceptions of truth and falsehood his philosophical opponents would have recognized and accepted in the context of (...) dialectical argument. On the basis of these nominal definitions, Aristotle develops his definitions of the essences of truth and falsehood--his "real" definitions of truth and falsehood. Aristotle's methodical exposition of his essential definitions of truth and falsehood in the Metaphysics serves as a well-developed example of how his philosophical inquiry starts with nominal definitions and ends with real definitions. Wheeler also argues for the novel claim that Aristotle defines the most fundamental kind of truth in terms of accurate measurement. Aristotle's metrical conception of truth serves as the theoretical basis for specifying the truth conditions of various assertions, for identifying the sorts of beings implicated in these truth conditions, and for explaining the nature of approximate truth and falsehood. Far from offering us a minimal account of truth, Wheeler shows how Aristotle offers us a sophisticated and metrical theory of truth. (shrink)

Let us begin with the simple observation that applied mathematics can be very tough! It is a common occurrence that basic physical principle instructs us to construct some syntactically simple set of differential equations, but it then proves almost impossible to extract salient information from them. As Charles Peirce once remarked, you can’t get a set of such equations to divulge their secrets by simply tilting at them like Don Quixote. As a consequence, applied mathematicians are often forced to pursue (...) roundabout and shakily rationalized expedients if any useful progress is to be made. Often these provisional and quasi-empirical procedures within applied mathematics loom large in motivating the “anti-realist” or “anti-unificationist” conclusions of Nancy Cartwright and allied authors. (shrink)

In this review of the Korean cloning scandal involving Woo-Suk Hwang, the nature of the disaster is documented and reasons why it occurred are suggested. The general problems it raises for scientific research are highlighted and six possible ways of improving practice are offered in the light of this case: better education of science students; independent monitoring and validation; guidelines for tissue donation for research; fostering of debate about ethically contentious research in science journals; development of an international code of (...) ethical research practice; fostering of public involvement in ethical review and debate through the web. (shrink)

Ces études débordent le problème du temps chez les Stoïciens et se proposent d’établir que cette question, en apparence modeste, permet d’éclairer, et en même temps commande l’ensemble du système.Au premier abord en effet, la théorie du temps se présente comme une simple section d’un chapitre de la Physique, celui qui traite des Incorporels. Mais déjà la simple interprétation des textes transmis fait voir que cette théorie tient étroitement à d’autres théories, comme celle des incorporels en général, des catégories, de (...) la substance. Abordant ensuite les thèses majeures de la logique et de l’éthique, on s’aperçoit qu’à leur tour elles sont solidaires de la conception du temps qui, dans bien des cas, fait évanouir leur apparence de paradoxe. A cela même, il n’y a rien d’étrange, si l’on se souvient que le stoïcisme, plus que tout autre philosophie antique, constitue un système cohérent. Mais plus particulièrement, le problème du temps a dû former comme le noeud de la réflexion stoïcienne qui vise, contre les lourdes autorités de Platon et d’Aristote, à rétablir dans sa réalité et dans sa dignité, le concret, le sensible, disqualifié comme « sujet à la génération et à la corruption », c’est-à-dire, en un mot, comme « l’être dans le temps ». (shrink)

This is one of those cases to which Dr. 8 oodhouse's remark applies with all its force, that a method which leads to true results must have its logic — H.S Smith (" On Some of the Methods at Present in Use in Pure Geometry," p. 6) A goodly amount of modern metaphysics has concerned itself, in one form or another, with the question: what attitude should we take in regard to a language whose semantic underpinnings seem less than certain? (...) Since much of standard English is surely of this type, many philosophers have felt driven to extreme and unpalatable resolutions — wholesale rejection of attractive logical rules, radical "antirealism", "minimalism" about truth, and so forth, Scientists, however, have long dealt with analogous foundational insecurities and, under the duress of practicality, have framed a set of shifting attitudes towards language and reasoning that seem far more commonsensical than the extreme positions to which pure philosophy has often been led. Following this lead, this essay will recommend a more nuanced approach to linguistic insecurity that is neither naively optimistic nor mired in the gloomy sloughs of antirealism. (shrink)

There is considerable likelihood that Gottlob Frege began writing his Foundations of Arithmetic with the expectation that he could introduce his numbers, not with sets, but through some algebraic techniques borrowed from earlier writers of the Gottingen school. These rewriting techniques, had they worked, would have required strong philosophical justification provided by Frege's celebrated "context principle," which otherwise serves little evident purpose in the published Foundations.

Current sociological theories appear to have lost their general persuasiveness in part because, unlike the theories of the ‘classical era’, they fail to maintain an integrated stance toward society, and the practical role that sociology plays in society. The authors explore various facets of this failure and possibilities for reconstructing sociological theories as integrated wholes capable of conveying a moral and political immediacy. They discuss the evolution of several concepts (for example, the social, structure, and self) and address the significant (...) disputes (for example, structuralism versus humanism, and individual versus society) that have dominated twentieth-century sociological thought. Their ideas and analyses are directed towards an audience of students and theorists who are coming to terms with the project of sociological theory, and its relationship with moral discourses and political practice. The authors of these essays are sociological theorists from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. They are all established, but not ‘establishment’ authors. The book contains no orthodoxies, and no answers. However, the essays do contribute to identifying the range of issues that will constitute the agenda for the next generation of sociological theorists. (shrink)

Stereological techniques allow biologists to create quantitative, three-dimensional descriptions of biological structures from two- dimensional images of tissue viewed under the microscope. For example, they can accurately estimate the size of a particular organelle, the total length of a mass of capillaries, or the number of neurons or synapses in a particular region of the brain. This book provides a practical guide to designing and critically evaluating stereological studies of the nervous system and other tissues. It explains the basic concepts (...) behind design-based stereology and how to get started. Also included are detailed descriptions of how to prepare tissue appropriately, perform pilot studies and decide on the appropriate sampling strategy, and account for phenomena such as tissue shrinkage. Numerous examples of applications of stereological methods that are applicable to studies of the central system and a wide variety of other tissues are explained. The book is therefore essential reading for neurobiologists and cell biologists interested in generating accurate representations of cell and tissue architecture. (shrink)

Together again for the first time, Marx and Durkheim join forces in the pages of Disintegration: Bad Love, Collective Suicide, and the Idols of Imperial Twilight for a dialectical exploration of the moral economy of neoliberalism, animated, as it is not only by the capitalist chase for surplus value, but also by an immortal vortex of sacred powers. Classical sociology and psychoanalysis are reconstituted within Hegelian social ontology and dialectical method that differentiates between the ephemeral and free and the eternal (...) and fixed aspects of modern life. (shrink)

In ancient China, a revered Taoist sage named Zhuangzi told many parables. In Existential Psychology and the Way of the Tao, a selection of these parables will be featured. Following each parable, an eminent existential psychologist will share a personal and scholarly reflection on the meaning and relevance of the parable for psychotherapy and contemporary life. The major tenets of Zhuangzi's philosophy are featured. Taoist concepts of emptiness, stillness, Wu Wei (i.e. intentional non-intentionality), epistemology, dreams and the nature of reality, (...) character building in the midst of pain, meaning and the centrality of relationships, authenticity, self-care, the freedom that can come from one's willingness to confront death, spiritual freedom, and gradations of therapeutic care are topics highlighted in this book. (shrink)

What can we learn about the nature of technology by studying practices of maintenance and repair? This volume addresses this question by bringing together scholarship from philosophers of technology working at the forefront of this emerging and exciting topic. -/- The chapters in this volume explore how attending to maintenance and repair can challenge and complement existing ways of thinking about technology focused on use and design and introduce new philosophical perspectives on the relationship between technology, time and human practice. (...) They examine the significance of maintenance and repair practices at different scales in relation to a diverse range of philosophical traditions and a wide variety of technologies, from urban infrastructure such as bridges and buildings to data technologies such as servers and software systems. Together, the contributions highlight common themes in the philosophical study of maintenance, including the role of skill, the significance of social values and the potential of these practices to transform the technologies to which they are applied. By reflecting on the different ways in which we keep technologies going, from the devices we use in our homes to the large technical systems which surround us, this volume reveals the philosophical significance of practices of maintenance, not only as a source of new insights but also as a resource for enriching our understanding of a variety of existing topics in philosophy. -/- Maintenance and Philosophy of Technology will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of technology, philosophy of engineering and science & technology studies. (shrink)

The paper defends a view of structural realism similar to that of French and Ladyman, although it differs from theirs in an important respect: I do not take indistinguishabiity of particles in quantum mechanics to have the significance they think it has. It also differs from Cao's view of structural realism, criticized in my "Critical Notice: Cao's `The Conceptual Development of 20th Century Field Theories".

It is time to bring the rich resources of these traditions into the contemporary debate about the nature of self. This volume is the first of its kind.

Book Information Intercultural Philosophy. By Ram Adhar Mall. Rowman & Littlefield. 2000. Pp. xiii + 152. Hardback, US$62.00. Paperback, US$16.95.

Some health-care institutions have ethics committees. The experience of the Ethical Issues Committee at the Royal College of Physicians is described. Ethics committees in institutions may be reactive or creative, must determine an agenda and must deal with dissent.

BL Contains a clear, accurate translation of Books I and II, together with a philosophical commentaryAristotle's Politics is a key document in Western political thought; it raises and discusses many theoretical and practical political issues which are still debated today. This edition is well suited to the requirements of students, including those who do not know Greek.

This volume features original essays on the philosophy of love. The essays are organized thematically around the past, present, and future of philosophical thinking about love. In section I, the contributors explore what we can learn from the history of philosophical thinking about love. The chapters cover Ancient Greek thinkers, namely Plato and Aristotle, as well as Kierkegaard's critique of preferential love and Erich Fromm's mystic interpretation of sexual relations. Section II covers current conceptions and practices of love. These chapters (...) explore how love changes over time, the process of falling in love, envy in romantic partnerships, and a new interpretation of grand-parental love. Finally, Section III looks at the future of love. These chapters address technological developments related to love, such as algorithm-driven dating apps and robotic companions, as well as the potential of polyamory as a future romantic ideal. This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in moral philosophy and social and political philosophy who are working on issues related to philosophy of love. (shrink)

Following a long-term international collaboration between leaders in cosmology and the philosophy of science, this volume addresses foundational questions at the limit of science across these disciplines, questions raised by observational and theoretical progress in modern cosmology. Space missions have mapped the Universe up to its early instants, opening up questions on what came before the Big Bang, the nature of space and time, and the quantum origin of the Universe. As the foundational volume of an emerging academic discipline, experts (...) from relevant fields lay out the fundamental problems of contemporary cosmology and explore the routes toward finding possible solutions. Written for graduates and researchers in physics and philosophy, particular efforts are made to inform academics from other fields, as well as the educated public, who wish to understand our modern vision of the Universe, related philosophical questions, and the significant impacts on scientific methodology. (shrink)

The article considers structuralism as a philosophy of mathematics, as based on the commonly accepted explicit mathematical concept of a structure. Such a structure consists of a set with specified functions and relations satisfying specified axioms, which describe the type of the structure. Examples of such structures such as groups and spaces, are described. The viewpoint is now dominant in organizing much of mathematics, but does not cover all mathematics, in particular most applications. It does not explain why certain structures (...) are dominant, not why the same mathematical structure can have so many different and protean realizations. ‘structure’ is just one part of the full situation, which must somehow connect the ideal structures with their varied examples. (shrink)