Two fundamental business ethics issues that repeatedly surface in the academic literature relate to business's role in the development of public policy [Suarez, S. L.: 2000, Does Business Learn? (The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI); Roberts, R. W. and D. D. Bobek: 2004, Accounting, Organizations and Society 29(5-6), 565-590] and its role in responsibly managing the natural environment [Newton, L.: 2005, Business Ethics and the Natural Environment (Blackwell Publishing, Oxford)]. When studied together, researchers often examine if, and (...) how, corporations influence environmental policy decisions. Drawing from literatures on corporate political activity, corporate social and environmental performance, and corporate environmental disclosure, we develop and empirically examine two research questions concerning the relations between corporate political expenditures, environmental performance, and environmental disclosure. The questions are: (1) Do corporations that are poorer environmental performers spend more on political activities than their better-performing counterparts? (2) Is there an association between corporations' spending on political activities and the extent of their financial report environmental disclosures? We investigated these questions through analyses of data we gathered on a sample consisting of 119 U.S. environmentally sensitive firms for the 2001-2002 election cycle. After controlling for firm size and specific industry effects, our tests reveal a significant, inverse relationship between firm environmental performance and political spending. This is consistent with the notion that U.S. firms with relatively poorer environmental performance records engage more intensely in corporate political activities as part of their overall strategic management of their relationship with the state. In addition, a significant and positive association between the amount of political spending and the extent of environmental disclosure suggests that environmental disclosure and political spending are both proactive, complementary tactics to strategically manage public policy pressure. If corporations' strategies are intentionally designed to unreasonably limit their environmental responsibilities or to misrepresent firm environmental performance, then we argue that these activities reflect a significant lapse in ethical conduct. (shrink)

Properties sometimes attributed to the “particle” aspect of a neutron, e.g., mass and magnetic moment, cannot straightforwardly be regarded in the Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics as localized at the hypothetical position of the particle. This is shown by examining a series of effects in neutron interferometry. A related thought-experiment also provides a variation of a recent demonstration that which-way detectors can appear to behave anomolously in the Bohm theory.

The book called 'The Consolation of Philosophy' was throughout the Middle Ages, and down to the beginnings of the modern epoch in the sixteenth century, the scholar's familiar companion. Few books have exercised a wider influence in their time. It has been translated into every European tongue, and into English nearly a dozen times, from King Alfred's paraphrase to the translations of Lord Preston, Causton, Ridpath, and Duncan, in the eighteenth century.

Festschrift volume in honour of Mohd. Sabir Hussain, b. 1935.

J. S. Bell's classic 1966 review paper on the foundations of quantum mechanics led directly to the Bell nonlocality theorem. It is not widely appreciated that the review paper contained the basic ingredients needed for a nonlocality result which holds in certain situations where the Bell inequality is not violated. We present in this paper a systematic formulation and evaluation of an argument due to Stairs in 1983, which establishes a nonlocality result based on the Bell-Kochen-Specker “paradox” in quantum mechanics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:98 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY quoted in great numbers. The other is Kern's philosophical competence and his skill in handling complex problems. The book is divided into two parts. Part I gives the reader a brief historical survey of Husserl's changing attitudes toward Kant and the neo-Kantians (especially Natorp and ttickert). Indicating the influences which shaped Husserl's thinking during the years of his studies at the universities of Berlin and (...) Vienna, Kern traces Husserl's development throughout his career as a thinker and a writer. But this survey (pp. 1-50) provides merely the general framework within which the intensive and detailed analyses of Part II (pp. 51-424) must be viewed. Two appendices, an extensive bibliography, and a name index complete the work. The detailed discussions of Part II are, of course, the really important contributions to our understanding of Husserl's relation to Kant and the Kantians. As was to be expected, Husserl found in Kant's works formulations of problems and profound insights that he regarded as crucial to any philosophy. At times, however, Husserl was sure that because of mistaken assumptions, insufficiently clarified presuppositions, and methodological deficiencies Kant himself had not fully realized his intentions. Still, it is evident that, in time, Husserl found himself increasingly in sympathy with Kant's postion. In fact, in the end he used Kant's term "transcendental idealism" to designate his own philosophy. In the course of this development, however, Husserl's thinking underwent various changes and reversals. The detailed analyses of them make fascinating reading and are most revelatory of Husserl's own struggles with obtrnsive problems. In Chapter z of Part II (pp. 55-134), the author discusses Husserl's criticism of Kant's positionwKant's conception of the apriori, his strict separation of "sensibility" and "understanding," his presupposition of a "natural world view," his failure to ask sufficiently radical questions concerning the foundations of knowledge, his lack of a proper method of analysis, and his "psychologism." In the course of his own development, however, Husserl modified and, in some respects, even reversed his criticisms of Kant. Chapters ~, m, re and v of Part II, dealing with problems of formal and transcendental logic, with the possibihty of metaphysics on Kantian principles, and with the complex problems of subjectivity, bear witness to the fact that Huseerl often changed his opinion of Kant's work. Of special interest, however, is Chapter vz. It is devoted to a comparison of Husserl's and Kant's "transcendental idealism" and reveals most strikingly the similarities of the two positions. The chapter dealing with Husserl's relation to l~atorp and Rickert, interesting in its own way, is essentially only a footnote, as it were, to the rest of the hook; but it completes the survey. As I said before, this book gives us not only a remarkable insight into the various phases of development in Husserl's thinking and is therefore indispensable to a real understanding of Husserl's intentions and achievements; it also lets us see Kant's philosophy in a new and revealing perspective--both as to its value and it deficiencies. Only a detailed study can do justice to this book. W. H. WF~mMF~STZR Florida State University Ludwig Wittgenstein. Zettel. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. (University of California Press and Basil Blackwell, 1967. Pp. v + 124 [German and English on facing pages]. $6.95.) The paragraphs in this volume, the editors tell us, were collected in a box-file by Wittgenstein from a period beginning in 1929,though the bulk of them come from typescripts dictated between 1945 and 1948. The editors credit Peter Geach with the major work of arrangement. Whoever is responsible did a superlative job, a remark that holds as well for Miss Anscombe's translation. The editors and Mr. Geach have performed an invaluable service to those interested BOOK REVIEWS 99 in Wittgenstein and--quite apart from Wittgensteinian exegesis--in the problems treated in these pages. The philosophical topics are those of the Investigations (PI) and The Remarks on the Foundations o] Mathematir~ (RFM)---e.g., the attack on... (shrink)