Includes an introd. of 49 p. by S. G. Abbas.

Organizations of all types are vulnerable to frauds. Banks contribute to a significant extent in a country’s economic development by generating a large part of revenue in the service sector. Deterrence of fraud is impossible without understanding it. The present study attempts to extract themes by highlighting the major areas of the bank fraud literature within a specific time frame of 2000–2019 and finding the research gaps citing the future scope for research. Post the review of existing literature, using thematic (...) analysis, two major themes were observed by the author, namely, “regulatory and compliance”–based studies and studies related to the “socio psychological” aspect of the literature. An examination of themes indicated that the popularity of the research areas shifted from accounting frauds or balance sheet frauds in early 2000s to areas such as cyber frauds and identity theft at the later decade. The present study paves way forward for future research on the bank customer’s vigilance, experiences and perspectives on frauds. Other significant areas of research include coping mechanisms with the various challenges faced by banks in marketing themselves after any major fraud occurrence. (shrink)

The notion of 'natural kinds' has been central to contemporary discussions of metaphysics and philosophy of science. Although explicitly articulated by nineteenth-century philosophers like Mill, Whewell and Venn, it has a much older history dating back to Plato and Aristotle. In recent years, essentialism has been the dominant account of natural kinds among philosophers, but the essentialist view has encountered resistance, especially among naturalist metaphysicians and philosophers of science. Informed by detailed examination of classification in the natural and social sciences, (...) this book argues against essentialism and for a naturalist account of natural kinds. By looking at case studies drawn from diverse scientific disciplines, from fluid mechanics to virology and polymer science to psychiatry, the author argues that natural kinds are nodes in causal networks. On the basis of this account, he maintains that there can be natural kinds in the social sciences as well as the natural sciences. (shrink)

Saba Mahmood’s anthropological work studies the gain in skills, agency and capacity building by the women’s dawa movement in Egypt. These women increase their virtue toward the goal of piety by following dominant, often patriarchal norms. Mahmood argues that “teleological feminism” ignores this gain in agency because this kind of feminism only focuses on opposition or resistance to these norms. In this paper I defend Mahmood’s “anti-teleological” feminist work from criticisms that her project valorizes oppression and has no vision for (...) a nonoppressive feminist future. I argue the future envisioned by teleological feminists gets caught in “the Hegelian” trap of replicating past oppression in their feminist future. I find in Mahmood’s work the tools to escape this trap. I argue, rather than a movement of overcoming oppression, Mahmood’s work suggests an immanent and creative movement that emphasizes difference for a truly new future. I turn to a Bergsonian metaphor and argue that this movement can be seen as akin to the movement of biological evolution. I conclude using the work of Eve Sedgwick that the Egyptian women that Mahmood studies are being read in a “paranoid” fashion and demonstrate using Leila Ahmed a better “reparative” reading of these women. (shrink)

Nūr Muḥammad is one of the teachings in Sufism that studies the beginning of the creation of the universe. The Sufis discussed Nūr Muḥammad through God's tajallī (manifestation), and they believed that only Insan Kamil (Perfect Humans) possessed the perfection of His tajallī. This Sufi theory can be comprehended through the dhawqi approach. This research will deal with Nūr Muḥammad's theory of Sufism through the perspective of Tijaniyah Tarekat. The data for this study was obtained through library research utilizing a (...) documentary technique. The collected data will be analyzed using the descriptive analysis method. This study finds that the Tijaniyah Tarekat is a Sufism institution that bases its teachings and practices on the concept of Nūr Muḥammad in the form of ṣalawāt al-fātiḥ and ṣalawāt jawharah al-kamāl. This Tarekat's elucidation of Nūr Muḥammad is also built on and consistent with the explication of authoritative Sufis in Islam's intellectual and spiritual tradition. (shrink)

My intention in this paper is to reframe the practice of veiling as an embodied practice of self-development and self- transformation. I argue that practices like these cannot be handled by the choice/chance distinction relied on by those who would restrict religious minority accommodations. Embodied self- transformation necessarily means a change in personal identity and this means the religious believer cannot know if they will need religious accommodation when they begin their journey of piety. Even some luck egalitarians would find (...) leaning exclusively on preference and choice to find who should be burdened with paying the full costs of certain choices in one’s life too morally harsh to be justifiable. I end by briefly illustrating an alternative way to think about religious accommodation that does not rely on the choice/chance distinction. (shrink)

Criminal juries in the United States typically deliver their decisions through a “general verdict,” expressing only their ultimate conclusion of “guilty” or “not guilty,” rather than through a “special verdict” that identifies whether each element of the charged crime has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. American courts have broadly favored the use of general verdicts in criminal cases due to concerns that the special verdict will curtail the jury’s decision-making autonomy, including its power to nullify the law in favor (...) of the defense, potentially undermining the criminal defendant’s constitutional right to trial by jury. This Article confronts the legal status quo on verdict format and its underlying, untested assumptions. Drawing upon prior psychology findings and legal professionals’ anecdotal observations, it questions whether the general verdict poses its own under-acknowledged threats to the rights of criminal defendants and the decision-making agency of jurors. While the more guided special verdict format is presumed to threaten nullifying acquittals, the unguided general verdict format might be enabling convictions that violate constitutional norms of due process, impartial adjudication, and equal protection. Given the high-stakes values potentially implicated in the choice of verdict format in criminal cases, it is time to put the conventional wisdom in favor of general verdicts to an empirical test. This Article therefore proposes a methodological framework for investigating whether the legal status quo accurately reflects (1) current stakeholders’ preferences and predictions, and (2) experimentally testable legal and cognitive effects of general versus special verdicts in lay determinations of criminal liability. A data-informed understanding is needed to assess whether the general verdict is optimizing the integrity, fairness, and constitutionality of criminal jury decision making. (shrink)

There are two problems with Cimpian & Salomon’s (C&S’s) claim that an innate inherence heuristic is part of our cognitive makeup. First, some of their examples of inherent features do not seem to accord with the authors’ own definition of inherence. Second, rather than posit an inherence heuristic to explain why humans rely more heavily on inherent features, it may be more parsimonious to do so on the basis of aspects of the world itself and our relationship to it.

Although informed consent is an integral part of clinical practice, its current doctrine remains mostly a matter of law and mainstream ethics rather than empirical research. There are scarce empirical data on patients’ perceived purpose of informed consent, which may include administrative routine/courtesy gesture, simple honest permission, informed permission, patient-clinician shared decision-making, and enabling patient’s self decision-making. Different purposes require different processes.

Asking whether the sexes are natural kinds amounts to asking whether the categories, female and male, identify real divisions in nature, like the distinctions between biological species, or whether they mark merely artificial or arbitrary distinctions. The distinction between females and males in the animal kingdom is based on the relative size of the gametes they produce, with females producing larger gametes (ova) and males producing smaller gametes (sperm). This chapter argues that the properties of producing relatively large and small (...) gametes are causally correlated with a range of other properties in a wide variety of organisms, and this is what makes females and males natural kinds in the animal kingdom. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the relationship between sex and gender: while the difference between the sexes is biologically grounded, the difference between genders is socially based. Since gender depends in part on the perception of sex, whether or not gender is real or not does not depend on whether sex is, since social reality is constituted in part by our perceptions. The claim that sexes are natural kinds in the animal kingdom does not imply that the biological differences among female and male humans do and should have social consequences. (shrink)

Objective: Governments consistently aim to enhance services and establish online connections to efficiently deliver necessary information. This study aims to evaluate the future potential of digital libraries in public libraries in Pakistan by examining various projects that have introduced innovative approaches to foster the development of digital library services. Methodology: The analysis utilized the Amos 24 version, employing the Structural Equation Model (SEM) for assessing model fit indices and validating hypotheses. Additionally, Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 24 was (...) employed for Pearson correlation and factor analysis. Findings: The results suggest the appropriateness of discussing three out of the seven elements/factors used to assess competence improvement. The study reveals that public library managers can offer both physical and online workshops to community members, addressing emotional management for customers, including children and adults, during post-crisis information retrieval. Practical Implications: The study on public library user literacy skills, user behavior, and digital resources and services integrates the exploration and development of online databases to address challenges faced by public library management and users amidst the information explosion in academic and research activities. This contributes to enhancing the satisfaction levels of public library users. Originality/Value: Librarians are encouraged to conduct online workshops to address challenges faced by research students in information-seeking scenarios, focusing on improving reading and literacy skills, understanding user behavior, and optimizing digital resources and services through a study of online databases. (shrink)

Purpose: Physicians are often reluctant to discuss “Do Not Resuscitate” orders with patients. Although perceived self-efficacy is a known prerequisite for behavioural change, little is understood about the confidence of physicians regarding DNR discussions.Subjects and methods: A survey of 217 internal medicine attendings and 132 housestaff at two teaching hospitals about their attitudes and confidence regarding DNR discussions.Results: Participants were significantly less confident about their ability to discuss DNR orders than to discuss consent for medical procedures , and this was (...) true for both attendings and housestaff . In a multivariate logistic model of confidence regarding DNR discussions, women were less confident than men ; house officers were less confident than attendings , those who were less confident of their ability to discuss medical procedures were less confident discussing DNR , and those who found talking to patients about DNR orders very difficult reported less confidence than those who did not .Conclusion: We conclude that physicians’ confidence regarding DNR discussions is low compared with their confidence regarding other medical discussions and that confidence varies by sex and perceived difficulty of the task. Efforts to improve DNR discussions should explore the need to tailor educational interventions to fit these characteristics. (shrink)

The search for the “furniture of the mind” has acquired added impetus with the rise of new technologies to study the brain and identify its main structures and processes. Philosophers and scientists are increasingly concerned to understand the ways in which psychological functions relate to brain structures. Meanwhile, the taxonomic practices of cognitive scientists are coming under increased scrutiny, as researchers ask which of them identify the real kinds of cognition and which are mere vestiges of folk psychology. Muhammad (...) Ali Khalidi presents a naturalistic account of “real kinds” to validate some central taxonomic categories in the cognitive domain, including concepts, episodic memory, innateness, domain specificity, and cognitive bias. He argues that cognitive kinds are often individuated relationally, with reference to the environment and etiology of the thinking subject, whereas neural kinds tend to be individuated intrinsically, resulting in crosscutting relationships among cognitive and neural categories. (shrink)

With the growing call for private sector actors to address global challenges, it is necessary to first assess whether regions with the greatest needs are accessing corporate philanthropy. In this paper, we ask whether corporate philanthropy is reaching those with the greatest health-care needs. Drawing on economic geography and corporate homophily, we argue that corporate philanthropy tends to exacerbate health inequality as grants are destined for counties with fewer health problems. We test and find support for this hypothesis using data (...) on health grants made by US corporate foundations and county-level health data. Our results that corporate health grants are less likely to go to counties which have a lower proportion of medical service providers and insured citizens suggest that corporate foundations are unwittingly complicit in worsening the resource gap between small, poor, rural counties and large, wealthy, urban counties. From an ethical perspective, we provide some guidance as to how this may be corrected. (shrink)

Abstract: The study aimed to identify the reality of the application of strategic agility in the Palestinian civil organizations in Gaza Strip, and the concept of strategic agility has included a number of areas which are (strategic sensitivity, clarity of vision, choice of strategic goals, rapid response, joint responsibility, taking actions, core capabilities) and the study used An analytical descriptive approach, and the questionnaire as a main tool for collecting data from the employees of the associations operating in the governorates (...) of Gaza Strip. The relative weight of the strategic agility scale reached (79.04 %), and there were statistically significant differences in the dimensions of the measure due to the gender variable in the dimensions of strategic agility (strategic sensitivity, clarity of vision, choice of strategic goals, rapid response, and taking measures) and the differences were in favor of females . While there were no statistically significant differences in my dimension (shared responsibility, core capabilities) attributable to the gender variable, there were no statistically significant differences between the mean dimensions of strategic agility due to the age group variable, the educational qualification, and the study presented a set of recommendations, the most important of which are: the necessity of seeking civil organizations In Gaza Strip, by obtaining funding from external countries in order to provide associations with self-income to face crises and give them independence in order to preserve them in order to play their role in society, the need to follow up on the strategic plan for NGOs using electronic messages where It paves the way to reach excellence and creativity in the field of work, the need to hold meetings and workshops with the local community and this helps them to define the needs of society. (shrink)

In this interview, which took place in July 2020, Muhammad Asghari, an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Tabriz, asked eleven questions (via email ) to Professor Susan Haack, a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of Miami. This American philosopher eagerly and patiently emailed me the answers to the questions. The questions in this interview are mainly about analytic philosophy and pragmatist philosophy.This interview was conducted via personal email between me and Professor (...) Susan Haack in July 2020. This interview, which Professor Hawk eagerly accepted, includes eleven questions about her biography and roles of various philosophers in her thought and finally about the influence of the philosophy of pragmatism on her thought. Of course, it goes without saying that the Haack's book Philosophy of Logic in Iran has been translated into Persian and he has published two articles in the quarterly journal of Philosophical Investigations (University of Tabriz) and I also have translated one of her articles into Persian. What was most interesting to me was the influence of pragmatism on Haack's thought that Charles Sanders Pierce, among classical American pragmatists, had as much influence on this philosopher's thought as John Dewey had in Rorty's thought. Here I thank Professor Susan Haack for answering my questions patiently and eagerly. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a unified causal account of natural kinds. Using as a starting point the widely held view that natural kind terms or predicates are projectible, I argue that the ontological bases of their projectibility are the causal properties and relations associated with the natural kinds themselves. Natural kinds are not just concatenations of properties but ordered hierarchies of properties, whose instances are related to one another as causes and effects in recurrent causal processes. The resulting account (...) of natural kinds as clusters of core causal properties that give rise to clusters of derivative properties enables us to distinguish genuine natural kinds from non-natural kinds. For instance, it enables us to say why some of the purely conventional categories derived from the social domain do not correspond to natural kinds, though other social categories may. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify creative behavior and its impact on achieving Lean strategy in Palestinian civil organizations. The study used the descriptive analytical approach and the questionnaire as a main tool for collecting data from employees of associations operating in the governorates of Gaza Strip. The cluster sample method was used and the sample size was (343) individuals. Retrieving (298) questionnaires, and the following results were reached: The relative weight of the measure of Lean strategy was 79.04 (%), and (...) the relative weight of the measure of creative behavior was 78.99 (%), and there was a statistically significant relationship between creative behavior and Lean strategy, and the presence of an effect of creative behavior on Achieving Lean strategy, the absence of statistically significant differences in creative behavior according to the gender variable, age group, educational qualification, specialization, and the presence of statistically significant differences in Lean strategy attributable to the gender variable in dimensions (strategic sensitivity, clarity of vision, choice of strategic goals, Response speed, action) and differences were in favor of females. While there were no statistically significant differences in my dimension (shared responsibility, core capabilities) due to the gender variable, there were no statistically significant differences between the mean dimensions of Lean strategy due to the age group variable, the educational qualification, and the study presented a set of recommendations, the most important of which are: the necessity of seeking civil organizations In Gaza Strip, by obtaining funding from external countries to provide self-income for associations to face crises and give them independence in order to preserve them to carry out their role in society, the need to work to follow up on the strategic plan for NGOs using electronic messages as they pave the way to reach excellence and creativity in the field of work, The necessity of holding meetings and workshops with the local community, and this helps them to define the community's needs. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Edward Said’s central thesis in Orientalism has a direct explanatory role to play in our understanding of the work produced in at least one area of scholarship about the Arab and Islamic worlds, namely Arab-Islamic philosophy from the classical or medieval period. Moreover, I claim that it continues to play this role not only for scholarship produced in the West by Western scholars but also within the Arab world itself. After recalling some traditional varieties (...) of Orientalism in the study of Islamic philosophy, I go on to isolate some neo-Orientalist theses and positions. Then I identify what I call “Oriental Orientalism” in the study of Islamic philosophy, which originates in the Arab world itself. In conclusion, I speculate as to why Orientalism persists in scholarship about the Islamic world, more than a quarter of a century after Said first unmasked it. Finally, I distinguish two accounts of Said's interpretive stance and attempt to justify a particular reading of his philosophical framework. (shrink)

Data analytics, machine intelligence, and other cognitive algorithms have been employed in predicting various types of diseases in health care. The revolution of artificial neural networks in the medical discipline emerged for data-driven applications, particularly in the healthcare domain. It ranges from diagnosis of various diseases, medical image processing, decision support system, and disease prediction. The intention of conducting the research is to ascertain the impact of parameters on diabetes data to predict whether a particular patient has a disease or (...) not. This paper develops an improved ANN model trained using an artificial backpropagation scaled conjugate gradient neural network algorithm to predict diabetes effectively. For validating the performance of the proposed model, we conduct a large set of experiments on a Pima Indian Diabetes dataset using accuracy and mean squared error as evaluation metrics. We use different number of neurons in the hidden layer, ranging from 5 to 50, to train the ANN models. The experimental results show that the ABP-SCGNN model, containing 20 neurons, attains 93% accuracy on the validation set, which is higher than using the other ANNs models. This result confirms the model’s effectiveness and efficiency in predicting diabetes disease from the required data attributes. (shrink)

The current doctrine of informed consent for clinical care has been developed in cultures characterized by low-context communication and monitoring-style coping. There are scarce empirical data on patients' norm perception of information disclosure in other cultures.

Abstract: The study aimed to identify the creative behavior in the Palestinian civil organizations between reality and expectations, and the study used the descriptive analytical approach and the questionnaire as a main tool for collecting data from employees of associations operating in the governorates of Gaza Strip, and the cluster sample method was used and the sample size was (343) individuals and has been recovered (298) Resolution. The following results were reached: The relative weight of the measure of creative behavior (...) was 78.99 (%), and there were no statistically significant differences in creative behavior according to the gender variable, age group, educational qualification, specialization, while the results indicated that there were differences according to the number of years of service. The study presented a set of recommendations, the most important of which are: the necessity of working to follow up the strategic plan for NGOs using electronic messages as it paves the way for achieving excellence and creativity in the field of work, the need to hold meetings and workshops with the local community and this helps them determine the needs of the community. (shrink)

Sir Muhammad Iqbal, 1877-1938, Urdu poet and philosopher.

Abstract: The study aimed to identify the procedures and speed of response and their role in improving the creative behavior of Palestinian NGOs. The study used the descriptive analytical approach and the questionnaire as a main tool for collecting data from employees of associations operating in Gaza Strip governorates, and the cluster sample method was used and the sample size reached (343) individuals. (298) questionnaires were retrieved, and the following results were reached: The relative weight of the field of taking (...) measures reached (77.33%), and the relative weight of the field of response speed reached (78.66%) and the relative weight of the creative behavior was 78.99 (%), and the results also showed a relationship Statistically significant of me For adopting the procedures and speed of response and creative behavior, and the presence of the effect for adopting procedures and speed of response to the creative behavior, and there are differences statistically significant in scale dimensions due to the variable gender in (response speed, take action) and the differences in favor of females. There were no statistically significant differences attributable to the variable of the age group and the educational qualification, and there were no statistically significant differences in the creative behavior according to the variable of gender, age group, educational qualification, specialization, and the study presented a set of recommendations the most important of them: the necessity of civil organizations in Gaza Strip to obtain Funding from foreign countries in order to provide associations with self-income to face crises and give them independence in order to preserve them in order to play their role in society. The necessity of holding meetings and workshops with the local community, and this helps them determine the needs of society. (shrink)

I begin the first part by showing how situationism should make us question traditional understandings of virtues as intrinsic dispositions. I concentrate specifically on situationist experiments related to mood. I then introduce Islamic virtue ethics and the dawa movement. In parts two and three I examine ethnography of the dawa movement to explore how they deal with worries about the influence of mood on their virtue. In part two I show how they train their habits in very traditional virtue ethics (...) ways in order to be more resilient when faced with virtue-diminishing affective situations. In part three I show how the situation, rather than hindering practitioners, is recruited into helping these women achieve piety. I conclude, in part four, by showing the dawa movement's creative use of the Islamic veil as a way to help these women deal with the objection that one cannot avoid all bad situations. Going beyond social psychological experiments, I examine two methodological sources not found in situationist debates. First, I argue for ethnography as an empirical method through which to study virtue. I draw on ethnography of the Islamic women's dawa movement. Secondly, the work in the philosophy of mind on ‘affective scaffolding’. (shrink)

Aim: Patients with advanced cancer need information about end-of-life treatment options in order to make informed decisions. Clinicians vary in the frequency with which they initiate these discussions.Patients and methods: As part of a long-term longitudinal study, patients with an expected 2-year survival of less than 50% who had advanced gastrointestinal or lung cancer or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis were interviewed. Each patient’s medical record was reviewed at enrollment and at 3 months for evidence of the discussion of patient wishes concerning (...) ventilator support, artificial nutrition and hydration , resuscitation and hospice care. A Kaplan–Meier analysis was also performed and 2-year survival calculated.Results: 60 cancer and 32 ALS patients were enrolled. ALS patients were more likely than cancer patients to have evidence of discussion about their wishes for ventilator support , ANH , DNR and hospice care . At 6 months, 91% of ALS patients were alive compared with 62% of cancer patients; at 2 years, 63% of ALS patients were alive compared with 23% of cancer patients .Conclusions: Cancer patients were less likely than ALS patients to have had documented advanced care planning discussions despite worse survival. This may reflect perceptions that ALS has a more predictable course, that advanced cancer has a greater number of treatment options, or differing views about hope. Nevertheless, cancer patients may be less adequately prepared for end-of-life decision-making. (shrink)

Conceptualized outside the theoretical framing of both liberal as well as critical approaches, this book re-imagines the law by exploring the contradictions and polarities of in terms of its relationship with violence. It encompasses and interweaves themes and ideas as diverse as death penalty, community might, state sovereignty on the one hand, to animal rights, sexual consent, children's agency and LGBT rights, on the other. While acknowledging that law is fundamentally and inherently tied to violence, the objective of this eclectic (...) collection is to respond to and engage with the violence of law by exploring alternate ways of conceptualizing, reading, practising, and making the law. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger broadened the meaning of art to a truth-disclosing event akin to seemingly disparate events such as the founding of a political state, Jesus’s sacrifice for all humankind, and the questioning of a philosopher. Art makes us pay attention to it by presenting the familiar in a new and unfamiliar context and unsettles our presuppositions and reconceptualizes our way of thinking. I begin by explicating the Heideggerian interpretation of the nature of art by looking at the key concepts that (...) make a work of art work. Then I argue that by themselves, the concept of veiling and the concept of fashion are very familiar concepts to Indonesians, but that the practice of combining these two ideas brings something unfamiliar to that society. This new practice reveals a way of Being that combines religious piety with our current, late-modern, consumer society. The combination of fashion and veiling for piety discloses, in the Heideggerian sense, a new “world” that undermines secular and fundamentalist narratives about the religious agent while still remaining an authentic Indonesian art piece. (shrink)

The intention of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate social responsibility disclosure on financial performance in a case study of listed Pharmaceutical firms in Pakistan. For this case study, the panel data of 10 years from 2005 to 2014 are obtained through content analysis of annual reports. Quantitative tools were used to measure variables studied in which index was developed and used scoring methodology. Further, brand equity is introduced as a mediator between CSRD and financial performance. The (...) results of content analysis revealed that GSK Pakistan laboratories involved in greater level of disclosure as compared to other pharmaceutical firms. The average rate of disclosure of listed pharmaceutical firms is increasing annually. Among four themes, the results showed that pharmaceutical firms mostly disclose information regarding community involvement. The results of regression which were significant shows that brand equity act as mediator between the corporate social responsibility disclosure and financial performance. (shrink)

Mankind is faced with a number of serious problems that demand an effective solution. The prevalence of injustice and the frequency of financial crises are two of the most serious of these problems. Consisting of an in-depth introduction along with a selection of eight of Muhammad Umer Chapra's essays--four on Islamic economics and four on Islamic finance--this timely book raises the question of what can be done to not only minimize the frequency and severity of the financial crises, but (...) also make the financial system more equitable. The author considers the origins of Islamic economics and outlines its development and underlying principles. He compares the approach taken to ethics and economics in Islam with that taken in the West, considering whether lessons can be applied to the global financial architecture in order to mitigate against financial crises. The book also examines the case against interest and looks at both innovation in Islamic finance, as well as challenges facing the industry. Written by a leading authority in the field, this book will be a stimulating resource for students and researchers in Islamic economics and finance, as well as providing valuable insight to all of those with an interest in financial systems and their interaction with society. (shrink)

The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has badly affected the social, physical, and emotional health of workers, especially those working in the healthcare sectors. Drawing on social exchange theory, we investigated the effects of participative leadership on employees’ workplace thriving and helping behaviors among frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we examined the moderating role of a leader’s behavioral integrity in strengthening the relationship between participative leadership, and employees’ workplace thriving and helping behaviors. By using a two-wave time-lagged design and (...) data collected from 244 healthcare workers, a moderated hierarchal regression was implemented to test the proposed hypotheses. As hypothesized, participative leadership predicted employees’ workplace thriving and helping behaviors. The leader’s behavioral integrity strengthened the relationship between participative leadership and employees’ thriving and moderated the relationship between participative leadership helping behaviors. Implications for research, theory, and practice are discussed. (shrink)

The seventeenth century Muslim philosopher Muhammad Sadr al-Din Shirazi, known as Mulla Sadra, introduced the idea of substantial motion in Islamic philosophy. This view is characterized by a continuity criterion for diachronic identity, a four-dimensional view of individual substances, the notion that possibilities change, and the continual creation of all creatures. Modern philosophical logic provides means to model a variety of claims about individuals, substances, modality and time. In this paper, the semantics of formal systems discussed by Carnap, Bressan (...) and Gupta are reviewed with regard to the issue of substance and identity. Next a model introduced by Storrs McCall is described that is able to build upon and yet resolve some of the issues about substance and identity as characterized by Bressan and others. McCall’s model is also shown to be able to provide an illustration of Mulla Sadra’s doctrine of substantial motion. (shrink)

Substituted judgment assumes adequate knowledge of patient’s mind-set. However, surrogates’ prediction of individual healthcare decisions is often inadequate and may be based on shared background rather than patient-specific knowledge. It is not known whether surrogate’s prediction of patient’s integrative life-story narrative is better. Respondents in 90 family pairs rank-ordered 47 end-of-life statements as life-story narrative measure and completed instruments on decision-control preference and healthcare-outcomes acceptability as control measures, from respondent’s view and predicted pair’s view. They also scored their confidence in (...) surrogate’s decision-making and familiarity with pair’s healthcare-preferences. Life-story narratives’ prediction was examined by calculating correlation of statements’ ranking scores between respondent-personal and respondent-surrogate Q-sorts and between respondent-surrogate and pair-personal Q-sorts before and after controlling for correlation with respondent-personal scores, and by comparing percentages of respondent-surrogate Q-sorts co-loading with pair-personal vs. respondent-personal Q-sorts. Accuracy in predicting decision-control preference and healthcare-outcomes acceptability was determined by percent concordance. Results were compared among subgroups defined by intra-pair relationship, surrogate’s decision-making confidence, and healthcare-preferences familiarity. Mean age was 35.4 years, 69% were females, and 73 and 80% reported ≥ very good health and life-quality, respectively. Mean surrogate’s decision-making confidence score was 3.35 and 75% were ≥ familiar with pair’s healthcare-preferences. Mean projection, simulation, and adjusted-simulation correlations were 0.68, 0.42, and 0.26, respectively. Out of 180 respondent-surrogate Q-sorts, 24, 9, and 32% co-loaded with respondent-personal, pair-personal, or both Q-sorts, respectively. Accuracy in predicting decision-control preference and healthcare-outcomes acceptability was 47 and 52%, respectively. Surrogate’s decision-making confidence score correlated with adjusted-simulation’s correlation score. There were significant differences among the husband-wife, parent-child, and sibling-sibling subgroups in percentage of respondent-surrogate Q-sorts co-loading with pair-personal Q-sorts and percent agreement on healthcare-outcomes acceptability. Despite high self-reported surrogate’s decision-making confidence and healthcare-preferences familiarity, family surrogates are variably inadequate in simulating life-story narratives. Simulation accuracy may not follow the next-of-kin concept and is 38% based on shared background. (shrink)

Consumers occasionally buy commodity products without much thought but purchase high involvement products or services after rigorous information collection and detailed comparisons of the different options. At the core, research on consumer behavior comprises studies on the cognitive processes involved in consumer purchasing decisions and the way buying decisions are made. The discipline of consumer research and marketing has remained dominated by positivist, empiricist, and realist philosophies. Since consumer behaviour is a social phenomenon, the researchers have used logical positivist and (...) interpretivist philosophies to study and develop various theories about consumer behaviour. However, both of these philosophies have inherent limitations to capture the complete knowledge of consumer reality. Pragmatist philosophy is capable of providing solutions to real-life problems by starting with research question and exploring the issues from multiple perspectives. It is, therefore, suggested to explore the various aspects of consumer behaviour research from a pragmatist perspective and contribute more effective information to the body of knowledge in this discipline. (shrink)