Corporate Governance (CG) issues have driven organisations to set their house right. There is a continual effort by organisations to build on a good framework of policies, not only as an undertaking enforced by a regulatory body, but also to sustain and win. However, these organisations are facing a dilemma in terms of their focus priority. Is it the composition of the board or is it the employee as the stakeholder that has high determining power to reach their goals. The (...) aim of this article is to build upon a structure of enablers of good governance. The paper utilises the Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) methodology to understand the mutual influence among the various enablers in such a fashion that the enablers having high driving power and dependency power can be identified. (shrink)

This book reconstructs the kalām theories of matter, space, and void in the tenth and eleventh centuries A.D., using texts that have only recently become available.

Concern for NGO accountability has been intensified in recent years, following the growth in the size of NGOs and their power to influence global politics and curb the excesses of globalization. Questions have been raised about where the sector embraces the same standards of accountability that it demands from government and business. The objective of this paper is to examine one aspect of NGO accountability, its discharge through annual reporting. Using Habermas’ theory of communicative action, and specifically its validity claims, (...) the research investigates whether NGOs use their annual reporting process to account to the host societies in which they operate or steer stakeholder actions toward their own self-interests. The results of the study indicate that efforts by organizations to account are characterized by communicative action through the provision of truthful disclosures, generally appropriate to the discharge of accountability and in a manner intended to improve their understandability. At the same time, however, some organizations exhibit strategically oriented behaviors in which the disclosure content is guided by the opportunity to present organizations in a particular light and there appears a lack of rhetor authenticity. The latter findings cast doubt on the ethical inspiration of NGOs and the values they demand from business communities, and questions arise as to why such practices exist and what lessons can be learnt from them. (shrink)

RésuméL'atomisme dukalāms'est constitué en opposition à la philosophie naturelle aristotélicienne desfalāsifa. Dans laPhysiqueduShifā', Avicenne s'en est livré à une réfutation détaillée et fondée sur de nombreux arguments. Ces derniers ont donné lieu à une réponse fort discrète chez al-Ghazālī, dont l'obédience aukalāmétait au mieux évanescente. Une réponse plus développée semble avoir été le fait d'al-Shahrastānī, encore qu'on n'en puisse retracer que les grandes lignes en raison du manque de sources transmises. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, qui est passé dans son développement intellectuel (...) par une phase avicennienne, donc par une adoption vigoureuse des arguments anti-atomistes d'Avicenne, suivie d'une phrase critique à l'égard de la philosophie du maître, ne se borne pas à fournir une réponse détaillée aux arguments d'Ibn Sīnā, mais construit de nouveaux arguments en faveur de l'atomisme dukalām. (shrink)

Kalām atomism stood in opposition to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of the falāsifa. In the Physics of the Shifā’, Ibn Sīnā undertook a detailed Refutation of kalām Atomism through several arguments. These arguments elicited a muted response from al-Ghazālī, whose commitment to kalām was minimal at best. A more forceful response seems to have been offered by al-Shahrastānī but its details remain sketchy due to the lack of surviving sources. Fakhr al-Dīn ar-Rāzī, whose intellectual development went through a phase of (...) commitment to Avicennism and thereby a vigorous endorsement of Ibn Sīnā’s anti-atomist arguments followed by a phase of a critical engagement with Avicennism, provides a detailed rebuttal to Ibn Sīnā’s arguments in addition to constructing novel arguments in defense of kalām atomism. (shrink)

Baṣran Muʿtazilite Theology: Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad b. Khallād’s Kitāb al-Uṣūl and Its Reception. Edited by Camilla Adang; Wilferd Madelung; and Sabine Schmidtke. Islamic History and Civilization, vol. 85. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Pp. iv + 8 + 306. $170.

Experiences of substitute decision-makers with requests for consent to non-therapeutic research participation during the dying process, including to what degree such requests are perceived as burdensome, have not been well described. In this study, we explored the lived experiences of family members who consented to non-therapeutic research participation on behalf of an imminently dying patient. We interviewed 33 family members involved in surrogate research consent decisions for dying patients in intensive care. Non-therapeutic research involved continuous physiological monitoring of dying patients (...) prior to and for 30 min following cessation of circulation. At some study centres participation involved installation of bedside computers. At one centre electroencephalogram monitoring was used with a subset of participants. Aside from additional monitoring, the research protocol did not involve deviations from usual end-of-life care. Thematic analysis of interviews suggests most family members did not perceive this minimal-risk, non-therapeutic study to affect their time with patients during the dying process, nor did they perceive research consent as an additional burden. In our analysis, consenting for participation in perimortem research offered families of the dying an opportunity to affirm the intrinsic value of patients’ lives and contributions. This opportunity may be particularly important for families of patients who consented to organ donation but did not proceed to organ retrieval. Our work supports concerns that traditional models of informed consent fail to account for possible benefits and harms of perimortem research to surviving families. Further research into consent models which integrate patient and family perspectives is needed. All data relevant to the study are included in the article. (shrink)

Surprisingly, the dimples on a golf ball (typically around 300-400) cannot be spaced evenly on the surface. I will explain how this is connected to the Platonic solids. The example is interesting, because it illustrates a difference between efficient and formal causation and explanation. I will discuss a few interesting consequences.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Figuring Myself Out:Certainty, Injury, and the Poststructuralist Repositioning of Bodies of IdentityJames Haywood Rolling Jr. (bio)CertaintyI have been attempting to figure myself out. Out of chaos and incompletion, toward increased certainty. I have been at this task of construction for quite some time now. I have just proposed my dissertation and my intentions are once again uncertain. My dissertation is to be a self-study. It is also a story (...) about uncertainty and my attempts to redeem a clear definition, to be named a peer and a colleague among artists, writers, and teachers. I have been uncertain as a little boy; uncertain as a son; uncertain as a student of architecture; uncertain as an artist and writer; uncertain as a teacher; uncertain as a black man. To compensate, I have sought the conferral of certainty, a name among leaders in many fields of inquiry. Still, it is not easy to forget that certainty has also been the cause of great injury to my body, to my mind.On sunny afternoons after school all the kids came outside to play. The air would fill with echoes going back and forth between the red brick and stone buildings on both sides of our narrow street. Pounding rubber balls, the taps and scratches of shoe heels, and the slapping of sneakers on the cement and asphalt.Sometimes white chalk would appear and hopscotch boxes were quickly drawn on the neat squares of cement pavement in front of my Grandma's house. Grandma lived next door to us. Houses on our block were side by side, sharing each other's walls.On a particular day, similar to other days, I watched as a small flat stone was tossed to bounce across the cement into a numbered box. I watched the one foot, two feet, one foot hops from box to box to stop and balance on one small hopping foot, steadying itself, to drop a hand to pick up the stone. Some little girl came to sit beside me and asked me to look at her. We were sitting on one of Grandma's two wooden benches, just inside the front gate. [End Page 46] Two steps down was the sidewalk and other kids. I ignored the girl. I made sure my body had no contact with hers on the bench. Why was she talking to me anyway? Didn't she see I didn't have anything I wanted to say?"Look at me!" she said, tugging at my arm."Will you stop it!" I snapped back, jerking my arm away. Being touched was not natural to me. My family didn't touch. I tightened the skin of my eyebrows and the bridge of my nose into a frown."Smile!" the little girl said slyly, trying to tickle me."Leave me alone!" I yelled. I tried to move away from the touching.I must have grinned. Grinning relaxes the frowns on faces. The girl clapped a hand over her mouth, all giggles. I asked what she was laughing so loud for. The kids out in front of us now had our attention. I felt like I was now being watched. I can't remember the faces, just the noise and voices that seemed to stop. The little girl stood up, pointed at my face and declared, finger in my face, pointing, speaking out loud, "Look! He only has one dimple! See?! Look at his face!""No I don't," I said, dropping my face, my eyes, my voice. My head was down and I didn't want to see if anyone was looking. The attention made my face warm and I needed to move away fast. "No I don't," I repeated, stiffly. My whole head seemed to glow brightly, very hot, drawing lots of attention. I was beneath windows, very near, on both sides of the street, always with onlookers. I rushed through the painted iron gate, going quickly next door, upstairs to "our house," to the second floor apartment we lived in, down the hallway so dark after the bright outside, around a curve and a corner, into the bathroom, closing the door behind me. Locking the door... (shrink)