In this paper we analyze some of the major difficulties of informed consent. We consider insufficient to base IC on the principle of autonomy. We must not forget that the patient may be in a situation of extreme vulnerability and the good doctor should assume a degree of commitment and responsibility with his/her decisions. Our aim is to introduce the ethics of responsibility of Levinas in practice and theory of IC in order to generate a beneficent medical practice in which (...) the supervision and overseeing of the patient do not undermine his/her autonomy. (shrink)

This study examines the relationship between cooperative business relations in small businesses and environmental protection, one of the most important policies of social responsibility in manufacturing. We reviewed the literature and carried out an empirical study of 930 small manufacturing firms in Spain. Results indicate that small businesses that maintain and improve their cooperative relations through business networking with universities, competitors, suppliers and customers spend more on environmental protection. The managerial, practical, research and policy implications of the obtained research findings (...) are discussed. (shrink)

This paper aims to improve knowledge about the main factors influencing firm environmental commitment, by examining empirically the relationship between public support for R&D for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and their investment in environmental protection. The empirical analysis was developed using a sample of 1594 Spanish firms, and a binary logistic regression to evaluate the existence of dependency relationships between the analyzed variables. The results show that those companies receiving direct funding from local public entities and those collaborating with (...) research centers and universities, invest more in environmental actions to protect the natural ecosystem. The paper contributes to the academic literature by analyzing the main factors that influence the SMEs environmental commitment. Moreover, showing practitioners and policy makers the effectiveness of different types of financial support depending on the origin of the funds and the form of action taken; showing managers the advantages of collaborating with public administrations, as well as with other research organizations, to obtain better ECSR results. (shrink)

This paper analyses empirical evidence of efforts to enable Spanish micro and small manufacturing companies to boost their labour productivity rates through the development of the main pillars of their corporate social responsibility policies. This study aims to develop new approaches and sensibilities towards work from an ethical, values and CSR perspective, showing how internal dimensions of CSR, such those related to relationships with employees and responsibility in processes and product quality, can improve labour performance and labour efficiency, thereby contributing (...) to a better society. The results of a sample of 929 small businesses indicate that the social responsibility policies that most contributed to a short-term increase in labour productivity are those related to internal aspects of the company, in particular its involvement in the quality of processes and products, promotion of innovation and employee care. However, the impact on labour productivity of CSR policies related to external factors, such as relationship with stakeholders and environmental concern, could not be empirically proven in this paper. (shrink)

v. 1. El tiempo histórico de Mario Hernández Sánchez-Barba -- v. 2. Generaciones y mentalidades. Estudios de teoría de la Historia.

Herder is often criticized for having embraced cultural relativism, but there has been little philosophical discussion of what he actually wrote about the nature of the human species and its differentiation through culture. This book focuses on Herder's idea of culture, seeking to situate his social and political theses within the context of his anthropology, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, theory of language and philosophy of history. It argues for a view of Herder as a qualified relativist, who combined the conception of (...) a common human nature with a belief in the importance of culture in developing and shaping that nature. Especially highlighted are Herder's understanding of the relativity of virtue and happiness, and his belief in the impossibility of constructing a single best society. The book will appeal to a wide range of readers interested both in Herder and in Enlightenment culture more generally. (shrink)

Este trabajo trata sobre el pensamiento político del humanista español Benito Arias Montano . Consta de dos partes: en la primera se estudia la actuación política de Arias Montano como consejero del rey Felipe II en Flandes; en la segunda se comenta elDavid , obra publicada por Arias Montano en colaboración con el artista holandés Philippe Galle en Amberes, donde se puede apreciar su alegoría sacro política.PALABRAS CLAVE: Arias Montano, Philippe Galle, Felipe II, política, República Cristiana Católica, metafórica teocrática, (...) humanismo bíblico, historia sagrada, historia profana, tacitismo, Campos Sánchez-Bordona, Sánchez Lora This paper examines the Spanish humanist Benito Arias Montano’s political thought, divided into two parts. Firstly, a study of the Arias Montano’s activity as advisor to King Philip II in Flanders. Secondly, the comment on his work David , published in collaboration with the Dutch artist Philip Galle in Antwerp, and in which its possible appreciate his sacred political allegory.KEYWORDS: Arias Montano, Philip Galle, Philip II, Christian Catholic Republic, biblical humanism, sacred history, profane history, tacitism, Campos Sánchez-Bordona, Sánchez Lora. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt escreveu que o “mal banal” origina-se da incapacidade do indivíduo para pensar. Porém, pode-se perguntar se o mal não pode se originar da falta de julgamento. Oou seja, o indivíduo comete atos maus porque não averigua os dados, não os avalia. Eem tal hipótese, o “mal banal” ocorre devido à ausência do “juízo reflexionante” (ou reflexivo) e da “mentalidade alargada” kantianos, resolvendo muitas das lacunas que o mal derivado do pensamento possui, como a que exige distinguir o raciocínio (...) do pensamento. (shrink)

In line with its institutional commitments and in order to strengthen the relevance of its business education program in addressing the persistent social challenges facing the Philippines, Mission University revised its Master of Business Administration curriculum in 2012. A core change in the curriculum was the incorporation of action research training and the requirement for graduation of implementing and defending an action research project. The introduction of action research, which is based on critical realist philosophy of science, was intended to (...) enable the university’s MBA graduates to become reflexive and humanistic agents of change in their work contexts through the application of observation, critical reflection, collaborative analysis and action and scholarly skills. The implementation of the action research requirement is beginning to yield positive results based on the types of projects implemented by the students and their resulting sense of efficacy in the workplace. Challenges in implementation include the need to further hone student skills in pursuing more emancipatory projects and the need to further orient faculty in the critical realist philosophy underlying action research, as distinct from traditional positivism. (shrink)

A través de un largo excurso por la historia de España, el autor se propone descubrir la particularidad de la Ilustración en el país ibérico para desmontar la tesis según la cual, aquende los Pirineos, no hubo propiamente un Siglo de las Luces, y por lo tanto, tampoco una auténtica filosofía moderna. Presenta en un segundo momento la figura intelectual del padre Benito Feijoo como ejemplo paradigmático de lo que fue la Ilustración española y su diferencia con el Enlightement (...) inglés, las Lumières francesas y la Aufklärung alemana. Se desarrolla la idea según la cual el siglo XVIII sentó las bases de una revolución cultural de carácter supranacional que se materializó en la Constitución de Cádiz de 1812, luego abortada por la Restauración absolutista de Fernando VII. (shrink)

This study focuses on retraction notices from two major Latin American/caribbean indexing databases: SciELO and LILACS. SciELO includes open scientific journals published mostly in Latin America/the Caribbean, from which 10 % are also indexed by Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge Journal of Citation Reports. LILACS has a similar geographical coverage and includes dissertations and conference/symposia proceedings, but it is limited to publications in the health sciences. A search for retraction notices was performed in these two databases using the keywords “retracted”, (...) “retraction” “withdrawal”, “withdrawn”, “removed” and “redress”. Documents were manually checked to identify those that actually referred to retractions, which were then analyzed and categorized according to the reasons alleged in the notices. Dates of publication/retraction and time to retraction were also recorded. Searching procedures were performed between June and December 2014. Thirty-one retraction notices were identified, fifteen of which were in JCR-indexed journals. “Plagiarism” was alleged in six retractions of this group. Among the non-JCR journals, retraction reasons were alleged in fourteen cases, twelve of which were attributed to “plagiarism”. The proportion of retracted articles for the SciELO database was approximately 0.005 %. The reasons alleged in retraction notices may be used as signposts to inform discussions in Latin America on plagiarism and research integrity. At the international level, these results suggest that the correction of the literature is becoming global and is not limited to mainstream international publications. (shrink)

The COVID-19 outbreak has ravaged all societal domains, including education. Home confinement, school closures, and distance learning impacted students, teachers, and parents’ lives worldwide. In this study, we aimed to examine the impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on Italian and Portuguese students’ academic motivation as well as investigate the possible buffering role of extracurricular activities. Following a retrospective pretest–posttest design, 567 parents reported on their children’s academic motivation and participation in extracurricular activities. We used a multi-group latent change score model to (...) compare Italian and Portuguese students’: pre-COVID mean motivation scores; rate of change in motivation; individual variation in the rate of change in motivation; and dependence of the rate of change on initial motivation scores. Estimates of latent change score models showed a decrease in students’ motivation both in Italy and in Portugal, although more pronounced in Italian students. Results also indicated that the decrease in students’ participation in extracurricular activities was associated with changes in academic motivation. Furthermore, students’ age was significantly associated with changes in motivation. No significant associations were found for students’ gender nor for parents’ education. This study provides an important contribution to the study of students’ academic motivation during home confinement, school closures, and distance learning as restrictive measures adopted to contain a worldwide health emergency. We contend that teachers need to adopt motivation-enhancing practices as means to prevent the decline in academic motivation during exceptional situations. (shrink)

Organization in a tangled world -- Process views of organization -- Alfred North Whitehead on process -- Bruno Latour on relativizing the social, and the becoming of networks -- Niklas Luhmann on autopoiesis and recursiveness in social systems -- James March on decision processes and organization : a logic of streams -- Karl Weick on organizing and sensemaking -- A scheme for process based organizational analysis -- Some implications for organizational analysis.

This practical-theological study aims to develop a contextual theology in the areas of business and government that will aid a successful intervention by the church in diminishing the corrupt practices prevalent in South Africa. It seeks to prove that corruption is a major factor in causing the delays experienced in the implementation of service delivery, and that this is causing much anger and increasing disillusionment with the present system of democratic government. At the moment the church has a window of (...) opportunity for this intervention to take place, since many of those responsible for supporting, organising and implementing service delivery, both in government and industry, worship regularly, as committed members, in local Christian congregations. A modified application of the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach using focus groups is suggested as both a tool for intervention and for further research. (shrink)

Introduction -- Concepts and theories -- Environment and citizenship : the basics -- Introducing citizenship theories -- Theorizing environmental citizenship -- Actions and practices -- Environmental citizenship in action -- Governing environmental citizenship -- Environmental citizenship incorporated -- Pedagogies and representations -- Learning environmental citizenship -- Conclusion : into the future.

In the contemporary context of increasing inequality and various forms of segregation, this volume analyzes the transition to neoliberal politics in Santiago de Chile. Using an innovative methodological approach that combines georeferenced data and multi-stage cluster analysis, Méndez and Gayo study the old and new mechanisms of social reproduction among the upper middle class. In so doing, they not only capture the interconnections between macro- and microsocial dimensions such as urban dynamics, schooling demands, cultural repertoires and socio-spatial trajectories, but also (...) offer a detailed account of elite formation, intergenerational accumulation, and economic, cultural, and social inheritance dynamics. (shrink)

Drawing on managerial discretion and conflicting institutional logics literature, this study investigates the relation between the personal sustainability behaviors of owner–managers and the corporate sustainability practices of SMEs. The research proposes a contingency model that assesses the moderating effects of perceived economic advantages and environmental hostility on this relationship. Based on linear hierarchical multiple regression analyses of a cross-sectoral sample of French SMEs, the results suggest a positive influence of the manager's PSB on the SME's CS practices that appears to (...) be differently moderated depending on the type of practice considered. The influence on environmental practices is fostered through the perception of economic advantages. The influence on workplace practices is only effective when the business environment is deemed benign and the influence on community practices is dampened by the perception of environmental hostility. Highlighting the trade-off between the manager's personal values and the SME's economic constraints, these findings contribute to a better understanding of the critical antecedents of sustainability in small businesses. (shrink)

Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Ambiguity is the first full-length study of Beauvoir's political thinking. Best known as the author of The Second Sex, Beauvoir also wrote an array of other political and philosophical texts that together, constitute an original contribution to political theory and philosophy. Sonia Kruks here locates Beauvoir in her own intellectual and political context and demonstrates her continuing significance. Beauvoir still speaks, in a unique voice, to many pressing questions concerning politics: the values (...) and dangers of liberal humanism; how oppressed groups become complicit in their own oppression; how social identities are perpetuated; the limits to rationalism; and the place of emotions, such as the desire for revenge, in politics. In discussing such matters Kruks puts Beauvoir's ideas into conversation with those of many contemporary thinkers, including feminist and race theorists, as well as with historical figures in the liberal, Hegelian, and Marxist traditions. Beauvoir's political thinking emerges from her fundamental insights into the ambiguity of human existence. Combining phenomenological descriptions with structural analyses, she focuses on the tensions of human action as both free and constrained. To be human is to be a paradoxical being, at once capable of free choice and yet, because embodied, vulnerable to injury from others. Politics is thus a domain of complexly interwoven, multiple, human interactions that is rife with ambiguity, and where freedom and violence too often closely intertwine. Beauvoir accordingly argues that failure is a necessary part of political action. However, she also insists that, while acknowledging this, we should assume responsibility for the outcomes of what we do. (shrink)

This article deals with Donald Davidson�s concept of metaphor and Richard Rorty�s use of it for his version of political liberalism. Rorty assumes that metaphor is a linguistic element that is impossible to understand. Metaphor is an unintelligible �call� that, from within the private sphere, provokes in individuals the desire to create alternative forms of life. Once metaphor has become literal, it �and the new form of life that it entails� can form part of public life. Metaphor is the guarantee (...) of the constant renewal of political liberalism. As against Rorty, yet also relying on Davidson, I argue that both metaphor and literal meaning are comprehensible,... (Leer más) and must therefore be said to exist in a relationship of mutuality. This allows me to subject to a thorough re-elaboration Rorty�s strict internal division of the political along the lines of the public and the private. (shrink)

Cultural difference has been largely ignored within bioethics, particularly within the end-of-life discourses and practices that have developed over the past two decades in the U.S. healthcare system. Yet how should culturebe taken into account?

Heidegger has often been seen as having no moral philosophy and a political philosophy that can only support fascism. Sonia Sikka's book challenges this view, arguing instead that Heidegger should be considered a qualified moral realist, and that his insights on cultural identity and cross-cultural interaction are not invalidated by his support for Nazism. Sikka explores the ramifications of Heidegger's moral and political thought for topics including free will and responsibility, the status of humanity within the design of nature, (...) the relation between the individual and culture, the rights of peoples to political self-determination, the idea of race and the problem of racism, historical relativism, the subjectivity of values, and the nature of justice. Her discussion highlights aspects of Heidegger's thought that are still relevant for modern debates, while also addressing its limitations as reflected in his political affiliations and sympathies. (shrink)

This paper deals with the interpretation and distribution of universal Free Choice (FC) items, such as English FC any or Spanish cualquiera. Crosslinguistically, universal FC items can be characterized as follows. First, they have a restricted distribution. Second, they express freedom of choice: the sentence You can take any card conveys the information that the addressee is free to pick whichever card she chooses. Under standard assumptions, the truth conditions of sentences like You can take any card are taken to (...) be captured by formalizations in which a universal quantifier ranging over individuals has wide scope over the possibility modal. The crucial observation that informs the account in this paper is that this type of formalization cannot capture the freedom of choice component. I will argue that in order to derive the right interaction between possibility modals and FC items, we need to add an exclusiveness condition to the standard wide scope paraphrases. The same proposal that guarantees freedom of choice will automatically account for the distribution restrictions of FC items. The formal implementation of this proposal is cast in the Hamblin semantics proposed in Kratzer and Shimoyama (Indeterminate phrases: The view from Japanese, 2002). (shrink)

Robert Hopkins’s Picture, Image and Experience aims to provide an account of pictorial representation that vindicates the intuitions of the many, namely that pictorial representation is a deeply visual phenomenon, that an explanation of pictorial representation needs to be based on an explanation of our experience of pictures, and that there must be some sense in the idea that pictures resemble their objects. Hopkins proposes that we can show what is correct in these intuitions by explaining pictures as representations that (...) depend on a distinctive sort of perceptual experience: experienced resemblance in outline shape between a picture and its object. Experienced resemblance in outline shape is the experience of sameness of the solid angle subtended by the contours on the pictorial surface and the solid angle subtended by the actual depicted objects. Pictures don’t resemble their objects but they are experienced as such and it is sameness of outline shape or sameness of subtended solid angles that secures this experience. (shrink)

Hormis pour quelques spécialistes, la pensée de J. G. Hamann est peu familière encore aujourd’hui. Cette situation regrettable peut s’expliquer de différentes manières. D’une part, les écrits de Hamann ne sont guère connus, peu étudiés et encore moins cités. D’autre part, son œuvre n’est pas proprement philosophique et qui plus est, Hamann, peut-être plus que quiconque, a la réputation d’être un écrivain «ésotérique, confus et obscur, inintelligible, [une] figure excentrique et isolée, consumé par une sorte de christianisme individuel, décrit sous (...) forme de piétisme, croyant aux vérités occultes de la révélation divine, [qui] rejetait le matérialisme et l’athéisme français de son temps [...]». Il est ainsi aisé de percevoir pourquoi Hamann ne fut généralement pas retenu comme un personnage important dans l’histoire de la philosophie au XVIIIe siècle, surtout en France, et aussi pourquoi peu de philosophes se sont intéressés à lui. (shrink)

A ética aristotélica baseia-se em uma “teoria da ação humana”. Para fins de compreensão , ela pode ser “decomposta” em etapas e analisada em seus componentes, que ficam expostos claramente. Dessa forma, também, podem-se avaliar os diferentes papéis desempenhados, especialmente, pela virtude e pela prudência , entre outros. A “ética teleológica” de Aristóteles, nessa exposição, parece portar componentes deontológicos, o que torna o estudo, além de relevante, também filosoficamente interessante.The Aristotelian ethics is based on a “theory of human action”. For (...) understanding his ethical theory it can be divided in steps, and thus be analyzed in its components, for example, virtue and prudence , which are so clearly exposed. Thus, also, it is possible toevaluate the different roles performed especially by these components. The “teleological ethics” of Aristotle seems, besides, to carry components of a deontological ethics which makes the study presented hear relevant and philosophically interesting. (shrink)