We conceptualise CSR communication as a process of reciprocal influence between organisations and their audiences. We use an illustrative case study in the form of a conflict between firms and a powerful stakeholder which is played out in a series of 20 press releases over a 2-month period to develop a framework of analysis based on insights from linguistics. It focuses on three aspects of dialogism, namely (i) turn-taking (co-operating in a conversation by responding to the other party), (ii) inter-party (...) moves (the nature and type of interaction characterising a turn, i.e. denial, apology or excuse) and (iii) intertextuality (the intensity and quality of verbal interaction between the parties). We address the question: What is the nature and type of verbal interactions between the parties? First we examine (a) whether the parties verbally interact and then (b) whether the parties listen to each other. We find evidence of dialogism suggesting that CSR communication is an interactive process which has to be understood as a function of the power relations between a firm and a specific stakeholder. Also, we find evidence of intertextuality in press releases by six firms which engage in verbal interaction with the stakeholder. We interpret this as linguistic evidence of isomorphic processes relating to CSR practices resulting from the pressure exerted by a powerful stakeholder. The lack of response by ten firms that fail to issue press releases suggests a strategy of ‘watch-and-wait’ with respect to the outcome of the conflict. (shrink)

We analyse managerial discourse in corporate communication (‘CEO-speak’) during a 6-month period following a legitimacy-threatening event in the form of an incident in a German nuclear power plant. As discourses express specific stances expressed by a group of people who share particular beliefs and values, they constitute an important means of restoring organisational legitimacy when social rules and norms have been violated. Using an analytical framework based on legitimacy as a process of reciprocal sense-making and consisting of three levels of (...) analysis which capture the relationship between text and context, we investigate the discourse used by CEOs in their initial and subsequent accounts of the incident. We find that CEOs aim to negotiate a resolution between their initial account and organisational audiences’ incongruent interpretations of the event by adopting an ad hoc normative attitude to stakeholders. This manifests itself in the strategic use of the discourse of stakeholder engagement as a means of signalling change, yet maintaining the status quo. It suggests that CEOs strategically use discourse to manufacture organisational audiences’ consent regarding the continued operation of the nuclear power plant affected by the incident. Our findings contribute to the critical corporate communication literature which regards corporate narrative reporting as a means of consolidating the private interests of corporations, rather than increasing transparency and accountability. (shrink)

Comparisons of indirect measures with direct measures can help elucidate the relationship between nonconscious and conscious perception. We report three experiments on masked word priming in which we observed a negative correlation between prime discriminability and priming , i.e. where priming decreased with increasing prime visibility. While such observations are rare , they may indicate a conflict between conscious and nonconscious processing when primes are shown close to the subjective visibility threshold for the priming-relevant information. For instance, such a conflict (...) could occur between nonconscious processing of a prime’s meaning and conscious perception of prime letters. Theoretical accounts that discuss similar conflicts assume that the conflict is resolved either by automatically prioritising conscious processes or by discounting the estimated confusion caused by a prime-target pair . In both cases, priming is predicted to decrease when prime visibility increases from below threshold to perithreshold levels. Therefore, we suggest that negative priming-d’ relationships are most likely observed when the d’ measure assesses prime visibility at a level of representation that is below the level of representation at which priming arises, in terms of a putative hierarchy of word processing. (shrink)

Can the institutional systems that prepare Black nurse researchers question the ways their systemic pathways have impacted health equity knowledge development in nursing? We invite our readers to keep this question in mind and engage with our conversation as Black nurse researchers, scholars, educators, and clinicians. The purpose of our conversation, and this article, is to explore the transactional impact of knowledge development pathways and Black faculty retention pathways on the state of health equity knowledge in nursing today. Over a (...) series of conversations, we discuss the research exploitation of communities of color, deficit research funding, knowledge capitalization, the marginalization of diversity as a continuous process, a lack of sociocultural authority, and our thoughts on solutions. We conclude by using the wisdom of a generation to answer our initial question. (shrink)

Institutional discrimination matters. The purpose of this longitudinal community‐based participatory research study was to examine institutional procedural discrimination, institutional racism, and other institutional discrimination, and their relationships with participants' health during a maternal and child health program in a municipal initiative. Twenty participants from nine multilingual, multicultural community‐based organizations were included. Overall reported incidences of institutional procedural discrimination decreased from April 2019 (18.6%) to November 2019 (11.8%) although changes were not statistically significant and participants reporting incidences remained high (n = (...) 15 in April and n = 14 in November). Participants reported experiencing significantly less “[when] different cultural ways of doing things were shared, the project did not support my way” from April 2019 (23.5%, n = 4) to November 2019 (0%, n = 0), Wilcoxon signed‐rank test Z = −2.00, p < 0.05. Some participants reported experiencing institutional racism (29.4%, n = 5) and other institutional discrimination (5.9%, n = 1). Participants experiencing institutional racism, compared to those who did not, reported a higher impact of the Initiative's program on their quality of life (t = 3.62, p < 0.01). Participatory survey designs enable nurse researchers to identify hidden pathways of institutional procedural discrimination, describe the impacts experienced, and examine types of institutional discrimination in health systems. (shrink)

In March 1994, a health care conference was held in Edmonton, Alberta, at which the values of conference participants towards health care were systematically recorded and analysed. This exploration is significant because the values that underpin the structure of the current publicly-funded and administered Canadian health care system rarely enter current discussions regarding health care system reform. Rather, economic and other sociopolitical forces now seem to be having a major impact on plans and actual changes within the health care system. (...) Thus, the underlying attitudes and beliefs of Canadians towards health care have not been articulated or given due credence. The conference par ticipants identified three dominant values: (1) the dignity of the human person as an indi vidual and social being; (2) respect for pluralism and difference; and (3) accountability These values were found to be robust, in that they sustain a focus on the 'common good'. The common good is the core of the Canadian health care system, and is enshrined in the 1984 Canada Health Act. Conceptually, these values could also lead to significant changes in health care, in keeping with the common good, particularly those changes focusing on the current deficiencies of the Canadian health care system. (shrink)

This study statistically analyzes two-year college students' attitudes toward cheating via a survey containing academic and business situations that the students evaluated on a seven point scale from unethical to ethical. When both the general questions concerning attitudes about cheating and the opinions on the ethical statements are considered, the business students were generally more unethical in their behavior and attitudes than non-business majors. These results indicate a need for more ethical exposure in business courses to help students distinguish ethical (...) from unethical decisions. (shrink)

In an age where digital images are omnipresent, the use of participant photography in qualitative research has become accessible and commonplace. Yet, scant attention is paid to the social justice impact of photovoice amongst studies that have used this innovative method as a way to promote social justice. There is a need to review this method to understand its contributions and possibilities. This literature review of photovoice research studies (i) explores whether authors implicitly or explicitly related the methodologies to their (...) aims of promoting social justice (methodology–method fit) and (ii) outlines the social justice research impact of photovoice findings using the framework of social justice awareness, amelioration and transformation. PubMed, Scopus, PsycINFO and Web of Science databases were searched from the years 2008–13 using the following keywords: photovoice; photonovella; photovoice and social justice; and photovoice and participatory action research. Of the 30 research studies reviewed, only thirteen identified an underlying methodology guiding the photovoice method. The social justice impacts emphasized were more related to social justice awareness (n = 30) than amelioration (n = 11) or transformation (n = 3). Future researchers using photovoice as a way to promote social justice are encouraged to assess and plan for the social justice impact desired. (shrink)

This essay is composed of five stories written by practicing physicians about their patients. Each clinical story describes a challenging ethical condition–potential abuse of medical power, gravely ill and probably over-treated newborns, iatrogenic narcotic addiction, deceived dying people. Rather than singling out one ethical conflict to resolve or adjudicate, the authors attempt, through literary methods, to grasp the singular experiences of their patients and to act according to the deep structures of their patients' lives. Examining these five stories with simple (...) literary tools–attention to narrative frames, time, plot, and desire–reveals the mechanisms through which acts of writing and reading contribute to clinical clarity and ethical actions. (shrink)

This book is a provocative contribution to contemporary ethical theory challenging foundational conceptions of character that date back to Aristotle. John Doris draws on behavioral science, especially social psychology, to argue that we misattribute the causes of behavior to personality traits and other fixed aspects of character rather than to the situational context. More often than not it is the situation not the nature of the personality that really counts. The author elaborates the philosophical consequences of this research for (...) a whole array of ethical theories and shows that, once rid of the misleading conception of motivation, moral psychology can support more robust ethical theories and more humane ethical practices. (shrink)

Do we know what we're doing, and why? Psychological research seems to suggest not: reflection and self-awareness are surprisingly uncommon and inaccurate. John M. Doris presents a new account of agency and responsibility, which reconciles our understanding of ourselves as moral agents with empirical work on the unconscious mind.

The Moral Psychology Handbook offers a survey of contemporary moral psychology, integrating evidence and argument from philosophy and the human sciences.

The nonvisual self-touch rubber hand paradigm elicits the compelling illusion that one is touching one’s own hand even though the two hands are not in contact. In four experiments, we investigated spatial limits of distance and alignment on the nonvisual self-touch illusion and the well-known visual rubber hand illusion. Common procedures and common assessment methods were used. Subjective experience of the illusion was assessed by agreement ratings for statements on a questionnaire and time of illusion onset. The nonvisual self-touch illusion (...) was diminished though never abolished by distance and alignment manipulations, whereas the visual rubber hand illusion was more robust against these manipulations. We assessed proprioceptive drift, and implications of a double dissociation between subjective experience of the illusion and proprioceptive drift are discussed. (shrink)

John M. Doris has been a leading proponent of interdisciplinary approaches to moral psychology for decades. His work has transformed the way in which philosophers approach questions of character, virtue, and agency. This selection of his work focuses on the ways in which human personality orders moral cognition and behaviour.

While nothing justifies atrocity, many perpetrators manifest cognitive impairments that profoundly degrade their capacity for moral judgment, and such impairments, we shall argue, preclude the attribution of moral responsibility.

Philosophical accounts of moral responsibility are standardly framed by two platitudes. According to them, blame requires the presence of a moral defect in the agent and the absence of excuses. In this chapter, this kind of approach is challenged. It is argued that (a) people sometimes violate moral norms due to performance mistakes, (b) it often appears reasonable to hold them responsible for it, and (c) their mistakes cannot be traced to their moral qualities or to the presence of excuses. (...) In the end, the implications for discussions of moral responsibility are discussed. (shrink)

This paper is a critical discussion of Manuel Vargas’ Building Better Beings, focusing on the treatment of desert therein. By means of an analogy between morality and sport, I examine some seemingly peculiar implications of Vargas’ teleological and revisionary account of desert. I also consider some general questions of philosophical methodology provoked by revisionary approaches.