Based on a case study of a large multinational group, this paper addresses the way in which social and environmental reporting systems were changed and the consequences and controversies associated with this change. Drawing on Power’s work on the processes by which things are made auditable via underlying systems, we focus on how and why a specific programme with auditability as its ultimate aim changed the basis on which the external social and environmental report was prepared. Our (...) analysis demonstrates that the perceived alignment with the financial report preparation and the explicit pursuit of auditability legitimized SER and paved the way for data systems to be changed. The programme borrowed authority from financial accounting technologies not only to make a system change but also to push SER internally, as we suggest that an intraorganizational group used the programme to ensure the existence and organizational status of SER. However, we also illustrate some of the practical challenges associated with this change, which include issues related to internal control and the establishment of organizational boundaries. (shrink)

This book explores sustainability and social responsibility from the point of view of accountability reporting systems. The contributions to this volume open up discussions about the theory and application of sustainability and social responsibility across various corporate sectors and assists the reader in applying sustainable corporate social responsibility reporting across those sectors. As a central theme, the book addresses how the theory and application in sustainability and social responsibility has different dimensions and aspects which are impossible to (...) apply across different sectors. This point of view is supported by chapter contributions from countries around the world including Turkey, Serbia, Malaysia, United States, South Africa, Italy, China, Brasil, Romania, Serbia, Puerta Rico, Algeria. Academics worldwide will discover in Sustainability and Social Responsibility of Accountability Reporting Systems: A Global Approach the latest developments about corporate social responsibility and sustainability of accountability reporting systems. (shrink)

BackgroundCritical Incident Reporting Systems (CIRS) provide a well-proven method to identify clinical risks in hospitals. All professions can report critical incidents anonymously, low-threshold, and without sanctions. Reported cases are processed to preventive measures that improve patient and staff safety. Clinical ethics consultations offer support for ethical conflicts but are dependent on the interaction with staff and management to be effective. The aim of this study was to investigate the rationale of integrating an ethical focus into CIRS.MethodsA six-step approach (...) combined the analysis of CIRS databases, potential cases, literature on clinical and organizational ethics, cases from ethics consultations, and experts’ experience to construct a framework for CIRS cases with ethical relevance and map the categories with principles of biomedical ethics.ResultsFour main categories of critical incidents with ethical relevance were derived: (1) patient-related communication; (2) consent, autonomy, and patient interest; (3) conflicting economic and medical interests; (4) staff communication and corporate culture. Each category was refined with different subcategories and mapped with case examples and exemplary related ethical principles to demonstrate ethical relevance.ConclusionThe developed framework for CIRS cases with its ethical dimensions demonstrates the relevance of integrating ethics into the concept of risk-, quality-, and organizational management. It may also support clinical ethics consultations’ presence and effectiveness. The proposed enhancement could contribute to hospitals’ ethical infrastructure and may increase ethical behavior, patient safety, and employee satisfaction. (shrink)

This paper analyses various approaches to the concept of a ‘safety culture’ in terms of their epistemological assumptions regarding the nature of learning. As a result of this analysis, the study proposes a relational-interpretive framework for the promotion of safety in health care, which is based on relational theories and the philosophy of conceptual pragmatism as this can be used to integrate the various strands of current safety research. In particular, the approach based on a relational-interpretive perspective can bridge the (...) apparent dualist gap that exists between the rational objectivist perspective and the relativist perspective on the role of learning in developing a safety culture. According to the relational-interpretive perspective of safety management that is proposed here, organizational members need to give continuous attention to the accepted organizational norms and values, which shape the safety culture. A case study from a health care safety project in Sweden is utilized to illustrate the ideas advanced in this paper. (shrink)

The benzodiazepines can produce a wide variety of abnormal mental responses and hazardous behavioral abnormalities, including rebound anxiety and insomnia, mania and other forms of psychosis, paranoia, violence, antisocial acts, depression, and suicide. These drugs can impair cognition, especially memory, and can result in confusion. They can induce dependence and addiction. Severe withdrawal syndromes with psychosis, seizures, and death can develop. The short-acting benzodiazepines, alprazolam and triazolam , are especially prone to cause psychological and behavioral abnormalities. The sources of data (...) to support these observations and conclusions are discussed in regard to the scientific method. These adverse drug effects can wreck havoc in the lives of individuals and their families. (shrink)

Self Aware Computer Systems is an area of basic research, and we are only in the initial stages of our understanding of what it means: What it means to be self aware; what a self aware system can do that a system without it cannot do; and what are some of the immediate practical applications and challenge problems. This paper is a report capturing some of the salient points discussed during the DARPA workshop on Self Aware Computer Systems (...) held on April 27-28, 2004 in Washington DC. (shrink)

An integrity system is an assemblage of institutional entities, mechanisms, and procedures whose purpose is to ensure compliance with minimum ethical standards and to promote the pursuit of ethical...

Professionals in various disciplines adopt significantly different lexicons to report their discoveries and arguments. Scientists discover, philosophers argue, whereas legal practitioners apply and consider. Reporting, as a ubiquitous linguistic phenomenon, has its disciplinary characteristics. In court judgments, it reflects the way judges identify the evidence of different documents or other courts. In the self-built court judgment corpus, the paper focuses on the way that judicial arguments are constructed through reporting verbs. On the basis of the analysis of the (...) representation and distribution of reporting verbs in court judgments, the study identifies the reporting verbs with high frequencies in court judgments and compares these reporting verbs with those in the comparable reference corpus, written sampler of British National Corpus, which works as a reference corpus. It is found that the tokens of reporting verbs in court judgments are slightly less than those in general texts; the distribution pattern of the speech act verbs and mental verbs in the self-built court judgment corpus is similar to the pattern of two kinds of reporting verbs in the reference corpus; judicial speech act verbs are employed to express the authority of the statements, whereas the judicial mental verbs illustrate the legal reasoning process with individual agents; and there is a significant difference in terms of the reporting verbs’ frequencies within the court judgments and general texts. The results show that the reporting verbs in court judgments have their uniqueness, which may cast light on both judicial and pedagogical practices. (shrink)

Despite the growing body of work exploring the weaknesses of police performance systems and the displacement of their goals, less attention has been given to why police officers resist and circumvent by false reporting. Whether police report honestly on their activities is a matter of considerable significance given the role that police have in a broadly democratic society, and the overall question is whether the false reporting undermines the integrity of the police or if it is a (...) collective coping strategy that safeguards the police ethos? This survey reveals that 25% of respondents (n = 2248) had manipulated the numbers at least once in the previous year. To identify why they did so, the variables selected for analysis are those determining their view of the Management by Objective (MBO) system, how far they have participated in the MBO process and how often they are unable to assist a member of the public. Our results show that men are more likely to manipulate the numbers than women and non-leaders are more likely to do so than leaders. Respondents were more likely to submit false reports if they had not participated in the MBO process, were not motivated by MBO goals, believed the MBO indicators misdirected their focus and frequently felt that they were forced to reject members of the public they would like to help. Our findings further show that public servants can be corrupted, though they do not “bring” vices to work with them, but rather acquire vices through what is required of them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 12.4 (2002) 389-390 [Access article in PDF] IOM Report on the System for Protecting Human Research Participants Tom L. Beauchamp* In response to society's concerns about the use of human subjects in research, the Department of Health and Human Services commissioned the Institute of Medicine to perform a comprehensive assessment of current systems of research participant protection in the U.S., including recommendations for (...) reform (Committee 2002). Although the committee declared its frustration over the lack of data, it found ample evidence to indicate that there are pivotal weaknesses in the current system. First, it discovered dissatisfaction with the current system from virtually every quarter and at virtually every level. Second, it found evidence that IRBs are under severe strain and performing inadequately. Third, it found that the existing regulatory framework—the IRB system and the Common Rule—has not and probably now cannot react adequately to the constantly evolving research environment. Some of these problems might be handled through federal agencies, but the committee holds that the problems are more extensive and will require additional institutional support and professional attention.The committee found that federal protection requirements should be extended to every research project—private, public, or otherwise. Subjects should be, in this respect, equally protected in privately sponsored research.The committee found that the IRB system is in important respects a failure, especially when it alone is relied upon for ethics reviews in institutions. One set of problems concerns the proper education of IRB members. The committee recommends that all members henceforth be given a specialized knowledge of human research ethics. It finds that IRB deliberations commonly have been dominated by scientists, who often marginalize the perspectives of nonscientist members. It therefore recommends that unaffiliated members, nonscientists, local community representatives, and those representing the participant-perspective comprise at least 25 percent of the membership. It also recommends that no protocol be approved without three-quarters of the voting members concurring. [End Page 389]The committee recommends that institutions distinguish review aimed at (1) scientific merit, (2) conflict of interest, and (3) general Ethics Review. The distinction should more evenly distribute the work of institutional ethics review. The IRB should not conduct the initial scientific review nor should it be spending the bulk of its time purely in examining either scientific merit—as many IRBs now do—or conflict of interest. Instead, the conclusions of the scientific review should be submitted to the IRB for ethics-focused deliberations. Problems of both financial and nonfinancial conflicts of interest should be handled similarly, preferably by a committee properly distanced from the institution's interests.The committee underscores that consent must be understood on the model of an interactive dialogue between research staff and participants and not merely as a signed form or single-disclosure event. Conversations between the participant and the research staff should begin even prior to the point of enrollment and should be reinforced during each stage of the research. The committee finds that informed consent conversations and documents too often are being conceived as risk management tasks gauged to protect the institution from liability.The committee also believes that the system of protections established by a research program should be open to the public in order to foster and maintain the community's trust. Open communication should occur among all relevant stakeholders. The committee notes that currently no centralized system exists for the dissemination of information about clinical trials and other research activities.It urges reconsideration of present policies regarding compensation, finding that many research organizations provide at least short-term medical care for those who are injured, but that few organizations cover all potential risks and that many organizations have no effective policy of compensation. The report holds that providing reasonable compensation for bona fide instances of research harm is the only just system and is necessary to avoid diminished public trust.The committee holds that establishing the appropriate culture in research institutions will require sustained efforts to educate researchers, research administrators, IRB members, and... (shrink)

Document assembly and other substantive legal practice applications are the most knowledge-intense forms of software now widely available in the legal technology marketplace. This article provides an illustrative look at two contemporary practice system engines-CAPS and Scrivener-and examines their relevance for AI-and-law researchers.

PART ONE I 'Alternative' in 'Alternative logic There are many systems of logic — many-valued systems and modal systems for instance - which are non-standard ...

This paper has its roots in qualitative analysis of accounts produced by an Italian serial killer. Theoretical references are related to symbolic interactionism and its developments in the field of psychology and criminology. The whole contribution is aimed to twofold purposes: A) to provide a set of criteria specifically addressed to study deviant action as system of meanings into two related contexts: the single action itself and the whole life history. According this point, paper introduces the concept of “ (...) class='Hi'>deviant career” and it explains its development and steps; it also provides some psychological social points of views and contributions that scientific works offers. B) to think about potentialities of accounting interviews as powerful tools in clinical practice and empirical research too.Specifically, we discuss narrative about behaviour and life story as a resource in order to take suggestions about meanings, goals and rules of action. It also suggests something about functions that crime discharges in the whole pathway of one's life. Juridical case analysis, run by means of the software ATLAS.ti, is aimed to demonstrate theoretical reasoning proposed. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a brief history of the emerging science of conceptual systems, explain some methodologies, their sources of data, and the understandings that they have generated. I also provide suggestions for extending the science-based research in a variety of directions. Essentially, I am opening a conversation that asks how this line of research might be extended to gain new insights—and eventually develop more useful and generally accepted methods for creating and evaluating theory. This effort will support (...) our ability to generate theory that is more effective in practical application as well as accelerating the development of theory to support advances in other sciences. (shrink)

Contemporary law offices use many different technologies for storing and retrieving documents produced in the course of legal work. This article examines two approaches in detail: document management, as exemplified by SoftSolutions, and electronic publishing, as exemplified by Folio VIEWS. Some other approaches are reviewed, and the pragmatics, politics, economics, and legalities of legal work product retrieval are discussed.

In this paper I investigate some characteristics of anomalous or deviant belief systems, such belief systems which include the extraordinary diversity of paranormal claims. It is frequently suggested that the appropriate attitude to adopt to such belief systems is one of scepticism—and that is a conclusion which I will not dispute. However I also suggest that deviant belief systems have characteristics which reveal much of interest about human psychology and the way that we try (...) to make sense of the world. (shrink)

Evidence from many different paradigms (e.g. change blindness, inattentional blindness, transsaccadic integration) indicate that observers are often very poor at reporting changes to their visual environment. Such evidence has been used to suggest that the spatio-temporal coherence needed to represent change can only occur in the presence of focused attention. In four experiments we use modified change blindness tasks to demonstrate (a) that sensitivity to change does occur in the absence of awareness, and (b) this sensitivity does not rely (...) on the redeploy- ment of attention. We discuss these results in relation to theories of scene percep- tion, and propose a reinterpretatio n of the role of attention in representing change. (shrink)

Reporting systems based on mobile technologies and feedback from regular citizens are becoming increasingly popular, especially as far as protection of environmental and cultural heritage is concerned. Reporting life-threatening situations, such as sudden natural disasters or traffic accidents, belongs to the same class of problems and could be aided by IT systems of a similar architecture. Designing and developing systems for reporting life-threatening situations is not a trivial task, requiring close cooperation between software developers (...) and experts in different domains, who could possibly find industrially recognized languages and notations difficult. Thus, the question is whether using simplified graphical domain-specific languages (SGDSLs) could help in creating a common communication platform. It has been revealed that domain experts have a preference for such languages as they offer good learnability, readability and ability to focus on the idea of application. The perspective of developers (technical persons) is introduced on the basis of feedback obtained from 84 students of Computer Science at the Lublin University of Technology, who attended comprehensive workshops followed by an anonymous survey. All participants received theoretical and practical training in modeling mobile software using the same set of languages as domain experts. An analysis of the results revealed that opinions expressed by technical and nontechnical persons concerning SGDSLs oriented on defining a flow of actions is consistent. Most respondents claimed that such languages might be valuable as tools for creating a common communication platform. (shrink)

Background Outbreaks of infectious disease cause serious and costly health and social problems. Two new technologies – pathogen whole genome sequencing and Big Data analytics – promise to improve our capacity to detect and control outbreaks earlier, saving lives and resources. However, routinely using these technologies to capture more detailed and specific personal information could be perceived as intrusive and a threat to privacy. Method Four community juries were convened in two demographically different Sydney municipalities and two regional cities in (...) New South Wales, Australia to elicit the views of well-informed community members on the acceptability and legitimacy of: making pathogen WGS and linked administrative data available for public health researchusing this information in concert with data linkage and machine learning to enhance communicable disease surveillance systems Fifty participants of diverse backgrounds, mixed genders and ages were recruited by random-digit-dialling and topic-blinded social-media advertising. Each jury was presented with balanced factual evidence supporting different expert perspectives on the potential benefits and costs of technologically enhanced public health research and communicable disease surveillance and given the opportunity to question experts. Results Almost all jurors supported data linkage and WGS on routinely collected patient isolates for the purposes of public health research, provided standard de-identification practices were applied. However, allowing this information to be operationalised as a syndromic surveillance system was highly contentious with three juries voting in favour, and one against by narrow margins. For those in favour, support depended on several conditions related to system oversight and security being met. Those against were concerned about loss of privacy and did not trust Australian governments to run secure and effective systems. Conclusions Participants across all four events strongly supported the introduction of data linkage and pathogenomics to public health research under current research governance structures. Combining pathogen WGS with event-based data surveillance systems, however, is likely to be controversial because of a lack of public trust, even when the potential public health benefits are clear. Any suggestion of private sector involvement or commercialisation of WGS or surveillance data was unanimously rejected. (shrink)

The recently published Report of theAHAG on the Operation of NHS Research Ethics Committees advocates major reforms of the NHS research ethics committees system. The main implications of the proposed changes and their probable effects on the major stakeholders are described.The Ad Hoc Advisory Group on the operation of NHS research ethics committees, set up in November 2004 by Lord Warner on behalf of the Department of Health, submitted its report in June 2005.1 The report advocates major reforms of the (...) research ethics committee system. The primary aim of the report is to streamline the processes around the approval of research projects and to pursue conformity of governance across Europe. Implicit in the report is the contention that failure to achieve this objective would be harmful to everyone with vested interests in improving health and social care. Moreover, it is stated that the reforms will enhance the mechanisms that protect the interests of all parties concerned.1Being mindful of two published critiques of the Warner Report, we suggest that its alleged benefits should not be taken at face value.2,3 In fact, the reformed system will give rise to moral failings akin to those of the existing system, but will differ from the existing system in its effect on the stakeholders. Thus, whereas the outgoing system has given each stakeholder a unique mixture of benefit and harm, the incoming system offers benefit only to sponsors and researchers and nothing but detriment to participants in research and consumers of its products.In the light of this conclusion, we finally suggest that the Warner Report be construed not merely as an ill-considered document, but rather as an ideological reflection of a long-established hegemonic contract fine-tuning itself to contemporary global challenges.To avoid …. (shrink)

The main technical errors are in the literature survey. On pages 44, 93-94, 131 and 133 I claim that Fitting's and/or Rautenberg's systems are incomplete because they omit contraction. The claim is wrong because contraction is implicit in their set notation. Their systems are complete because they allow contraction on any formula whereas the systems in this technical report explicitly build contraction into certain rules, allowing contraction only on certain types of formulae. Please accept my apologies for (...) any confusion this causes you. (shrink)

: Despite some questionable decisions regarding its organization, this anthology is an interesting read and a valuable general education resource concerning the intellectual history, and subsequent evolution, of systems theory. The book details early conceptual landmarks while emphasizing latter-day developments and applications, in particular in the context of cultural studies and the socio-economical sciences. While commenting on the book’s form and content I also raise questions concerning systems theory’s standing in relation to such themes as consciousness, constructivism, and (...) the machine metaphor. (shrink)

We would like to respond to the comment we received from our colleagues on our case report about organ donation after euthanasia starting at home. We reply to their statements on medical and legal aspects, and provide more information on our view of informed consent.

To maximize brain plasticity after stroke, several rehabilitation strategies have been explored, including the use of intensive motor training, motor imagery, and action observation. Growing evidence of the positive impact of virtual reality (VR) techniques on recovery following stroke has been shown. However, most VR tools are designed to exploit active movement, and hence patients with low level of motor control cannot fully benefit from them. Consequently, the idea of directly training the central nervous system has been promoted by utilizing (...) motor-imagery (MI) based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). To date, detailed information on which VR strategies lead to successful functional recovery is still largely missing, and very little is known about how to optimally integrate BCI and VR paradigms for stroke rehabilitation. The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of a BCI-VR system using a MI paradigm for post-stroke upper limb rehabilitation on functional assessments, and related changes in MI ability and brain imaging. To achieve this, a 60 years old male chronic stroke patient was recruited. The patient underwent a 3-week intervention in a clinical environment, resulting in 10 BCI-VR training sessions. The patient was assessed before and after intervention, as well as on a one-month follow-up, in terms of clinical scales and brain imaging using functional MRI (fMRI). Consistent with prior research, we found important improvements in upper extremity scores (Fugl-Meyer) and identified increases in brain activation measured by fMRI that suggest neuroplastic changes in brain motor networks. This study expands on the current body of evidence as more data are needed on the effect of this type of interventions not only on functional improvement but also through brain imaging to study the effect of the intervention on plasticity. (shrink)

En este artículo investigamos la incidencia de tres formatos de presentación de información multisemiótica textual en la comprensión de textos escritos a partir de un pasaje retórico del género Informe de Política Monetaria. Para ello se diseñó un experimento con tres pruebas de comprensión, cuyos textos variaban en la preponderancia multisemiótica constitutiva: texto original, texto con predominancia del sistema gráfico y texto con predominancia del sistema verbal. Estos instrumentos fueron aplicados a 151 estudiantes de una carrera universitaria en el área (...) de economía, Chile, divididos en dos grupos: estudiantes de primer año de universidad y estudiantes de tercer año. Los resultados indican, por un lado, que no existen diferencias estadísticamente significativas entre las tres condiciones de las pruebas de comprensión, en cada grupo de estudiantes. Por otro, sí se registran diferencias significativas entre los resultados de comprensión de los grupos de lectores de primer y tercer año, particularmente a favor de textos que preponderantemente privilegian un solo formato de codificación de la información ; mientras que no se distingue por nivel de inserción disciplinar en textos que exigen una lectura integrada de los códigos verbal y gráfico. Se discuten implicancias de estos resultados para la comprensión de textos especializados multisemióticos. In this paper we investigate the impact of three presentation formats of textual multisemiotic information in the comprehension of written texts from a rhetorical passage of the genre Monetary Policy Report. To do this, an experiment with three comprehension tests was designed, in which texts varied in the constituent multisemiotic preponderance: original text, text with predominance of the graphic system, and text with predominance of the verbal system. These instruments were applied to 151 students at a university program in the field of Economics in Chile. They were divided into two groups: university freshmen and university third graders. The results indicate, on the one hand, that there are no statistically significant differences between the three conditions of the comprehension tests, in each group of students. On the other hand, there are significant differences between the results of the reading comprehension tests of first and third year university students, particularly, in favor of texts predominantly of one information encoding format ; while there is no difference in terms of the disciplinary university level in texts that required an integrated reading of verbal and graphic codes. Implications of these results for the comprehension of multisemiotic specialized texts are discussed. (shrink)

Chest pain is the pain felt in the chest by infants, children and adolescents. In most cases the pain is not associated with the heart. It is mainly recognized by the observance or report of pain by the infant, child or adolescent by reports of distress by parents or care givers. Chest pain is not unusual in children. Lots of children are seen in ambulatory clinics, emergency rooms and hospitals and cardiology clinics. Usually there is a benign cause for the (...) pain for utmost children. Certain patients have conditions that are serious and perhaps life-threatening. Chest pain in pediatric patients needs careful physical examination and a detailed history that would point to the possibility of a serious cause. Researches of pediatric chest pain are scarce. It has been difficult to create evidence-based guidelines for evaluation. In this paper we propose an expert system to help doctors and parents, and care giver in diagnosing chest pain in infants and children. This expert System is design and implemented in SL5 Object language. (shrink)