There are several conceptions of truth, such as the classical correspondence conception, the coherence conception and the pragmatic conception. The classical correspondence conception, or Aristotelian conception, received a mathematical treatment in the hands of Tarski (cf. Tarski [1935] and [1944]), which was the starting point of a great progress in logic and in mathematics. In effect, Tarski's semantic ideas, especially his semantic characterization of truth, have exerted a major influence on various disciplines, besides logic and mathematics; for instance, linguistics, the (...) philosophy of science, and the theory of knowledge. The importance of the Tarskian investigations derives, among other things, from the fact that they constitute a mathematical, formal mark to serve as a reference for the philosophical (informal) conceptions of truth. Today the philosopher knows that the classical conception can be developed and that it is free from paradoxes and other difficulties, if certain precautions are taken. We believe that is not an exaggeration if we assert that Tarski's theory should be considered as one of the greatest accomplishments of logic and mathematics of our time, an accomplishment which is also of extraordinary relevance to philosophy, as we have already remarked. In this paper we show that the pragmatic conception of truth, at least in one of its possible interpretations, has also a mathematical formulation, similar in spirit to that given by Tarski to the classical correspondence conception. (shrink)

Annotated logics were introduced by V.S. Subrahmanian as logical foundations for computer programming. One of the difficulties of these systems from the logical point of view is that they are not structural, i.e., their consequence relations are not closed under substitutions. In this paper we give systems of annotated logics that are equivalent to those of Subrahmanian in the sense that everything provable in one type of system has a translation that is provable in the other. Moreover these new systems (...) are structural. We prove that these systems are weakly congruential, namely, they have an infinite system of congruence 1-formulas. Moreover, we prove that an annotated logic is algebraizable (i.e., it has a finite system of congruence formulas,) if and only if the lattice of annotation constants is finite. (shrink)

In Lewin et al. 359–386) the authors proved that certain systems of annotated logics are algebraizable in the sense of Block and Rigozzi 396). Later in Lewin et al. the study of the associated quasi-varieties of annotated algebras is initiated. In this paper we continue the study of the these classes of algebras, in particular, we report some recent results about the free annotated algebras.

We introduce a family of matrices that define logics in which paraconsistency and/or paracompleteness occurs only at the level of literals, that is, formulas that are propositional letters or their iterated negations. We give a sound and complete axiomatization for the logic defined by the class of all these matrices, we give conditions for the maximality of these logics and we study in detail several relevant examples.

In this paper a first order theory for the logics defined through literal paraconsistent-paracomplete matrices is developed. These logics are intended to model situations in which the ground level information may be contradictory or incomplete, but it is treated within a classical framework. This means that literal formulas, i.e. atomic formulas and their iterated negations, may behave poorly specially regarding their negations, but more complex formulas, i.e. formulas that include a binary connective are well behaved. This situation may and does (...) appear for instance in data bases. (shrink)

Written by two of the leading figures in the field, this is a lucid and systematic introduction to semantics as applied to transformational grammars of the ...

The received view of Martin Heidegger’s work is that he leaves little room for reason in the practice of philosophy or the conduct of life. Citing his much-scorned remark that reason is the “stiff-necked adversary of thought”, critics argue that Heidegger’s philosophy effectively severs the tie between reason and normativity, leaving anyone who adheres to his position without recourse to justifying reasons for their beliefs and actions. Transcending Reason is a collection of essays by leading Heidegger scholars that challenges this (...) view by exploring new ways to understand Heidegger’s approach to the relationship between reason, normativity, and the philosophical methodology that gives us access to these issues. The volume points to Heidegger’s novel approach to reason understood in terms of what he calls Dasein’s ‘transcendence’—the ability to occupy the world as a space of normatively structured meanings in which we navigate our striving to be. By examining the strengths and weaknesses of this new and innovative take on Heidegger’s philosophy, this collection considers the possibility that he does not sever but rather reconceives the relation between reason and normativity. -/- . (shrink)

The commentaries on the Ethica nova and the Ethica vetus written by some masters of the arts – presumably operating in the Paris faculty – in the first half of the thirteenth century expound in an original way the doctrine of the virtutes consuetudinales which Aristotle, at the end of the first book of his Ethica (I 13), distinguishes into the two main classes of the “moral virtues” and the “intellectual virtues”. The present paper aims at highlighting the particularly important (...) task which is assigned to the intellectual virtues in these early commentaries: joining man to God directly, through a contemplation which becomes love. The masters of the arts maintain that the moral virtues, in spite of the definition given by Aristotle (habitus a quo quis bonus est et opus eius bene reddit), are not sufficient alone to bring man to perfection, but that other more perfect virtues, namely the intellectual ones, are needed in order to make him know and love the supreme good. Having no knowledge of the sixth book of the Ethica, in which Aristotle deals in particular with the intellectual virtues, our masters know only their general description and are concerned with clarifying their relationships with the moral virtues, compared to which they appear to be sometimes really distinct and sometimes united to them in sharing the recta ratio, so much that they may constitute a double virtue. Although the masters of the arts seem to be well-informed about the teaching of the theologians – which they often cite without opposing to it, albeit stressing their own philosophical point of view –, it is significant that no reference whatsoever is made by them to the theological virtues and that they have recourse to the themes of Avicennian mysticism such as the doctrine of the two faces of the soul. Besides presenting the commentaries on the Ethica vetus from a general point of view, I will focus on the Paris commentary in Ethicam veterem (Paris BN lat. 3804A, ff. 152ra-159vb, 241ra-247vb; Paris BN lat. 3572, ff. 226ra-235ra), of which I am preparing a critical edition. The Paris commentary contains in fact a special and original discussion of the doctrine of the virtutes intellectuales. (shrink)

This paper aims to produce a defense of the ethical significance of Confucian ritual. An adequate defense must explain how these conventions are based in a culturally-neutral, objective ground. After a brief account of how Confucians view the relationship between rituals and moral goodness, I consider three sorts of justification. Mencian naturalism appeals to a conception of flourishing that is grounded in human nature. Xunzian consequentialism looks to how ritual brings about social order. I argue that both of these approaches (...) fail because they are unable to account for the normative fineness of rituals, which refers to the precision and detail of ritual propriety. Instead, I look to Xunzi for a justification of rituals in terms of their role in beautifying human nature. I argue that this view provides a sort of objective ground for ritual, while also preserving their normative fineness. I conclude with remarks on how Xunzian aestheticism may be useful for understanding other areas of moral life. (shrink)

For the first time, the reader can have a synoptic view of the reception of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, East and West, in a multicultural perspective. All the major themes of Pythagoreanism are addressed, from mathematics, number philosophy and metaphysics to ethics and religious thought.

El artículo se centra en el filósofo argentino Eugenio Pucciarelli (1907-1995) y su recepción de la fenomenología, a la que confiere un sesgo humanista. Se procederá a una introducción a su contribución a la fenomenología en América Latina y se abordarán los siguientes temas: 1) la misión de la filosofía, las diversas vías de acceso a su esencia, en particular aquellas de Scheler, Dilthey y Husserl, 2) su recepción de Husserl en cuanto concierne a los ideales de ciencia y de (...) razón, 3) la crisis de la razón y de la evidencia, 4) su concepción pluralista de la razón, del tiempo y de la cultura, 5) humanismo y libertad. La tesis sostiene que su concepción de la filosofía, que enfatiza la dimensión personal y el compromiso social de la práctica filosófica, revela un profundo humanismo pluralista que no descuida su función militante y crítica, evidenciado así la actualidad de su mensaje. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) -- Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) -- Martin Buber (1878-1965) -- Leo Strauss (1899-1973) -- Emmanuel Lévinas (1906-1995).

This essay is a critical review of two recent collections, Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance, edited by Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby and Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender, edited by Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell. While the collections differ in their manner of addressing the critical sources that have inspired them-the former relying upon a single theorist, the latter attempting to move through some of the philosophical history that constitutes our present theoretical terrain-both attempt to (...) think through and thus revisualize some of the categories of difference which we have inherited. Though the best essays from these collections are celebrated for demonstrating how "feminism as critique" can work to move us toward a clearer and more inclusive feminist theory, questions are raised about what the inattention to race in these volumes suggests about our own role in the construction of power and knowledge, and the erasures that help to secure them both. (shrink)

Summary During his prolific career, the German Jewish scientist Franz Boas (Minden, 1858 - New York, 1942) recognized as the founding father of American Cultural Anthropology – maintained assiduous contacts with the European scientific community, in a privileged way with that of the German area. The contribution addresses the Boasian correspondence with the two directors of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv, the philosopher and psychologist Carl Stumpf, and the ethnomusicolo-gist Erich Moritz von Hornbostel. All three were united by a common scientific experimental (...) training and a solid musical education, typical of their Bildungsbu ü rgertum. With them, Boas consistently shared his fieldwork findings regarding music, sound, and language among the Indians of British Columbia: indeed, their epistolary exchanges intertwine epistemological reflections centered on the study of «exotische Musik» in context with technical problems, derived from the use of phonographic recordings and the relative shipments of wax cylinders by Boas to the Phonographic Archive. So far, the critical literature has not paid particular attention to their correspondence, that offer instead a privileged look in observing the birth of Ethnomusicology, at the time still defined as comparative Musicology (vergleichende Musikwissenschaft). Starting from a biographical contextualization and following the micro-history of the scientific and personal relationship of these scientists, the contribution aims to explore the hypothesis that the emerging Ethnomusicology significantly contributed to the definition of Cultural Anthropology as a discipline. In his painstaking research devoted to the Native Indian sounds and languages, Boas observed indeed what happens if a mind is exposed to a new sound, musical or linguistic context; he had therefore to rigorously deal with the phenomena of mishearing, sound-blindness and biasing filter related to the perception of «new sounds». Thanks to his fieldwork, Boas would endorse a relativistic and “in context” approach to perception and mental representations of sounds, fostering his eventual lifelong, hectic concern about a broaden antiracist theory of human mental functions. (shrink)

Fodor argues that speech perception is accomplished by a module. Typically, modular processing is taken to be bottom-up processing. Yet there is ubiquitous empirical evidence that speech perception is influenced by top-down processing. Fodor attempts to resolve this conflict by denying that modular processing must be exclusively bottom-up. It is argued, however, that Fodor's attempt to reconcile top-down and modular processing fails, because: (i) it undermines Fodor's own conception of modular processing; and (ii) it cannot account for the contextually varying (...) top-down influences that characterize speech perception. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

In this collection of original essays, leading scholars of East Asian studies seek to define the deeply religious dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian thought and practice in order to demonstrate its intellectual connections with other traditions of thought--such as Taoism, Buddhism, and Shintoism--at specific junctures in history.

This article uses a conversation analytic framework to describe a type of wh-question used to challenge a prior utterance, specifically to challenge the basis for or right to do an action done by the prior utterance. These wh-questions are able to do challenging because, rather than asking for new information, they are used to convey a strong epistemic stance of the questioner, a negative assertion. The utterances are designed as requests for an account for a prior claim or action, but (...) by conveying a negative assertion, they suggest that there is no adequate account available and, thus, that there are no grounds for the prior claim or action. The use of these questions in institutional settings can display participants' orientation to institutional goals, norms and roles, showing that institutional roles can thus be enacted, and goals accomplished, by means of practices of talk which are not, themselves, institutionally specific. (shrink)

Known throughout East Asia as Mengzi, or "Master Meng," Mencius was a Chinese philosopher of the late Zhou dynasty, an instrumental figure in the spread of the Confucian tradition, and a brilliant illuminator of its ideas. Mencius was active during the Warring States Period, in which competing powers sought to control the declining Zhou empire. Like Confucius, Mencius journeyed to one feudal court after another, searching for a proper lord who could put his teachings into practice. Only a leader who (...) possessed the moral qualities of a true king could unify China, Mencius believed, and in his defense of Zhou rule and Confucian philosophy, he developed an innovative and highly nuanced approach to understanding politics, self-cultivation, and human nature, profoundly influencing the course of Confucian thought and East Asian culture. _Mencius_ is a record of the philosopher's conversations with warring lords, disciples, and adversaries of the Way, as well as a collection of pronouncements on government, human nature, and a variety of other philosophical and political subjects. Mencius is largely concerned with the motivations of human actors and their capacity for mutual respect. He builds on the Confucian idea of _ren_, or humaneness, and places it alongside the complementary principle of _yi_, or rightness, advancing a complex notion of what is right for certain individuals as they perform distinct roles in specific situations. Consequently, Mencius's impact was felt not only in the thought of the intellectual and social elite but also in the value and belief systems of all Chinese people. (shrink)

Durante los años 1880, Nietzsche propone una idea original de individuo en tanto pluralidad como un modo de superación del difundido nihilismo con respecto a la unidad. Sus escritos, tanto editados como inéditos, presentan una crítica aguda de la concepción heredada de unidad anímica y cultural acorde con la crisis de identidad que vive Europa en la segunda mitad del siglo xix. Nuestro objetivo es mostrar un hilo que va desde la biología celular hasta la filosofía de Nietzsche. Consideramos cómo (...) la biología celular, especialmente con Rudolph Virchow, inauguró la crítica de la noción de Individuum desde el plano orgánico. Eso constituyó un motivo fuerte en la psicología de los franceses Hippolyte Taine y Theódule Ribot, quienes transpusieron el problema al ámbito anímico y de la psicopatología. Ambos concluyeron con un fuerte cuestionamiento sobre la unidad y simplicidad del yo. Eso generó un profundo interés en la filosofía de Nietzsche que en repetidas ocasiones se refiere al Individuum como una multiplicidad de células. Finalmente, profundizaremos en el registro nietzscheano acerca del Individuum, ya que constituye uno de los costados del pensamiento sobre el Übermensch, que Nietzsche imagina inspirado en los grandes hombres del Renacimiento, como posible superación del nihilismo. Among possible ways that Nietzsche can take to deal with Nihilism and its challenges, he proposes an original idea of plural individual. His papers both published and unpublished, present a sharp critique of the inherited view of psychic and cultural unit. It was in line with the identity's crisis faced by Europe along the second half of the nineteenth century. Our goal is to show a thread that goes from cell biology to Nietzsche's philosophy. We see how cell biology, precisely through Rudolph Virchow, inaugurated the critique of the notion of organic Individuum from the organic field. It became a strong subject in the psychology of Hippolyte Taine and Theódule Ribot. They transposed the issue to the field of mind and psychopathology. Both concluded in a strong challenge on the self's unity and simplicity. This generated a deep concern in Nietzsche's philosophy. He repeatedly refers to Individuum as a multiplicity of cells. Finally, we will go in deep into the Nietzschean consideration about Individuum because this topic means one important aspect of the concept of Übermensch that Nietzsche imagines inspired by the great men of the Renaissance as a promising way out of Nihilism. (shrink)

L’article analyse la représentation et la perception des Grandes invasions à la fin du xixe siècle et au début du xxe siècle : des mouvements de groupes ethniques cohérents, conduits par des héros masculins. Ce modèle a été suggéré à partir d’un type spécifique de sagas mythiques du haut Moyen Âge, les Origines gentium qui, s’appuyant sur différentes sources anciennes, présentaient l’échiquier complexe des déplacements, des guerres et des alliances entre les barbares et l’Empire comme des exodes linéaires de tribus (...) cohérentes vers une terre promise. Les archéologues et les ostéologues ont appliqué littéralement ce modèle : les biens funéraires et les types de squelettes permettaient à leurs yeux d’identifier les membres des différentes tribus et de suivre leurs routes migratoires. Ils ont privilégié les tombes avec des armes et les squelettes masculins et souligné ainsi l’agentivité des hommes. Cependant, les découvertes archéologiques examinées de plus près nous racontent une histoire complètement différente : dans les cimetières du haut Moyen Âge, les femmes avaient une plus grande visibilité que les hommes. (shrink)

How is the tension between conflict and deliberation resolved in shareholder engagement? We address this question by studying shareholder engagement as a deliberative process with three stages: establishing dialogue, solution development, and solution implementation. We theorize that two interactionist mechanisms, deliberative interaction and the voicing of disagreement, play different roles at different stages of the process. We test our hypotheses with a proprietary database of 169 environmental, social, and governance engagements with US public companies over 2007–12. We find that while (...) deliberative interaction does not help advance the engagement process, it positively moderates the effect of disagreement in the solution development stage. By contrast, in the solution implementation stage, deliberative interaction amplifies the negative effect of disagreement, thus hindering progress in the engagement. Our article contributes to shareholder engagement, deliberation theory, and interactionist organization theory by establishing that engagement effectiveness is an interactional achievement shaped by both deliberation and disagreement. (shrink)

The concept of sustainability was developed in response to stakeholder demands. One of the key mechanisms for engaging stakeholders is sustainability disclosure, often in the form of a report. Yet, how reporting is used to engage stakeholders is understudied. Using resource dependence and stakeholder theories, we investigate how companies within the same industry address different dependencies on stakeholders for economic, natural environment, and social resources and thus engage stakeholders accordingly. To achieve this objective, we conducted our research using qualitative research (...) methods. Our findings suggest that the resource dependencies on different stakeholders lead to development of different stakeholder relationships and thus appropriate resources within the company to execute engagement strategies that are informing, responding, or involving. Our research explains why diversity exists in sustainability disclosure by studying how it is used to engage stakeholders. We find that five sustainability reporting characteristics are associated with the company’s stakeholder engagement strategy: directness of communication, clarity of stakeholder identity, deliberateness of collecting feedback, broadness of stakeholder inclusiveness, and utilization of stakeholder engagement for learning. Our study develops the literature by providing insight into companies’ choices of stakeholder engagement strategy thus explaining diversity in sustainability reporting based on the characteristics and relationships with specific stakeholders. (shrink)

Known throughout East Asia as Mengzi, or "Master Meng," Mencius was a Chinese philosopher of the late Zhou dynasty, an instrumental figure in the spread of the Confucian tradition, and a brilliant illuminator of its ideas. Mencius was active during the Warring States Period, in which competing powers sought to control the declining Zhou empire. Like Confucius, Mencius journeyed to one feudal court after another, searching for a proper lord who could put his teachings into practice. Only a leader who (...) possessed the moral qualities of a true king could unify China, Mencius believed, and in his defense of Zhou rule and Confucian philosophy, he developed an innovative and highly nuanced approach to understanding politics, self-cultivation, and human nature, profoundly influencing the course of Confucian thought and East Asian culture. _Mencius_ is a record of the philosopher's conversations with warring lords, disciples, and adversaries of the Way, as well as a collection of pronouncements on government, human nature, and a variety of other philosophical and political subjects. Mencius is largely concerned with the motivations of human actors and their capacity for mutual respect. He builds on the Confucian idea of _ren_, or humaneness, and places it alongside the complementary principle of _yi_, or rightness, advancing a complex notion of what is right for certain individuals as they perform distinct roles in specific situations. Consequently, Mencius's impact was felt not only in the thought of the intellectual and social elite but also in the value and belief systems of all Chinese people. (shrink)

Controlled human malaria infection (CHMI) studies involve the deliberate infection of healthy volunteers with malaria parasites under controlled conditions to study immune responses and/or test drug or vaccine efficacy. An empirical ethics study was embedded in a CHMI study at a Kenyan research programme to explore stakeholders’ perceptions and experiences of deliberate infection and moral implications of these. Data for this qualitative study were collected through focus group discussions, in‐depth interviews and non‐participant observation. Sixty‐nine participants were involved, including CHMI study (...) volunteers, community representatives and research staff. Data were managed using QSR Nvivo 10 and analysed using an inductive‐deductive approach, guided by ethics literature. CHMI volunteers had reasonable understanding of the study procedures. Decisions to join were influenced by study incentives, trust in the research institution, their assessment of associated burdens and motivation to support malaria vaccine development. However, deliberate malaria infection was a highly unusual research strategy for volunteers, community representatives and some study staff. Volunteers’ experiences of physical, emotional and social burdens or harms were often greater than anticipated initially, and fluctuated over time, related to specific procedures and events. Although unlikely to deter volunteers' participation in similar studies in furture, we argue that the dissonance between level of understanding of the burdens involved and actual experiences are morally relevant in relation to community engagement, informed consent processes, and ongoing support for volunteers and research staff. We further argue that ethics oversight of CHMI studies should take account of these issues in deciding whether consent, engagement and the balance of benefits and harms are reasonable in a given context. (shrink)

Research has shown that the construction of visual representations may have a positive effect on cognitive skills, including argumentation. In this paper we present a study on learning argumentation through computer-supported argument diagramming. We specifically focus on whether students, when provided with an argument-diagramming tool, create better diagrams, are more motivated, and learn more when working with other students or on their own. We use learning analytics to evaluate a variety of student activities: pre and post questionnaires to explore motivational (...) changes; the argument diagrams created by students to evaluate richness, complexity and completion; and pre and post knowledge tests to evaluate learning gains. (shrink)

TThis paper aims to evidence the inherently metonymic nature of co-speech gestures. Arguing that motivation in gesture involves iconicity (similarity), indexicality (contiguity), and habit (conventionality) to varying degrees, it demonstrates how a set of metonymic principles may lend a certain systematicity to experientially grounded processes of gestural abstraction and enaction. Introducing visuo-kinetic signs as an umbrella term for co-speech gestures and signed languages, the paper shows how a frame-based approach to gesture may integrate different cognitive/functional linguistic and semiotic accounts of (...) metonymy (e.g., experiential domains, frame metonymy, contiguity, and pragmatic inferencing). The guiding assumption is that gestures metonymically profile deeply embodied, routinized aspects of familiar scenes, that is, the motivating context of frames. The discussion shows how gestures may evoke frame structures exhibiting varying degrees of groundedness, complexity, and schematicity: basic physical action and object frames; more complex frames; and highly abstract, complex frame structures. It thereby provides gestural evidence for the idea that metonymy is more basic and more directly experientially grounded than metaphor and thus often feeds into correlated metaphoric processes. Furthermore, the paper offers some initial insights into how metonymy also seems to induce the emergence of schematic patterns in gesture which may result from action-based and discourse-driven processes of habituation and conventionalization. It exemplifies how these forces may engender grammaticalization of a basic physical action into a gestural marker that shows strong metonymic form reduction, decreased transitivity, and interacting pragmatic functions. Finally, addressing basic metonymic operations in signed lexemes elucidates certain similarities regarding sign constitution in gesture and sign. English and German multimodal discourse data as well as German Sign Language (DGS) are drawn upon to illustrate the theoretical points of the paper. Overall, this paper presents a unified account of metonymy’s role in underpinning forms, functions, and patterns in visuo-kinetic signs. (shrink)

Research from behavioural sciences shows that people reach decisions in a much less rational and well-considered way than was often assumed. The doctrine of informed consent, which is an important ethical principle and legal requirement in medical practice, is being challenged by these insights into decision-making and real-world choice behaviour. This article discusses the implications of recent insights of research on decision-making behaviour for the informed consent doctrine. It concludes that there is a significant tension between the often non-rational choice (...) behaviour and the traditional theory of informed consent. Responsible ways of dealing with or solving these problems are considered. To this end, patient decisions aids are discussed as suitable interventions to support autonomous decision-making. However, current PDAs demand certain improvements in order to protect and promote autonomous decision-making. Based on a conception of autonomy, we will argue which type of improvements are needed. (shrink)

‘‘Post-normal science’’ has received much attention in recent years, but like many iconic concepts, it has attracted differing conceptualizations, applications, and implications, ranging from being a ‘‘cure-all’’ for democratic deficit to the key to achieving more sustainable futures. This editorial article introduces a Special Issue that takes stock of research on PNS and critically explores how such research may develop. Through reviewing the history and evolution of PNS, the authors seek to clarify the extant definitions, conceptualizations, and uses of PNS. (...) The authors identify five broad areas of research on, or using, PNS which have developed over four decades. Their analysis suggests that the 1990s represent a symbolic watershed in the use of PNS terminology, when the concept was further developed and applied to highly complicated issues such as climate change. The authors particularly distinguish between uses of PNS as a normative prescription and as a practical method. Through this classification, they set out gaps and research questions arising. They then briefly summarize the Special Issue articles and consider their relationship to each other and the research questions raised by their analysis. They conclude by considering what the articles in this issue suggest for future theory building in PNS and related scholarship. (shrink)

Introduction: Time and the shared world -- The "subject" of inquiry -- Mineness and the practical first-person -- Being and otherness: Sartre's critique -- Heideggerian aprioricity and the categories of being -- The temporality of care -- Fursorge: acknowledging the other Dasein -- Authenticity, inauthenticity, and the extremes of Fursorge -- Conclusion.

This study examines the relationships between a company''s emphasis on discretionary social responsibility, environment, and firm performance. It tests the proposition that environmental munificence and dynamism moderate the relationship between discretionary social responsibility and financial performance. Social responsibility was measured with a three-item scale in a sample of 62 firms using a questionnaire. Environmental munificence and dynamism were measured using archival sources as was financial performance (return on assets and return on sales). The results of moderated regression analyses and subgroup (...) analyses found a significant moderating effect of environment on the social responsibility-firm performance relationship. Discretionary social responsibility contributes to firm performance in environments that are dynamic and munificent. (shrink)