Leaders and managers of today's multinational corporations face a plethora of problems and issues directly attributable to the fact that they are operating in an international context. With work-sites, plants and/or customers based in another country, or even several countries, representing a vast spectrum of cultural differences, international trade and offshore operations, coupled with increased globalisation in respect to political, social and economic realities, contribute to new dilemmas that these leaders must deal with. Not the least of these being a (...) Code of Ethics and ethical decision making.This paper examines the differences in culture between a group of managers from the United States and similar group from Croatia using Hofstede's theory of International Cultures. The study explores how these cultural dimensions may help in our understanding of the differences in reported whistleblowing. The authors then postulate four hypotheses regarding various aspects of whistleblowing. These Hypotheses were than tested using a survey administered to a sample of U.S.A. and Croatian managers. Finally, the paper discusses the findings and practical implications for contemporary managers in the international arena. (shrink)

Hemagglutinin is a major virulence factor of influenza viruses and plays an important role in viral pathogenesis. Analysis of amino acid changes, epitopes’ regions, glycosylation and phosphorylation sites have greatly contributed to the development of new generations of vaccine. The hemagglutinins of 10 selected isolates, 8 of 2010 and 2 of 2013 samples were sequenced and analyzed by several bioinformatic softwares and the results were compared with those of 3 vaccine isolates. The study detected several amino acid changes related to (...) altered epitopes’ sites, modification sites and physico-chemical properties. The results showed some conserved modification sites in HA structure. This study is the first analytical research on isolates obtained from Shiraz, Iran, and our results can be used to better understand the genetic diversity and antigenic variations in Iranian and Asian H1N1 pathogenic strains. (shrink)

Some of the most well known figures in three main cultures, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, defend negative theology. They believe that God doesn’t have any positive attribute and that no positive knowledge of Him is possible. Others, who are in majority, are anxious of agnosticism. Maimonides the great Jewish philosopher tries to relive this anxiety. He proposes negative knowledge arguing that in terms of negation we become closer to some knowledge of Him, though His nature still remains out of access. (...) In this way he tries to avoid agnosticism and at the same time justify the extreme differences among believers in knowledge of Him. But it seems that, if we rely on reason alone, Maimonides' arguments are not convincing. This paper tries to criticize his examples and arguments. It seems clear that any negative knowledge should be based on a kind of positive one. No one by mere negation can receive any understanding of Him especially when the realm of negation expands upon the predicate of being too. In that case if someone like Maimonides insists to preserve his faith on God he should seek ways other than reason, like fideism or Gnosticism. And as a philosopher he cannot hold his position anymore. (shrink)

This study tried to investigate the type of argumentation found in media discourse data. A case in point was the sport talk show interview. The data included an interview extracted from the Iranian popular sport show, Navad, broadcast every Monday by Channel 3 in Iran. The interview was with the former president of the Football Federation of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Analysis of the data was done within the framework of Toulmin’s conception of argument as a form of conversation. (...) Accordingly, the propositions produced collaboratively by the host and guests were used to reconstruct the argument structure of the interview in terms of Toulminian schemata. The qualitative analysis of the data revealed that: 1) the argument structure of the interview was that of substantial argument rather than the analytic one. 2) Little if any formal validity was found in the skeleton of the argument. 3) The talk seemed to be subjective, and backing and qualifier elements widely used by the guest were not in some parts satisfactory. 4) Warrant, considered as one of the essential components of practical arguments, was not, in some parts, explicitly referred to, but must have been be implicitly inferred by the listeners. (shrink)

Ghesmat (roughly could be translated as ‘fate’) is one of the ancient cultural schemas among the Persians. This study explores the schema of ghesmat in the lives of Persian speakers as reflected in their language use among people with different age and educational level. Having introduced the schema of ghesmat in Persian, data was collected by giving a discourse completion test (DCT) to the participants of the study who were randomly chosen. The results of the analysis of data revealed that (...) Persians instantiated the cultural schema of ghesmat in different contextual circumstances of their lives. In addition, the use of this cultural schema was different among people with different age and education. It seemed young educated Persian speakers drew least on the schema whereas old uneducated ones mostly favored ghesmat schema. Finally the study discussed about the possible pattern for the distribution of cultural schemas. (shrink)

Translation of 'The Meaning of Life' (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) into Persian by Abdulfazl Tavakoli Shandiz. Printed as a booklet.