A simple thought experiment and web search tools are brought to bear on conventional notions of disability. A Nobel Prize winner weighs in.

Leonard Peikoff and David Harriman have denounced modern physics as incompatible with Objectivist metaphysics and epistemology. Physics, they say, must return to a Newtonian viewpoint; much of relativity theory must go, along with essentially all of quantum mechanics, string theory, and modern cosmology. In their insistence on justifications in terms of “physical nature,” they cling to a macroscopic worldview that doesn't work in the high-velocity arena of relativity or the subatomic level of quantum mechanics. It is suggested that the concept (...) of identity be widened to accommodate the probabilistic nature of quantum phenomena. (shrink)

The disappearance of the late-Roman gesta municipalia, or municipal document registers, is one of the milestones along the road in Europe that leads from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages. While they survived, these registers apparently served two constituencies. The late-Roman state used the gesta municipalia to keep track of tax obligations as property changed hands. Citizens for their part validated and secured legal transactions by having the documents generated by their transactions ratified by the civic authorities and copied (...) into the gesta. (shrink)

Creativity and morality are key attributes that stakeholders demand of organizations. Accordingly, higher education institutions and professional training programs also seek to cultivate these attributes in future leaders. However, research has hitherto shown that, under certain conditions, creativity may conflict with morality. This complicates the development of creative individuals who are also moral. We examined the complex relationship between creativity and moral reasoning with data collected from a group of undergraduate students. By considering the cognitive processes behind creativity and moral (...) reasoning, we propose perspective taking as a moderating factor. Specifically, we found that while creative individuals might not necessarily adopt a lower level of moral reasoning, there was a more nuanced moderating relationship among creativity, perspective taking, and moral reasoning. That is, individuals who were weak in perspective taking tended to adopt a lower level of moral reasoning if they were also creative. Perspective taking was also directly and positively associated with moral reasoning. We explore the implications of our findings for future research and curriculum/program design. (shrink)

Research is increasingly recognised as a key component of medical curricula, offering a range of benefits including development of skills in evidence-based medicine. The literature indicates that experienced academic supervision or mentoring is important in any research activity and positively influences research output. The aim of this project was to investigate the human research ethics experiences and knowledge of three groups: medical students, and university academic staff and clinicians eligible to supervise medical student research projects; at two Australian universities. Training (...) in research ethics was low amongst academic staff and clinicians eligible to supervise medical student research. Only two-thirds of academic staff and students and less than half of clinicians surveyed indicated that specific patient consent was required for a doctor to include patient medical records within a research publication. There was limited awareness of requirements for participant information and consent forms amongst all groups. In the case of clinical trials, fewer clinicians and students than academics indicated there was a requirement to obtain consent. Awareness of the ethics committee focus on respect was low across all groups. This project has identified significant gaps in human research ethics understanding among medical students, and university academic staff and clinicians. The incorporation of research within medical curricula provides the impetus for medical schools and their institutions to ensure that academic staff and clinicians who are eligible and qualified to supervise students’ research projects are appropriately trained in human research ethics. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory is widely recognized as a management theory, yet very little research has considered its implications for individual managerial decision-making. In the two studies reported here, we used stakeholder theory to examine managerial decisions about balancing stakeholder interests. Results of Study 1 suggest that indivisible resources and unequal levels of stakeholder saliency constrain managers’ efforts to balance stakeholder interests. Resource divisibility also influenced whether managers used a within-decision or an across-decision approach to balance stakeholder interests. In Study 2 we (...) examined instrumental and normative implications of these two approaches. We conclude by considering the contributions of this research. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory is widely recognized as a management theory, yet very little research has considered its implications for individual managerial decision-making. In the two studies reported here, we used stakeholder theory to examine managerial decisions about balancing stakeholder interests. Results of Study 1 suggest that indivisible resources and unequal levels of stakeholder saliency constrain managers’ efforts to balance stakeholder interests. Resource divisibility also influenced whether managers used a within-decision or an across-decision approach to balance stakeholder interests. In Study 2 we (...) examined instrumental and normative implications of these two approaches. We conclude by considering the contributions of this research. (shrink)

’Ethical codes of conduct are superficial and distracting answers to the question of how to promote ethical behaviour in corporate life.’The author is Principal Lecturer in the Department of Business Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.

“We need to start by recognising that the company is a contributor to the moral order of society.” Only then can we really and accurately identify the role of business in today's society. The author of this important study is Principal Lecturer in the Business Studies Department, Manchester Metropolitan University.

Health equity is a global concern. Although health equity extends far beyond the equitable distribution of healthcare, equitable access to healthcare is essential to the achievement of health equity. In Canada, Indigenous Peoples experience inequities in health and healthcare access. Cultural safety and trauma‐ and violence‐informed care have been proposed as models of care to improve healthcare access, yet practitioners lack guidance on how to implement these models. In this paper, we build upon an existing framework of equity‐oriented care for (...) primary healthcare settings by proposing strategies to guide nurses in operationalizing cultural safety and trauma‐ and violence‐informed care into nursing practice at the individual level. This component is one strategy to redress inequitable access to care among Indigenous Peoples in Canada. We conceptualize barriers to accessing healthcare as intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural. We then define three domains for nursing action: practicing reflexivity, prioritizing relationships, and considering the context. We have applied this expanded framework within the context of Indigenous Peoples in Canada as a way of illustrating specific concepts and focusing our argument; however, this framework is relevant to other groups experiencing marginalizing conditions and inequitable access to healthcare, and thus is applicable to many areas of nursing practice. (shrink)

Loyalty, commitment and self‐interest explored in Japanese and Western companies. The author is Principal Lecturer in the Department of Business Studies at Manchester Polytechnic.

Inequities in access to oncology care among Indigenous peoples in Canada are well documented. Access to oncology care is mediated by a range of factors; however, emerging evidence suggests that healthcare providers, including nurses, play a significant role in shaping healthcare access. The purpose of this study was to critically examine access to oncology care among Indigenous peoples in Canada from the perspective of oncology nurses. Guided by postcolonial theoretical perspectives, interpretive descriptive and critical discourse analysis methodologies informed study design (...) and data analysis. Oncology nurses were recruited from across Canada to complete an online survey (n = 78). Nurses identified a range of barriers experienced by Indigenous peoples when accessing oncology care, yet located these barriers primarily at the individual and systems levels. Nurses perceived themselves as mediators of access to oncology care; however, their efforts to facilitate access to care were constrained by the dominance of biomedicine within healthcare. Nurses' constructions of access to oncology care highlight the embedded narrative of individualism within nursing practice and the relative invisibility of racism as a determinant of equitable access to care among Indigenous peoples. This suggests a need for oncology nurses to better understand and incorporate structural determinants of health perspectives. (shrink)

’Ethical codes of conduct are superficial and distracting answers to the question of how to promote ethical behaviour in corporate life.’The author is Principal Lecturer in the Department of Business Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Warren and Dresang comment on the contributions from a psycholinguistic perspective, highlighting close relations between the respective research on events and proposing that, for example, verbs may indeed directly pre‐activate templates of the typically involved event participants.

As research in the areas of unethical and ethical leadership grows, we note the need for more consideration of the normative assumptions in the development of constructs. Here, we focus on a subset of this literature, the “dark side” of supervisory behavior. We assert that, in the absence of a normative grounding, scholars have implicitly adopted different intuitive ethical criteria, which has contributed to confusion regarding unethical and ethical supervisory behaviors as well as the proliferation of overlapping terms and fragmentation (...) of research. Accordingly, we offer a definition of unethical supervision grounded in the normative theories and develop a framework of unethical supervision by analyzing the constructs associated with unethical supervision from a normative perspective. Our analysis suggests a heavy emphasis on violations of the right to dignity. We also note that utilitarianism and certain forms of rights as well as justice have been largely overlooked in the unethical supervision literature. We conclude by considering the implications of our conceptualization for theory on the antecedents and consequences of unethical supervision and by explaining how our approach extends to the larger literature on unethical and ethical leadership. (shrink)

Loyalty, commitment and self‐interest explored in Japanese and Western companies. The author is Principal Lecturer in the Department of Business Studies at Manchester Polytechnic.

Shareholders are sometimes considered to be, in moral terms, the owners of a company, they are after all the carriers of the residual liabilities and bear a higher proportion of the financial risk. However, in company law, the shareholders’ responsibility is limited, and in financial terms shareholders are only liable up to the fully paid value of the share certificate. Moreover, when the shares are sold, the responsibility and risk are transferred completely to the new bearer of the shares. Whether (...) this gap in moral and legal perceptions can be judged to be satisfactory in business ethics terms is a moot point and will be partly explored in this case study which seeks to analyse the shareholder’s responsibility towards a firm in which they own shares. The case study company chosen as a vehicle to explore these issues is that of Turner & Newall; a company that subjected its employees, communities and customers to a major health hazard – asbestosis. This paper will use the Turner & Newall archive materials to illustrate the moral hazards that can arise for shareholders. In particular it will examine the ethical responsibilities of shareholders towards those stakeholders who were exposed to the dangers of asbestos. This case is a significant test of the veracity of the legal system of company control, and exposes the ineffectiveness of that system in accountability terms. The case study also deals with specific issues that arose in the asbestos crisis, as well as with more general issues in our present system of corporate governance and shareholder responsibilities. (shrink)

The Search for the Legacy of the USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee is a collection of essays from experts in a variety of fields seeking to redefine the legacy of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The essayists place the legacy of the study within the evolution of racial and ethnic relations in the United States. Contributors include two leading historians on the study, two former United States Surgeons General, and other prominent scholars from a wide range of fields.