This paper investigates the alignment of business school curriculums with the Sustainable Development Goals, utilising a case study of Griffith Business School, Australia. The study utilises an audit of keywords to map content and concepts associated with the goals, targets and indicators of SDGs. The audit results revealed that although there was already considerable uptake of key SDGs concepts throughout the undergraduate programs, in particular Goal 16, there were some gaps. Feedback from teaching staff on the results (...) was combined with existing literature and industry/government approaches to offer considerations for future curriculum development that seeks to better integrate SDGs and sustainability. This work contributes to ongoing discussions about sustainability curriculum development and links previous research with the emerging SDG agenda in business schools. The practical nature of this research lends to direct transfer of method to other business schools who are wishing to map and develop their curriculum in relation to the SDGs. (shrink)

Audits of the informed consent process are a key element of a clinical research quality assurance program. A systematic approach to such audits has not been described in the literature. In this paper we describe two components of the audit. The first is the audit of the informed consent document to verify adherence with federal regulations. The second component is comprised of the audit of the informed consent conference, with emphasis on a real time review of the (...) appropriate communication of the key elements of the informed consent. Quality measures may include preparation of an informed consent history log, notes to accompany the informed consent, the use of an informed consent feedback tool, and the use of institutional surveys to assess comprehension of the informed consent process. (shrink)

Early food regimes literature tended to concentrate on the global scale analysis of implicitly negative trends in global food relations. In recent years, early food regimes authors like Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael have begun to consider the sites of resistance, difference and opportunity that have been emerging around, and into contestation with, new food regime relations. This paper examines the emerging global-scale governance mechanism of environmental food auditing—particularly those being promoted by supermarkets and other large food retailers—as an important (...) new dynamic in our understanding of the politics and potentials of food regimes. Commencing with an examination of Friedmann’s corporate environmental food regime, two key dynamics are identified as being pivotal in the rise and decline of global-scale regimes: securing social legitimacy for food relations and the importance of ecological dynamics in global food relations. By extending McMichael’s notion of ‘Food from Nowhere’ versus ‘Food from Somewhere’, the paper interrogates the emergence of a cluster of relations that comprise ‘Food from Somewhere’ and examines whether this cluster of relations has the potential to change some of the constituent ecological dynamics of food regimes. These ecological dynamics have historically been problematic, amply demonstrating Marx’s metabolic rift as the early food regimes solidified relationships between ‘ecologies at a distance’. By using socio-ecological resilience theory, ‘Food from Somewhere’ is characterized as having denser ecological feedbacks and a more complex information flow in comparison to the invisibility and distanciation characterizing earlier regimes as well as contemporary ‘Food from Nowhere’. The conclusion of this article is that while ‘Food from Somewhere’ does provide one site of opportunity for changing some key food relations and ecologies, the social legitimacy of this new form of food relations does rely on the ongoing existence of the opposite, more regressive, pole of world food relations. The key question for resolving this tension appears to be whether new food relations can open up spaces for future, more ecologically connected, global-scale food relations. (shrink)

What are the sensory individuals of audition? What are the entities our auditory system attributes properties to? We examine various proposals about the nature of the sensory individuals of audition, and show that while each can account for some aspects of auditory perception, each also faces certain difficulties. We then put forward a new conception of sensory individuals according to which auditory sensory individuals are composite individuals. A feature shared by all existing accounts of sounds and sources is that they (...) postulate sensory individuals that are non-composite. They identify the sensory individual of sound hearing or source hearing with one type of entity in the environment, be they sound waves, vibrations, or interactions. We question this assumption and argue that our perceptual systems represent two or more aspects of the environment as a single sensory individual. Finally, we show that taking auditory individuals to be composite sensory individuals allows for an account of audition that is less problematic than its existing alternatives. (shrink)

We ran a pilot experiment to explore, using a new psychophysical method, the hypothesis proposed by Zietz and Werner in the ’30s, that a sound presented simultaneously with an afterimage can change its phenomenal appearance in non-synaesthetes. The method we adopted is able to directly collect and visualise the apparent changes in intensity of the afterimages, by recording observers’ interactions with a physical feedback mechanism, without referring to verbal descriptions. These first findings support some of the most meaningful observations (...) reported by Werner and Zietz, according to which the colours of the afterimages ‘disintegrate’ at the hearing of a low sound and ‘concentrate’ for a high sound. This relationship is particularly evident with the Yellow stimulus, where the perceived colour intensity of its afterimage seems to have a faster negative change with a low-pitched tone sound, and an increase in intensity and duration when perceived simultaneously with a soprano sound. These data are also coherent with the crossmodal correspondences between both pitch and loudness in audition and lightness and brightness in vision reported in the literature. (shrink)

mHealth devices and applications, with their wide accessibility and ease of use, have the potential to address persistent inequities in biomedical research participation. Yet, while mHealth technologies may facilitate more inclusive research participation, negative features of some unregulated use in research — misleading enrollment practices, the promotion of secondary mHealth applications, discriminatory profiling, and poorer quality feedback due to dependencies on biased data and algorithms — may threaten the trust and engagement of underrepresented individuals and communities. To maximize the (...) participation of currently disenfranchised groups, those involved in unregulated mHealth research must become aware of potential risks, adopt targeted education policies, audit algorithms for hidden biases, and engage citizen scientists and other community members to identify and forestall possible harms. (shrink)

Interactive theories of lexical retrieval in language production assume that activation cascades from earlier to later processing levels, and feeds back in the reverse direction. This commentary invites Pickering & Garrod (P&G) to consider whether cascading and feedback can be seen as a form of forwarding modeling within a hierarchical production system.

This paper aims to examine the impact of national cultural values on the relation between auditing and reporting standards and ethical behaviours of firms. Based on a regression analysis using data regarding 54 countries between the years 2007 and 2012, we found that the impact of the perceived strength of auditing and reporting standards on the perceived ethical behaviours of firms is accentuated when a society is characterized by low power distance and in-group collectivism, and high institutional collectivism, future orientation (...) and uncertainty avoidance. Empirically, the study addresses a gap in the literature by highlighting the influence of national culture on the effectiveness of legal settings and regulations on ethical behaviours. (shrink)

This article presents a theorized and conceptually informed method for the undertaking of an ethics audit organization. At an operational level, the overall integrity of an organization, it is argued, may be evaluated through the application of a conceptual frame-work that embraces the inter-related themes of individual responsibility, social equity and political responsibility. Finally, a method is presented for ethics audit which was developed in the auditing of a national public sector sports organization: sportscotland. This emphasizes the significance (...) of key personnel (individuals and in groups) in producing and reproducing the organizational ethos, whilst recognizing the importance of anonymity and confidentiality throughout the process. The theoretical terrain of the ethics audit is articulated through a consideration of ethics as applied moral philosophy, equity as social justice and corporate governance as the moral health (or otherwise) of a public sector sports organization. (shrink)

There is an international consensus that medical research involving humans should only be undertaken in accordance with ethical principles. Paradoxically though, there is no consensus over the kinds of activities that constitute research and should be subject to review. In the UK and elsewhere, research requiring review is distinguished from clinical audit. Unfortunately the two activities are not always easy to differentiate from one another. Moreover, as the volume of audit increases and becomes more formal in response to (...) the demand for evidence-based practice in medicine, the overlap between research and audit grows more acute. Arguably, similar ethical standards and systems for ensuring that those standards are met should be applied regardless of whether or not a project is classified as research or audit. At a time when the research ethics review system in the UK is undergoing significant reform it is important that the opportunity is not missed to address the longstanding research-audit problem. We discuss suggestions for further reform that addresses this issue. (shrink)

Our commentary outlines a number of arguments questioning an autonomous model of word recognition without feedback. Arguments are presented against the need for a phonemic decision stage and in support of a featural level in a model including feedback.

This paper reviews the experience of 174 of Canada's largest 1500 public and private sector corporations which have begun to incorporate sustainable development management and reporting as part of their operations. Answers are provided to three main questions: Why have they implemented this initiative? What progress has been made in terms of sustainability audit practice – frequency, focus, organization of the audit team –, internal communication, and external reporting? And where has, and will the leadership for the sustainability (...) audit movement come from as why? Sustainable development auditing and reporting in Canada is voluntary. Practice varies from an elementary level to a sophisticated integrated assessment of social, environmental, labour, sourcing and trading, and governance issues. The depth of practice and experience in this area depends on several factors, including: corporate commitment, the degree of public perception of sector-wide environmental issues, exposure to legal liability, and the extent of dialogue and transparency associated with the auditing process. Differences of opinion about accounting and auditing standards as well as whether all, or parts of, audits should be independent are explored. The sources of data used for this paper include the EthicScan Corporate 1500 DataBase, The Corporate Ethics Monitor, various reports prepared by EthicScan Canada, and the consultancies of both authors. (shrink)

Lifelong learning is crucial for professionals to continuously develop and update their knowledge and skills, and for organizations to create and sustain competitive advantage. In this regard, feedback seeking is a powerful vehicle to gain new knowledge and insights in one’s development and performance. The current research dives deeper in the concept of feedback seeking by investigating the act and use of feedback as well as multiple feedback seeking methods. Leadership as a contextual factor can affect (...) employees’ feedback seeking behavior. As such, this study also explores the role of learning leadership for feedback seeking. Learning leadership supports, facilitates and encourages employees’ professional development. To address these aims, two independent studies were conducted. Study 1 was a quantitative, survey study that investigated the direct relationship between learning leadership and feedback seeking. Study 2 was a qualitative, interview study that explored which concrete learning leadership behaviors were linked to different methods of feedback seeking. The findings confirmed the pivotal role of leaders in employees’ feedback seeking behavior and provided an overview of concrete learning leadership behaviors. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to start a debate about ethical issues associated with the practice of clinical audit. This is an area that has not received much consideration. The role of clinical audit is to raise general clinical standards. The ethical issues of clinical audit may have far-reaching consequences for clinicians, patients, health care providers and purchasers. Guidance is required to provide consistency in approach so that those involved in clinical audit, at whatever level, (...) can be confident that they are following good practice. Clinicians and managers often think of good practice as being a technical matter. The main point of this paper is to bring out important ethical dimensions to good practice. (shrink)

Women who had had breast cancer and had been enrolled in a large genetic breast cancer epidemiological study were interviewed about their experience of participation in the study, their attitudes to the confidentiality of data, and the feedback of personal and general research results. Collection of family history information seemed more salient in indicating the genetic nature of the study than the enrolment information sheet. There were no concerns about confidentiality.While participants would have welcomed general feedback about the (...) results of the study and were critical that this had not been provided, the feedback of personal information proved complicated and, sometimes, difficult. It is suggested that individual feedback of genetic test information in epidemiological studies should be undertaken only when there are specific reasons. (shrink)

The article is of the opinion that simultaneous with the study of practice as an aggregate that conditions the movement of knowledge an in-depth inquiry should be made into the structure and function of practice and its law of development from different angles. The article lays emphasis on probing into the following: the process in which the capacity for practice is converted from potential into reality and the specific social and historical conditions for the conversion; the dialectic relations between the (...) purpose and effect, the effect and efficiency, and the general and the partial effect of practice and the objective criterion to judge the effect; and the feedback mechanism of the movement of practice and its function. On the basis of the above, the article analyzes the intricate interactions between practice and its various links of efficacy, effect, and feedback and arrives at the conclusion that the dialectical cycle of "practice-efficacy-effect-feedback-practice" is objective, universal, dynamic, and open and thus constitutes one of the basic laws of the movement of practice. (shrink)

Information Retrieval systems benefit from the use of long queries containing a large volume of search-relevant information. This situation is not common, as users of such systems tend to use very short and precise queries with few keywords. In this work we propose a modification of the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) technique using data from the document collection and its vocabulary for a better representation of short queries. Additionally, a study is carried out on how the modification of the proposed (...) LDA weighted vectors increase the performance using relevant documents as feedback. The work shown in this paper is tested using three biomedical corpora (TREC Genomics 2004, TREC Genomics 2005 and OHSUMED) and one legal corpus (FIRE 2017). Results prove that the application of the proposed representation technique, as well as the feedback adjustment, clearly outperforms the baseline methods (BM25 and non-modified LDA). (shrink)

Reinforcement learning relies on the reward prediction error (RPE) signals conveyed by the midbrain dopamine system. Previous studies showed that dopamine plays an important role in both positive and negative reinforcement. However, whether various reinforcement processes will induce distinct learning signals is still unclear. In a probabilistic learning task, we examined RPE signals in different reinforcement types using an electrophysiology index, namely, the feedback-related negativity (FRN). Ninety-four participants were randomly assigned into four groups: base (no money incentive), positive reinforcement (...) (presentation of money rewards), negative reinforcement (removal of money losses), and combined reinforcement (money rewards and removal of money losses) groups. In addition, in order to evaluate the engagement of emotional activity in the different reinforcement processes, Positive and Negative Affect Schedule-Expanded Form (PANAS-X) scales were applied before and after the experiment to detect the emotional changes. The results showed that there was no difference between groups in the dopamine-related learning bias. However, compared to the other three groups, negative reinforcement elicited smaller FRN (the difference-wave measure) during the learning, stronger positive affect and joviality, and less fatigue after the learning, in which the difference between the negative and positive reinforcement groups was smaller. The results indicated that pure avoidance motivation may induce distinct emotional fluctuations, which influence the feedback processing. (shrink)

If cultures are always in the making, this book catches one kind of culture on the make. Academics will be familiar with audit in the form of research and teaching assessments - they may not be aware how pervasive practices of 'accountability' are or of the diversity of political regimes under which they flourish. Twelve social anthropologists from across Europe and the Commonwealth chart an influential and controversial cultural phenomenon.

This article draws on key normative principles grounded in important values – solidarity, partiality and friendliness – in African philosophy to think critically and deeply about the ethical challenges around returning individual genetic research findings in African genomics research. Precisely, we propose that the normative implication of solidarity, partiality and friendliness is that returning findings should be considered as a gesture of goodwill to participants to the extent that it constitutes acting for their well-being. Concretely, the value of friendliness may (...) imply that one ought to return actionable results to participants even when their preferences regarding feedback are unknown. Notwithstanding, returning individual genetic results will have a cost implication. The cost of feeding back is relevant in the context of African genomics research projects, which are often funded by international sponsors and should be researched further. (shrink)

The program of which the cybernetics conferences are a part is described as "an experiment in communication, still in progress," in which the emphasis is on informal and critical discussion rather than uninterrupted presentation of formal papers. The articles have a refreshing frankness about them. Included are an introduction and a summing up of the previous nine conferences by Warren S. McCulloch, and articles on brain activity, on measures of semantic information, and on the nature and acquisition of meaning in (...) language. ---D. S. (shrink)