Management Ethics: Integrity at Work redefines what it means for a manager to function with integrity in the private and public sectorsùdomestically and globally. It integrates the latest theoretical work in both descriptive and normative ethics, and incorporates legal, communication, quality, and organizational theories into a conceptual framework that improves managerial judgment in the handling of moral complexity at work. The authors use their organizational ethics consulting and academic research experience to provide practical assessment and decision-making tools that convert ethics (...) theories into sound action steps. The book examines three key dimensions of management integrityùjudgment, process, and developmental dimensionsùand applies them to individual chapters devoted to the subprocesses of ethical planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. The authors focus their theories and tools on 28 ethics minicases related to each management function in seven allied management application clusters: accounting, auditing management; finance, investment management; marketing, advertising management; business management, business law, human resource management; technology, quality operations, organizational behavior management; public, nonprofit, health care management; and international, environmental, public policy management. Management Ethics: Integrity at Work builds management integrity by linking and enhancing both ethics and management competence in responsible planning, organizing, leading, and controlling for use by professionals and students in the private and public sectorsùdomestically and globally. (shrink)

The authors identify the challenge of holding contemporary business leaders accountable for enhancing the intangible strategic asset of integrity capacity in organizations. After defining integrity capacity and framing it as part of a strategic resource model of sustainable global competitive advantage, the stakeholder costs of integrity capacity neglect are delineated. To address this neglect issue, the authors focus on the cultivation of judgment integrity to handle behavioral, moral and hypothesized economic complexities as key dimensions of integrity capacity. Finally, the authors (...) recommend two leadership practices to build competence in business leaders to enhance integrity capacity as an organizational strategic asset. (shrink)

The authors propose the integrity capacity construct with its four dimensions (process, judgment, development and system dimensions) as a framework for analyzing and resolving behavioral, moral and legal complexity in business ethics' issues at the individual and collective levels. They claim that moral progress in business comes about through the increase in stakeholders who regularly handle moral complexity by demonstrating process, judgment, developmental and system integrity capacity domestically and globally.

The authors delineate the nature and neglect of integrity capacity and global business citizenship by world business leaders. They discuss how the philosophical analysis of moral and economic complexity enhances judgment integrity capacity and global business citizenship. Finally, the authors recommend positive action steps to improve global business citizenship and leadership integrity capacity through a balanced and inclusive pluralistic economic philosophy.

The authors delineate the nature and neglect of integrity capacity and global business citizenship by world business leaders. They discuss how the philosophical analysis of moral and economic complexity enhances judgment integrity capacity and global business citizenship. Finally, the authors recommend positive action steps to improve global business citizenship and leadership integrity capacity through a balanced and inclusive pluralistic economic philosophy.

The first main result isolates some conditions which fail for the class of graphs and hold for the class of Abelian p-groups, the class of Abelian torsion groups, and the special class of "rank-homogeneous" trees. We consider these conditions as a possible definition of what it means for a class of structures to have "Ulm type". The result says that there can be no Turing computable embedding of a class not of Ulm type into one of Ulm type. We apply (...) this result to show that there is no Turing computable embedding of the class of graphs into the class of "rank-homogeneous" trees. The second main result says that there is a Turing computable embedding of the class of rank-homogeneous trees into the class of torsion-free Abelian groups. The third main result says that there is a "rank-preserving" Turing computable embedding of the class of rank-homogeneous trees into the class of Boolean algebras. Using this result, we show that there is a computable Boolean algebra of Scott rank ${\mathrm{\omega }}_{1}^{\mathrm{C}\mathrm{K}}$. (shrink)

BackgroundThe ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines are widely endorsed but compliance is limited. We sought to determine whether journal-requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist improves full compliance with the guidelines.MethodsIn a randomised controlled trial, manuscripts reporting in vivo animal research submitted to PLOS ONE (March–June 2015) were randomly allocated to either requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist or current standard practice. Authors, academic editors, and peer reviewers were blinded to group allocation. Trained reviewers performed outcome adjudication (...) in duplicate by assessing manuscripts against an operationalised version of the ARRIVE guidelines that consists 108 items. Our primary outcome was the between-group differences in the proportion of manuscripts meeting all ARRIVE guideline checklist subitems.ResultsWe randomised 1689 manuscripts (control: n = 844, intervention: n = 845), of which 1269 were sent for peer review and 762 (control: n = 340; intervention: n = 332) accepted for publication. No manuscript in either group achieved full compliance with the ARRIVE checklist. Details of animal husbandry (ARRIVE subitem 9b) was the only subitem to show improvements in reporting, with the proportion of compliant manuscripts rising from 52.1 to 74.1% (X2 = 34.0, df = 1, p = 2.1 × 10−7) in the control and intervention groups, respectively.ConclusionsThese results suggest that altering the editorial process to include requests for a completed ARRIVE checklist is not enough to improve compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines. Other approaches, such as more stringent editorial policies or a targeted approach on key quality items, may promote improvements in reporting. (shrink)

Despite concerns about the relationships between health professionals and the medical device industry, the issue has received relatively little attention. Prevalence data are lacking; however, qualitative and survey research suggest device industry representatives, who are commonly present in clinical settings, play a key role in these relationships. Representatives, who are technical product specialists and not necessarily medically trained, may attend surgeries on a daily basis and be available to health professionals 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to provide (...) advice. However, device representatives have a dual role: functioning as commissioned sales representatives at the same time as providing advice on approaches to treatment. This duality raises the concern that clinical decision-making may be unduly influenced by commercial imperatives. In this paper, we identify three key ethical concerns raised by the relationship between device representatives and health professionals: impacts on healthcare costs, the outsourcing of expertise and issues of accountability and informed consent. These ethical concerns can be addressed in part through clarifying the boundary between the support and sales aspects of the roles of device representatives and developing clear guidelines for device representatives providing support in clinical spaces. We suggest several policy options including hospital provision of expert support, formalising clinician conduct to eschew receipt of meals and payments from industry and establishing device registries. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to explore the association between internet addiction and problem behaviours on social networking sites using the general strain theory. Design/methodology/approach Using the purposive sampling method, a survey was conducted, which collected data from 414 college students studying in two public universities in South Australia. The Delphi method was used to develop the questionnaire used for the survey. Findings 'Results of this research indicated a significant association between internet addiction and problem behaviours on SNS. Respondents who had (...) engaged in problem behaviours on SNS had high internet addiction test scores. On the basis of this finding, the present research argues that the general strains associated with the suffering of newly emerging challenges such as internet addiction might contribute to victimisation and deviant and problem behaviours on SNS in specific and possibly in cyberspace in general. Research limitations/implications Results of the present study need to be interpreted cautiously due to many limitations it has. This research is a cross-sectional study, which might not adequately explain the associations between internet addiction and problem behaviours on SNS. Longitudinal studies involving larger samples might have added significant value to this study. The present study uses purposive sampling technique, which has limited its generalizability, and its findings may not be generalised to large populations. Originality/value Limited information is available pertaining to the association between problem behaviours on SNS and internet addiction. The present study is a pioneering effort, which argues that rapid popularity of SNS is likely to increase internet addiction and the frustration of not getting proper treatment for their internet addiction might lead to deviant behaviours on SNS. (shrink)

Professional identity and competent ethical behaviors of nursing students are commonly developed through curricular inclusion of professional nursing values education. Despite the enactment of this approach, nursing students continue to express difficulty in managing ethical conflicts encountered in their practice. This descriptive correlational study explores the relationships between professional nursing values, self-esteem, and ethical decision making among senior baccalaureate nursing students. A convenience sample of 47 senior nursing students from the United States were surveyed for their level of internalized professional (...) nursing values (Revised Professional Nursing Values Scale), level of self-esteem (Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale), and perceived level of confidence in ethical decision making. A significant positive relationship (p < 0.05) was found between nursing students’ professional nursing values and levels of self-esteem. The results of this study can be useful to nursing educators whose efforts are focused on promoting professional identity development and competent ethical behaviors of future nurses. (shrink)

Professional identity and competent ethical behaviors of nursing students are commonly developed through curricular inclusion of professional nursing values education. Despite the enactment of this approach, nursing students continue to express difficulty in managing ethical conflicts encountered in their practice. This descriptive correlational study explores the relationships between professional nursing values, self-esteem, and ethical decision making among senior baccalaureate nursing students. A convenience sample of 47 senior nursing students from the United States were surveyed for their level of internalized professional (...) nursing values (Revised Professional Nursing Values Scale), level of self-esteem (Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale), and perceived level of confidence in ethical decision making. A significant positive relationship (p < 0.05) was found between nursing students’ professional nursing values and levels of self-esteem. The results of this study can be useful to nursing educators whose efforts are focused on promoting professional identity development and competent ethical behaviors of future nurses. (shrink)

This chapter defends a divine command theory consisting of two central claims. First, a kind of action is morally obligatory just in case God has commanded that actions of that kind be performed. Second, God’s commanding that a kind of action be performed is what makes it obligatory. God’s commands bring it about that the wrong actions are wrong, and the required actions are required. Moreover, God’s goodness ensures that His commands are not arbitrary. God is the standard of Goodness. (...) Something is good just in case it resembles God in a relevant way. Since God resembles Himself, He is good, and His commands are suited to ground moral obligations. Deontic or duty-related properties depend on God’s commands, but axiological or evaluative properties, such as goodness, do not. (shrink)

With the blossoming of research on corporate social performance, the data produced by Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini have become the standard to measure firms’ social and stakeholder actions. However, to date, only a few studies have focused on examining the data directly, and have done so largely in terms of validating the concepts and methods in the data set’s construction. The present study seeks to complement these efforts by contributing knowledge about what the KLD data report on firms’ actions toward primary (...) and secondary stakeholders, and the dimensions of CSP that firms generally engage in, together or sequentially. With data on 3,073 firms over the period 2000-2010, results show that firms expend more resources on garnering strengths in primary stakeholder dimensions, although this trend is sharply deteriorating to the benefit of secondary stakeholders—notably the natural environment. Results also show that firms generally approach CSP with a mixed behavior, with strengths and concerns in the same dimensions, especially as it pertains to secondary stakeholders. These are the same dimensions in which firms show the longer, more intrinsic commitments, suggesting that secondary stakeholder strengths and concerns may be structural in nature. However, there is also evidence of relationships across dimensions, indicating that firms’ involvement in CSP can generate momentum. The rich implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper I develop and defend a social conception of dignity. To that end, I look at what Holocaust survivors say about dignity (and the related Hebrew word, kavod) since many have described their experiences in these terms. Unlike traditional conceptions, on my account dignity admits of degrees—one can have more or less dignity.

That women tend to see harassment where men see harmless fun or normal gendered interaction is one of the more robust findings in sexual harassment research. Using in-depth interviews with employed men and women, this article argues that these differences may be partially explained by the performative requirements of masculinity. The ambiguous practice of “girl watching” is centered, and the production of its meaning analyzed. The data suggest that men's refusal to see their behavior as harassing may be partially explained (...) through the objectification and attenuated empathy that the production of masculine identities may require. Thus, some forms of harassment and their interpretations may more accurately be seen as acts of ignoring than states of ignorance. Implications for anti-sexual harassment policies and training are explored. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a social conception of integrity while still holding onto the original meaning of the term. To that end I build mainly on the works of Cheshire Calhoun, whose view of integrity, developed over a decade ago, I consider to be one of the best, Charles Taylor, who has an insightful understanding of the self, which helps provide a richer conception of integrity than I believe Calhoun developed, and Lawrence Langer, who gives an instructive critique of (...) Taylor, which I use to provide the foundation for an integrity richly grounded in community. Finally I discuss how community can contribute to or diminish one’s integrity and how it can help restore one’s integrity if it has been diminished or lost. (shrink)

This paper discusses issues involved with revealing one’s sexual orientation, cultural background, or religious beliefs to one’s students. The author takes a Deweyian approach to learning, where learning is an active, embedded practice rooted in life. As such, coming out in the classroom can have positive benefits for learning since the practice of revealing one’s sexual orientation to a group of students can be used to help students think philosophically about their life choices and, in addition, promote a more supportive (...) intellectual community. (shrink)

This thought-provoking text explores the ethical dimensions of the professional nursing practice. The authors discuss important topics such as inter-professional relationships, collective action, nursing research, and educational requirements within the context of professional commitment. Providing a balance between an empirical and a philsophical framework, the book stimulates the reader to ponder, analyze and evaluate the professional and ethical aspects of these issues.

German human rights campaigner Karl Heinrich Ulrichs advocated for same-sex marriage in the nineteenth century. Over a century later, we still have a long way to go. Arguing before his time, he took the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, head on. Ulrichs’s insights seem to have been all but forgotten. No one, to my knowledge, has invoked Ulrichs in contemporary debates about same-sex marriage, and yet he expertly diagnosed the problem and proposed a solution: start with the Church. In this (...) paper, I resurrect his insights, and strengthen his case, for same-sex marriage. (shrink)

The consideration of the problem of healthcare allocation as a special case of distributive justice is especially alluring when we only consider consequentialist theories. I articulate here an alternative Rawlsian non-consequentialist theory which prioritizes the fairness of healthcare allocation procedures rather than directly setting distributive parameters. The theory in question stems from Rawlsian commitments that, it is argued, have a better Rawlsian pedigree than those considered as such by Tännsjö. The alternative framework is worthy of consideration on its own merits, (...) but it also casts light on two related difficulties with Tännsjö’s approach: (i) the limits of his supposedly ecumenical methodology, which is revealed to be dialectically suspect and (ii) issues with the type of abstraction and idealization from actual judgements and preferences which the approach requires. (shrink)

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a serious condition with a large disease burden. It is often claimed that MDD is a “brain disease.” What would it mean for MDD to be a brain disease? I argue that the best interpretation of this claim is as offering a substantive empirical hypothesis about the causes of the syndrome of depression. This syndrome-causal conception of disease, combined with the idea that MDD is a disease of the brain, commits the brain disease conception of (...) MDD to the claim that brain dysfunction causes the symptoms of MDD. I argue that this consequence of the brain disease conception of MDD is false. It incorrectly rules out genuine instances of content-sensitive causation between adverse conditions in the world and the characteristic symptoms of MDD. Empirical evidence shows that the major causes of depression are genuinely psychological causes of the symptoms of MDD. This rules out, in many cases, the “brute” causation required by the brain disease conception. The existence of cases of MDD with non-brute causes supports the reinstatement of the old nosological distinction between endogenous and exogenous depression. (shrink)

Increasingly, policymakers within biomedicine argue that “non-financial” interests should be given equal scrutiny to individuals’ financial relationships with industry. Problematized as “non-financial conflicts of interest,” interests, ranging from intellectual commitments to personal beliefs, are managed through disclosure, restrictions on participation, and recusal where necessary. “Non-financial” interests, though vaguely and variably defined, are characterized as important influences on judgment and thus, are considered risks to scientific objectivity. This article explores the ways that “non-financial interests” have been constructed as an ethical problem (...) and the implications for research integrity. I conducted an interpretive, qualitative study, which triangulated two data sources: documents (including published accounts of identifying and managing “non-financial” interests and conflict of interest policies) and in-depth interviews with 16 leaders within evidence-based medicine, responsible for contributing to, directing, or overseeing conflict of interest policy development and implementation. This article outlines how evolutions in the definition of conflict of interest have opened the door to include myriad “non-financial” interests, resulting in the generalisation of a statistical concept—risk of bias—to social contexts. Consequently, biases appear equally pervasive among participants while in reality, a politics of objectivity is at play, with allegations of conflict of interest used as a means to undermine others’ credibility, or even participation. Iterations of the concept of conflict of interest within biomedicine have thus consistently failed to articulate or address questions of accountability including whose interests are able to dominate or distort evidence-led processes and why. Consequently, current policy solutions meant to mitigate bias may instead serve exclusionary purposes under the guise of impartiality while remaining vulnerable to interference from powerful stakeholders. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against three leading accounts of self-deception in the philosophical literature and propose a heretofore overlooked route to self-deception. The central problem with extant accounts of self-deception is that they are unable to balance two crucial desiderata: (1) to make the dynamics of self-deception (e.g., the formation of self-deceptive beliefs) psychologically plausible and (2) to capture self-deception as an intentional phenomenon for which the self-deceiver is responsible. I argue that the three leading views all fail on (...) one or both counts. However, I claim that many or most cases of self-deception conform to a different model, which I call ‘Self-deception as Omission’. In these cases, the process of self-deceptive belief formation and the intentional act for which the self-deceiver is responsible come apart, allowing us to meet both desiderata. Self-deceptive beliefs are often formed by unconscious mechanisms closely analogous to the 'System 1' processes of dual-systems psychology, or by other mechanisms of motivated reasoning. The nascently self-deceptive subject then acquiesces in the comforting belief and commits an epistemic failure by allowing it to persist. If this is done for motivationally biased reasons — e.g., preferring that the belief in question be true — then the subject is self-deceived and is blameworthy for her epistemic omission. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that warrant for Lewis’ principle of recombination presupposes warrant for a combinatorial analysis of intrinsicality, which in turn presupposes warrant for the principle of recombination. This, I claim, leads to a vicious circularity: warrant for neither doctrine can get off the ground.

Polynomial clone reducibilities are generalizations of the truth-table reducibilities. A polynomial clone is a set of functions over a finite set X that is closed under composition and contains all the constant and projection functions. For a fixed polynomial clone ${\fancyscript{C}}$ , a sequence ${B\in X^{\omega}}$ is ${\fancyscript{C}}$ -reducible to ${A \in {X}^{\omega}}$ if there is an algorithm that computes B from A using only effectively selected functions from ${\fancyscript{C}}$ . We show that if A is Kurtz random and ${\fancyscript{C}_{1} (...) \nsubseteq \fancyscript{C}_{2}}$ are polynomial clones, then there is a B that is ${\fancyscript{C}_{1}}$ -reducible to A but not ${\fancyscript{C}_{2}}$ -reducible to A. This implies a generalization of a result first proved by Lachlan (Z Math Logik Grundlagen Math 11:17–44, 1965) for the case |X| = 2. We also show that the same result holds if Kurtz random is replaced by Kolmogorov–Loveland stochastic. (shrink)

This paper argues that many so-called digital technologies can be construed as notational technologies, explored through the example of Monegraph, an art and digital asset management platform built on top of the blockchain system originally developed for the cryptocurrency bitcoin. As the paper characterizes it, a notational technology is the performance of syntactic notation within a field of reference, a technologized version of what Nelson Goodman called a “notational system.” Notational technologies produce abstracted entities through positive and reliable, or constitutive, (...) tests of socially acceptable meaning. Accordingly, this account deviates from typical narratives of blockchains, instead demonstrating that blockchain technologies are effective at managing digital assets because they produce abstracted identities through the performance of notation. Since notational technologies rely on configurations of socially acceptable meaning, this paper also provides a philosophical account of how blockchain technologies are socially embedded. (shrink)

This paper raises a slightly uncomfortable question: are some delusional subjects responsible for their delusions? This question is uncomfortable because we typically think that the answer is pretty clearly just ‘no’. However, we also accept that self-deception is paradigmatically intentional behavior for which the self-deceiver is prima facie blameworthy. Thus, if there is overlap between self-deception and delusion, this will put pressure on our initial answer. This paper argues that there is indeed such overlap by offering a novel philosophical account (...) of self-deception. The account offered is independently plausible and avoids the main problems that plague other views. It also yields the result that some delusional subjects are self-deceived. The conclusion is not, however, that those subjects are blameworthy. Rather, a distinction is made between blameworthiness and ‘attributability’. States or actions can be significantly attributable to a subject—in the sense that they are expressions of their wills—without it being the case that the subject is blameworthy, if the subject has an appropriate excuse. Understanding delusions within this framework of responsibility and excuses not only illuminates the ways in which the processes of delusional belief formation and maintenance are continuous with ‘ordinary’ processes of belief formation and maintenance, it also provides a way of understanding the innocence of the delusional subject that does not involve the denial of agency. (shrink)

It is a mistake to think that any philosophical contribution to the study of psychopathology is otiose. I identify three non-exhaustive roles that philosophy can and does occupy in the study of mental disorder, which I call the agenda-setting role, the synthetic role, and the regulative role. The three roles are illustrated via consideration of the importance of Jaspers' notion of understanding and its application to specific examples of mental disorder, including delusions of reference, Capgras delusion and other monothematic delusions, (...) and clinical depression. Together the three roles assign to philosophy of psychopathology the task of determining how to situate the varieties of mental disorder within the system of interpretive and evaluative concepts that partially make up the dynamic but indispensable manifest image. (shrink)