This paper investigates the relationships between organizational change and trust in management. It is argued that organizational change represents a critical episode for the production and destruction of trust in management. Although trust in management is seen as a semi stable psychological state, changes in organizations make trust issues salient and organizational members attend to and process trust relevant information resulting in a reassessment of their trust in management. The direction and magnitude of change in trust is dependent on a (...) set of change dimensions that reflect trust relevant experiences and information. We distinguish between dimensions related to trust relevant consequences of the change and trust relevant aspects of how the change process is performed. Empirical results indicate that increases in post change emotional stress and the use of referential accounts for justifying change are both negatively related to post change trust in management. The use of ideological accounts and participation were found to be positively related to post change trust in management, so was perceived decision quality. Findings also indicate that the effects of change on trust are negatively moderated by tenure. (shrink)

This paper defends an account of explanatory reasoning generally, and inference to the best explanation in particular, according to which it first and foremost justifies pursuing hypotheses rather than accepting them as true. This side-steps the problem of why better explanations should be more likely to be true. I argue that this account faces no analogous problems. I propose an account of justification for pursuit and show how this provides a simple and straightforward connection between explanatoriness and justification for pursuit.

This article highlights a use of analogies in science that so far has received relatively little systematic discussion: providing reasons for pursuing a model or theory. Using the development of the liquid drop model as a test case, I critically assess two extant pursuit worthiness accounts: that analogies justify pursuit by supporting plausibility arguments and that analogies can serve as a guide to potential theoretical unification. Neither of these fit the liquid drop model case. Instead, I develop an alternative account, (...) based on the idea that analogies facilitate the transfer of a well-understood modelling strategy to a new domain. 1Introduction2Case Study: The Development of the Liquid Drop Model3Plausibility Accounts 3.1Bartha on plausibility and analogical inference3.2Plausibility and the drop analogy4Analogies as a Guide to Unification5Generative Accounts 5.1Analogy-based modelling strategies5.2Did analogies play a merely generative role?6A New Pursuit Worthiness Account of Analogies 6.1Transferring understanding-with through analogies6.2Understanding-with and the liquid drop model7Conclusion. (shrink)

Research in nanotechnology has advanced rapidly in recent years. Several researchers, however, warn that there is a paucity of research on the ethical, legal, and social implications of nanotechnology, and they caution that ethical reflections on nanotechnology lag behind this fast developing science. In this article, the authors question this conclusion, pointing out that the predicted concrete ethical issues related to the area of nanotechnology are rather similar to those related to the area of biotechnology and biology that have been (...) considered by ethicists since the 1970s. Hence, a knowledge base has already been acquired from ethical reflections on biotechnology and biology, which may be a good starting point and foundation for a discussion of ethical reflections on nanotechnology. The authors argue that a promising approach is the use of basic ethical principles as a method to analyze ethical issues of nanotechnology. (shrink)

Transparency has been proposed as a way of handling value-ladenness in machine learning (ML). This article highlights limits to this strategy. I distinguish three kinds of transparency: epistemic transparency, retrospective value transparency, and prospective value transparency. This corresponds to different approaches to transparency in ML, including so-called explainable artificial intelligence and governance based on disclosing information about the design process. I discuss three sources of value-ladenness in ML—problem formulation, inductive risk, and specification gaming—and argue that retrospective value transparency is only (...) well-suited for dealing with the first, while the third raises serious challenges even for prospective value transparency. (shrink)

This article examines the drivers and barriers for corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the Norwegian graduate uniform industry, which is a market devoid of large corporations, consisting entirely of two small businesses. It finds that these small businesses' CSR activities are not particularly well explained by the existing literature on CSR in small- and medium-sized enterprises, which assumes the presence of large competitors. This raises the question of whether small businesses that do not compete against large corporations may actually behave (...) more like ‘little big firms’ when it comes to CSR. The article finds that the two businesses studied are mostly driven by external pressure to improve their social responsibility. Such pressure stems partly from news reports on their activities and partly from increasing competition leading to a situation where the small businesses operating in the market scrutinise each others' activities. (shrink)

Certain critics, e.g. Manfred Frank and Hans-Herbert Kögler, claim that Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics reduces the individual subject to a mere instrument of history and tradition, the latter reproducing themselves through the subject. However, Gadamer also emphasizes the active role of the subject in shaping and creating history and tradition. In this article I argue that the critics mistakenly emphasize a one-sided conception of history. By incorporating both active and passive aspects of the subject, Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics provides the means (...) by which the individual may be conceived more aptly in an interdependent, dialectical relation to their corresponding historical, cultural, and social context. (shrink)

Based on a dataset of more than 5,000 contentious collective actions from 1700-2000, this paper examines the relation between popular protest and democratization of the Danish political system. The first wave of protests began in the 1830s and culminated in 1848 with the fall of absolutism and the transition to constitutional monarchy. The next protest wave from 1885 to 1887 arose from the so-called ‘constitutional struggle’ and mobilized hundreds of thousands of ordinary Danes, and contributed to the parliamentarization and nationalization (...) of the political system. The third wave unfolded around the end of World War II, while the hitherto last wave of popular struggle erupted in 1968 with the youth rebellion. The analysis show that ‘democracy’ was the central issue of contention in all four of these protest waves, and support the main thesis that periods of intense interaction between popular protest and the state have had a decisive formative influence on the genesis and further development of Danish democracy. (shrink)

Tinguelys gesamtes Œuvre scheint vom Vanitas-Motiv grundiert: seine sinnlosen Maschinen aus Schrott, sich selbst vernichtenden, ephemeren Artefakte, die in Form von Flügelaltären stattfindende Auseinandersetzung mit dem Tod und erst recht der eine barocke Tragikomödie referierende Cenodoxus. Dass dieser Eindruck trügt, zeigt sich sobald das scheinbar Evidente mit den frühneuzeitlichen Spielarten der Vanitas konfrontiert wird. Dennoch adaptiert und inszeniert Tinguely das Motiv mit dem melancholischen Gestus des seines Heilshorizonts verlustig gegangenen Subjekts.

Trust has a great potential for furthering our understanding of organizational change and learning. This potential however remains largely untapped. It is argued that two reasons as for why this potential remains unrealized are: (i) A narrow conceptualization of change as implementation and (ii) an emphasis on direct and aggregated effects of individual trust to the exclusion of other effects. It is further suggested that our understanding of the effects of trust on organizational change, should benefit from including effects of (...) trust on the formulation stage. It should also benefit from exploring the structuring effects of trust in organizations. Throughout this chapter, ways to extend current research on trust in organizations are suggested. The chapter also provides examples of relevant contributions where available. In order to capture organizational effects of trust, it is suggested that trust should be studied over longer time intervals, and include several referents of trust, spanning both horizontal and vertical relationships in the organization. (shrink)

This article examines the drivers and barriers for corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the Norwegian graduate uniform industry, which is a market devoid of large corporations, consisting entirely of two small businesses. It finds that these small businesses' CSR activities are not particularly well explained by the existing literature on CSR in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises, which assumes the presence of large competitors. This raises the question of whether small businesses that do not compete against large corporations may actually behave (...) more like ‘little big firms’ when it comes to CSR. The article finds that the two businesses studied are mostly driven by external pressure to improve their social responsibility. Such pressure stems partly from news reports on their activities and partly from increasing competition leading to a situation where the small businesses operating in the market scrutinise each others' activities. (shrink)

Climate change is an existential risk reinforced by ordinary actions in afuent societies—often silently present in comfortable and enjoyable habits. This silence is sometimes broken, presenting itself as a nagging reminder of how our habits fuel a catastrophe. As a case in point, global warming has created a state of urgency among wine makers in Spain, as the alcohol level has risen to a point where it jeopardises wine quality and thereby Spanish viticulture. Eforts are currently being made to solve (...) this problem technologically by developing (non-GMO) strains of yeast that produce less alcohol. If successful, this could help save Spanish viticulture. This kind of technological solution is routinely criticised for ofering simplistic “techno-fx” solutions to solve complex societal problems. However, it is not clear what features are criticised by the notion of techno-fx and hence how to avoid this criticism. In our interpretation, the techno-fx notion is not exclusively used as a dismissive term. The notion points to a general virtue of engineering: to create technological solutions that work silently in the background. This asset of technological solutions might sometimes be problematic and sometimes not. Hence, it needs to be analysed case-by-case by paying attention to the moral relevance of the hidden implications of the technology and of the unrefective actions and habits that they facilitate. Such moral analysis will in turn inform strategies for foregrounding this technology to counteract silencing. We discuss what this means in the case of modifying yeast as a viticultural climate resilience strategy. (shrink)

This article examines the myth of the supposed superiority of the desert noble savage over civilized man. With the Bedouin of Arabia and the Aborigines of Australia as its two prime examples, the article argues that two versions of this myth can be traced: one in which the desert noble savage is valorized due to his valour, physical prowess and martial skill (Bedouin); and another, later version, where the desert noble savage is valorized as a pacifist, an ecologist and a (...) mythmaker/storyteller (Aborigines). The article concludes by examining the way in which this turn from one type of desert noble savage to another reflects the manner in which western modernity has shifted its values from Cartesian dualities and Enlightenment rationalism to that of networks, potentialities, ecology and myth. (shrink)

This article offers reinterpretation of the current economic and political crisis through the lens of Gramsci’s concept of “interregnum,” departing from the model of “punctured equilibrium” to analyze the specific political dynamics of nonhegemonic periods between the breakdown of one ideological order and the emergence of a new one. Although political science has a range theories about periods of hegemony and paradigmatic stability, the periods between stable hegemonies remain distinctly undertheorized. A theoretical concept describing periods of interregnum is offered and (...) applied to the changes in economic ideology and political alignments that followed the breakdown of the liberal order in the interwar period and the postwar Keynesian consensus of the 1970s. The concept is then applied to the current juncture, in which the hegemony of neoliberalism has been shaken by the 2008 financial crisis but no clear successor has emerged. (shrink)

"Methods of the Way: Early Chinese Ethical Thought" gives a detailed account of the textual history as well as the early development of 112 ethical terms defined in the chapter "Methods ot the Way (Daoshu)" ascribed to Jia Yi (200-168 B.C.). An important contribution to our understanding of the roles of ethics in early China.

Constellations, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 310-328, September 2022.

Readily conjured images of “grotesque” behavior—such as, say, vomiting on one’s plate during dinner or fornicating in public—are hard to envisage as acts of “sophistication.” In fact it seems that the grotesque constitutes the exact opposite of sophistication. For whereas the grotesque is loud and insistent, “characteristically [evoking] a sudden shock,” sophistication is characterized by that which is subdued and refined.1 Unlike the grotesque, which is to some extent defined by spectacle, sophistication is at its finest when it remains unnoticed. (...) Similarly, where the grotesque mixes categories, placing objects in frames in which they do not belong, sophistication is constantly at work to uphold categories so as.. (shrink)

Management consultants and their moral standards and behaviour have been questioned and caricatured, but it is not sufficiently appreciated that they frequently have to operate in situations which are characterized by ambiguity, ignorance, uncertainty and sensitivity and they cannot always simply apply ethical rules in cooperating with their clients. In addition, more attention should be given to the ethics of the client, and “dual ethics” should be a joint concern. Research among consultants and clients has identified several ethical dilemmas frequently (...) experienced by consultants which are explained and explored. Dr Poulfelt is Associate Professor of Management at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School, Blaagaardsgade 23 B, DK‐2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark. (shrink)

Analogies often provide reasons for pursuing hypotheses or models. This is illustrated with a case study on the liquid drop model of the atomic nucleus. I criticise accounts in which analogies provide reasons for pursuit through epistemic support, proposing instead that analogies increase the value of learning the truth. I consider two accounts of this type: first, that analogies indicate potentials for theoretical unification; second, that analogies facilitate the transfer of already well-understood modelling frameworks to new domains. While the first (...) is plausible for some cases, only the second can account for the liquid drop case study. (shrink)

Simion and Kelp defend a non-anthropocentric account of trustworthy AI, based on the idea that the obligations of AI systems should be sourced in purely functional norms. In this commentary, I highlight some pressing counterexamples to their account, involving AI systems that reliably fulfil their functions but are untrustworthy because those functions are antagonistic to the interests of the trustor. Instead, I outline an alternative account, based on the idea that AI systems should not be considered primarily as tools but (...) as technological participants in social practices. Specifically, I propose to source the obligations of an AI system in the norms that should govern the role it plays within the social practices it participates in, taking into account any changes to the social practices that its participation may bring about. This proposal is anthropocentric insofar as it ascribes obligations to AI systems that are similar to those of human participants in social practices, but only modestly so, as it does not require trustworthy AI to have contentious anthropomorphic capacities (e.g. for consciousness or moral responsibility). (shrink)

In this paper, we tell the story of efforts currently underway, on diverse fronts, to build digital knowledge repositories to support research in the life sciences. If successful, knowledge bases will be part of a new knowledge infrastructure—capable of facilitating ever-more comprehensive, computational models of biological systems. Such an infrastructure would, however, represent a sea-change in the technological management and manipulation of complex data, inducing a generational shift in how questions are asked and answered and results published and circulated. Integrating (...) such knowledge bases into the daily workflow of the lab thus destabilizes a number of well-established habits which biologists rely on to ensure the quality of the knowledge they produce, evaluate, communicate and exploit. As the story we tell here shows, such destabilization introduces a situation of unfamiliarity, one that carries with it epistemic risks. It should elicit—to use Niklas Luhmann’s terms—the question of trust: a shared recognition that the reliability of research practices is being risked, but that such a risk is worth taking in view of what may be gained. And yet, the problem of trust is being unexpectedly silenced. How that silencing has come about, why it matters, and what might yet be done forms the heart of this paper. (shrink)

This essay outlines the kinds of evidence available (and not available) for studies of ancient Mediterranean pandemics, the scholarship on the subject so far, and some reflections on the relationship between the two. The focus is on the three largescale epidemic episodes that have attracted the most scholarly attention: the “Plague of Athens” in the fifth century BCE; the “Antonine Plague,” which spread across the Roman Empire in the late second century CE; and the “Justinianic Plague,” which first engulfed the (...) Mediterranean in the sixth century CE. All present considerable evidential challenges. There are traditional resources and the rich remains of ancient medical writings, but we also now have at our disposal new archaeological and genetic evidence. The research questions on these pandemics must be expanded beyond asking what disease was implicated and what political and economic impact its Mediterranean outbreaks had, sometimes within quite a restricted geographical area. Interdisciplinary research will be required to answer these wider enquiries fully. All the salient disciplines need to be involved, with due attention to their methodologies, if the field is to move forward and make the most of its resources. (shrink)

The right inferior frontal gyrus has most strongly, although not exclusively, been associated with response inhibition, not least based on covariations of behavioral performance measures and local gray matter characteristics. However, the white matter microstructure of the rIFG as well as its connectivity has been less in focus, especially when it comes to the consideration of potential subdivisions within this area. The present study reconstructed the structural connections of the three main subregions of the rIFG using diffusion tensor imaging, and (...) further assessed their associations with behavioral measures of inhibitory control. The results revealed a marked heterogeneity of the three subregions with respect to the pattern and extent of their connections, with the pars orbitalis showing the most widespread inter-regional connectivity, while the pars opercularis showed the lowest number of interconnected regions. When relating behavioral performance measures of a stop signal task to brain structure, the data indicated an association between the dorsal opercular connectivity and the go reaction time and the stopping accuracy. (shrink)

This contribution examines Arrighi’s effort in Adam Smith in Beijing to understand the trajectory of China’s political economy and the effects of that trajectory on the current reforms and changes in China. This article discusses these reforms from the perspective of China’s ’internal’ dynamics and suggests that Arrighi’s argument has been developed without proper reference to China’s complex realities. As an alternative, the contribution proposes a research-agenda that could better account for these realities.

This article traces the metamorphoses of Norwegian reformism during the last two centuries. In the Norwegian system, the shifting political regimes have to a remarkable extent been accompanied by shifting knowledge discourses. Regardless of whether its ideological dress was liberalism or socialism, a central feature of Norwegian reformism has been its basis in different versions of social science: it has been a scientific reformism. The legal knowledge regime of the civil servants’ state was towards the end of the 19th century (...) replaced by a democratic-pedagogical knowledge regime. When the Labour Party gained control of the political centre in 1945, it did so in coalition with the new economists. Following the demise of the Labour Party state in the 1980s, some features of a new knowledge regime have become visible. (shrink)

I highlight a lacuna in recent debates concerning analogies in science. Most philosophers focus on analogical inferences as a way to justify accepting hypotheses. I argue that analogies play another important role, namely to justify pursuing hypotheses. In particular, I argue that both Paul Bartha's formal account and John Norton's material view of analogical inference, as they stand, fail to address this issue. I present my own account of justification for pursuit and show how analogies on this account can justify (...) pursuit independently of whether they can also justify acceptance. (shrink)

While he develops three different aspects of Lacan's “Real,” Slavoj Žižek does so only partially, in the end leaving an inconsistent and contradictory account. Here these three versions of the Real are outlined and clarified by showing their relation to Marx's account of capitalist exchange and socialist politics. This leads to a discussion of two other aspects of the Real that appear in Žižek's work: the pre-Symbolic Real and the “Sinthome.” Where the former is simultaneously the fear of a unified (...) working class and the fantasy of a world of “total enjoyment” without conflict, the latter is discussed here in terms of political struggle that takes on not only the form of a means to an end but also that of an end in itself. (shrink)