Fitness is a central but notoriously vexing concept in evolutionary biology. The propensity interpretation of fitness is often regarded as the least problematic account for fitness. It ties an individual's fitness to a probabilistic capacity to produce offspring. Fitness has a clear causal role in evolutionary dynamics under this account. Nevertheless, the propensity interpretation faces its share of problems. We discuss three of these. We first show that a single scalar value is an incomplete summary of a propensity. Second, we (...) argue that the widespread method of “abstracting away” environmental idiosyncrasies by averaging over reproductive output in different environments is not a valid approach when environmental changes are irreversible. Third, we point out that expanding the range of applicability for fitness measures by averaging over more environments or longer time scales (so as to ensure environmental reversibility) reduces one's ability to distinguish selectively relevant differences among individuals because of mutation and eco‐evolutionary feedbacks. This series of problems leads us to conclude that a general value of fitness that is both explanatory and predictive cannot be attained. We advocate for the use of propensity‐compatible methods, such as adaptive dynamics, which can accommodate these difficulties. (shrink)

Dans la crise mondiale, écologique et économique, sociale et politique que nous traversons, la coexistence juste et pacifique des hommes devient un enjeu crucial. L'ampleur des crimes commis au XXe siècle pourrait laisser sceptique quant à notre capacité à relever un tel défi. Pourtant, ce même siècle a vu surgir un recours nouveau : le pardon. Jusque-là privilège de la conscience religieuse individuelle, il s'est invité au plan politique, avec succès. Depuis 1950 en effet, de nombreux pays ont recouru au (...) pardon pour constituer un espace politique durable là où des violences destructrices avaient dominé. Trois cas attirent l'attention : l'Europe, les Commissions vérité et réconciliation et les instances juridiques internationales. Les contours d'un pardon politique se dessinent. En retour se pose la question de sa réception par chacun. La phénoménologie est convoquée : elle conduit à une distinction radicale entre coupables et victimes, privilégiant parmi elles les plus fragiles. L'herméneutique prend alors le relai d'une anthropologie devenue aporétique, esquissant avec le pardon, le geste par lequel l'homme advient. Dans ce parcours, Paul Ricoeur, interlocuteur privilégié, sera rejoint par d'autres : Jean Monnet, Maïti Girtanner, Hannah Arendt ou Simon Wiesenthal. (shrink)

This paper discusses the validity of nudges to tackle time-inconsistent behaviours. I show that libertarian paternalism is grounded on a peculiar model of personal identity, and that the argument according to which nudges may improve one’s self-assessed well-being can be seriously questioned. I show that time inconsistencies do not necessarily reveal that the decision maker is irrational: they can also be the result of discounting over the degree of psychological connectedness between our successive selves rather than over time. Time inconsistency (...) can call for paternalism if and only if we accept that an individual is characterised by stable “true” preferences over time-dependent outcomes, and that she is rationally required to make time-consistent choices. This model is descriptively and normatively questionable. I then argue that behavioural findings may still justify paternalistic interventions, but on a non-welfarist basis. (shrink)

Neoclassical economics assumes that individuals have stable and context-independent preferences, and uses preference satisfaction as a normative criterion. By calling this assumption into question, behavioural findings cause fundamental problems for normative economics. A common response to these problems is to treat deviations from conventional rational choice theory as mistakes, and to try to reconstruct the preferences that individuals would have acted on, had they reasoned correctly. We argue that this preference purification approach implicitly uses a dualistic model of the human (...) being, in which an inner rational agent is trapped in an outer psychological shell. This model is psychologically and philosophically problematic. (shrink)

Dans L’Homme faillible, Ricœur découvre, au cœur de l’homme, une faille. À cause d’elle, l’homme est fragile: il est fragile médiation de lui-même et du monde, médiation à faire et à refaire, au risque permanent de se défaire. C’est ainsi que l’homme fragile est aussi faillible. Dans Soi-même comme un autre, Ricœur revient sur cette faille qui passe au cœur de soi, entre l’idem et l’ipse, livrant accès à l’alter. Cette image, la faille, guide Ricœur dans chacun de ces deux (...) textes: elle nous donne accès à leur continuité mais aussi à l’écart qui les sépare. D’autre part, si cette image a inspiré l’œuvre de Ricœur, elle donne aussi de la critiquer: relisant la Symbolique du mal, nous mettrons en lumière une dimension de l’homme peu explorée par Ricœur et que notre actualité nous pousse à retrouver: le corps et le geste. (shrink)

The transmission of the craft and the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder have in common that they involve a relationship of act to act between the master and the apprentice on the one hand, and between the therapist and the patient on the other. Phenomenology has from the outset considered movement as inherent to the flesh: Hardy thus hypothesises that the origin of the flesh is a gesture. For all that, his description remains largely dependent on a flesh that is (...) primarily perceptive: this gesture can thus be qualified as an aesthetic gesture. But if the flesh is as much mobile as it is perceptive, would there not be another gesture that generates the flesh in movement that is not linked to perception? Housset takes a step in this direction and allows us to hypothesize the kinesic gesture which, alone, allows us to account for the two experiences mentioned above. (shrink)

L'avènement des théories modernes de la physique au XXe siècle a suscité des discussions acharnées autour de la causalité dans la nature. Les ruptures avec les conceptions classiques de la physique du me siècle, alors rendues nécessaires, et les nouvelles synthèses opérées, attestent du caractère problématique de cette notion telle que l'appréhende la science physique. Le présent travail analyse de près les conceptions de la causalité qui se dégagent de deux théories majeures, la théorie de la relativité (sous ses deux (...) formes) et la théorie quantique, en se centrant sur les écrits de leurs principaux fondateurs : Albert Einstein et Hermann Minkowski d'une part, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg et Erwin Schrödinger, de l'autre. Ceci sans négliger les aperçus indispensables donnés par les versions plus récentes de ces théories. Son but philosophique est de déterminer quelles sont les conceptions et les formes de la causalité qui sont engagées dans ces théories, quelle fonction exacte leur est conférée, et enfin jusqu'à quel point ces théorisations de la causalité se montrent capables de mettre à jour l'intelligibilité du monde. Il en ressort que le caractère idéal des catégorisations de la science physique empêche d'en faire une lecture directement réaliste. Ce qui invite à continuer d'interroger le discours scientifique afin de déterminer quelle connaissance effective il nous donne du monde."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This study is an ethical reflection on the formulation and application of public policies regarding reproductive health in Brazil. The Integral Assistance Program for Women's Health (PAISM) can be considered advanced for a country in development. Universal access for family planning is foreseen in the Brazilian legislation, but the services do not offer contraceptive methods for the population in a regular and consistent manner. Abortion is restricted by law to two cases: risk to the woman's life and rape. This (...) reality favors the practice of unsafe abortion, which is the third largest cause of maternal death in Brazil. Legal abortion is regulated by the State and the procedure is performed in public health centers. However, there is resistance on the part of professionals to attend these women. Prenatal care is a priority strategy for promoting the quality of life of these women and of future generations. Nonetheless, it is still difficult for these women to access the prenatal care services and to have the required number of consultations. Moreover, managers and health professionals need to be made aware of the importance of implementing the actions indicated by the public policies in the area of sexual and reproductive health, favoring respect for autonomy in a context of personal freedom. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the debate about the utilization of new reproductive technologies in Brazil, and the paths taken in the Brazilian National Congress in an attempt to draw up legislation to regulate the clinical practice of human assisted reproduction. British documents, such as the Warnock Report and Human Fertilization and Embriology Authority (HFEA) are used for thorough reference. The analysis of the Law Projects in the National Congress, the Resolution by the Federal Medicine Council, Resolution 196/96 and documents by (...) the Ministério Público (Public Prosecution Office), suppled the bases for the discussion. The principal question involved is the observation of different technical and moral prientations that influence the conduct of the issue in the legislative process. It is possible to observe that the main focus of the projects relates to the rights and interests of the children, to those possibly benefited by the technique and to embryo reduction. Very little attention has been directed to the issues of sexual and reproductive rights and to the health of the women submitted to the new reproductive techologies. (shrink)

Neste livro, novos desafios da ética em pesquisa com seres humanos são explorados pelos autores - da pesquisa com populações vulneráveis às pesquisas em Ciências Sociais. Dentre os destaques da obra está o caso do Sangue Yanomami e a pesquisa antropológica e genética conduzida nos anos 1970.

We propose a methodology for normative evaluation when preferences are context-dependent. We offer a precise definition of context-dependence and formulate a normative criterion of self-determination, according to which one situation is better than another if individuals are aware of more potential contexts of a choice problem. We provide two interpretations of our normative approach: an extension of Sugden’s opportunity criterion and an application of Sen’s positional views in his theory of justice. Our proposition is consistent with Muldoon’s and Gaus’ approaches (...) of public reason in social contract theory, which account for the diversity of perspectives in non-ideal worlds. (shrink)

A common narrative among some behavioural economists and policy makers is that experimental psychology highlights that individuals are more like Homer Simpson than the Mr Spock imagined by neoclassical economics, and that this justifies policies aiming to ‘correct’ individual behaviours. This narrative is central to nudging policies and suggests that a better understanding of individual cognition will lead to better policy prescriptions. I argue that this Homer economicus narrative is methodologically flawed, and that its emphasis on cognition advances a distorted (...) view of public policies consisting in fixing malfunctioning individuals, while ignoring the characteristics of the socio-economic environment that influence individuals’ behaviours. (shrink)

This study is an ethical reflection on the formulation and application of public policies regarding reproductive health in Brazil. The Integral Assistance Program for Women's Health (PAISM) can be considered advanced for a country in development. Universal access for family planning is foreseen in the Brazilian legislation, but the services do not offer contraceptive methods for the population in a regular and consistent manner. Abortion is restricted by law to two cases: risk to the woman's life and rape. This reality (...) favors the practice of unsafe abortion, which is the third largest cause of maternal death in Brazil. Legal abortion is regulated by the State and the procedure is performed in public health centers. However, there is resistance on the part of professionals to attend these women. Prenatal care is a priority strategy for promoting the quality of life of these women and of future generations. Nonetheless, it is still difficult for these women to access the prenatal care services and to have the required number of consultations. Moreover, managers and health professionals need to be made aware of the importance of implementing the actions indicated by the public policies in the area of sexual and reproductive health, favoring respect for autonomy in a context of personal freedom. (shrink)

Reproductive division of labor has been proposed to play a key role for evolutionary transitions in individuality (ETIs). This chapter provides a guide to a theoretical model that addresses the role of a tradeoff between life-history traits in selecting for a reproductive division of labor during the transition from unicellular to multicellular organisms. In particular, it focuses on the five key assumptions of the model, namely (1) fitness is viability times fecundity; (2) collective traits are linear functions of their cellular (...) counterparts; (3) there is a tradeoff between cell viability and fecundity; (4) cell contribution to the collective is optimal; and (5) there is an initial reproductive cost in large collectives. Thereafter the chapter contrasts two interpretations of the model in the context of ETIs. Originally, the model was interpreted as showing that during the transition to multicellularity the fitness of the lower-level (the cells) is “transferred” to the higher level (the collective). Despite its apparent intuitiveness, fitness transfer may obscure actual mechanisms in metaphorical language. Thus, an alternative and more conservative interpretation of the model that focuses on cell traits and the evolutionary constraints that link them is advocated. In addition, it allows for pursuing subsequent questions, such as the evolution of development. (shrink)

This note replies to a comment by Daniel Hausman on our paper ‘Preference purification and the inner rational agent: a critique of the conventional wisdom of behavioural welfare economics’. We clarify our characterisation of behavioural welfare economics and acknowledge that Hausman does fully endorse this approach. However, we argue that Hausman’s response to our critique, like behavioural welfare economics itself, implicitly uses a model of an inner rational agent.

The rise of blockchain as a techno-solution in the development sector underscores the critical imbalances of data power under ‘computational capitalism’. This article will consider the political economy of techno-solutionist and blockchain discourses in the developing world, using as its object of study blockchain projects in Pacific Island nations. Backed by US State Department soft power initiatives such as Tech Camp, these projects inculcate tech-driven notions of economic and political development, or ICT4D, while opening up new terrains for data accumulation (...) and platform control. Blockchain developers in search of proof of concept have found the development sector a fecund space for tech experimentation as they leverage a desire for tech-development and exploit regulatory weakness. The material implications of blockchain projects and discourse have been to create governance solutions which bypass the developing world state as a largely corrupting intermediary. In the Pacific, this has meant blockchain supply-chain management systems, proprietary financial innovation in humanitarian relief and an Asian Development Bank project to manage indigenous Fijian lands exclusively on the blockchain. In all these instances, discourses of solutionism, innovation and data empowerment have been deployed in aid of blockchain cartographies of control. (shrink)

This book presents the framework for a new, comprehensive approach to cognitive science. The proposed paradigm, enaction, offers an alternative to cognitive science's classical, first-generation Computational Theory of Mind. _Enaction_, first articulated by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch in _The Embodied Mind_, breaks from CTM's formalisms of information processing and symbolic representations to view cognition as grounded in the sensorimotor dynamics of the interactions between a living organism and its environment. A living organism enacts the world it lives in; its embodied (...) action in the world constitutes its perception and thereby grounds its cognition. _Enaction_ offers a range of perspectives on this exciting new approach to embodied cognitive science. Some chapters offer manifestos for the enaction paradigm; others address specific areas of research, including artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, neuroscience, language, phenomenology, and culture and cognition. Three themes emerge as testimony to the originality and specificity of enaction as a paradigm: the relation between first-person lived experience and third-person natural science; the ambition to provide an encompassing framework applicable at levels from the cell to society; and the difficulties of reflexivity. Taken together, the chapters offer nothing less than the framework for a far-reaching renewal of cognitive science. Contributors: Renaud Barbaras, Didier Bottineau, Giovanna Colombetti, Diego Cosmelli, Hanne De Jaegher, Ezequiel A. Di Paolo. Andreas K. Engel, Olivier Gapenne, Véronique Havelange, Edwin Hutchins, Michel Le Van Quyen, Rafael E. Núñez, Marieke Rohde, Benny Shanon, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Adam Sheya, Linda B. Smith, John Stewart, Evan Thompson. (shrink)

Of all the things we do and say, most will never be repeated or reproduced. Once in a while, however, an idea or a practice generates a chain of transmission that covers more distance through space and time than any individual person ever could. What makes such transmission chains possible? For two centuries, the dominant view was that humans owe their cultural prosperity to their powers of imitation. In this view, modern cultures exist because the people who carry them are (...) gifted at remembering, storing and reproducing information. How Traditions Live and Die proposes an alternative to this standard view. What makes traditions live is not a general-purpose imitation capacity. Cultural transmission is partial, selective, often unfaithful. Some traditions live on in spite of this, because they tap into widespread and basic cognitive preferences. These attractive traditions spread, not by being better retained or more accurately transferred, but because they are transmitted over and over. This theory is used to shed light on various puzzles of cultural change and to explain the special relation that links the human species to its cultures. Morin combines recent work in cognitive anthropology with new advances in quantitative cultural history, to map and predict the diffusion of traditions. This book is both an introduction and an accessible alternative to contemporary theories of cultural evolution. (shrink)

Ingvar Johansson has argued that there are not only determinate universals, but also determinable ones. I here argue that this view is misguided by reviving a line of argument to the following effect: what makes determinates falling under a same determinable similar cannot be distinct from what makes them different. If true, some similarities — imperfect similarities between simple determinate properties — are not grounded in any kind of property-sharing. I suggest that determinables are better understood as maximal disjunctions of (...) brutely and imperfectly similar determinates. Such brute similarities have been thought to clash with realism about universals. I argue that this worry stems from the mistaken assumption that perfect and imperfect similarities are relations of a same kind. If exact and inexact resemblances are distinct and heterogeneous explananda, the realist about universals might explain the first thanks to property-sharing, while happily leaving imperfect similarities between properties unexplained. (shrink)

The first of its kind, this book is an in-depth history of hydrodynamics from its eighteenth-century foundations to its first major successes in twentieth-century hydraulics and aeronautics. It documents the foundational role of fluid mechanics in developing a new mathematical physics. It gives full and clear accounts of the conceptual breakthroughs of physicists and engineers who tried to meet challenges in the practical worlds of hydraulics, navigation, blood circulation, meteorology, and aeronautics, and it shows how hydrodynamics at last began to (...) fulfill its early promise to unify the different worlds of flow. Richly illustrated, technically thorough, and sensitive to cross-cultural effects, this history should attract a broad range of historians, scientists, engineers, and philosophers and be a standard reference for anyone interested in fluid mechanics. (shrink)

À travers l'analyse d'exemples ethnographiques, la question posée fut de savoir si la séduction a besoin d'un rituel pour se réaliser. Défini comme des modèles de conduite, le rituel engendre une codification et une répétitivité des comportements des acteurs sociaux. Le rituel comporte une transmission d'informations codifiées selon des normes, qui s'applique à la séduction. La séduction se construit sur une invention de l'individu par lui-même, dans l'image qu'il choisit d'endosser afin de susciter un lien avec l'autre sexe. Mode spécifique (...) de communication, la séduction s'élabore sur un acte de parole et une attitude gestuelle prise dans le sens d'un positionnement particulier du corps. Pour créer une mise en scène de soi, l'individu se sert durant l'interaction sociale d'attitudes rituelles et de représentations normatives. Elle a besoin du rituel pour pouvoir être performative et déchiffrée par le récepteur; sans le rituel, elle serait incompréhensible ou mal interprétée par le destinataire du message. Dans la séduction, on peut conclure que le rituel mis en oeuvre relève à la fois de l'auto-séduction, de la théâtralisation et de la mimesis.Through the analysis of ethnographic examples, the question was whether the seduction needed to perform a ritual. Defined as behavior patterns, ritual creates a codification and repetitive behaviors of social actors. The ritual involves the transmission of information coded according to standards which apply to seduction. Seduction is built on an invention by the individual himself in the image he chooses to endorse in order to create a link with the other sex. Specific mode of communication, seduction is developed on an act of speech and gestural attitude taken in the sense of a particular position of the body. To create a staging itself, the individual uses during social interaction ritual attitudes and normative representations. She needs to be performative ritual and decrypted by the receiver without the ritual, it would be incomprehensible or misinterpreted by the recipient. In seduction, we can conclude that the ritual is implemented both self-seduction, and theatrical mimesis. (shrink)

Introduction The Brazilian national curriculum guidelines for undergraduate medicine courses inspired and influenced the groundwork for knowledge acquisition, skills development and the perception of ethical values in the context of professional conduct. Objective The evaluation of ethics education in research involving human beings in undergraduate medicine curriculum in Brazil, both in courses with active learning processes and in those with traditional lecture learning methodologies. Methods Curricula and teaching projects of 175 Brazilian medical schools were analyzed using a retrospective historical and (...) descriptive exploratory cohort study. Thirty one medical schools were excluded from the study because of incomplete information or a refusal to participate. Active research for information from institutional sites and documents was guided by terms based on 69 DeCS/MeSH descriptors. Curriculum information was correlated with educational models of learning such as active learning methodologies, tutorial discussions with integrated curriculum into core modules, and traditional lecture learning methodologies for large classes organized by disciplines and reviewed by occurrence frequency of ethical themes and average hourly load per semester. Results Ninety-five medical schools used traditional learning methodologies. The ten most frequent ethical themes were: 1 – ethics in research (26); 2 – ethical procedures and advanced technology (46); 3 – ethic-professional conduct (413). Over 80% of schools using active learning methodologies had between 50 and 100 hours of scheduled curriculum time devoted to ethical themes whereas more than 60% of traditional learning methodology schools devoted less than 50 hours in curriculum time to ethical themes. Conclusion The data indicates that medical schools that employ more active learning methodologies provide more attention and time to ethical themes than schools with traditional discipline-based methodologies. Given the importance of ethical issues in contemporary medical education, these findings are significant for curriculum change and modification plans in the future of Brazilian medical education. (shrink)

As a form of functional diversity, spinal cord injury expressed by tetraplegia is one of the most serious events that can impact people, affecting their family and socioeconomic life. The type of care relationship established in these cases will be essential for preserving autonomy. The objective of this study was to understand how care relationships influence the autonomy of people with tetraplegia and the dynamics that trigger practices of autonomy violation, maintenance and promotion. This research is inspired by problematization as (...) a methodology using the Arch of Maguerez as an analytical approach strategy that enables an engagement between empirical and theoretical data. Some models of care relationships identified in this study either promote or violate autonomy: the protectionist model, based on the biomedical interpretation model of disability and the bodily impediments caused by spinal cord injury; the participatory model, involving the patient's interest in adapting to their new condition of family and community life, seeking to understand the practical aspects of daily life; the sharing model, in which the complicity and understanding of new forms of bodily expression allow the caregiver to be almost an extension of the tetraplegic person's body; the delegate model, which occurs in relationships with professional caregivers; and the emancipatory model, which seeks to empower the patient, highlight potentialities, and encourage autonomy. The key components of these conceptual care models guided the elaboration of hypotheses for intervention with the objective of maintaining and promoting the autonomy of people with tetraplegia through supported care. (shrink)

Ethics in research became a central theme regarding globalization of the scientific development, particularly when related to the socioeconomic conditions of the countries involved as partners in research protocols, production of inputs and of knowledge. The objective of this paper is to analyze the sources of information about ethics in research present at Scientific Electronic Library Online. Methodologically, this is an exploratory study was carried out by the systematic analysis of the literature available. The search engines retrieved 885 summaries, from (...) which 170 were analyzed. The first publication was dated from 1996 and it could be identified the mention to international documents about research in humans. Since 2002 there has been an increase of publications related to the gain of legitimacy of the topic in academy. As a conclusion, although the amount is not huge, the manuscripts presented great impact as they stimulated debates and produced scientific knowledge on the topic. It can be observed that ethics in research has outcome the biomedical field, being inserted in other fields of knowledge. (shrink)

This book is a long-term history of optics, from early Greek theories of vision to the nineteenth-century victory of the wave theory of light. It is a clear and richly illustrated synthesis of a large amount of literature, and a reliable and efficient guide for anyone who wishes to enter this domain.

The main contention of this article is that current approaches to ontological emergence are not comprehensive, in that they share a common bias that make them blind to some conceptual space available to emergence. In this article, I devise an alternative perspective on ontological emergence called ‘flat emergence’, which is free of such a bias. The motivation is twofold: not only does flat emergence constitute another viable way to fulfill the initial emergentist promise, but it also allows for making sense (...) of some emergence ascriptions that traditional accounts are unable to accommodate. (shrink)

This book recounts a few ingenious attempts to derive physical theories by reason only, beginning with Descartes' geometric construction of the world, and finishing with recent derivations of quantum mechanics from natural axioms.

This article presents, an analysis of the opinions of assurance providers regarding the quality and the limitations of sustainability reports and their recommendations to improve them using the Global Reporting Initiative as a framework. The qualitative content analysis of 301 assurance statements for sustainability reports from mining and energy companies provides a comprehensive view of the main outcomes of the assurance process, including its limitations, the application of the GRI principles and suggestions for improving sustainability reports. Taking into account the (...) perceptions of practitioners a priori well informed on the quality of sustainability reports—namely assurance providers—this paper complements the current literature on sustainability reporting and its assurance, including critical approaches that question the reliability of sustainability reports, stakeholder engagement and the accountability of reporting practices. This study contributes to the debates surrounding the quality of sustainability reports, the added value of assurance statements and the ethical issues underlying the assurance process. It also contains important practical implications for auditors, standardization organizations and stakeholders. (shrink)

This study examines to what extent different types of CEOs in family firms influence external and internal stakeholder-related CSP as compared to CEOs in nonfamily firms. Linking family CEO and nonfamily CEO with CSR outcomes, we provide evidence that family CEOs are positively associated with both external and internal CSR, whereas nonfamily CEOs within family firms tend to be negatively associated with both external and internal CSR. We show that the incumbent CEO’s age moderates the above relationships, indicating the existence (...) of shifting family priorities and suggesting a tendency toward CSR conformity as the salience of succession concerns increases. (shrink)

Sixteen years after Kim’s seminal paper offering a welcomed analysis of the emergence concept, I propose in this paper a needed extension of Kim’s work that does more justice to the actual diversity of emergentism. Rather than defining emergence as a monolithic third way between reductive physicalism and substance pluralism, and this through a conjunction of supervenience and irreducibility, I develop a comprehensive taxonomy of the possible varieties of emergence in which each taxon—theoretical, explanatory and causal emergence—is properly identified and (...) defined. This taxonomy has two advantages. First, it is unificatory in the sense that the taxa it contains derive from a common unity principle, which consequently constitutes the very hallmark of emergentism. Second, it can be shown that the emergence taxa it contains are able to meet the challenges that are commonly considered as being the hot topics on the emergentists’ agenda, namely the positivity, the consistency and the triviality/liberality challenges. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to explore, through a qualitative study of small regional airports, how sustainability issues are taken into account in remote small- and medium-sized enterprises. Based on 42 semi-structured interviews conducted with managers of small regional Canadian airports and experts in this area, this study shows the quasi-absence of specific measures for sustainability, despite the seriousness of environmental issues, which tend to be subordinated to economic priorities and operational activities. The paper contributes to the literature on (...) sustainability in SMEs by focusing on passive organizations located in remote areas and the complex reasons underlying their lack or absence of environmental commitment. The paper sheds more light on the essential role of stakeholders in providing the resources and skills necessary for the development of sustainability initiatives in passive SMEs. The study’s managerial contributions and implications for stakeholders are also discussed. (shrink)