Due to the difficulty in solving combinatorial optimization problems, it is necessary to improve the performance of the algorithms by improving techniques to deal with complex optimizations. This research addresses the metaheuristics of marriage in honey-bees optimization based on the behavior of bees. The current study proposes a technique for solving combinatorial optimization problems within proper computation times. The purpose of this study focuses on the travelling salesperson problem and the application of chaotic methods in important sections of the MBO (...) metaheuristic. Three experiments were conducted to measure the efficiency and quality of the solutions: MBO with chaos to generate initial solutions ; MBO with chaos in the workers ; and MBO with chaos to generate initial solutions and the workers. The application of chaotic functions in MBO was significantly better at solving the travelling salesperson problem. (shrink)

Several studies have been conducted on ethical leadership and workplace ethical behavior but little is known about the role of organizational justice and each of its dimensions in this relationship. This study predicts that ethical leadership enhances organizational justice perceptions, including each of its specific dimensions, which in turn enhances employee ethical behavior. The results from two-wave survey data obtained from 270 employees in the Malaysian manufacturing industry confirm that ethical leadership has a positive impact on employee ethical behavior, and (...) that organizational justice and each of its justice dimensions mediate this relationship, both individually and together. Importantly, interpersonal and informational dimensions show the strongest mediation effects. This paper highlights the actions and strategies that can help managers to effectively elevate the moral tone in their organizations. In particular, our findings show where managers must put more emphasis to foster an ethical workplace: on providing fair treatment and honest information. (shrink)

A multidimensional measure of ethical culture was examined for its relationship to person–organization fit, ethical intent and organizational citizenship behavior, using a sample of 525 employees from the financial industry in Spain. As hypothesized, relative to studies using unidimensional assessments, our measure of EC was more strongly related to ethical intent and organizational citizenship. Also, significant differences were found in the degree to which each the EC dimensions related to both ethical intent and OCB. Finally, in a first for the (...) literature, we demonstrated the important role of overall P–O fit in connection with EC, ethical intent, and organizational citizenship. Specifically, as hypothesized, P–O fit moderated positively the association between EC and ethical intent, but mediated the EC–OCB relationship. (shrink)

Research suggests a direct negative relationship between peers’ unethical behavior and employees’ ethical intention. But several possible mechanisms might explain this relationship in more detail. For example, Machiavellianism is a personality trait characterized by interpersonal manipulation and the use of unethical means to achieve certain self‐interested ends, whether useful or pleasant. This article adopts an Aristotelian understanding of philia, related to three goods on which human relationships rest: useful, pleasant, and honest. We propose that Machiavellianism, a self‐interested, pragmatic personality orientation, (...) might explicate the relationship between peers’ unethical behavior and ethical intention. The results of a structural equation model applied to a sample of 436 banking employees in Spain reveals that Machiavellianism partially mediates the relationship between peers’ unethical behavior and employees’ ethical intention. We also find that with a greater level of peers’ unethical behavior, the negative effect of Machiavellianism on ethical intention increases, and that when peers’ unethical behavior is nonexistent, the negative effect of Machiavellianism on ethical intention disappears. These findings advance current literature by revealing that unethical peers can indirectly influence ethical intention, through shaping Machiavellianism. Our study is also the first to show that pairing high Machiavellians with ethical peers can help to cancel out the negative influence of Machiavellianism on ethical intention. (shrink)

Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century chroniclers call attention to the Incas having had a ‘particular language’, used exclusively by members of the court. The sparse linguistic material attributed to it consists of barely a dozen proper names which ‘El Inca’ Garcilaso de la Vega, unable to explain through his Quechua mother tongue, assumed must belong to the purported secret language. On closer inspection most of these words do turn out to be explicable in terms of either a Quechua or an Aymara origin. (...) Nevertheless, a small amount of extant onomastic material — mostly Inca institutional names — cannot be traced back to either, and points to a third language instead. This chapter makes the case that this could have been Puquina, once a major language of the Titicaca Basin, whence the mythical Incas set out on their journey to Cuzco. Linguistic, mythohistorical, and archaeological evidence are offered support of this hypothesis. (shrink)

The moral ideology of banking and insurance employees in Spain was examined along with supervisor role modeling and ethics-related policies and procedures for their association with ethical behavioral intent. In addition to main effects, we found evidence supporting that the person–situation interactionist perspective in supervisor role modeling had a stronger positive relationship with ethical intention among employees with relativist moral ideology. Also as hypothesized, formal ethical polices and procedures were positively related to ethical intention among those with universal beliefs, but (...) the relationship was much weaker among relativists. Thus, firms wishing to optimally promote ethical attitudes and behavior must tailor their organization-based initiatives to the individual characteristics of their employees. (shrink)

Brian Cutter objected to the consequence argument due to its dependence on the principle that miracle workers are metaphysically impossible. A miracle worker is someone who has the ability to act in a way such that the laws of nature would be violated. While there is something to the thought that agents like us do not have this ability, Cutter claims that there is no compelling reason to regard miracle workers as metaphysically impossible. However, the paper contends that miracle workers (...) are indeed impossible according to well-known theories concerning the laws of nature. This result highlights the reliance of the consequence argument on a plausible premise, which is widely accepted by proponents of non-Humean views of laws. The paper also provides a way to explain away the intuition that miracle workers are possible, but this has the upshot that a recent, two-dimensional formulation of the consequence argument is unsound. (shrink)

The aim of this work is the description of the migration of unaccompanied minors which is affected by new patterns of mobility and the globalization. The dynamism of this migrant phenomenon and diversification with respect to other kind of migration requires a new theoretical framework more complex and derived from the all explicative approaches. The study of the migration of unaccompanied minors involves the socio-political contexts, the legal framework and the home and host country; besides, it is strongly linked to (...) gender issues shaping the mobility strategy. The migration of girls adopts different patterns for themselves and their families. The strategy is related to the access of territory and the contact with mafias which smuggle them. The study is focused on the Canary Island study case where migration of unaccompanied minors is very relevant. (shrink)

Traditionally, research focused on determining the causes of employee pay satisfaction has investigated the influence of job-related inputs, both extrinsic and intrinsic to the job itself. Together with these inputs, pay-related fairness issues have played an important role in explaining the phenomenon. However, few studies consider the factors linked to fairness issues, such as ethical leadership. Because ethical leadership necessarily entails the concept of fairness, it seemingly should have a positive effect. Furthermore, because the presence of supervisor ethical leadership (SEL) (...) offers strong chances for employees to achieve moral accomplishments and excel in the practice of their jobs, SEL should enhance the effects of intrinsic job inputs. Whereas high job motivating potential (JMP) makes it easier for employees be self-actualized, moral fulfillment is necessary for them to obtain authentic self-actualization at work and minimize the impact of pay deficiencies. Along with SEL, JMP should be shaped to increase positive experiences of job meaningfulness, responsibility for job outcomes, and knowledge of results at work, which can lead to enjoyment in doing the job in itself, not just for compensation-related motives. Hierarchical regression analysis with a sample of 151 employees in a diverse set of Spanish organizations supports the direct effects of JMP and SEL and shows that higher levels of SEL increase the positive effects of JMP on pay satisfaction. The practical implications of these findings and further research directions conclude this article. (shrink)

We prove that every weakly square compact cardinal is a strong limit cardinal, and therefore weakly compact. We also study Aronszajn trees with no uncountable finitely splitting subtrees, characterizing them in terms of being Lindelöf with respect to a particular topology. We prove that the class of such trees is consistently non-empty and lies between the classes of Suslin and Aronszajn trees.

Nowadays there is a growing interest in business ethics, both in academia and professionally. However, moral lapses continue to happen in business activities, leading academicians and professionals to rethink what is being done and reinventing new strategies to successfully manage ethics in business organisations. Thus, whereas efforts to promote ethics are basically oriented to using and developing explicit, written formal mechanisms, the literature suggests that other instruments are also useful and necessary to achieve this. Thus, studying the role of the (...) Human Resource Management (hereafter, HRM) in promoting ethics is an emerging research topic due to the heavy influence that HRM practices are thought to have on employees. This paper is aimed at developing a thorough analysis of HRM's role in promoting ethics, and specifically at focusing on one of its practices, training. As an illustrative example of the utility of this practice, an empirical study was conducted on a range of Spanish banking companies in which an impact was found on the employees' ethical behaviour when ethics training was being provided inside the organisation. Finally, the practical implications of these findings and directions for future research are presented. (shrink)

I argue that the opening line of the _Phaedrus_ proleptically encapsulates the major themes of the dialogue and that paying attention to the opening line enables us to strengthen the identification of psychagogy as the key unifying thread of the whole dialogue. In particular, I argue that the opening line foreshadows the quarrel between Lysias and Socrates over the practical guidance of Phaedrus’ soul; the prominence of friendship in the philosophical form of life; the pertinence of Socrates’ one-on-one, custom-built speeches, (...) vis-à-vis the later conceptualization of rhetoric; the definition of the soul as a source of never-ending movement; as well as the origin (_arché_) and destiny (_télos_) of human souls, following the lines of the Palinode. (shrink)

Among the many approaches to leadership, servant leaders stand out for the emphasis they place on the importance of service to their followers, the organization, and the broader community. We develop and test a multilevel mediation model, in which the relationship between servant leadership and team performance is sequentially transmitted through individual-level organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and team-based internal social capital. Multilevel structural equation modeling was applied to a sample of 343 teams, reflecting 835 respondents from various departments at 171 (...) hotels in Spain; both top-down (between team leaders and individual employees) and bottom-up relationships (individual employee behavior and team outcomes) were assessed. As anticipated, individual-level OCB and group-level internal social capital fully mediated the positive effect of servant leadership on team performance. Our findings illustrate that servant leadership in the team-based business enterprise context can foster virtuous individual-level OCB to help build task-focused community, in which leaders, followers, and teams can flourish for the common good. Thus, managers should know that serving their team members first and foremost is a positive for the flourishing of all involved. As such, policymakers should pursue communication and training initiatives to encourage the practice of servant leadership. (shrink)

Today’s organizations are operating in a highly competitive and changing environment that pushes them to continuously adapt their organizational structures to such environment. However, the success of change initiatives may face a barrier in the response of employees, especially when they lack readiness to change. While leadership can shape the culture of an organization and a culture of effectiveness can help increase employees’ readiness to change, ethical leaders, who serve as a guide and offer support, can also make a difference (...) by reducing uncertainty. Yet existing research on the role of ethical leadership in the enhancement of the employees’ readiness to change is practically non-existent. Far less is the research that analyses the mechanisms that ethical leadership can use to foster employees’ readiness to change. This study aims to investigate whether the ethical leadership of middle-lower echelons influences on employees’ readiness to change positively (H1) and if this relationship is mediated through shaping an organizational culture of effectiveness (H2). Using data from 270 direct reports of middle–lower managers in public foreign trade Egyptian companies, the findings reveal that ethical leadership enhances employees’ readiness to change and that this impact is partially mediated by an organizational culture of effectiveness. Thus, with these findings, new light is shed on the positive role of ethical leadership and the mechanisms it uses to enhance employees’ readiness to change. (shrink)

We build on limited research concerning the mediation processes associated with the relationship between ethical culture and employee outcomes. A multidimensional measure of ethical culture was examined for its relationship to overall Person-Organization (P–O) fit and employee response, using a sample of 436 employees from social economy and commercial banks in Spain. In line with previous research involving unidimensional measures, ethical culture was found to relate positively to employee job satisfaction, affective commitment, and intention to stay. New to the literature, (...) ethical culture was also found to be associated positively with employee willingness to recommend the organization to others. These effects were observed even when perceptions of P–O fit were controlled. Importantly, ethical culture was also positively related to overall P–O fit, which in turn, partially mediated the relationship between ethical culture and employee outcomes. Our findings add to studies that focus on the importance of the degree of ethical congruence between the individual employee and the organization. They suggest that ethical culture, with its expected impact on virtuousness and emotional well-being, will positively influence outcomes independently of the degree to which there is a match between employee and organizational values. (shrink)

The organizational climate is the work environment conceived by emotions and motivation of an organization and, an optimal way of increasing participation is with working groups in the dependencies to improve: objectives, processes, conflicts, leadership. Thus the objective was to determine the characterization of variables. The method incorporates the quantitative approach, non -experimental design, descriptive level, applied and transversal type, analysis and deductive methods. The results show, there is a high organizational climate level, due to the contribution of three dimensions (...) or aspects that are: economic conditions, management values and organizational policies. (shrink)

Sprache, Einstellung und Rationalität stellen zentrale Begriffe eines komplexen Zusammenhangs dar, der in seiner philosophischen Tragweite noch viel zu wenig verstanden wird. In zweierlei Hinsicht trägt die vorliegende Arbeit dazu bei, dieses Desiderat zu beseitigen: Im ersten Teil wird dafür argumentiert, daß Ansätze, die glaubhaft machen wollen, daß bei der Erklärung von Intentionalität auf Rationalitätsannahmen zu verzichten sei, schon deshalb fehlerhaft sind, weil es bei Einstellungs-Zuschreibungen nicht auf die Individuierung geistiger Zustände ankommt. Vielmehr besagt die zentrale Überlegung des zweiten Teils, (...) daß dasjenige, was gemeinhin als die kognitive Signifikanz von Einstellungs-Äußerungen bezeichnet wird, am einfachsten durch eine ergänzende Theorie der pragmatischen Kontext-Bedingungen zu erfassen ist. Hier ist dann auch der Ort, an dem der im Titel gestiftete Zusammenhang am deutlichsten zutage tritt. (shrink)

Propongo en las siguientes páginas dar cuenta de las posibles conexiones que existen entre lenguaje y economía, para poder desanudar los entramados que operan en el encuentro entre ambas disciplinas, de manera que nos sea posible esclarecer por qué existiría una relación tan significativa entre el modo de funcionamiento de la economía y el papel que juega el lenguaje en ella, especialmente desde el problema del intercambio como punto de encuentro entre ambas. Comenzando por un análisis del problema del valor (...) de Marx iremos desanudando el encuentro, las similitudes y diferencias que es posible establecer entre lenguaje y economía, tratando de dar respuesta a las siguientes preguntas: ¿Funciona la teoría del valor al modo en que la concibió Marx de manera similar al intercambio lingüístico? ¿Pensó Marx en su Crítica de la economía política la relación lenguaje-economía? ¿Qué papel ocupa la traducción en todo esto? Como segundo momento analizamos el problema de la circulación y el intercambio como momentos fundamentales del encuentro entre lenguaje y economía, a partir de dos narraciones que tienen a la figura de la moneda como eje central. Por un lado, el caso de “La moneda falsa” de Baudelaire y, por el otro, “El Zahir” de Borges. En ambos escritos es posible problematizar la relación ‘lengua-economía’ allí donde se encuentra en entredicho la circulación como proceso de intercambio que es posible interrumpir. ¿Nos presentan Borges y Baudelaire una posibilidad de pensar una interrupción de los procesos de circulación del capital, tal y como Marx los concibió? (shrink)

Este texto propone una defensa de la crítica que Cohen realiza al concepto de propiedad de uno mismo. Para ello, presentaremos la crítica de Cohen a dicho concepto en la obra de Nozick. Luego, se expondrá la defensa elaborada por Mack de la propiedad de uno mismo en la obra de Nozick, por medio de la formulación de lo que denomina “cláusula de propiedad de uno mismo”. Por último, se sostendrá que dicha cláusula no permite superar las críticas de Cohen, (...) debido a que su cumplimiento es compatible con un régimen de propiedad colectiva. (shrink)

This article reconstructs the genealogy of the figure of the “global south” from the 1970s to current uses in policy, academic, and political discourses in several countries, to point out its limitations and its unintended ideological consequences. It discusses its connections with similar earlier figures like Antonio Gramsci’s “southern question” and the “third world,” establishing continuities and differences. After tracing the uses of the “global south” in several disciplinary fields, it contrasts them, through specific examples, with the way in which (...) scholars in Latin American Studies have analyzed the history of capitalist globalization and the social and political responses to it more effectively. (shrink)

This is the first book to offer a systematic comparison of the philosophies of Albert Camus and Frantz Fanon. It shows how the ethical, political, and psychological outlooks of these two influential thinkers can further our understandings of how to bring about justice in the face of deep power imbalances. The author foregrounds the bloody Algerian War of Independence in his analysis of the philosophies of Camus and Fanon. Although neither supported French colonial occupation of Algeria, they held radically different (...) views of the conflict. Fanon supported emancipation through violence, which the author argues has been uncritically romanticized. Camus, on the other hand, supported an ethics of moderation that shunned indiscriminate violence. The author argues that Camus has been unfairly accused of being an apologist for colonialism. Finally, the author draws out the common endorsement of humanist values that drive both Camus' and Fanon's thought. Camus and Fanon on the Algerian Question will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in twentieth-century Continental philosophy, postcolonialism, existentialism, and African philosophy. (shrink)

Este artigo tem como objetivo principal analisar o pensamento desenvolvido por Georges Canguilhem e Gilbert Simondon sobre dois conceitos principais: o conceito de organismo e de máquina. A intenção é de reconstruir, a partir das continuidades e descontinuidades entre os dois conceitos, o raciocínio desenvolvido pelos dois autores sobre esses temas na história da filosofia francesa do século passado. Assim, tomamos como escopo as obras La connaissance de la vie, publicada por Canguilhem em 1952 e a tese complementar de doutoramento (...) de Simondon, orientada por Canguilhem, Du mode d’existence des objets techniques, de 1958. A partir disso, o texto se divide em seis partes: uma introdução, onde damos as especificações de escopo e de análise, seguida pela primeira parte, onde analisamos os conceitos de pensamento, conhecimento, sujeito e objeto. Em seguida, na parte dois, analisamos os conceitos de máquina, mecanismo e motor, como utilizadas em Canguilhem, e os conceitos de indivíduo, elemento e conjunto técnico desenvolvidas por Simondon. A terceira parte se dedica a analisar a questão do autômato, bem como os conceitos de mecanismo e finalismo. A quarta parte desenvolve o conceito de organismo-máquina e os conceitos de potencialidade e de teleologia desenvolvidos principalmente em Canguilhem. Por fim, na conclusão, analisamos as aproximações e distâncias entre os dois autores, bem como a imagem do monstro e do robô. (shrink)

A key issue in the business ethics field is the design of effective measures for assessing the ethical culture of organizations. The Corporate Ethical Virtues Model (CEV), developed by Kaptein in 2008, is an instrument for measuring ethical culture, and has been applied, adapted and validated in different contexts. In 2013, DeBode, Armenakis, Field and Walker developed the CEV–S, a shortened version of the original scale. Both the CEV and CEV–S assess eight dimensions based on corporate ethical virtues: clarity, congruency (...) of supervisors, congruency of senior management, feasibility, supportability, transparency, discussability and sanctionability. The objective of this study is to present a Spanish version of the CEV–S and its validation process. The scale was applied to two samples of 114 and 193 Colombian employees from two companies operating in the services sector. The confirmatory factor analyses revealed a good fit for the eight-factor structure of the Spanish CEV–S and the statistical tests applied showed good levels of reliability and validity for this scale. The adequate psychometric properties shown by the Spanish CEV–S may support its use in future research to measure organizational ethical culture in Spanish-speaking settings. (shrink)