In this paper we open up the topic of ethical corporate identity: what we believe to be a new, as well as highly salient, field of inquiry for scholarship in ethics and corporate social responsibility. Taking as our starting point Balmer’s (in Balmer and Greyser, 2002) AC2ID test model of corporate identity – a pragmatic tool of identity management – we explore the specificities of an ethical form of corporate identity. We draw key insights from conceptualizations of corporate social responsibility (...) and stakeholder theory. We argue ethical identity potentially takes us beyond the personification of the corporation. Instead, ethical identity is seen to be formed relationally, between parties, within a community of business and social exchange. Extending the AC2ID test model, we suggest the management of ethical identity requires a more socially, dialogically embedded kind of corporate practice and greater levels of critical reflexivity. (shrink)

Background: Informed consent is regarded as a contract between autonomous and equal parties and requires the elements of information disclosure, understanding, voluntariness and consent. The validity of informed consent for critically ill patients has been questioned. Little is known about how these patients experience the process of consent.Objective: The aim of this study was to explore critically ill patients’ experience with the principle of informed consent in a clinical trial and their ability to give valid informed consent.Design: 11 stroke patients (...) who had been informed about thrombolytic treatment and had been through the process of deciding whether or not to participate in a thrombolysis trial went through repeated qualitative semistructured interviews.Results: None of the patients had any clear understanding of the purpose of the trial. Neither did they understand the principles of randomisation and voluntariness. Reasons for giving or not giving consent were trust, conceptions of benefits and risks and altruism. Several patients found it immoral to involve patients in the consent procedure and argued that this was the doctors’ responsibility. Others argued that it is a duty to question patients and perceived it as a sign of being treated with respect and dignity. A majority of the patients found the consent process vague and ambiguous.Conclusions: The results indicate that the principle of informed consent from critically ill patients cannot be seen as a contract between equal and autonomous parties. Further studies are needed to explore critically ill patients’ experiences with the process of informed consent. (shrink)

Background: Informed consent is regarded as a contract between autonomous and equal parties and requires the elements of information disclosure, understanding, voluntariness and consent. The validity of informed consent for critically ill patients has been questioned. Little is known about how these patients experience the process of consent.Objective: The aim of this study was to explore critically ill patients’ experience with the principle of informed consent in a clinical trial and their ability to give valid informed consent.Design: 11 stroke patients (...) who had been informed about thrombolytic treatment and had been through the process of deciding whether or not to participate in a thrombolysis trial went through repeated qualitative semistructured interviews.Results: None of the patients had any clear understanding of the purpose of the trial. Neither did they understand the principles of randomisation and voluntariness. Reasons for giving or not giving consent were trust, conceptions of benefits and risks and altruism. Several patients found it immoral to involve patients in the consent procedure and argued that this was the doctors’ responsibility. Others argued that it is a duty to question patients and perceived it as a sign of being treated with respect and dignity. A majority of the patients found the consent process vague and ambiguous.Conclusions: The results indicate that the principle of informed consent from critically ill patients cannot be seen as a contract between equal and autonomous parties. Further studies are needed to explore critically ill patients’ experiences with the process of informed consent. (shrink)

This paper explores the influence of social categories on the perceived trade-off between a relatively bad but equal distribution of resources between two parties and a profit maximizing yet unequal one. Studies 1 and 2 showed that people prefer to maximize profits when interacting within their social category, but chose not to maximize individual and joint profits when interacting across social categories. Study 3 demonstrated that outside observers, who were not members of the focal social categories, also were less likely (...) to maximize profits when resources were distributed across social category lines. Study 4 showed that the transaction utility of maximizing profits required greater compensation when resources were distributed across, in contrast to within social categories. We discuss the ethical implications of these decision making biases in the context of organizations. (shrink)

Reality medical television, an increasingly popular genre, depicts private medical moments between patients and healthcare providers. Journalists aim to educate and inform the public, while the participants in their documentaries—providers and patients—seek to heal and be healed. When journalists and healthcare providers work together at the bedside, moral problems precipitate. During the summer of 2010, ABC aired a documentary, Boston Med, featuring several Boston hospitals. We examine the ethical issues that arise when journalism and medicine intersect. We provide a framework (...) for evaluating the potential benefits and harms of reality medical television, highlighting critical issues such as informed consent, confidentiality, and privacy. (shrink)

An important challenge for actors in economic exchange relations concerns dealing with the aftermath of unethical behavior and the violation of trust that such transgressions entail. As transgressions in these relations often result in financial harm for one party, a common restorative approach consists of the transgressor paying a financial compensation to the victim; either voluntarily, or following coercion by a third party (cf. litigation). In the present article, we studied the impact of financial compensations on victims' trust towards the (...) transgressor and examined whether the size of the compensation is relevant to this process. In contrast to out-come-based models in game theory, we predicted that whether larger compensations foster more trust, depends on whether the compensation is provided voluntarily or not. Experimental data from a trust game supported our hypothesis by showing that larger compensations only lead to more trust when the transgressor provided the compensation voluntarily, whereas compensation size had no effect when the transgressor was forced by a third party. (shrink)

This paper explores the influence of social categories on the perceived trade-off between a relatively bad but equal distribution of resources between two parties and a profit maximizing yet unequal one. Studies 1 and 2 showed that people prefer to maximize profits when interacting within their social category, but chose not to maximize individual and joint profits when interacting across social categories. Study 3 demonstrated that outside observers, who were not members of the focal social categories, also were less likely (...) to maximize profits when resources were distributed across social category lines. Study 4 showed that the transaction utility of maximizing profits required greater compensation when resources were distributed across, in contrast to within social categories. We discuss the ethical implications of these decision making biases in the context of organizations. (shrink)

It is the intention in this article to explain the electoral stagnation of the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) in the light of the 2015 parliamentary elections in Turkey. Drawing on theories of voting behavior, the article uncovers the organizational shortcomings within the party and the problem of credibility that have emerged as significant impediments to the party in addressing long-term historical-structural issues, mainly the division of Turkish society between the religious periphery and the secular center. Furthermore, the (...) strong identification between the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) and its partisans have made party-switching difficult, having been achieved, above all, through the provision of economic benefits and public services and the consolidation of party identification through growing polarization and division in Turkish politics. Last but not least, the changes to the political environment between the June 7 and November 1, 2015 elections, pushed stability and security to the top of the agenda, as well as AKP’s electoral adjustments in the run-up to the November 1 elections inhibited any possible flow of votes to the CHP. (shrink)

This case describes an adolescent in a crisis of a chronic medical condition whose situation is complicated by substance abuse and mental illness. D. Micah Hester provides an analytic approach, teasing apart the multiple layers of medical, developmental, and moral issues at hand and describing possible responses and outcomes. Amy T. Campbell examines existing legal guidelines for adolescent decision making, arguing that greater space exists for clinical discretion in these matters than commonly thought. Cheryl D. Lew discusses the development of (...) agency in adolescent patients, the ideal of autonomous decision making in the context of impairment and chronic illness, and the obligation of healthcare teams to examine an adolescent patient’s decisions in relation to her identity. (shrink)

This article is a theoretical and empirical exploration of the meaning that accompanies contractual agreements, such as the End-User License Agreements (EULAs) that participants of online communities are required to sign as a condition of participation. As our study indicates, clicking “I agree” on the often lengthy conditions presented during the installation and updating process typically permits third parties (including researchers) to monitor the digitally-mediated actions of users. Through our small-scale study in which we asked participants which terms of EULAs (...) they would find agreeable, the majority confirmed that they simply clicked through the terms presented to them without much knowledge about the terms to which they were agreeing. From a research ethics standpoint, we reflect upon whether or not informed consent is achieved in these cases and pose a challenge to the academic research community to attend to the socio-technical shift from informed consent to a more nebulous concept of contractual agreement, online and offline. (shrink)

Does the A-theory have an intuitive advantage over the B-theory? Many A-theorists have claimed so, arguing that their theory has a much better explanation for the fact that we all experience the passage of time: we experience time as passing because time really does pass. In this paper I expose and reject the argument behind the A-theorist’s claim. I argue that all parties have conceded far too easily that there is an experience that needs explaining in the first place. For (...) what exactly is an experience of temporal passage? One natural thought is that we experience passage in virtue of experiencing change, or in virtue of experiencing change as ‘dynamic’. Another is that we experience passage in virtue of experiencing events as (successively) present. None of these experiences, I argue, amounts to an experience of passage. Although there might still be other ways to experience passage, A-theorists would have to provide us with a plausible candidate experience. If there is such an experience at all, it won’t be one that qualifies as what we intuitively take to be an experience of passage. The ‘intuitive advantage’, it seems, has dissolved in any case. (shrink)

Research ethics education in the biosciences has not historically been a priority for research universities despite the fact that funding agencies, government regulators, and the parties involved in the research enterprise agree that it ought to be. The confluence of a number of factors, including scrutiny and regulation due to increased public awareness of the impact of basic research on society, increased public and private funding, increased diversity and collaboration among researchers, the impressive success and speed of research advances, and (...) high-profile cases of misconduct, have made it necessary to reexamine how the bioscience research community at all levels provides ethics education to its own. We discuss the need to and reasons for making ethics integral to the education of bioscientists, approaches to achieving this goal, challenges this goal presents, and responses to those challenges. (shrink)

Adrian Viens, Guest Editor of this Olivieri symposium, and Julian Savulescu, the Editor of JME, set the scene for the symposium."In failing...[her] when she needed them most, it is now clear that some members of the University’s Faculty of Medicine heard her muffled cries of academic freedom from the back room, yet their response was to serve another round of drinks and turn the music up louder. With the bombshell revelations in the...affair, the plug may have been pulled on this (...) business sponsored party, and hopefully a sober re-examination of the university’s neglected role and responsibility toward independent inquiry and academic freedom can begin.1" "These guys don’t get one thing—we’re not going away. This isn’t a personal vendetta. This is something I want patients to be protected from when I’m dead, fifty years from now.2" "[The Olivieri affair is] not a mystery novel, but instead the latest skulduggery at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.1" "The legal assaults which you have endured in your battle against the drug company, and in your battle against the medical establishment appear to have been fought with the type of uncommon bravery that is rarely seen. It is for this reason that our trustees have unanimously chosen to recognise you for this most prestigious award.3" "[The Olivieri affair resulted from] a fundamental misreading of the issue as a mere contractual and scientific dispute...[it is] Canada’s worst academic and research scandal in decades...[Since 1998, Olivieri has been] demoted, then restored, then harassed. She has been smeared with allegations attacking her competence, integrity, sanity and personality....4"The Olivieri affair is one of the most important events to occur in research ethics. From its dominance in the Canadian and international news media, to changes in the governance of public health, academic medicine, …. (shrink)

Ever ramifying debate over the correct analysis of linguistic representation unfolds against the backdrop of uncontested acceptance as baseline datum, by those aiming to determine the nature of the cognizing subject’s contact with the world, of language as the vehicle of factual packaging of experience. Given the easy two-way traffic in the contemporary lexicon between “concept” and “ word,” the modern reader’s antennae are not attuned to detect doctrinal parti pris when he encounters the mention, in a classical text, of (...) concepts in the course of a treatment of cognition. Kant’s declaration that “[t]he knowledge yielded by understanding, or at least by the human understanding, must…be by means of concepts” will likely be glossed as an archaic variant of the baseline datum. While it does not go unnoticed by those acquainted with the major texts of the tradition that a Descartes and a Hume speak of ideas and not concepts, this is approached, more often than not, as a verbal variant on the common theme. Of course, closer attention to the sources reveals that Kant presents cognition-by-concepts as part of a theory of cognition supplanting the ideational accounts of his predecessors. But subject to a certain amount of textual reform—prophylactic and reconstructive—cognition-by-concepts and cognition-by-ideas continue to be regarded as functional equivalents. The superiority of Kant’s treatment is accordingly evaluated conservatively, as the superiority of a more penetrative analysis. (shrink)

Reasoned disagreement is a pervasive feature of public life, and the persistence of disagreement is sometimes troublesome, reflecting the need to make difficult decisions. Fogelin suggests that parties to a deep disagreement should abandon reason and switch to non-rational persuasion. But how are the parties to know when to make such a switch? I argue that Fogelin's analysis doesn't clearly address this question, and that disputes arising in areas like medical decision making are such that the parties to them have (...) reasons to act as if they can be rationally resolved even if they are deep. Fogelin's analysis is thus of limited value as regards the practical moral demand of addressing concrete moral dilemmas. (shrink)

In this article, we investigate the political theology of populism and look at the case of the Front National. Considering the writings of Carl Schmitt and Ernesto Laclau, we trace the logical core of Schmitt’s political theology and show how it is integrated into theories of the political and Laclau’s theory of populism. We argue that the theologico-political core of populism is the simultaneous disavowal and imposition of mediation and that this stance leads to an increasing formalism. Looking at the (...) discourse of the FN on the notion of laïcité, we find that this theologico-political structure explains how the party is able to link traditionally left- and right-wing motives in its discourse. Finally, we show how in FN’s discourse, the formalist tendency of populism, which Laclau has theoretically explicated, has become overt and must be understood as part of politics, not as a universal and tran-historical logic of the political. This suggests, we argue pace Laclau, that we ought to consider both t... (shrink)

The deeply imaginative structure of Dungeons Dragons (DD) can allow for players to explore the intricacies of gender and sexuality in creative and potentially radical ways. One would be hard pressed to argue that cartoonishly large breasts and skin‐tight leather skirts really allow for dexterous swordplay or quick getaways. DD liberates us from the limitations of our sex by making male and female characters equal in terms of abilities. The shyest of men can be the most outspoken of wizards, the (...) most honest girl can play the most unscrupulous rogue, and the pacifist woman can don full armor and fly into a berserker rage on a group of bugbears ambushing her adventuring party because, after all, bugbears are her species enemy and she just can't help herself when they are around. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 99 the movement of the Dutch to France. Only in the second half of the century, as DutchFrench relations deteriorated, and Protestantism was actively persecuted, did Dutch students turn away from France. Professor Dibon reveals the kinds of untapped source materials that exist for tracing these student voyages, for assessing the intellectual conditions in France, and for tracing the course of ideas. Items found ill funeral orations, (...) guide books, letters, unpublished student travel diaries, various Album amicorum that students carried with them, university records, applications of students for funds, etc., provide the basis for Professor Dibon's sketch of where Dutch students went, how they were received in Paris and elsewhere, whom they met, what universities they attended, and how long they spent at various stages of their tours. Professor Dibon clearly shows that there is a rich mine of information to be found through careful, painstaking research in these many manuscripts or rare printed sources. The picture he presents of the travels of Gronovius' brother-in-law, Samuel Ten Nuyl, later professor of history and eloquence at the University of Nijmegen, indicates the valuable materials that can be unearthed from such labors. Ten Nuyl was in and around Paris from 1659-1661. Letters of Introduction from Gronovius, Heinsius, and Van Schooten led to his being accepted in the highest Protestant and Catholic intellectual circles, got him into the Royal Library (t), and into the circles of Pierre-Daniel Huet, Mfinage, DailI~, Guy Patin, Chapelain, and many others. A study of these Dutch voyagers throws much light on the milieu at certain university centers, such as Caen and Orleans, on the possible exchanges and interchanges of ideas, and on the careers of some of the major figures in the Dutch universities. Professor Dibon has performed a most valuable service in this superbly written and documented study in pointing to an area of research that can aid us greatly in understanding the actual intellectual currents and cross-currents of the seventeenth century. His concluding paragraph (pp. 34-35) sums up what we can learn from such data. Ainsi nous pouvons esp6rer voir naitre de la convergence de multiples d6tails recueillis dans les journaux, dans les albums amicorum, les registres universitaires et autres documents d'archives une ~tude d'ensemble du Voyage en France des ~tudiants n6erlandais au XVIIe sidle. Une telle ~tude, fond~e sur une connaissance, qui serait ~t ~largir et h preciser, des milieux universitaires et des cercles ~rudits de la France du XVIIe sidle, nourrie de la substance de rant de correspondances en grande partie in6dites, constituerait h coup stir le chapitre le plus attachant d'une histoire des relations culturelles franco-nberlandaises. Elle ne manquerait pas par surcrolt de faire apparaitre en pleine lumi~re ce fait trop souvent m6connu que les relations culturelles en ce temps restaient, en d~pit des conflits politiques ou des rivalit& ~conomiques, au sein m~me des pol~miques religieuses, des &hanges de personne ~t personne. I1 faut se bien convaincre que c'est dans une tr6s large mesure /~ partir de tels 6changes,--. (shrink)

There is general acknowledgement that both the anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortex are implicated in reinforcement-guided decision making, and emotion and social behaviour. Despite the interest that these areas generate in both the cognitive neuroscience laboratory and the psychiatric clinic, ideas about the distinctive contributions made by each have only recently begun to emerge. This reflects an increasing understanding of the component processes that underlie reinforcement- guided decision making, such as the representation of reinforcement expectations, the exploration, updating and representation (...) of action values, and the appreciation that choices are guided not just by the prospect of reward but also by the costs that action entails. Evidence is emerging to suggest that the anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortex make distinct contributions to each of these aspects of decision making. (shrink)

Ontological and methodological constraints on a theory of cognition that would generalize across species are identified. Within these constraints, ecological arguments for animal-environment mutuality and reciprocity and the necessary specificity of structured energy distributions to environmental facts are developed as counterpoints to the classical doctrines of animal-environment dualism and intractable nonspecificity. Implications of and for a cognitive theory consistent with Gibson's programme of ecological psychology are identified and contrasted with contemporary cognitivism.

In this paper I want to suggest that, while the argued philosophical distinction between logic, epistemolgoy and ontology is one of the many achievements of Aristotle, his predecessor Parmenides was in fact already operating with a theory of knowledge and an elementary propositional logic that are of abiding philosophical interest. As part of the thesis I shall be obliged to reject a number of interpretations of particular passages in his poem, including one or two currently fashionable ones. Since so much (...) turns on points of translation, I note for purposes of comparison what seem to be significant alternatives to my own in any particular instance. The line numbers are those of the DK text. (shrink)

A unifying theory of general anesthetic-induced unconsciousness must explain the common mechanism through which various anesthetic agents produce unconsciousness. Functional-brain-imaging data obtained from 11 volunteers during general anesthesia showed specific suppression of regional thalamic and midbrain reticular formation activity across two different commonly used volatile agents. These findings are discussed in relation to findings from sleep neurophysiology and the implications of this work for consciousness research. It is hypothesized that the essential common neurophysiologic mechanism underlying anesthetic-induced unconsciousness is, as with (...) sleep-induced unconsciousness, a hyperpolarization block of thalamocortical neurons. A model of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness is introduced to explain how the plethora of effects anesthetics have on cellular functioning ultimately all converge on a single neuroanatomic/neurophysiologic system, thus providing for a unitary physiologic theory of narcosis related to consciousness. (shrink)