BackgroundThe principles of informed consent, confidentiality and privacy are often neglected during patient care in developing countries. We assessed the degree to which doctors in Lahore adhere to these principles during outpatient consultations.Material & MethodThe study was conducted at medical out-patient departments (OPDs) of two tertiary care hospitals (one public and one private hospital) of Lahore, selected using multi-stage sampling. 93 patients were selected from each hospital. Doctors' adherence to the principles of informed consent, privacy and confidentiality was observed through (...) client flow analysis performed by trained personnel. Overall patient perception was also assessed regarding these practices and was compared with the assessment made by our data collectors.ResultsSome degree of informed consent was obtained from only 9.7% patients in the public hospital and 47.8% in the private hospital. 81.4% of patients in the public hospital and 88.4% in the private hospital were accorded at least some degree of privacy. Complete informational confidentiality was maintained only in 10.8% and 35.5% of cases in public & private hospitals respectively. Informed consent and confidentiality were better practiced in the private compared to the public hospital (two-sample t-test > 2, p value < 0.05). There was marked disparity between the patients' perspective of these ethical practices and the assessment of our trained data collectors.ConclusionObservance of medical ethics is inadequate in hospitals of Lahore. Doctors should be imparted formal training in medical ethics and national legislation on medical ethics is needed. Patients should be made aware of their rights to medical ethics. (shrink)

While prophethood is the backbone of the Islamic tradition and an uncompromised tenet of faith, the impact of modernity with its ambivalent status afforded to the prophet and institution of prophethood shook many Muslim scholars. Through analysis of these modern debates on prophethood in Islam, this book situates Muhammad Iqbal's (1877-1938) and Said Nursi's (1877-1960) discourses within it and assesses their implications on the modern period. This book introduces the 'what, who and how' of the prophets in the Islamic tradition. (...) It unveils the rich Islamic literature of both the classical and modern periods and analyses the construction of their philosophies and theologies. Concise in both historical and textual analysis, this book makes an important contribution to our understanding of contemporary debates on prophecy and prophethood in Islam, and will be of great interest to postgraduate students and researchers of Islam, religious studies, medieval studies and contemporary studies of Islam and religion. (shrink)

Choudhury, elected president of the General Assembly in 1986, reviews the changes within the UN and reasserts its enduring role as a global instrument of peace.

This Festschrift honours Arkoun's scholarship, bringing together the contributions of eleven scholars of history, religious studies and philosophy. It offers a comprehensive selection of critical engagements with Arkoun's work, reflecting on his influence on contemporary thinking about Islam and its ideological, philosophical and theological dimensions.

This paper is devoted to an analysis of Ma‘ruf ar-Rusafi’s work The Personality of Mohammed or the Elucidation of the Holy Enigma. While ar-Rusafi is traditionally known as a poet who combines great evocative power with a superb mastery of language and strict adherence to classical form, this canonical image is seriously complicated by the iconoclastic character of this book, completed in 1933 but unpublished until 2002. It totally rejects the orthodox theory of prophecy as passive transmission, and insists on (...) the historic development behind orthodoxy. Rusafi puts forward a way of conceiving the Prophet’s mission that he considers more faithful to the sources and in greater conformity with the elementary requirements of reason. He proposes a “disenraptured” or “demythologized” reading of the Prophet’s life and work. The author considers ar-Rusafi’s book as the most serious assault on orthodoxy that has been launched on it from within in modern times. (shrink)

Abstract In the present article, we provide a critical overview of the emerging field of ‘neuroeducation’ also frequently referred to as ‘mind, brain and education’ or ‘educational neuroscience’. We describe the growing energy behind linking education and neuroscience in an effort to improve learning and instruction. We explore reasons behind such drives for interdisciplinary research. Reviewing some of the key advances in neuroscientific studies that have come to bear on neuroeducation, we discuss recent evidence on the brain circuits underlying reading, (...) mathematical abilities as well as the potential to use neuroscience to design training programs of neurocognitive functions, such as working memory, that are expected to have effects on overall brain function. Throughout this review we describe how such research can enrich our understanding of the acquisition of academic skills. Furthermore, we discuss the potential for modern brain imaging methods to serve as diagnostic tools as well as measures of the effects of educational interventions. Throughout this discussion, we draw attention to limitations of the available evidence and propose future avenues for research. We also discuss the challenges that face this growing discipline. Specifically, we draw attention to unrealistic expectations for the immediate impact of neuroscience on education, methodological difficulties, and lack of interdisciplinary training, which results in poor communication between educators and neuroscientists. We point out that there should be bi-directional and reciprocal interactions between both disciplines of neuroscience and education, in which research originating from each of these traditions is considered to be compelling in its own right. While there are many obstacles that lie in the way of a productive field of neuroeducation, we contend that there is much reason to be optimistic and that the groundwork has been laid to advance this field in earnest. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-13 DOI 10.1007/s12152-011-9119-3 Authors Daniel Ansari, Numerical Cognition Laboratory, Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, Westminster Hall, London, ON N6A 3K7, Canada Bert De Smedt, Parenting and Special Education Research Group, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium Roland H. Grabner, Institute for Behavioral Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Journal Neuroethics Online ISSN 1874-5504 Print ISSN 1874-5490. (shrink)

Integrated reporting encourages firms to provide information on their environmental, social and governance activities. Studies on this area in developing countries concentrate on the environmental and social aspects of the phenomenon, thus neglecting the governance disclosure element. Given this, the study examined the disclosure practices of the governance element of integrated reporting among Ghanaian listed firms. The content of 410 annual reports of 33 firms was examined based on a checklist of 18 disclosure items. Moving average scores and Wilcoxon signed-rank (...) test were employed to analyse the data. The study found that governance reporting is receiving attention in Ghana, suggesting that the firms have recognised its potentials. The findings imply that the firms employed governance reporting as a strategy to influence public perception and obtain their acceptance. This study provides insights into how firms address the governance aspect of integrated reporting that is neglected in the literature. (shrink)

The present study explores the influence of challenge stressors on identity orientation directly and via thriving at work and employee investment. Drawing on the broaden–and–build theory of positive emotions, this study proposes challenge stressors as a critical predictor of identity orientation. The purpose of this article is to explore if a particular identity is salient in different contextual factors, and this study suggests that challenge stressors stimulate personal, relational, and collective identities to respond to a situation. The relationships hypothesized in (...) this study were tested using a sample of 225 employees from the banking sector of Pakistan. A time-lagged research design consisting of two waves of data collection was employed. A structural equation modeling technique was used to test the hypotheses regarding the relationship between challenge stressors and identity orientation, including the role of thriving at work and employee investment as intervening mechanisms of this relationship. Results showed that challenge stressors had a significant positive relationship with identity orientation. The results also confirmed the sequential mediation of thriving at work and employee investment in the relationship between challenge stressors and identity orientation. The findings suggest that the positive side of stress as a strength motivates employees for continued self-development. Importantly, challenge stressors enhance employees’ ability to thrive at work and, in turn, they invest in the work more and identify themselves strongly with their organization and work. (shrink)

The role of higher education -- Education and society -- Education and community life -- Education and planned development -- The basis of national unity -- Education and one world -- The crisis of youth -- Universities and national unity -- Universities and the future -- Knowledge and national unity -- Intellectual standards and national progress -- The challenge of a new age -- Indian philosophy of education: -- -Ancient ideals -- -The continuity of tradition -- -At the cross roads (...) -- -Education and national development. (shrink)

This group of essays concentrates on the themes of freedom and democracy. The author argues that the pursuit of scientific culture is dependent on a religious culture, of which he regards Islam as one of the finest examples.

First published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In recent years there have been growing calls for forging greater connections between education and cognitive neuroscience. As a consequence great hopes for the application of empirical research on the human brain to educational problems have been raised. In this article we contend that the expectation that results from cognitive neuroscience research will have a direct and immediate impact on educational practice are shortsighted and unrealistic. Instead, we argue that an infrastructure needs to be created, principally through interdisciplinary training, funding (...) and research programs that allow for bidirectional collaborations between cognitive neuroscientists, educators and educational researchers to grow. We outline several pathways for scaffolding such a basis for the emerging field of ‘Mind, Brain and Education’ to flourish as well as the obstacles that are likely to be encountered along the path. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this study was to explore the indirect effect of intrinsic religiosity and extrinsic religiosity on ethical intention through ethical judgment. A review of the literature shows the need for more research at the intersection of religiosity and ethics, especially in non-Western, highly religious contexts. This research, therefore, addresses the research question: Do intrinsic religiosity and extrinsic religiosity indirectly impact ethical intention through influencing the ethical judgment of management professionals? Data were gathered from members of the Management (...) Association of Pakistan through a questionnaire. Pearson correlation results show the overall trend between the constructs of interest. Multiple regression results show that both intrinsic religiosity and extrinsic religiosity are significant positive predictors of ethical judgment. Ethical judgment was also found to be a significant, positive predictor of ethical intention. The main contribution of the study is evidence that ethical judgment acts as a mediator between religiosity (whether intrinsic or extrinsic) and ethical intention in a non-Western highly religious context. This research also found that intrinsic religiosity impacts ethical intention directly as well as indirectly through ethical judgment, but extrinsic religiosity influences ethical intention only through its effect on ethical judgment. We discuss our results along with practical and research implications, and limitations of this research are highlighted to guide future research. (shrink)

We examine the framing mechanisms used to maintain a cross-sector partnership that was created to address a complex long-term social issue. We study the first 8 years of existence of an XSP that aims to create a market for recycled phosphorus, a nutrient that is critical to crop growth but whose natural reserves have dwindled significantly. Drawing on 27 interviews and over 3000 internal documents, we study the evolution of different frames used by diverse actors in an XSP. We demonstrate (...) the role of framing in helping actors to avoid some of the common pitfalls for an XSP, such as debilitating conflict, and in creating sufficient common ground to sustain collaboration. As opposed to a commonly held assumption in the XSP literature, we find that collaboration in a partnership does not have to result in a unanimous agreement around a single or convergent frame regarding a contentious issue. Rather, successful collaboration between diverse partners can also be achieved by maintaining a productive tension between different frames through “optimal” frame plurality—not excessive frame variety that may prevent agreements from emerging, but the retention of a select few frames and the deletion of others toward achieving a narrowing frame bandwidth. One managerial implication is that resources need not be focussed on reaching a unanimous agreement among all partners on a single mega-frame vis-à-vis a contentious issue, but can instead be used to kindle a sense of unity in diversity that allows sufficient common ground to emerge, despite the variety of actors and their positions. (shrink)

Experience with a group of mechanical engineering seniors at the University of Colorado led to an informal experiment with engineering students in India. An attempt was made to qualitatively gauge the students’ ability to appreciate a worldview different from the standard engineering worldview—that of a mechanical universe. Qualitative differences between organic and mechanical systems were used as a point of discussion. Both groups were found to exhibit distinct thought and behavior patterns which provide important clues for sensitizing engineers to environmental (...) issues in future educational initiatives. Cross-cultural and global dimensions of these initiatives are discussed. (shrink)

Some of the most difficult consultations for an ethics consultant to resolve are those in which the patient is ready to leave the acute-care setting, but the patient or family refuses the plan, or the plan is impeded by deficiencies in the healthcare system. Either way, the patient is “stuck” in the hospital and the ethics consultant is called to help get the patient “unstuck.” These encounters, which we call “complex discharges,” are beset with tensions between the interests of the (...) institution and the interests of the patient as well as tensions within the ethics consultant whose commitments are shaped both by the values of the organization and the values of their own profession. The clinical ethics literature on this topic is limited and provides little guidance. What is needed is guidance for consultants operating at the bedside and for those participating at a higher organizational level. To fill this gap, we offer guidance for facilitating a fair process designed to resolve the conflict without resorting to coercive legal measures. We reflect on three cases to argue that the approach of the consultant is generally one of mediation in these types of disputes. For patients who lack decision making capacity and lack a surrogate decision maker, we recommend the creation of a complex discharge committee within the organization so that ethics consultants can properly discharge their duties to assist patients who are unable to advocate for themselves through a fair and transparent process. (shrink)

What was the relationship between government and religion in Middle Eastern history? In a world of caliphs, sultans, and judges, who exercised political and religious authority? In this book, Ali Humayun Akhtar investigates debates about leadership that involved ruling circles and scholars of jurisprudence and theology. At the heart of this story is a medieval rivalry between three caliphates: the Umayyads of Cordoba, the Fatimids of Cairo, and the Abbasids of Baghdad. In a fascinating revival of Late Antique Hellenism, (...) Aristotelian and Platonic notions of wisdom became a key component of how these caliphs debated their authority as political leaders. By tracing how these political debates impacted the theological scholars and their own conception of communal guidance, Akhtar offers a new picture of premodern political authority and the connections between Western and Islamic civilizations. It will be of use to students and specialists of the premodern and modern Middle East. (shrink)

Bangladesh is aspiring to achieve universal health coverage by 2030. In this regard, quality and efficient healthcare delivery have been regarded as a major challenge. Proper management of employees is crucial for service organizations like healthcare because in healthcare employees provide life saving services which make them unique from other non-health professionals. They directly interface with the patients or service seekers who make evaluative judgment of the quality of service delivered by the employees. Therefore, it is important that healthcare organizations (...) (both public and private) comprehend specific organizational factors and issues that influence employee’s attitudes and behaviors, which ultimately affect their service behaviour at work. Drawing from the organizational justice principles and other management theories, this article presents a conceptual framework and a set of hypotheses regarding the relationships among distributive justice, procedural justice, interactional justice, employee’s citizenship behaviour, role prescribed behaviour and counterproductive behaviour for the healthcare organizations in Bangladesh. The purpose is to assist the policy makers and service providers in identifying desirable human resource management practices that healthcare organizations in Bangladesh should seek and engage in and at the same time, avoid undesirable practices in order to maintain optimum level of employee commitment, and citizenship behavior essential for ensuring quality and efficient service delivery to the communities. This article is ‘theoretical’ but it has practical implications for the policy makers and service providers who are directly involved with service delivery system. It is also expected that the paper enriches the health service delivery literature and also advocates focusing on justice perspectives particularly in Bangladesh. (shrink)

Management theory is a diverse field where multiple theoretical perspectives coexist and coevolve, leading to conceptual pluralism. While conceptual pluralism is useful for grasping different aspects of the complex reality we live in, it may limit the further development of knowledge on elemental concepts. In this article, we focus on knowledge on the natural environment (NE) in management theory. We argue that management scholars and practitioners often rely on theoretical lenses that tend to reify the NE, thereby limiting the conceptualization (...) of some of the essential properties of the NE. Drawing on the example of the conceptual development of the ecosystem services (ES) at the intersection of economics and biology, we identify the advantages and the limits of interdisciplinary theory-building and testing. Finally, we discuss how tools from the philosophy of science can be useful for proposing a way forward for integrating reliable knowledge on the natural environment in management theory. (shrink)

Stock markets accurately reflect countries’ economic health, and stock returns are tightly related to economic indices. One popular area of financial research is the factors that influence stock returns. Several investigations have frequently cited macroeconomic factors, among numerous elements. Therefore, this study focuses on the empirical analysis of the relationship between macroeconomic factors and stock market returns. When a stock market becomes increasingly volatile, it becomes susceptible to economic uncertainty news, and information on social media platforms. Thus, we incorporated a (...) new dimension of economic uncertainty news sentiment for stock return predictions. We employed the daily data ofgold index, crude oil price, interest rate, exchange rate, and stock returns for a set of countries from January 2010 to December 2020. Subsequently, to compute coefficients, we conducted a regression analysis using one of the more sophisticated approaches: single-layer neural networks and ordinary least square regression. In addition, we only computed EUNS for the period of the fiscal budget announcement for the US, Turkey, and Hong Kong. The results indicate that the gold index, interest rate, and exchange rate are highly significant and negative macroeconomic factors for all analyzed countries. These findings also indicate that EUNS is important and detrimental for projecting stock returns. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungEines der medizinischen Felder, in dem die ethische Diskussion um die „wunscherfüllende Medizin“ am intensivsten geführt wird, ist die Reproduktionsmedizin, die die Erfüllung des „Kinderwunsches“ verspricht. Strittig ist besonders, ob Sterilität als Krankheit definiert wird, die eine medizinische Intervention rechtfertigt, ob sich aus der Sterilität oder Infertilität lediglich ein Abwehr- oder auch ein positives Anspruchsrecht auf medizinische Ressourcen ergibt, ob legitime Fortpflanzungsmedizin Grenzen hat. Nach einer Übersicht über Eckpunkte der nationalen und internationalen Debatte beschreiben wir im zweiten Teil Ansichten zum (...) Status ungewollter Kinderlosigkeit, zum Recht auf Fortpflanzungsmedizin und zur möglichen Legitimität ihrer Begrenzung anhand der Ergebnisse unserer vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) geförderten Studien. Während der letzten fünf Jahre haben wir u. a. Paare mit und ohne Sterilitätsproblematik sowie verschiedene Expertengruppen qualitativ und standardisiert befragt. Die stark divergierenden Auffassungen konfrontieren wir im dritten Abschnitt mit internationalen Standards, zum anderen mit dem „Capability-Ansatz“ und dem freiheitsfunktionalen Liberalismus von Sen und Pauer-Studer. Dies ergibt, dass die Bereitstellung verschiedener Möglichkeiten der In-vitro-Fertilisations-(IVF-)Behandlung nicht lediglich einen Wunsch auf Elternschaft erfüllt sondern als die gesollte Erfüllung eines normativen Bedürfnissanspruchs begriffen werden muss. (shrink)