The study of moral decision-making presents to us two approaches for understanding such choices. The cognitive and the neurocognitive approaches postulate that reason and reasoning determines moral judgments. On the other hand, the intuitionist approaches postulate that automated intuitions mostly dominate moral judgments. There is a growing concern that neither of these approaches by itself captures all the key aspects of moral judgments. This paper draws on models from neurocognitive research and social-intuitionist research areas to propose an integrative cognitive–intuitive model (...) of moral decision-making. The model suggests that moral decision-making includes five interdependent, yet functionally distinct steps, issue framing, pre-processing, moral judgment, moral reflection, and moral intent. The model proposes a cognitive–intuitive view of moral judgment and it describes how emotion regulation, perceived moral intensity, and perceived ethical climate constructs impact the formation of moral intent. The paper discusses the theories that link emotions to moral judgment and implications of the model for future research and its implication for managers. (shrink)

Impact investment ventures are growing in the modern economy. However, the recent failures of some impact investment ventures are a cause for concern. Unfortunately, our concern about the ethicality of these kinds of social exchanges seem to emerge when it is too late. Namely, we become concerned about lack of ethics when a venture has failed or is collapsing. A better approach would be for us to have a means to proactively assess and improve the degree to which the arrangements (...) and practices of a social exchange meet ethical standards. Whereas much work has been done to equip social ventures to evaluate their impacts, little work has been done to create frameworks that could be used to assess the degree to which social exchanges integrate ethical practices in their designs. This paper proposes such a framework. For illustration purposes, the proposed framework would also be used to evaluate the One Acre Farm, an impact investment venture in Africa. (shrink)

This volume offers a critical analysis and illustration of the challenges and promises of ‘stateless’ law thought, pedagogy and approaches to governance - that is, understanding and conceptualizing law in a post-national condition. Confronting the ‘transnational challenge’ posed to the traditional theoretical and institutional structures that underlie the teaching and study of law in the university, the book brings new insight to the ongoing and crucial conversation about the future shape of legal scholarship, education and practice that is emblematic of (...) the early twenty-first century. (shrink)

A member of the Institute of Economics of the Czech National Bank reflects on what the developing Czech capital market has to learn, and how it can best protect investors. The views expressed in this paper are those of its author, Dr Dedek, and do not necessarily represent those of the Czech National Bank. This research has been sponsored by a grant awarded under the ACE Programme of the European Community. The paper has benefited from interviews with Professor Colin Mayer (...) and other members of the Economics Department of the University of Warwick. (shrink)

In his Doctrine of Right, Immanuel Kant calls Moses Mendelssohn, the towering figure of the German and the Jewish Enlightenment, a ‘Rechtsforscher’—a legal scholar. Yet not only Kant, but numerous scholars of Natural law in the 18th and 19th centuries refer to and reflect on the juridical aspects of Mendelssohn’s work, in particular his thoughts on the law of contract. In this article, I hope to shed some light on this hitherto rather unexplored facet of Mendelssohn’s oeuvre. Mendelssohn develops his (...) theory of contract from the starting point of the officium amoris: the unenforceable ‘duty of love’ to exercise beneficence. Mendelssohn’s theory knows nothing yet of the modern contrast between altruism, distributive justice and ‘freedom of contract’. By exploring Mendelssohn’s theory, we will thus be able to catch a glimpse of the birth pangs of the modern Western discourse on the ‘freedom of contract’, which formed the backdrop as well as the jumping-off point of the development of a ‘liberal’ will theory of contract. Since this ‘liberal’ model is still the paradigm of how contract is mostly perceived today, Mendelssohn’s theory also exemplifies the possibility of an alternative to our own conceptualizations of contract that inescapably shape the way we think. (shrink)

The author examines traditional Catholic teaching on abortion, genetic manipulation, euthanasia, and war, and shows how it has evolved through the centuries, with special emphasis on papal pronouncements, the writings of the Church Fathers, and the frequent conflicts in Theological opinion. But, more than this, he suggests approaches for dealing with these questions today, when the sensitive counselor finds himself in a situation where he must try as best he can to protect innocent human life and at the same time (...) not demand of the individual more than he can understand or bear.--. (shrink)

Contemporary historians examining moral theology in the Middle Ages question whether the practice of proscribing certain kinds of human acts as intrinsic moral evils has a legitimate basis in the Christian ethical tradition. John Dedek argues that this proscription does not fully emerge until the work of the fourteenth-century thinker Durandus of St. Pourçain. Dedek’s historical focus, however, is upon theological discussions which consider God’s absolute power and his ability to dispense from or command any human act whatsoever. The focus (...) for addressing this question should be instead to examine how medieval thinkers understand the structural elements of a human act, especially in response to the ethical intentionalism promoted by the twelfth-century thinker Peter Abelard. An examination of Peter Lombard’s response to Abelard reveals that certain human acts were proscribed as intrinsic moral evils long prior to Durandus, and that Augustine serves as a source for this doctrine. (shrink)