This paper considers discussions of the work of Alasdair MacIntyre in management literature. It argues that management scholars who have attempted to appropriate his After Virtue as a supportive text for conventional business ethics do so only by misreading or by ignoring his other work. It shows that MacIntyre does not argue for a reformed capitalism in which individual virtue overcomes institutional vice. Rather he argues that capitalist businesses are inherently vicious and that therefore individual virtue cannot be realised within (...) them. The job of the virtuous is to resist them.2. The paper first presents an account of MacIntyre’s position on management and introduces some of the critical and supportive uses of his work in management scholarship. It focuses on two papers3 typical of the approach taken by conventional business ethicists to his work. These have attempted to deploy concepts developed by MacIntyre while denying the account of management and organisation of which they form a part. The paper provides some tentative hypotheses as to why management scholars have approached MacIntyre in this way. It argues that these attempted appropriations not only have failed but also must fail as conceptual coherence is sacrificed when the account within which those concepts make sense is denied.4. (shrink)

This chapter compares simple predicates of personal taste (PPTs) such as tasty and beautiful with their complex counterparts (eg tastes good, looks beautiful). I argue that the former differ from the latter along two dimensions. Firstly, simple PPTs are individual-level predicates, whereas complex ones are stage-level. Secondly, covert Experiencer arguments of simple PPTs obligatorily receive a generic interpretation; by contrast, the covert Experiencer of a complex PPT can receive a generic, bound variable or referential interpretation. I provide an analysis of (...) these facts based on a novel proposal about the licensing of individual-level predicates (the ‘Licensing Condition on ILPs’). This condition states that all covert pronominal arguments of an individual-level predicate must be bound by the generic operator. Finally, I show that generic construal of the Experiencer is a necessary condition for faultless disagreement. This is evidence in favour of treatments of subjective meaning that appeal to genericity, and against relativism about PPTs. (shrink)

Since the publication of Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue in 1981, tensions inherent to the relationship between morally educative practices and the institutions that house them have been widely noted. We propose a taxonomy of the ways in which the pursuit of external goods by institutions undermines the pursuit of the internal goods of practices. These comprise substitution, where the institution replaces the pursuit of one type of good by another; frustration, where opportunities for practitioners to discover goods or develop new (...) standards of excellence are frustrated by institutional priorities and resource allocation; and injustice, which undermines the integrity of relationships within the organization and/or with partners. These threats, though analytically distinct, are often mutually reinforcing. This conceptual contribution is illustrated both by the extant literature and by a novel context, the three-ring circus. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article deploys Alasdair MacIntyre’s Aristotelian virtue ethics, in which meaningfulness is understood to supervene on human functioning, to bring empirical and ethical accounts of meaningful work into dialogue. Whereas empirical accounts have presented the experience of meaningful work either in terms of agents’ orientation to work or as intrinsic to certain types of work, ethical accounts have largely assumed the latter formulation and subjected it to considerations of distributive justice. This article critiques both the empirical and ethical literatures from (...) the standpoint of MacIntyre’s account of the relationship between the development of virtuous dispositions and participation in work that is productive of goods internal to practices. This reframing suggests new directions for empirical and ethical enquiries. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFinance may suffer from institutional deformations that subordinate its distinctive goods to the pursuit of external goods, but this should encourage attempts to reform the institutionalization of finance rather than to reject its potential for virtuous business activity. This article argues that finance should be regarded as a domain-relative practice. Alongside management, its moral status thereby varies with the purposes it serves. Hence, when practitioners working in finance facilitate projects that create common goods, it allows them to develop virtues. This (...) argument applies MacIntyre’s widely acknowledged account of the relationship between practices and the development of virtues while questioning some of his claims about finance. It also takes issue with extant accounts of particular financial functions that have failed to identify the distinctive goods of financial practice. (shrink)

In a series of papers Geoff Moore has applied Alasdair MacIntyre’s much cited work to generate a virtue-based business ethics. Central to this project is Moore’s argument that business falls under MacIntyre’s concept of ‘practice’. This move attempts to overcome MacIntyre’s reputation for being ‘anti-business’ while maintaining his framework for evaluating social action and replaces MacIntyre’s hostility to management with a conception of managers as institutional practitioners (craftsmen). I argue however that this move has not been justified. Given the importance (...) MacIntyre places on the protection of practices, the result is that much of Moore’s contribution is misplaced. Business cannot name a practice but business institutions certainly do house practices. The task then is to try to understand the circumstances under which practices might flourish and those under which they might founder in a business context. This is not aided by Moore’s redescription of all businesses as practices. (shrink)

This paper presents novel data regarding the logophoric pronoun in Ewe. We show that, contrary to what had been assumed in the absence of the necessary fieldwork, Ewe logophors are not obligatorily interpreted de se. We discuss the prima facie rather surprising nature of this discovery given the assumptions that de se construals arise via binding of the pronoun by an abstraction operator in the left periphery of the clausal complement of an attitude predicate, and that logophors are elements that (...) are obligatorily bound by such abstractors. We show that this approach can be reconciled with these facts given the additional assumption that elements that are ‘de se’ bound can interact with the concept generator variables posited by Percus and Sauerland to derive de re interpretations of embedded nominals. The proposed set-up has consequences for our understanding of puzzles raised by Heim and Sharvit concerning binding-theoretic effects with de re elements, and for the derivation of the obligatorily de se interpretation of controlled PRO. (shrink)

This paper introduces ‘Virtue and Virtuousness: When will the twain ever meet?’ a special edition of Business Ethics: A European Review. The Call for Papers invited contributions that could inform the relationship between organisational virtuousness, as conceptualised by positive organisation studies, and the classical conception of virtues pertaining to individual women and men. While the resources of particular virtue traditions – Aristotelian, Catholic, Confucian, and the like – could inform their own debates as to whether virtue extends beyond individuals, the (...) debate between virtue traditions and positive organisation studies has a different dimension. The question is whether the claims of positive social sciences as such are compatible with those of any virtue tradition. We argue that positive social science and virtue traditions are indeed rivals such that adherence to the claims of the one precludes adherence to the other. Resolution to such conflicts requires that one tradition is able to resolve questions that exhaust the resources of the other. This paper suggests that at least one area of incoherence in the findings of positive social sciences can be resolved by virtue traditions, and introduces the remaining papers in the special edition. (shrink)

What can be learned from a small scale study of managerial work in a highly marginal and under-researched working community? This article uses the ‘goods–virtues–practices–institutions’ framework to examine the managerial work of owner–directors of traditional circuses. Inspired by MacIntyre’s arguments for the necessity of a narrative understanding of the virtues, interviews explored how British and Irish circus directors accounted for their working lives. A purposive sample was used to select subjects who had owned and managed traditional touring circuses for at (...) least 15 years, a period in which the economic and reputational fortunes of traditional circuses have suffered badly. This sample enabled the research to examine the self-understanding of people who had, at least on the face of it, exhibited the virtue of constancy. The research contributes to our understanding of the role of the virtues in organizations by presenting evidence of an intimate relationship between the virtue of constancy and a ‘calling’ work orientation. This enhances our understanding of the virtues that are required if management is exercised as a domain-related practice. (shrink)

My purpose in this essay is to describe and define the ways in which Afro-American women intellectuals, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, theorized about the possibilities and limits of patriarchal power through its manipulation of racialized and gendered social categories and practices. The essay is especially directed toward two academic constituencies: the practitioners of Afro-American cultural analysis and of feminist historiography and theory. The dialogue with each has its own peculiar form, characterized by its own specific history; (...) yet both groups are addressed in an assertion of difference, of alterity, and in a voice characterized by an anger dangerously self-restrained. For it is not in the nature of Caliban to curse; rather, like Caliban, the black woman has learned from her behaviour of her master and mistress that if accommodation results in a patronizing loosening of her bonds, liberation will be more painful. Hazel V. Carby is assistant professor of English at Wesleyan University. She is the coauthor of the Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in Seventies Britain and the author of Uplifting as They Write: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. (shrink)

We tested the hypothesis that “good feelings”—the central element of subjective well-being—are associated with interdependence and interpersonal engagement of the self in Japan, but with independence and interpersonal disengagement of the self in the United States. Japanese and American college students (total N = 913) reported how frequently they experienced various emotional states in daily life. In support of the hypothesis, the reported frequency of general positive emotions (e.g. calm, elated) was most closely associated with the reported frequency of interpersonally (...) engaged positive emotions (e.g. friendly feelings) in Japan, but with the reported frequency of interpersonally disengaged positive emotions (e.g. pride) in the United States. Further, for Americans the reported frequency of experience was considerably higher for positive emotions than for negative emotions, but for Japanese it was higher for engaged emotions than for disengaged emotions. Implications for cultural constructions of emotion in general and subjective well-being in particular are discussed. (shrink)

It has been claimed that ‘virtuous structures’ can foster moral agency in organisations. We investigate this in the context of employee involvement in corporate philanthropy, an activity whose moral status has been disputed. Employing Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of moral agency, we analyse the results of eight focus groups with employees engaged in corporate philanthropy in an employee-owned retailer, the John Lewis Partnership. Within this organisational context, Employee–Partners’ moral agency was evidenced in narrative accounts of their engagement in philanthropic activities and (...) in their disputes about the moral status of corporate philanthropy. (shrink)

The book explores and explains the relationship between law and ethics in the context of medically related research in order to provide a practical guide to understanding for members of research ethics committees (RECs), professionals involved with medical research and those with an academic interest in the subject.

The author uses a case history to compare the approaches taken by social care teams in engaging with parents whose care of their children has been called into question. As organising secretary for Parent Aid, a voluntary support service for Essex families who had or were likely to become clients of Social Services, she drew up a list of five keys points that would improve working relations with parents in child protection and court situations and relates them to the ethical (...) framework; write reports that are both factual and objective ; take as much time to build a relationship with the parents as you do with the child; remember to treat gossip with extreme caution; donât back off from parents just because they seem hostile; and try to be as honest and reliable as possible. The examples used to illustrate these points are said to demonstrate the five areas where parents most often take objection to Social Servicesâ approach; the same areas that are most likely to cause parentsâ anxiety and anger to harden into belligerence. The author goes on to show that all of these points can be found embedded in the Code of Practice for Social Workers. (shrink)

We relate Popper functions to regular and perfectly additive such non-Archimedean probability functions by means of a representation theorem: every such non-Archimedean probability function is infinitesimally close to some Popper function, and vice versa. We also show that regular and perfectly additive non-Archimedean probability functions can be given a lexicographic representation. Thus Popper functions, a specific kind of non-Archimedean probability functions, and lexicographic probability functions triangulate to the same place: they are in a good sense interchangeable.

This paper considers the resources MacIntyre provides for undertaking empirical work using his goodsvirtues-practices-institutions framework alongside the attendant challenges of doing such work. It focuses on methods that might be employed in judging the extent to which observed social arrangements may conform to the standards required by a practice-embodying institution. It concludes by presenting the outline of an empirical project exploring at a music facility in the North East of England, The Sage Gateshead.

Machine generated contents note: Table of Cases xi -- Table of legislation xv -- Introduction: Medicine Men, Outlaws and Voluntary Euthanasia 1 -- 1. To Kill or not to Kill; is that the Euthanasia Question? 9 -- Introduction-Why Euthanasia? 9 -- Dead or alive? 16 -- Euthanasia as Homicide 25 -- Euthanasia as Death with Dignity 29 -- 2. Euthanasia and Clinically assisted Death: from Caring to Killing? 35 -- Introduction 35 -- The Indefinite Continuation of Palliative Treatment 38 -- (...) Withholding or Withdrawing Treatment 44 -- The Principle of Double Effect 54 -- Physician Assisted Suicide 60 -- Mercy Killing 64 -- Conclusions 66 -- 3. Consent to Treatment but Not to Death 69 -- Introduction-Why Consent? 69 -- Without Consent 70 -- Killing and Consent 73 -- Valid Consent, Freely Given? 74 -- Old Enough to Consent 80 -- Deciding for Others 82 -- Conclusions-A Consent Too Far? 93 -- 4. Autonomy, Self-determination and Self-destruction 95 -- Introduction-Autonomous Choices 95 -- Choosing to Die-Suicide and Autonomy 100 -- Suicidal Intentions 107 -- Autonomous Clinical Discretion 110 -- Deciding to Live or Die-Whose Decision? 112 -- 5. Living Wills and the Will to Die 115 -- Introduction 115 -- I Know My Will 118 -- This is My Will 121 -- I Will Decide 128 -- Will My Will be Done? 134 -- Where There's a Will 137 -- Conclusions 143 -- 6. Is Euthanasia a Dignified Death? 145 -- Introduction-Why Dignity? 145 -- Needing Dignity 146 -- Finding Dignity 149 -- Achieving Dignity in Dying 151 -- Dignifying Death 157 -- 7. Conclusions: Dignified Life, Dignified Death and Dignified Law 165 -- Select Bibliography 175 -- Index 183. (shrink)

It is a somewhat vexed question whether presuppositions are always accommodated into the global context of utterance of the sentence, or whether they may sometimes be accommodated into a local context - the context of some subsentential constituent. Von Fintel (2008) argues that there is no local accommodation. He shows that presuppositions in the scope of universally quantified sentences, which have traditionally been handled via local accommodation (eg Heim 1983), can be accounted for by assuming that conversational participants select a (...) domain of quantification such that every relevant element of it has the property required by the presupposition in the scope. It is shown that this domain selection mechanism cannot account for a related set of data involving presupposition triggers in the restrictor rather than scope of the universal. We also discuss the relationship between quantified sentences and conditionals, and general consequences for the theory of presupposition accommodation. (shrink)

Numerous recommendations and guidelines aim to improve the quality, timeliness and transparency of medical publications. However, these guidelines use ambiguous language that can be challenging to interpret, particularly for speakers of English as a second language. Cultural expectations within the Asia-Pacific region raise additional challenges and several studies have suggested that awareness and application of ethical publication practices in the Asia-Pacific region is relatively low compared with other regions. However, guidance on applying ethical publication practice guidelines in the Asia-Pacific region (...) is lacking. This commentary aims to improve publication practices in the Asia-Pacific region by providing guidance on applying the 10 principles of the Good Publication Practice 3 (GPP3) guidelines and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria for authorship. Recommendations are provided for encore presentations, applying the ICMJE authorship criteria in the context of regional cultural expectations, and the role of study sponsors and professional medical writers. Ongoing barriers to compliance with guidelines are also highlighted, and additional guidance is provided to support authors submitting manuscripts for publication. The roles of regional journals, regulatory authorities and professional bodies in improving practices are also discussed. (shrink)

This extended literature review proposes to present the trends in the therapeutic alliance, outcomes, and measures in the last decade within the premises of individual cognitive behaviour therapy and its innovations, used as an interventional measure in the context of child and adolescent mental health setting. A brief background of the rationale for conducting this literature search is presented at the start. This is followed by the methodology and design which incorporates the inclusion and exclusion criteria and the basis for (...) the same. The critical appraisal of the primary studies is presented in the literature review section with a brief description of the summary features of the studies in the study tables followed by the results and discussion of the study findings. To summarise, the literature review of primary studies conducted in the last decade demonstrates the need for further research to be conducted both in the field of CBT in children and therapeutic alliance, competence, and therapy outcomes, integrating perspectives in child development, carer alliance, and the social construct theory in children, to allow for further innovations in CBT in the context of increasing challenges in the current times of exponentially developing technology and its utility without compromising the quality of therapy. In conclusion, recommendations are made as a guideline for future studies and research in this field. (shrink)

Calls for the inclusion of women in clinical trials raise the obvious question: why have sponsors excluded them? The answer most often given is one tragically evocative word: Thalidomide. The tragedies of the children born with seal limbs because their mothers took this over-the-counter sleeping pill and cure for morning sickness showed that, contrary to previous perceptions, the placenta could not be depended upon to filter out toxins before they reached the fetus. The specter of birth defects spawned sponsors’ fears (...) of a variety of catastrophes which contributed to closing the doors of clinical trials for women.This paper will not argue that the possibility of birth defects arising from the ingestion of an experimental drug does not exist. Sadly, scientists do not yet have the ability to predict which drugs will cause birth defects. Rather, it will argue that case law does not provide a basis for sponsor liability when a woman gives informed consent and the regulations governing clinical trials are followed. (shrink)

Calls for the inclusion of women in clinical trials raise the obvious question: why have sponsors excluded them? The answer most often given is one tragically evocative word: Thalidomide. The tragedies of the children born with seal limbs because their mothers took this over-the-counter sleeping pill and cure for morning sickness showed that, contrary to previous perceptions, the placenta could not be depended upon to filter out toxins before they reached the fetus. The specter of birth defects spawned sponsors’ fears (...) of a variety of catastrophes which contributed to closing the doors of clinical trials for women.This paper will not argue that the possibility of birth defects arising from the ingestion of an experimental drug does not exist. Sadly, scientists do not yet have the ability to predict which drugs will cause birth defects. Rather, it will argue that case law does not provide a basis for sponsor liability when a woman gives informed consent and the regulations governing clinical trials are followed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Fragments SARTRE AND SEXISM by Hazel E. Barnes Insofar as is possible, I want to consider here not Sartre the man but Sartre the philosopher—or, more precisely, the philosophy of Sartre. To askwhether Sartre's long association with Simone de Beauvoir was a model of human relations at their best or an example ofbad faith on both sides is not to my present purpose. Nor are his (...) numerous, sometimes rather unsavory affairs with other women. Of course, the man and his work cannot be separated entirely. Sartre himselfadmitted that despite his wholehearted support of women's liberation, there remained in him vestiges of ingrained male chauvinism which he found difficult to eradicate.1 We should expect to find echoes of these in his writing, and we do—not in the ideas but in the imagery and rhetoric, and these not only in the fiction but in the philosophical works. The grossest example is the well-known passage in which Sartre discusses the "existential meanings" ofslime and holes.2 Slime, the great "Antivalue," is "a moist and feminine sucking" and "a sickly-sweet feminine revenge." Moreover—and this is even worse—Sartre allows his meditation on holes to lead by a process of his own associations to the idea ofa woman's sex as "a voracious mouth" evoking the male castration complex. This is not the only place where Sartre links female with notions of a treacherous receptivity. Furthermore, such passages are complemented by others where Sartre employs male sexual imagery to describe the activity of consciousness. Knowledge is portrayed as penetration and conquest. He points out, without objecting, that banal metaphors of everyday language suggest that "knowing" has overtones of carnal knowing and sexual violation: "What is seen is possessed; to see is to deflower.... The unknown object is given as immaculate, as Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 340-347 Hazel E. Barnes341 virgin, comparable to a whiteness.... Man has not yet 'snatched' its secret away from it.... Figures of speech... like that of the 'unviolated depths of nature' suggest the idea ofsexual intercourse more plainly."3 There can be no doubt that a full investigation ofthe linguistic codes in Sartre's writing would reveal him to be a man comfortably ensconced in a world of male dominance. Yet Collins and Pierce in their excellent article, "Holes and Slime: Sexism in Sartre's Psychoanalysis," even as diey deplore Sartre's sexist language and his failure to depict any fictional female characters as embodiments of existential authenticity, admit that these weaknesses are at variance with the central philosophy ofBeing and Nothingness and not derived logically from it.4 I agree, and diat is why I hold that the sexism is there but is contingent, relevant to our appraisal of die writer but not essential to ourjudgment on the philosophy and its potential value as a support to feminism. In saying this I am partially making the sort of distinction employed by Jean Grimshaw, who points out that a philosophy built on male assumptions may exclude women essentially as with Kant, inconsistendy as with Aristode, or inadvertendy as with Descartes.5 The difference with Sartre is that in spite of the occasional lapse into traditional male linguistic tropes, the work, like its author, is notjust theoretically egalitarian but concerned explicidy with forms of oppression and the problems of disfavored groups. More than that of any other male writer, Sartre's philosophy seems to me to demand feminism as one of its natural consequences. That diis has been historically true is shown, ofcourse, by the fact that Simone de Beauvoir used Sartrean existentialism as the foundation for her own original analysis of women's situation in TL· Second Sex. The irony is diat this book, which played a key role in launching the movement for women's liberation throughout the world, has been adversely criticized by later feminists precisely on the grounds of its Sartrean orientation, along with Beauvoir's emphasis on women's right to share the things men value rather than to challenge those values. Beauvoir herself later recognized that the book did not go far enough, but she never renounced what she had written there. My claim... (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss specific epistemic injustices suffered by gender minorities in the Philippines. We also show that societal changes have been evident throughout the years. We review some progressive Philippine Catholic communities' sustainable development efforts toward gender equality or toward the eradication of discrimination, marginalisation, and violence based on a person's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression (SOGIE). Despite these epistemic injustices, we reveal that there are ways by which gender disorientations may be disrupted by progressive Philippine (...) Catholic groups and communities in the era of contemporary Christianities. (shrink)

The Demonic in the Political Thought of Eusebius of Caesarea explores how Eusebius of Caesarea's ideas about demons interacted with and helped to shape his thought on other topics, particularly political topics Hazel Johannessen builds on and complements recent work on early Christian and early modern demonology. Eusebius' political thought has long drawn the attention of scholars who have identified in some of his works the foundations of later Byzantine theories of kingship. However, Eusebius' political thought has not previously (...) been examined in the light of his views on demons. Moreover, despite frequent references to demons throughout many of Eusebius' works, there has been no comprehensive study of Eusebius' views on demons, until now, as expressed throughout a range of his works.The originality of this study lies both in an initial examination of Eusebius' views on demons and their place in his cosmology, and in the application of the insights derived from this to consideration of his political thought. As a result of this new perspective, Johannessen challenges scholars' traditional characterization of Eusebius as a triumphal optimist. Instead, she draws attention to his concerns about a continuing demonic threat, capable of disrupting humankind's salvation, and presents Eusebius as a more cautious figure than the one familiar to late antique scholarship. (shrink)

This paper considers the way in which Christian Religious Education (RE) teachers articulate the difficulties and challenges they experience both in school and with their peers as they navigate their way through their Initial Teacher Education. The paper offers a unique exploration of the relationship between elements of the three discourses of faith identity, emerging professional identity and the requirements of a performative teacher training context. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 184 student RE teachers across three universities. It became clear (...) that all students interpreted the Standards and policy guidelines ambiguously, as being value-laden or value-free. The idea of the 'good teacher' as someone who was, by very definition, neutral and objective immediately made the faith position of students problematic. This is a key point in relation to the notion of performativity and education and the disproportionate impact it made on Christian students. It appeared as though many Christian students were concerned to stress that although their faith was personally important for them it was not something that contributed to their understanding of a 'good teacher'. (shrink)