The various theories about business ethics need to take much more notice of technology, realising that technology has its own increasing momentum which is driving business, and that, whereas business people think they control technology as a simple neutral means to their ends, in fact the reverse is true: business is the servant of technological development. Jacques Ellul, however, offers some hope for the future to help us ‘reappropriate our humanity’. Dr Davies is a senior lecturer in Strategic Management (...) and Business Ethics at the Buckingham Business School, Buckinghamshire College [a College of Brunel University], Newland Park Campus, Gorelands Lane, Chalfton‐St‐Giles, Buckinghamshire HP8 4PB (Tel 01494‐874441, ext. 2240; fax 01494‐874230; Email [email protected]). His background is in mining and production engineering and he would like to hear from others interested in the new field of engineering ethics. (shrink)

_Current Issues in Business Ethics_ analyzes the questions which underlie business activities, arguing that the prime object for a legitimate business must be sustainability. It also looks at the issues between individuals and business and asks whether businesses can support their employees as an alternative to family and church. Finally it assesses the impact of most recent trends in business looking at: * the activities of multinational companies * the changing gender balance * privatization * the loss of power of (...) the trade unions. (shrink)

_Current Issues in Business Ethics_ analyzes the questions which underlie business activities, arguing that the prime object for a legitimate business must be sustainability. It also looks at the issues between individuals and business and asks whether businesses can support their employees as an alternative to family and church. Finally it assesses the impact of most recent trends in business looking at: * the activities of multinational companies * the changing gender balance * privatization * the loss of power of (...) the trade unions. (shrink)

The various theories about business ethics need to take much more notice of technology, realising that technology has its own increasing momentum which is driving business, and that, whereas business people think they control technology as a simple neutral means to their ends, in fact the reverse is true: business is the servant of technological development. Jacques Ellul, however, offers some hope for the future to help us ‘reappropriate our humanity’. Dr Davies is a senior lecturer in Strategic Management (...) and Business Ethics at the Buckingham Business School, Buckinghamshire College [a College of Brunel University], Newland Park Campus, Gorelands Lane, Chalfton‐St‐Giles, Buckinghamshire HP8 4PB . His background is in mining and production engineering and he would like to hear from others interested in the new field of engineering ethics. (shrink)

Ethics and Empowerment is aimed atproviding tactical, high-level solutions to today's business and professionalchallenges. Gathering together experts in various fields, this line of titleswill benefit professionals as they face the challenges of the ever-changingbusiness climate. Amid the burgeoning literature on business ethics, this book providesan important lead in taking a well-known everyday management notion such as"empowerment" and using it to make "ethics" more relevantand accessible to the business world. Adding a major contribution to theongoing debate about the role of business (...) in society, the content examines theissues of power, control, and autonomy, addressing such questions asempowerment as a matter of justice, and also provides case studies of theorganizational experiences of empowerment programs. (shrink)

The Frame/Content theory deals with how and why the first language evolved the present-day speech mode of programming syllable “Frame” structures with segmental “Content” elements. The first words are considered, for biomechanical reasons, to have had the simple syllable frame structures of pre-speech babbling, and were perhaps parental terms, generated within the parent–infant dyad. Although all gestural origins theories have iconicity as a plausible alternative hypothesis for the origin of the meaning-signal link for words, they all share the problems of (...) how and why a fully fledged sign language, necessarily involving a structured phonology, changed to a spoken language. (shrink)

Words denoting “mother” in baby talk and in languages usually include nasal sounds, supporting Falk's suggestion that infant nasalized demand vocalizations might have motivated a first word. The linguistic contrast between maternal terms and paternal terms, which favor oral consonants, and the simple phonetic patterns of parental terms in both baby talk and languages also suggest parental terms could have been first words.

Arbib's gestural-origins theory does not tell us why or how a subsequent switch to vocal language occurred, and shows no systematic concern with the signalling affordances or constraints of either medium. Our frame/content theory, in contrast, offers both a vocal origin in the invention of kinship terms in a baby-talk context and an explanation for the structure of the currently favored medium.

Hurford presents a much-needed lowly origins scenario for the evolution of conceptual precursors to lexical items. But more is still needed on action, regarding both the message level of lexical concepts and the medium. We summarize our complementary action-based lowly origins (frame/content) scenario for the vocal auditory medium of language, which, like Hurford's scenario, is anchored in a phylogenetically old neurological dichotomy.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a major public health concern in both civilian and military populations, across race, age, gender, and socio-economic status. While PTSD has been around for centuries by some name or another, its definition and description also continue to evolve. Within the last few years, the American Psychological Association has published the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which includes some major changes in the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Recent data on epidemiology, etiological (...) theories, and empirically supported methods of treatment, as well as implications for legal processes and criminal justice system personnel, are discussed. (shrink)

New coverage of the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the ensuing public education campaigns by the Department of Veterans Affairs and private veterans advocacy groups combine to call the public's attention to the many potential mental health problems associated with traumatic event exposure. Indeed, since 2001, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom combat and peacekeeping missions have been characterized by high levels of exposure to acts of extreme violence, with often gruesome effects. Less publically discussed is the (...) fact that a surprisingly large number of United States civilians also report exposure to traumatic events, such as severe interpersonal violence, natural disasters, and serious automobile accidents. In fact, approximately 70% of randomly sampled respondents indicated that they have experienced an incident characterized by significant perceived life threat at some point during their lives. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

This paper surveys the evidence for the use of scientific and mathematical instruments from tenth-century Kiev Rus' to the death of Peter the Great in 1725 and the literature devoted to the subject. The evidence is extremely sparse before the sixteenth century; in the seventeenth century there is more, both in the form of artefacts, either local or imported, and texts; at the end of the seventeenth century and in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, Peter the (...) Great opted for complete Westernization, and both by edict and by creating a need for their products in effect established the instrument making and scientific book publishing trades in Russia. (shrink)

Arthur Norman Prior (1914-69) was a logician and philosopher from New Zealand who contributed crucially to the development of ‘non-standard’ logics, especially of the modal variety. His greatest achievement was the invention of modern temporal logic, worked out in close connection with modal logic. However, his work in logic had a much broader scope. He was also the founder of hybrid logic, and he made important contributions to deontic logic, modal logic, the theory of quantification, the nature of propositions and (...) the history of logic. In addition, he discussed questions of ethics, free will, and general theology. Prior’s philosophical works comprise about 200 titles. His earliest articles center on philosophical theology and historical studies of Scottish Reformed Theology. This led on to the publication of his first influential work on ethics: Logic and The Basis of Ethics (1949). With the invention of tense-logic in the early 1950s, his focus shifted to investigations into the syntax of tempo-modal logic leading to his seminal Time and Modality (1957), a volume derived from his John Locke Lectures in Oxford in 1956. Furthermore Prior, together with the Irish mathematician and logician C.A. Meredith (1904-76), made important early contributions to the semantics of possible worlds. Prior’s tense-logic provided a strong conceptual framework for problems pertaining to the philosophy of time. In Time and Modality, Prior discussed the philosophical implications of Ruth Barcan’s famous formulae for tense-logic, and in the 1960s he worked on the notion of the present. The most persistent problem running through Prior’s work is his study of the questions surrounding human freedom and divine foreknowledge, and more general philosophical problems emerging from this classical theological question. His thorough analysis of this problem, with the conceptual tools of tense-logic, received a crucial impetus from his correspondence with the young Saul Kripke, when the latter suggested the semantic tool of branching time to Prior. Prior’s development of two solutions based on branching time for the problem of future contingency, the Peircean and the Ockham solution, was most thoroughly developed in Past, Present and Future (1967), the most important work published by Prior. Characteristically for Prior’s methodological approach, the development of these two solutions were at the same time a development of two new systems of tense logic, and vice versa. One of Prior’s significant contributions to logic was his work on world propositions and instant propositions. In the course of developing these notions he also made one of the earliest formulations of hybrid logic. In Papers on Time and Tense (1968), he presented this idea in a more detailed manner in the context of his four grades of tense-logical involvement. (shrink)

This paper is about teaching philosophy to high school students through Lincoln-Douglas (LD) debate. LD, also known as “values debate,” includes topics from ethics and political philosophy. Thousands of high school students across the U.S. debate these topics in class, after school, and at weekend tournaments. We argue that LD is a particularly effective tool for teaching philosophy, but also that LD today falls short of its potential. We argue that the problems with LD are not inevitable, and we offer (...) strategic recommendations for improving LD as a tool for teaching philosophy. Ultimately, our aim is to create a dialogue between LD and academic philosophy, with the hope that such dialogue will improve LD’s capacity to teach students how to do philosophy. (shrink)

Monetary intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the dark side of monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics—dishonesty. Dishonesty, a risky prospect, involves cost–benefit analysis of self-interest. We frame good or bad barrels in the environmental context as a proxy of high or low probability of getting caught for dishonesty, respectively. We theorize: The magnitude and intensity of (...) the relationship between love of money and dishonest prospect may reveal how individuals frame dishonesty in the context of two levels of subjective norm—perceived corporate ethical values at the micro-level and Corruption Perceptions Index at the macro-level, collected from multiple sources. Based on 6382 managers in 31 geopolitical entities across six continents, our cross-level three-way interaction effect illustrates: As expected, managers in good barrels, mixed barrels, and bad barrels display low, medium, and high magnitude of dishonesty, respectively. With high CEV, the intensity is the same across cultures. With low CEV, the intensity of dishonesty is the highest in high CPI entities —the Enron Effect, but the lowest in low CPI entities. CPI has a strong impact on the magnitude of dishonesty, whereas CEV has a strong impact on the intensity of dishonesty. We demonstrate dishonesty in light of monetary values and two frames of social norm, revealing critical implications to the field of behavioral economics and business ethics. (shrink)

We endorse Davey's view that expectancy processes are intimately involved in fear reactions, but question his model on three grounds. First, the mechanism for generating expectancy bias to both ontogenetic and phylogenetic stimuli is not spelled out. Second, the selective association component is unnecessary. Third, the model fails to provide a clear explanation for the irrationality of phobic reactions.

Monetary Intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the bright side of Monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics, frames money attitude in the context of pay and life satisfaction, and controls money at the macro-level and micro-level. We theorize: Managers with low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior will have high subjective well-being: pay satisfaction and (...) quality of life. Data collected from 6586 managers in 32 cultures across six continents support our theory. Interestingly, GDP per capita is related to life satisfaction, but not to pay satisfaction. Individual income is related to both life and pay satisfaction. Neither GDP nor income is related to Happiness. Our theoretical model across three GDP groups offers new discoveries: In high GDP entities, “high income” not only reduces aspirations—“Rich, Motivator, and Power,” but also promotes stewardship behavior—“Budget, Give/Donate, and Contribute” and appreciation of “Achievement.” After controlling income, we demonstrate the bright side of Monetary Intelligence: Low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior define Monetary Intelligence. “Good apples enjoy good quality of life in good barrels.” This notion adds another explanation to managers’ low magnitude of dishonesty in entities with high Corruption Perceptions Index. In low GDP entities, high income is related to poor Budgeting skills and escalated Happiness. These managers experience equal satisfaction with pay and life. We add a new vocabulary to the conversation of monetary intelligence, income, GDP, happiness, subjective well-being, good and bad apples and barrels, corruption, and behavioral ethics. (shrink)

This book tackles the most difficult and profound open questions about life and its origins from an information-based perspective.

Corruption involves greed, money, and risky decision-making. We explore the love of money, pay satisfaction, probability of risk, and dishonesty across cultures. Avaricious monetary aspiration breeds unethicality. Prospect theory frames decisions in the gains-losses domain and high-low probability. Pay dissatisfaction (in the losses domain) incites dishonesty in the name of justice at the individual level. The Corruption Perceptions Index, CPI, signals a high-low probability of getting caught for dishonesty at the country level. We theorize that decision-makers adopt avaricious love-of-money aspiration (...) as a lens and frame dishonesty in the gains-losses domain (pay satisfaction-dissatisfaction, Level 1) and high-low probability (CPI, Level 2) to maximize expected utility and ultimate serenity. We challenge the myth: Pay satisfaction mitigates dishonesty across nations consistently. Based on 6500 managers in 32 countries, our cross-level three-dimensional visualization offers the following discoveries. Under high aspiration conditions, pay dissatisfaction excites the highest- (third-highest) avaricious justice-seeking dishonesty in high (medium) CPI nations, supporting the certainty effect. However, pay satisfaction provokes the second-highest avaricious opportunity-seizing dishonesty in low CPI entities, sustaining the possibility effect—maximizing expected utility. Under low aspiration conditions, high pay satisfaction consistently leads to low dishonesty, demonstrating risk aversion—achieving ultimate serenity. We expand prospect theory from a micro and individual-level theory to a cross-level theory of monetary wisdom across 32 nations. We enhance the S-shaped Curve to three 3-D corruption surfaces across three levels of the global economic pyramid, providing novel insights into behavioral economics, business ethics, the environment, and responsibility. (shrink)