Teaching ethics poses a dilemma for professors of business. First, they have little or no formal training in ethics. Second, they have established ethical values that they may not want to impose upon their students. What is needed is a well-recognized, yet non-sectarian model to facilitate the clarification of ethical questions. Gestalt theory offers such a framework. Four Gestalt principles facilitate ethical clarification and another four Gestalt principles anesthetize ethical clarification. This article examines each principle, illustrates that principle through current (...) business examples, and offers exercises for developing each principle. (shrink)

This paper seeks to examine the putative growth of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Singapore. A key impetus for the nascent CSR movement in twenty-first century Singapore is the economic imperative. As a trade-dependent industrializing economy, the economic development drive coupled with the need for international expansion has made it necessary for Singapore businesses to be cognizant of the growing CSR movement in the western, industrialized world. The government supports the CSR endeavour with an instrumental bent, where CSR ideas and (...) concepts are adapted, incorporated, and promoted in various sectors of the economy. This paper assesses the state’s active encouragement of CSR in various facets of economic life in Singapore. The government sees itself as a promoter and practitioner of CSR. For instance, Singapore’s unique tripartite labor relations have recently emphasized a CSR gloss while CSR is also touted as being beneficial for corporate governance as well as improving the competitiveness of companies and improving the quality of life. However, CSR is too often seen as another form of corporate governance. This paper argues that the CSR drive in Singapore coheres with the government’s pragmatic approach to governance broadly conceived. There are many intrinsic and tangible benefits in the government being seen as an active promoter of CSR in various facets of Singapore life. The close association with the various concerns of CSR ensures that the government is seen to be involved in issues, such as environmentalism, work–life balance, anti-corruption, and philanthropy, that concern and appeal to the younger generation of Singaporeans. The CSR endorsement by the state, while not taking a legislative framework and still very much a private sector-driven initiative, is in accord with Singapore’s political and cultural values where the promotion of social responsibility (individual and group), harmony, cohesion, and stability in a multi-racial, multi-religious, and multi-lingual society are very much valued. In studying the putative CSR movement in Singapore, a sense of the values that the state, in partnership with the business world, hopes to inculcate would be evident. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to make a comparison between two philosophical theories on convention, totally independent from each other, and produced by two thinkers of this century yet totally unknown to each other, in order to assess to what extent both theories meet the same facts or are verified by the same features. The result of this inquiry is that each theory is autonomous, but that both theories are quite compatible with each other, that they even fairly coincide (...) with each other, and that there where they emphasize different aspects of a convention they are complementary to each other. In a general introductory paragraph we lay stress upon the distinction between something conventional and something arbitrary and assign a place to conventionalism between rationalism and relativism. In the second part of the paper we examine D. K. Lewis's conception and analysis of the notion of a convention, which he defines in terms of the theory of games of pure coordination, in terms of coordination equilibrium, of orders of mutual expectations, of preferences and of regularities. In the third part of the paper we show that Dupréel's sociological concept of 'being of one mind' is the analogue of Lewis's definition. We also compare Lewis's remarks on the phenomenon of the imitation with Dupréel's theory of the consolidation and endorse the latter's view that a convention has a creative function so that it cannot be reduced to being a pure sign of something else. In the fourth part of our paper we analyze the relation between value and convention and claim that in Dupréel's philosophy the main values may not be identified with conventions. Lastly we justify our conclusion as already stated at the beginning of this summary. (shrink)

This study reveals evidence of a significant sex preference among men. Programmes aimed at changing men's views on the importance of the sex of a child must be implemented in order to reduce the desired family size and eventual fertility.

The application of genetic technologies in China, especially in the area of prenatal genetic testing, is rapidly increasing in China. In the wealthy regions of China, prenatal genetic testing is already very widely adopted. We argue that the government should actively promote prenatal genetic testing to the poor areas of the country. In fact, the government should prioritize resources first to make prenatal genetic testing a standard routine care with an opt-out model in these area. Healthcare professions would be required (...) to inform pregnant women about the availability of genetic testing and provide free testing on a routine basis unless the parents choose not to do so. We argue that this proposal will allow parents to make a more informed decision about their reproductive choices. Secondarily, this proposal will attract more healthcare professionals and other healthcare resources to improve the healthcare infrastructures in the less-developed regions of the country. This will help to reduce the inequity of accessing healthcare services between in different regions of China. We further argue that this policy proposal is not practicing eugenics. (shrink)

Pike, Gregory K Eugenics is not usually a topic for polite conversation. The first thought that typically springs to mind is Hitler's euthanasia programme, the master race and the attempted extermination of the Jews. However, an examination of the social history of eugenics reveals that in practice it operated in many other contexts, and its conceptual meaning is much broader. And while that social history has usually been confined to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the core ideas in (...) eugenics have been part of dreams about the human condition for millennia. It is therefore not surprising to find various modern practices, some driven by new technology, subsumed under the rubric of eugenics. Eugenics as an idea is certainly resilient, even if at times it has been elusive. Indeed, perhaps it is resilient because it is elusive. In summary, eugenics is powerful yet poorly understood. Because it appeals to utopian dreams of a better future, where humans can be freed from their 'biological slavery', as Margaret Sanger put it, it remains pervasive even if cryptic. The new eugenics is sanitised, framed as autonomous choice, and unlike the ill-informed version of the 20s and 30s or the nasty Nazi variety. But it is nonetheless potent and its various manifestations are expressions of powerful ideas that remain firmly embedded in the collective human consciousness. (shrink)

Tuberculosis was clearly one of the most predominant diseases of the early twentieth century. At this time, Americans involved in the eugenics movement grew increasingly interested in methods to prevent this disease's potential hereditary spread. To do so, as this essay examines, eugenicists' attempted to shift the accepted view that tuberculosis arose from infection and contagion to a view of its heritable nature. The methods that they employed to better understand the propagation and control of tuberculosis are also discussed. Finally, (...) the essay explores the interpretative analyses of data that the Eugenics Record Office used in an attempt to convince contemporaries of the hereditary transmission of tuberculosis. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Because the confinement of [Formula: see text] in a storage reservoir depends on a stratigraphically continuous set of seals to isolate the fluid in the reservoir, the detection of structural anomalies is critical for guiding any assessment of a potential subsurface carbon storage site. Employing a suite of 3D seismic attribute analyses maximizes the chances of identifying geologic anomalies or discontinuities that may affect the integrity of a seal that will confine the stored [Formula: see text] in the reservoir. The (...) Illinois Basin, a major area for potential carbon storage, presents challenges for target assessment because geologic anomalies can be ambiguous and easily misinterpreted when using 2D seismic reflection data, or even 3D data, if only conventional display techniques are used. We procured a small 3D seismic reflection data set in the central part of the basin to experiment with different strategies for enhancing the appearance of discontinuities by integrating 3D seismic attribute analyses with conventional visualizations. Focusing on zones above and below the target interval of the Cambrian Mt. Simon Sandstone, we computed attribute traveltime slices based on discontinuity computations, crossline-directed amplitude change, azimuth of the dip, shaded relief, and fault likelihood attributes. The results provided instructive examples of how discontinuities may be almost “invisible” on conventional displays but become detectable and mappable using an appropriate integration of 3D attributes. Strong discontinuities in underlying Precambrian basement rocks do not necessarily propagate upward into the target carbon storage interval. The origin of these discontinuities is uncertain, but we explored a possible strike-slip role that also explains the localization of a structural embayment developed in Lower Paleozoic strata above the basement discontinuities. (shrink)

SummaryCasual heterosexual sex remains a significant contributor to HIV transmissions in Ghana. The study used data from the 2008 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey to assess the socio-demographic, economic and spatial factors influencing unprotected casual heterosexual sex among men and women. The results of the binary logistic regression models revealed that women aged 35–44 had significantly higher odds of engaging in unprotected casual heterosexual sex than those aged 15–24, unlike the men. There were significantly lower odds of unprotected casual heterosexual (...) sex for women and men with exposure to print media compared with those without exposure. Compared with men residing in the Western Region, unprotected casual heterosexual sex was significantly less likely among those in the Upper East Region. There is the need for behavioural change campaigns in Ghana that take into consideration the multiplicity of factors that determine unprotected casual heterosexual sex. (shrink)