We explore psychological contracts as mechanisms by which individuals gain influence in organizations. Using two distinct research settings and longitudinal analysis, we demonstrate that ideological contracts endow individuals with increased centrality in the organization’s influence network. More generally, we propose that an important outcome of different psychological contract types may be how they affect the nature of influence in organizations.

The Politics of the Soul: Eric Voegelin on Religious Experience includes eight essays examining one of the most profound studies of religious experience to appear in the last century: that of the political philosopher Eric Voegelin. Voegelin is increasingly recognized as a political theorist of exceptional scope and erudition and the most important philosopher of his time since Toynbee, and his treatment of religious experience is a crucial part of his overall analysis of existence and history. This collection of essays (...) by prominenet Voegelin scholars is the first book to explore the relevance of that analysis to the contemporary understanding of political theory, theology, history, and philosophy of consciousness, and as such it constitutes a significant contribution not only to Voegelin scholarship but to the current quest for theoretical foundations. (shrink)

Cognitive control refers to the regulation of mental activity to support flexible cognition across different domains. Cragg and Nation (2010) propose that the development of cognitive control in children parallels the development of language abilities, particularly inner speech. We suggest that children’s late development of cognitive control also mirrors their limited ability to revise misinterpretations of sentence meaning. Moreover, we argue that for certain tasks, a tradeoff between bottom-up (data-driven) and top-down (rule-based) thinking may actually benefit performance in both children (...) and adults. Specifically, we propose that a lack of cognitive control may promote important aspects of cognitive development, like language acquisition and creativity. (shrink)

Reporting peers’ counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) is important for maintaining an ethical organization, but is a significant and potentially risky action. In Bandura’s Theory of Moral Thought and Action (Bandura, 1991) he states that such acts require significant moral agency, which is generated when an individual possesses adequate moral self-regulatory capacities to address the issue and is in a context that activates and reinforces those capacities. Guided by this theory, we assess moral potency (i.e., moral courage, moral efficacy, and moral (...) ownership) as key capacities predicting peer reporting intentions and assess three contextual factors influencing the generation and effects of moral potency: whether a potential informant (1) works for an ethical leader, (2) is embedded in a psychologically safe climate promoting interpersonal risk-taking, and (3) operates in a more normal or extreme context. We assess the proposed model across three field studies entailing both normal and extreme (i.e., firefighting units) contexts. Results show that ethical leaders raise employees’ moral potency, promoting greater willingness to report their peers’ CWBs. In normal work contexts, psychological safety positively moderated both the relationship between ethical leadership and moral potency and between moral potency and peer reporting intentions. However, psychological safety had the opposite effects in more extreme work contexts. Whereas psychological safety strengthens the positive association between moral potency and peer reporting intentions in normal work contexts, in contexts where individuals are more frequently exposed to extreme events, psychological safety weakens this relationship, thus highlighting the unforeseen downsides of psychological safety in extreme contexts. (shrink)

In The Media and Modernity, Thompson develops an interactional theory of communication media that distinguishes between three basic types of interaction: face-to-face interaction, mediated interaction, and mediated quasi-interaction. In the light of the digital revolution and the growth of the internet, this paper introduces a fourth type: mediated online interaction. Drawing on Goffman’s distinction between front regions and back regions, Thompson shows how mediated quasi-interaction and mediated online interaction create new opportunities for the leakage of information and symbolic (...) content from back regions into front regions, with consequences that can be embarrassing, damaging and, on occasion, hugely disruptive. The growing role of mediated quasi-interaction and mediated online interaction has reconstituted the political field so that political life now unfolds in an information environment that is much more difficult to control, creating a permanently unstable arena in which leaks, revelations and disclosures are always capable of disrupting the most well-laid plans. (shrink)

Zhou Dunyi Zhou Dunyi has long been highly esteemed by Chinese thinkers. He is considered one of the first “Neo-Confucians,” a group of thinkers who draw heavily on Buddhist and Daoist metaphysics to articulate a comprehensive, Confucian religious … Continue reading Dunyi, Zhou →.

The essays in this book - all of them published here for the first time - provide a long-overdue critical discussion of Jürgen Habermas's cascade of ideas. These are topped off by a freshet of original Habermas: in the final essay, he replies to the criticism developed in the preceding contributions and to other recent assessments of his work, provides an important clarification of his earlier views, and reveals the direction of his current thought.Each essay probes a particular theme in (...) Habermas's work, and each presents both an exposition and a critique. Among the subjects covered are Habermas's theory of knowledge-constitutive interests, his account of language and truth, his "overcoming" of hermeneutics, the concept of universal pragmatics, the orientation of his thought relative to the Marxist tradition, and his project of analyzing the crisis tendencies of capitalism within the context of evolutionary theory.The contributors are philosophers and social theorists of international standing, most of them affiliated with German, English, and American universities. They are Agnes Heller, Rudiger Bubner, Thomas McCarthy, Henning Ottmann, Mary Hesse, Steven Lukes, Anthony Giddens, Michael Schmid, Andrew Arato, and the editors. The editors have also contributed a substantial introduction outlining the central contours of Habermas's work and summarizing the main arguments of the essays.John B. Thompson is a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and David Held is Lecturer in Politics, University of York. (shrink)

The reason for physics’ failure to find a final theory of the universe is examined. Problems identified are: the lack of unequivocal definitions for its fundamental elements (time, length, mass, electric charge, energy, work, matter-waves); the danger of relying too much on mathematics for solutions; especially as philosophical arguments conclude the universe cannot have a mathematical basis. It does not even need the concept of number to exist. Numbers and mathematics are human inventions arising from the human predilection for measurement. (...) Following Aristotle, a single fundamental cause is proposed to explore the efficacy of using pure non-mathematical philosophy to explain the universe, contrary to current quantum physical views. The cause is taken as Time, which is then defined, surprisingly leading automatically to a definition of a three-dimensional space answering the question into what can a universe be placed (space before space seems non-sensical). This enables the philosophical arguments to derive a universal rule giving clear-cut descriptions (definitions) of force (both gravitational and electromagnetic), motion, energy, and particles. The formation of atomic nuclei and atomic properties together with an unexpected role for neutrinos follow. In particular, a Popper-test can be prepared by introducing the concept of measurement to allow the philosophy arguments to be tested in another discipline - mathematics. The solution agrees with human physical observations to a remarkable degree of accuracy, automatically explaining and predicting values for Planck’s and the fine-structure constants. Although mathematical, it is included as confirming the efficacy of philosophy in attaining a final theory. (shrink)

Michael Berry, Professor of Physics at Bristol University, discusses the philosophical ideas underlying his research to the theories of catastrophes and chaotic systems. He is one of England's leading scientists, and has been instrumental in the growth of interest in qualitative phenomena.

Introduction Few areas of social inquiry are more exciting and important, and yet at the same time more marked by controversy and dispute, than the area ...

This is a study in the philosophy of social science. It takes the form of a comparative critique of three contemporary approaches: ordinary language philosophy, hermeneutics and critical theory, represented here respectively by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Paul Ricoeur and Jürgen Habermas. Part I is devoted to an exposition of these authors' views and of the traditions to which they belong. Its unifying thread is their common concern with language, a concern which nonetheless reveals important differences of approach. For whereas ordinary language (...) philosophers tend to treat linguistic activity as the ultimate object of inquiry, both Ricoeur and Habermas regard it as a medium which betrays more fundamental dimensions of human experience and the social world. Part II complements the exposition with a critical analysis of its central themes: the conceptualisation of action, the methodology of interpretation, and the theory of reference and truth. The author defends many aspects of the work of Ricoeur and Habermas, such as the emphasis on power and ideology, the strategy of depth interpretation, and the link between consensus and truth; but he argues that there are serious deficiencies and obscurities in their work. He proposes solutions to these difficulties and concludes with a sketch of a critical and rationally justified theory for the interpretation of action - a critical hermeneutics. (shrink)

2. Thesis 2 I accept insofar as it asserts the relation of possibility to actuality to be a fundamental aspect of things. This relation is sui generis.

This chapter discusses the psychological process of selectively attending to one source of information to the exclusion of others. In a meta-analysis, it reviews different tasks used to study selective attention, under the construct of conflict resolution, as assessed with functional imaging techniques. Both the anterior cingulate cortex and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex are involved in some aspect of conflict resolution, which is likely related to different mechanisms. The theme of heterogeneity of function is reflected in these results.

This is a collection in translation of essays by Paul Ricoeur which presents a comprehensive view of his philosophical hermeneutics, its relation to the views of his predecessors in the tradition and its consequences for the social sciences. The volume has three parts. The studies in the first part examine the history of hermeneutics, its central themes and the outstanding issues it has to confront. In Part II, Ricoeur's own current, constructive position is developed. A concept of the text is (...) formulated as the implications of the theory are pursued into the domains of sociology, psychoanalysis and history. Many of the essays appear here in English for the first time; the editor's introduction brings out their background in Ricoeur's thought and the continuity of his concerns. The volume will be of great importance for those interested in hermeneutics and Ricoeur's contribution to it, and will demonstrate how much his approach offers to a number of disciplines. (shrink)

The enduring popularity of Star Wars has much to do with its mythic dimensions. However, there are problems with Joseph Campbell's work on myth and George Lucas's use of Campbell's ideas in Star Wars. Both Campbell and Lucas promote a simplistic view that encourages fans to avoid some darker, more unsettling ideas in Star Wars, which may obscure myth's true power. Campbell remains one of the most famous mythologists, but he was by no means the first. Campbell's influence on Star (...) Wars seems obvious, but the details are difficult to determine, partly because Lucas himself gives different accounts of it. Campbell's monomyth leads us to see similarities between tales and, in so doing, overlooks many significant differences. Tensions between mythos and logos date back to ancient Greek philosophers, if not earlier. The mythic structure of Star Wars has immense hidden power, and this power has a dark side. (shrink)

This article examines the characteristics of a new form of visibility which has become a pervasive feature of the modern world and which is linked to the development of communication media. With the development of the media, the visibility of individuals, actions and events is severed from the sharing of a common locale: one no longer has to be present in the same spatial-temporal setting in order to see the other or to witness an action or event. The rise of (...) this new form of mediated visibility has transformed the relations between visibility and power. Thanks to mediated visibility, political rulers are able to appear before their subjects in ways and on a scale that never existed previously. Skilful politicians exploit this to their advantage; with the help of their PR consultants and communications advisers, they seek to create and sustain a basis of support by managing their visibility in the mediated arena of modern politics. But mediated visibility is a double-edged sword: it also creates new risks for political leaders, who find themselves exposed to new kinds of dangers. Hence the visibility created by the media becomes the source of a new and distinctive kind of fragility. However much political leaders try to manage their visibility, they cannot completely control it: mediated visibility can slip out of their grasp and can, on occasion, work against them. (shrink)

This article critically re-examines the “received wisdom” on Buddhism— its history, traditional lore, monastic institutions, and ritual practices— acknowledging the fact of violence within Buddhism while striving for a nuanced understanding by looking at the life of Kumarajiva (ca. 344–413). A legendary figure in Sino-Japanese Buddhism, Kumarajiva has long been lauded as a wondrous exemplar of the Dharma at work, making accounts of his life valuable resources for understanding Buddhism in medieval China, including the place of violence. My intention is (...) not to condemn Buddhism as a “violent religion” but to encourage us to consider just how pervasive and complex the role of “violence” seems to be within Buddhism (both in the past and in the present), and critically trace out some of its implications. (shrink)

We introduce a novel paradigm for studying the cognitive processes used by listeners within interactive settings. This paradigm places the talker and the listener in the same physical space, creating opportunities for investigations of attention and comprehension processes taking place during interactive discourse situations. An experiment was conducted to compare results from previous research using videotaped stimuli to those obtained within the live face-to-face task paradigm. A headworn apparatus is used to briefly display LEDs on the talker's face in four (...) locations as the talker communicates with the participant. In addition to the primary task of comprehending speeches, participants make a secondary task light detection response. In the present experiment, the talker gave non-emotionally-expressive speeches that were used in past research with videotaped stimuli. Signal detection analysis was employed to determine which areas of the face received the greatest focus of attention. Results replicate previous findings using videotaped methods. (shrink)

We introduce a novel paradigm for studying the cognitive processes used by listeners within interactive settings. This paradigm places the talker and the listener in the same physical space, creating opportunities for investigations of attention and comprehension processes taking place during interactive discourse situations. An experiment was conducted to compare results from previous research using videotaped stimuli to those obtained within the live face-to-face task paradigm. A headworn apparatus is used to briefly display LEDs on the talker’s face in four (...) locations as the talker communicates with the participant. In addition to the primary task of comprehending speeches, participants make a secondary task light detection response. In the present experiment, the talker gave non-emotionally-expressive speeches that were used in past research with videotaped stimuli. Signal detection analysis was employed to determine which areas of the face received the greatest focus of attention. Results replicate previous findings using videotaped methods. (shrink)

Written by interdisciplinary authors from the fields of educational policy, early childhood education, history, political philosophy, law, and moral philosophy, this volume addresses the use of disciplinary action across varied educational contexts. Much of the punishment of children occurs in non-criminal contexts, in educational and social settings, and schools are institutions where young people are subject to disciplinary practices and justifications that are quite unlike those found elsewhere. In addition to this, the discipline they receive is often discriminatory, being disproportionately (...) focused on students of colour and other minoritized identities, and unjust in other ways. This timely text is a comprehensive examination of punishment in schools, prompting discussions on racial equity, social justice in education and the school to prison pipeline. Each chapter offers empirically informed, theoretical investigations into punishment in educational settings, including how punishment is understood, whether it is permissible to discipline students, and whether such punishment can be considered educational. (shrink)

Collected and translated by John B. Thompson, this collection of essays by Paul Ricoeur includes many that had never appeared in English before the volume's publication in 1981. As comprehensive as it is illuminating, this lucid introduction to Ricoeur's prolific contributions to sociological theory features his more recent writings on the history of hermeneutics, its central themes and issues, his own constructive position and its implications for sociology, psychoanalysis and history. Presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery, and (...) including a specially commissioned preface written by Charles Taylor, illuminating its enduring importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, this classic work has been revived for a new generation of readers. (shrink)

The world I grew up in believed that change and development in life are part of a continuous process of cause and effect, minutely and patiently sustained throughout the millenniums. With the exception of the initial act of creation ..., the evolution of life on earth was considered to be a slow, steady and ultimately demonstrable process. No sooner did I begin to read history, however, than I began to have my doubts. Human society and living beings, it seemed to (...) me, ought to be excluded from so calm and rational a view. The whole of human development, far from having been a product of steady evolution, seemed subject to only partially explicable and almost invariably violent mutations. Entire cultures and groups of individuals appeared imprisoned for centuries in a static shape which they endured with long-suffering indifference, and then suddenly, for no demonstrable cause, became susceptible to drastic changes and wild surges of development. It was as if the movement of life throughout the ages was not a Darwinian caterpillar but a startled kangaroo, going out towards the future in a series of unpredictable hops, stops, skips and bounds. Indeed, when I came to study physics I had a feeling that the modern concept of energy could perhaps throw more light on the process than any of the more conventional approaches to the subject. It seemed that species, society and individuals behaved more like thunder-clouds than scrubbed, neatly clothed and well-behaved children of reason. Throughout the ages life appeared to build up great invisible charges, like clouds and earth of electricity, until suddenly in a sultry hour the spirit moved, the wind rose, a drop of rain fell acid in the dust, fire flared in the nerve, and drums rolled to produce what we call thunder and lightening in the heavens and chance and change in human society and personality.LAURENS VAN DER POST, The Lost World of the Kalahari. (shrink)