Why is it so plausible that business organisations in contemporary society use values in their communication? In order to answer this question, a sociological, system theoretical approach is applied which approaches values not pre-empirically as invisible drivers for action but as observable semantics that form organisational behaviour. In terms of empirical material, it will be shown that business organisations resort to a communication of values whenever uncertainty or complexity is very high. Inevitably, value semantics are applied in organisations first when (...) the speakers are uncertain about which stakeholders to whom they have to address (uncertainty) or when different stakeholder groups have to be addressed simultaneously (complexity); second, when the identity of the organisation has to be described; and third, when future strategic options that cannot be expressed by quantitative terms have to be communicated. Values accordingly play a role in organisational practice when certain aspects are indeterminate. Therefore, they are a means for organisations to communicate under fuzzy circumstances. On the basis of these findings, new approaches to value management can now be formulated. (shrink)

Стаття актуалізує проблему антропологічних вимірів музичного мистецтва на основі впливу естетичної емоції. Робоча гіпотеза розвідки ґрунтується на трьох позиціях: генезис звукоемоційних комплексів убачається в емоційному тлумаченні; модусом антропології музики є феномени, що закладені як глибинна структура в розвитку європейської культури в історичній перспективі та в сьогоденні; музичне мистецтво моделює за допомогою інтонаційної мови ціннісне багатство, логіку й динаміку людського світовідношення, організує духовне спілкування між людьми й поколіннями.

Although there is now a substantial body of literature exploring the effects of language diversity in international management contexts, little attention has been paid to the ethical dimensions of language diversity at work. This conceptual paper draws on the concept of epistemic injustice in order to explore how language, and in particular corporate language policies, may act as a source of epistemic injustice within the workplace. It demonstrates how language competence affects credibility judgements about a speaker, and also considers how (...) corporate language policies can create situations of hermeneutic injustice, in which marginalised groups are denied the vocabularies to understand their own experiences. Finally, ways in which such epistemic harms can be reduced are discussed, and the possibilities for management education to create epistemically responsible managers are highlighted. (shrink)

Background Researchers are required to determine whether a person has capacity to consent to a research study before they are able to participate. The Mental Capacity Act and accompanying Code of Practice for England and Wales provide some guidance on this process, but researchers have identified that it can be difficult to determine capacity to consent when a person has complex cognitive or communication needs. This study aimed to understand the experiences and opinions of researchers who recruit people with dementia (...) to research projects, to inform the future development of training resources. Methods A mixed method, cross-sectional, electronic survey was circulated via social media and research networks in England and Wales. The survey remained open for ten weeks and included open and closed questions exploring respondents’ confidence in determining capacity in the context of recruiting people with dementia to consent, their views on training and support they have experienced and their suggestions for future training and support needs. Results 60 respondents completed the survey from across England and Wales. Although 75% of respondents had experience of determining capacity to consent with people with dementia to research, only 13% rated themselves as feeling ‘very confident’ in this. Qualitative content analysis of open responses led to the generation of six themes, explaining researchers’ confidence, competence and future training needs in this area: (1) Researcher uncertainties, (2) Lack of time, (3) Balancing information complexity with accessibility, (4) Gatekeepers, (5) Existing enablers and (6) Envisioning future training. Conclusions Researchers would benefit from specific training in undertaking conversations around consent with people with dementia. People with dementia may have fluctuating capacity, and despite support from caregivers, researchers have little practical guidance on methods of determining a person’s ability to understand or appreciate the information they have provided during the consent process. Given the development of large complex trials within dementia research, there is an urgency to develop specific and practical guidance and training for researchers working with people with dementia and their families. (shrink)

Although many of the factors that may influence donation have been identified, the timing of the interview in which families are asked for their authorisations seems to be decisive. However, there are few studies that analyse this process when the interview takes place. Qualitative techniques such as Participant Observation could help to better understand this process. One of the most recurring arguments against carrying out this type of study is the difficulty in complying with all the ethical requirements for any (...) research as defined in biomedical research guidelines and committees. This article aims to contribute to a discussion on the ethical viability of conducting an in situ study on family interviewing and proposes a strategy for minimising possible risks in designing a study of these characteristics. (shrink)

Speaking about the state of the Hollywood film industry at the 2008 Academy Awards, the Oscars’ host – comedian Jon Stewart – made the following wry assessment: ‘Not all films did as well as Juno obviously. The films that were made about the Iraq War, let’s face it, did not do as well. But I’m telling you, if we stay the course and keep these movies in the theatres we can turn this around. I don’t care if it takes 100 (...) years. Withdrawing the Iraq movies would only embolden the audience. We cannot let the audience win.’ The films he is referring to include Home of the Brave (2006), In the Valley of Elah (2007) and Stop-Loss (2008) – all of which focus on the personal cost to American soldiers on their return to civilian life, as well as exposing the failure of the US invasion of Iraq at home and abroad. Despite their topical subject matter, these movies were, for the most part, commercial failures. This article seeks to investigate audience indifference (Jean Baudrillard claims a certain indifference is a fundamental consequence of the Western globalising ideology) to mainstream cinematic depictions of the post September 11 invasion of Iraq, via a consideration of the trauma and abjection depicted in these films. Baudrillard’s hypotheses on terrorism – as a symbolic challenge put forth by terrorism (embodied by the attack on the Twin Towers) – and the West’s incapacity to respond to it, forms the basis for our investigation of the limits of these films to incite and engage viewers. His writings offer a lens through which to consider how ‘terrorism’ operates symbolically, and fundamentally, the dilemmas this raises for a Western psyche grappling with how the ‘terrorist threat’ might be answered, engaged with, responded to. (shrink)

Ego-justifying, group-justifying, and system-justifying motivations contribute to base-rate respect. People tend to neglect (and use) base rates when doing so allows them to draw desired conclusions about matters such as their health, the traits of their in-groups, and the fairness of the social system. Such motivations can moderate whether people rely on the rule-based versus associative strategies identified by Barbey & Sloman (B&S).

Los juegos funerales en honor de Patroclo presentan como componente estructural el catálogo de los contrincantes en tres versiones diferentes. El presente trabajo analiza el modo en que este componente estructural revela los aspectos accidentales o inexplicables de la existencia humana desde la perspectiva de la ética homérica The Funeral Games in honor of Patroclus shows the catalogue of contenders as a structural component in three different versions. The present work analyzes the way in which this structural component reveals accidentals (...) or unexplainable aspects of human life from the point of view of Homeric Ethic. (shrink)

Public and government outrage over recent tax fraud and tax shelter cases led to significant changes in the preparer penalty laws under the Small Business Work Opportunity Act of 2007. This study experimentally examines the effectiveness of the revised preparer penalty provisions at reducing tax preparer aggressiveness. Specifically, we examine the impact of two significant components of the changes to the preparer penalty provisions - the increase in penalty amount and the increase in the likelihood of sustaining the tax position (...) required to avoid penalty imposition (required likelihood threshold) - on tax preparers’ willingness to (1) recommend an uncertain position and (2) sign a tax return containing an aggressive position. The results suggest that both the increase in penalty amount and the increase in required likelihood threshold reduce tax preparers’ willingness to recommend an uncertain position and/or sign a tax return containing an aggressive position. Of the two components, the results indicate that the increase in required likelihood threshold is more effective at reducing tax preparer aggressiveness than the increase in penalty amount. Congress may want to rethink its recent decision to reduce the required likelihood threshold for many of the decisions that tax preparers make with their clients. (shrink)

Tinguelys gesamtes Œuvre scheint vom Vanitas-Motiv grundiert: seine sinnlosen Maschinen aus Schrott, sich selbst vernichtenden, ephemeren Artefakte, die in Form von Flügelaltären stattfindende Auseinandersetzung mit dem Tod und erst recht der eine barocke Tragikomödie referierende Cenodoxus. Dass dieser Eindruck trügt, zeigt sich sobald das scheinbar Evidente mit den frühneuzeitlichen Spielarten der Vanitas konfrontiert wird. Dennoch adaptiert und inszeniert Tinguely das Motiv mit dem melancholischen Gestus des seines Heilshorizonts verlustig gegangenen Subjekts.

MUC1 and MUC4 are the two membrane mucins that have been best characterized. Although they have superficially similar structures and have both been shown to provide steric protection of epithelial surfaces, recent studies have also implicated them in cellular signaling. They act by substantially different mechanisms, MUC4 as a receptor ligand and MUC1 as a docking protein for signaling molecules. MUC4 is a novel intramembrane ligand for the receptor tyrosine kinase ErbB2/HER2/Neu, triggering a specific phosphorylation of the ErbB2 in the (...) absence of other ErbB ligands and potentiating phosphorylation and signaling through the ErbB2/ErbB3 heterodimeric receptor complex formed in the presence of neuregulin. In contrast, MUC1 has a highly conserved cytoplasmic tail, which binds β‐catenin, a key component of adherens junctions and a regulator of transcription, in a process that is tightly regulated by MUC1 phosphorylation. The specific localization of these membrane mucins to the apical surfaces of epithelial cells suggests that their signaling functions may be important as sensor mechanisms in response to invasion or damage of epithelia. BioEssays 25:66–71, 2003. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

What do spelling errors look like in children with sign language knowledge but with variation in hearing background, and what strategies do these children rely on when they learn how to spell in written language? Earlier research suggests that the spelling of children with hearing loss is different, because of their lack of hearing, which requires them to rely on other strategies. In this study, we examine whether, and how, different variables such as hearing degree, sign language knowledge and bilingualism (...) may affect the spelling strategies of children with Swedish sign language, Svenskt teckenspråk, (STS) knowledge, and whether these variables can be mirrored in these children’s spelling. The spelling process of nineteen children with STS knowledge (mean age: 10.9) with different hearing degrees, born into deaf families, is described and compared with a group of fourteen hearing children without STS knowledge (mean age: 10.9). Keystroke logging was used to investigate the participants’ writing process. The spelling behavior of the children was further analyzed and categorized into different spelling error categories. The results indicate that many children showed exceptionally few spelling errors compared to earlier studies, and they demonstrated good typing skills. Also, deaf children showed a tendency to rely on a visual strategy during spelling, which may result in incorrect, but visually similar, words, i.e. a type of spelling errors not found in texts by hearing children with STS knowledge. The deaf children also showed direct transfer from STS in their spelling. A sounding strategy was found in the hard-of-hearing children with STS knowledge, together with hearing children of deaf adults (CODAs), rather than a visual strategy. Nevertheless, the children with STS knowledge demonstrated fewer spelling errors in general, that may also derive from their early exposure of STS, also enabling them to use the fingerspelling strategy. Overall, this study suggests that the ability to hear and to use sign language, together and respectively, play a significant role for the spelling patterns and spelling strategies used by the children with and without hearing loss. (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo analizar la recepción argentina de los governmentality studies , particularmente con los denominados anglofoucauldians . En esta dirección, nos referimos, inicialmente a los “deslizamientos” y “sobreentendidos” implicados en la traducción local de la perspectiva que examinamos. En segundo lugar, en un nivel más teórico y general, abordamos las limitaciones que supone la analítica del gobierno entendida en términos de la descripción de unas racionalidades políticas. En este punto, proponemos un modo alternativo, aunque complementario, de (...) reflexión sobre las prácticas discursivas de gobierno. Para ello, nos nutrimos de las elaboraciones provenientes del análisis materialista del discurso. Finalmente, en las conclusiones reflexionamos acerca del Sur como posición enunciativa desde la cual contribuir al debate teórico-conceptual sobre el problema del gobierno y la gubernamentalidad. (shrink)

Collective action processes in complex, multiple-use common-pool resources (CPRs) have only recently become a focus of study. When CPRs evolve into more complex systems, resource use by separate user groups becomes increasingly interdependent. This implies, amongst others, that the institutional framework governing resource use has to be re-negotiated to avoid adverse impacts associated with the increased access of any new stakeholders, such as overexploitation, alienation of traditional users, and inter-user conflicts. The establishment of “platforms for resource use negotiation” is a (...) way of dealing with complex natural resource management problems. Platforms arise when stakeholders perceive the same resource management problem, realize their interdependence in solving it, and come together to agree on action strategies for solving the problem (Röling, 1994). This article sets the scene for a discussion in this Special Issue about the potential of nested platforms for resource use negotiation in facilitating collective action in the management of complex, multiple-use CPRs. The article has five objectives. First, we define “collective action” in the context of this paper. Second, we discuss the importance of collective action in multiple-use CPRs. Third, we introduce the concept of platforms to coordinate collective action by multiple users. Fourth, we address some issues that emerge from evidence in the field regarding the role and potential of nested platforms for managing complex CPRs. Finally, we raise five discussion statements. These will form the basis for the collection of articles in this special issue. (shrink)

Philosophers and social scientists have focussed a great deal of attention on our human capacity to trust, but relatively little on the capacity to hope. This is a significant oversight, as hope and trust are importantly interconnected. This paper argues that, even though trust can and does feed our hopes, it is our empowering capacity to hope that significantly underwrites—and makes rational—our capacity to trust.

The medicalisation of pregnancy and childbirth has been encouraged by the continuing growth of technology that can be applied to the reproductive journey. Technology now has the potential to fully separate reproduction from the human body with the prospect of ectogenesis—the gestation of a fetus outside of the human body. This paper considers the issues that have been caused by the general medicalisation of pregnancy and childbirth and the impact that ectogenesis may have on these existing issues. The medicalisation of (...) pregnancy and childbirth is criticised for its impact on the relationship between doctors and pregnant women and the way in which doctors treat fetuses. It is argued that ectogenesis may cause more imbalance in the doctor and intended parent relationship and may result in an increased lack of clarity regarding a doctor’s duty to the fetus. This paper finds that extensive guidance and revised legislation will be necessary to minimise the impact of ectogenesis on the existing issues caused by the medicalisation of reproduction. (shrink)

In Building Better Beings, Vargas develops and defends a naturalistic account of responsibility, whereby responsible agents must possess a feasibly situated capacity to detect and respond to moral considerations. As a preliminary step, he also offers a substantive account of how we might justify our practices of holding responsible—viz., by appeal to their efficacy in fostering a ‘valuable form of agency’ across the community at large, a form of agency that precisely encompasses sensitivity to moral considerations. But how do these (...) accounts relate to one another? Though I find much that is appealing in Vargas’s general approach, I challenge his insistence that these accounts should be treated as ‘conceptually independent’, arguing that this generates an objectionable “justification gap”: on his analysis, someone could remain an appropriate target of our responsibility practices and yet fail to be a morally responsible agent. In closing, I offer a potential solution to this problem, though it means re-visioning how the account of moral responsibility is conceptually tied to the justification of our responsibility practices. (shrink)

What is hope? Though variously characterized as a cognitive attitude, an emotion, a disposition, and even a process or activity, hope, more deeply, a unifying and grounding force of human agency. We cannot live a human life without hope, therefore questions about the rationality of hope are properly recast as questions about what it means to hope well. This thesis is defended and elaborated as follows. First, it is argued that hope is an essential and distinctive feature of human agency, (...) both conceptually and developmentally. The author then explores a number of dimensions of agency that are critically implicated in the art of hoping well, drawing on several examples from George Eliot’s Middlemarch. The article concludes with a short section that suggests how hoping well in an individual context may be extended to hope at the collective level. (shrink)

Prenatal screening, consisting of maternal serum screening and nuchal translucency screening, is on the verge of expansion, both by being offered to more pregnant women and by screening for more conditions. The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have each recently recommended that screening be extended to all pregnant women regardless of age, disease history, or risk status. This screening is commonly justified by appeal to the value of autonomy, or women's (...) choice. In this paper, I critically examine the value of autonomy in the context of prenatal screening to determine whether it justifies the routine offer of screening and the expansion of screening services. I argue that in the vast majority of cases the option of prenatal screening does not promote or protect women's autonomy. Both a narrow conception of choice as informed consent and a broad conception of choice as relational reveal difficulties in achieving adequate standards of free informed choice. While there are reasons to worry that women's autonomy is not being protected or promoted within the limited scope of current practice, we should hesitate before normalizing it as part of standard prenatal care for all. (shrink)

We call systematic disputes that are particularly hard to resolve deep disagreements. We can divide most theories of deep disagreements in analytic epistemology into two camps: the Wittgensteinian view and the fundamental epistemic principles view. This essay analyzes how both views deal with two of the most pressing issues a theory of deep disagreement must address: their source and their resolution. After concluding that the paradigmatic theory of each camp struggles on both fronts, the essay proceeds to show that, despite (...) their differences, these theories share some core assumptions and think of deep disagreements similarly: as grounded in fundamental epistemic differences between the parties. This underlying conception of deep disagreements the author calls “the fundamental model.” The essay provides reasons to be wary of this conception, and hence, mainstream epistemologists’ treatment of the issue. (shrink)

This paper is divided into two parts. In Section 1, I explore and defend a “regulative view” of folk-psychology as against the “standard view”. On the regulative view, folk-psychology is conceptualized in fundamentally interpersonal terms as a “mind-making” practice through which we come to form and regulate our minds in accordance with a rich array of socially shared and socially maintained sense-making norms. It is not, as the standard view maintains, simply an epistemic capacity for coming to know about the (...) mental states and dispositions already there. Importantly, the regulative view can meet and beat the standard at its own epistemic game. But it also does more. In Section 2, I show how the regulative view makes progress on two other problems that remain puzzling on the standard view: the problem of “first-person authority” – accounting for the special features of self-knowledge; and the problem of “reactive.. (shrink)

This paper examines the methodological claim made famous by P.F. Strawson: that we understand what features are required for responsible agency by exploring our attitudes and practices of holding responsible. What is the presumed metaphysical connection between holding responsible and being fit to be held responsible that makes this claim credible? I propose a non-standard answer to this question, arguing for a view of responsible agency that is neither anti-realist (i.e. purely 'conventionalist') nor straightforwardly realist. It is instead ‘constructivist’. On (...) the ‘Scaffolding View’ I defend, reactive attitudes play an essential role in developing, supporting, and thereby maintaining the capacities that make for responsible agency. While this view has relatively novel implications for a metaphysical understanding of capacities, its chief virtue, in contrast with more standard views, is providing a plausibly defensible account of how so-called responsible agents genuinely deserve to be treated as such. (shrink)