Contemporary Islamic management scholars have agreed that values are embedded in quality management. Their agreement is grounded on the famous prophetic tradition encouraging diligence in work, uttered more than 1400 years ago, which has been narrated authentically. However, little studies have specifically indicated its application in quality management activities. As quality management is initiated in the West, little attention has been given to Islamic perspective of the discipline. However, as the Japanese had successfully implemented quality management in their cultural value (...) perspective, many parties come to acknowledge the significance of values. In the literature, various Islamic values have been linked to quality management practice. While studies analyzing and categorizing them is limited, several values are redundant or being termed differently, though they are similar in crux. This article compiles the values and categorizes them depending on similar bases of Quranic verses or Prophetic traditions. The categorization proposes a set of Islamic values related to quality management practice, based on a simple frequency analysis matrix. Finally, this article concludes with prospects for future research. (shrink)

With the increase in market competition and dynamic work environment, work overload seems to have become a common issue suffered by almost every employee. Overload usually results in not only poor health conditions but also mental circumstances. These problems then become a threat to the organizations in the form of poor performance and lack of ability to reach standards. Workplace spirituality is one way to deal with stressful overload conditions. This research deals with the study of moderating affects of workplace (...) spirituality on job overload and employee’s satisfaction relationship. Having large piles of work in given targeted time results in employees becoming stressed out from their work as well as their organization. The motive of their job becomes to achieve targets and diminish the creativity within the employees. Workplace spirituality basic dimensions mentioned in this research help one achieve these targets and help employees cope with the symptoms caused by work overload. The research includes three variables, workplace spirituality, job overload, and job satisfaction. The samples of 76 respondents were asked to fill the questionnaire on all the three variables. The final results show interestingly different results then, as conceptualized according to theory. Workplace spirituality also showed to have quite an impact on job satisfaction. (shrink)

Despite increasing pressure to deal with climate change, firms have been slow to respond with effective action. This article presents a multi-level framework for a better understanding of why many firms are failing to reduce their absolute greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to climate change. The concepts of short-termism and uncertainty avoidance from research in psychology, sociology, and organization theory can explain the phenomenon of organizational inaction on climate change. Antecedents related to short-termism and uncertainty avoidance reinforce one another at (...) three levels—individual, organizational, and institutional—and result in organizational inaction on climate change. The article also discusses the implications of this multi-level framework for research on corporate sustainability. (shrink)

In this article I provide a critical perspective on governing the global corporation. While the papers in the 2009 special issue of Business Ethics Quarterly explore the political role of corporations I argue that they lack a sophisticated analysis of power acrossinstitutional and actor networks. The argument that corporate engagement with deliberative democracy can enhance the legitimacy of corporations does not take into account the effects of institutional, material and discursive forms of power that determine legitimacycriteria. As a result corporate (...) versions of citizenship mediate versions of social responsibility and morality, which are reflected in the institutional and political economic norms that are produced by this power/knowledge. In order to overcome the limits of corporate social responsibility there is a need to develop more democratic forms of global governance of corporations. A radical revisioning of democratic governance would also need to overcome the limits posed by sovereignty and would require new forms of multi-actor and multi-level translocal governance arrangements in an attempt to create forms of power that are more compatible with the principles of economic democracy. (shrink)

Previous research with adults suggests that a catalog of minimally counterintuitive concepts, which underlies supernatural or religious concepts, may constitute a cognitive optimum and is therefore cognitively encoded and culturally transmitted more successfully than either entirely intuitive concepts or maximally counterintuitive concepts. This study examines whether children's concept recall similarly is sensitive to the degree of conceptual counterintuitiveness (operationalized as a concept's number of ontological domain violations) for items presented in the context of a fictional narrative. Seven- to nine-year-old children (...) who listened to a story including both intuitive and counterintuitive concepts recalled the counterintuitive concepts containing one (Experiment 1) or two (Experiment 2), but not three (Experiment 3), violations of intuitive ontological expectations significantly more and in greater detail than the intuitive concepts, both immediately after hearing the story and 1 week later. We conclude that one or two violations of expectation may be a cognitive optimum for children: They are more inferentially rich and therefore more memorable, whereas three or more violations diminish memorability for target concepts. These results suggest that the cognitive bias for minimally counterintuitive ideas is present and active early in human development, near the start of formal religious instruction. This finding supports a growing literature suggesting that diverse, early-emerging, evolved psychological biases predispose humans to hold and perform religious beliefs and practices whose primary form and content is not derived from arbitrary custom or the social environment alone. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between environmental, social, and governance controversies and firm market value. We use a unique dataset of more than 4000 firms from 58 countries during 2002–2011. Primary analysis surprisingly shows that ESG controversies are associated with greater firm value. However, when interacted with the corporate social performance score, ESG controversies are found to have no direct effect on firm value while the interaction appears to be highly and significantly positive. Building on (...) this evidence, we attempt to explore the channels through which CSP may enhance market value. Conducting sample split analysis indicates that higher CSP score has an impact on market value only for high-attention firms, those firms which are larger, perform better, located in countries with greater press freedom, more searched on the Internet, more followed by analysts, and have an improved corporate social reputation. Thus, our findings provide new insights on the role of firm visibility through which firms can profit from their CSP. (shrink)

: There has been an intensive scholarly debate about the developmentof Indonesia’s post-New Order democracy. Some scholars have laudedIndonesia’s surprisingly successful transition to democratic consolidation,while others have disputed such a notion, arguing that Indonesia’s democraticprocess tends to be stagnant and even regressive. However, the absence ofa progressive civil society as a result of the increasingly dominant positionof oligarchic political elites in the structure of state power and democraticinstitutions, are a number of important factors that encourage the declineof democracy. This article (...) investigates the conditions that drive the role ofmoderate Islamic organizations weredeclining rather than increasing in fighting for a democratic agenda. Referringto the research data obtained through interviews, documentation and casestudies on Nahdlatul Ulama activism - the largest moderate Islamicorganization in a predominantly Muslim country, this article arguesthat the decline of civil Islamic organizations is closely related to socio-politicalfragmentation and the strengthening of the conservative wing within moderateIslamic organizations. At the same time, the decline of the organization whichhad a glorious reputation as a champion of tolerance, pluralism, and democracyin the 1980-1990s had implications for the regression of Indonesian democracymarked by, among other things, the exclusion of religious minority groups suchas Shi’a from the public sphere. (shrink)

This book delves deep into the Social Construction of Theory, comparative epistemology and intellectual history to stress the interrelationship between diverse cultures during the colonial period and bring forth convincing evidence of how the 19th century was shaped. It approaches an interesting relation between the linguistic studies of 19th century’s scientific world and subsequent widespread acceptance of the empirically weak theory of the Aryan invasion. To show entangled history in a globalized world, the book draws on the Aryan Invasion Theory (...) to highlight how different socio-religious parties commonly shape a new theory. It also explores how research is affected by the so-called social construction of theory and comparative epistemology, and deals with scholarly advancement and its relation with contemporary socio-political demands. The most significant conclusion of the book is that academic studies are prone to comparative epistemology, even under the strict scrutiny of the so-called scientific methods. (shrink)

On the life and philosophy of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Christianity and comparing it with the views of Aurobindo Ghose, 1872-1950 on Vedanta; a study.

Contemporary democracy has given primacy to thought. Building up institutions on thought and reasoned discourse excludes out human actions derived not from thought that one thinks. Ordinary life is visited by emotion and passion. Such actions of unknown origin are captured best in the drama. Indian theory and practice of drama and the poetics offer communion between the performer and the viewer. Blissful relish of the actions and the dialogues lift up the banal actions from the ordinary to a state (...) beyond simple event. Relishing thus resides in cognition. Drama in theory and in its practice thus offers foundation to institutions that could embrace independent actions as well. In relish there is cognition and reasoning alone cannot lay claim. Folk life and folk actions thus could be emancipatory. (shrink)

Drawing on two studies of children aged between seven and 10 years this article explores their narratives of themselves, families, sibling and peer relationships. Their narratives were full of push-pull and contradictory processes. The children moved towards knowledge as well as a disavowal of ‘reality’ about their families and material conditions. Critically they revealed profound wishes for something better alongside the knowledge that ‘this is it’. This article focuses on theorizing children's understandings of and relationships to social and material life (...) in order to argue that meanings matter and meanings have matter. Narratives are social in two critical ways: they involve reaching out and connecting with others, and narratives are constructed within and through the social sphere, while simultaneously they are shot through with conscious and unconscious fantasies. Children are moving towards being in a complex – engaged in and inhabiting many relationships. (shrink)

AbstractIn this paper I provide a decolonial critique of received knowledge about deliberative democracy. Legacies of colonialism have generally been overlooked in theories of democracy. These omissions challenge several key assumptions of deliberative democracy. I argue that deliberative democracy does not travel well outside Western sites and its key assumptions begin to unravel in the ‘developing’ regions of the world. The context for a decolonial critique of deliberative democracy is the ongoing violent conflicts over resource extraction in the former colonies (...) of Africa, Asia and Latin America. I argue that deliberative democracy cannot take into account the needs of marginalized stakeholders who are defending their lands and livelihoods. The paper contributes to the literature by (1) offering a critique of hegemonic models of democracy that cannot address issues of inequality and colonial difference and (2) offering possibilities to imagine counterhegemonic alternatives for a democratization of democracy from below. (shrink)

When it comes to discourses around women's labor in global contexts, we need feminist philosophical frameworks that take the intersections of gender, race, and global capitalism seriously in order to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of women's lives within global processes. Women of color feminist philosophy can bring much to the table in such discussions. In this essay, I theorize about a concrete instance of global women's labor: transnational commercial gestational surrogacy. By introducing a “racialized gender” analysis into the philosophical (...) debate on this issue, I argue that women's reproductive labor is becoming increasingly stratified within the global economy along racial and other lines. This paves the way for a “transnational reproductive caste system,” which ends up reifying various social hierarchies and sustaining existing global inequities. I aim to expose the kind of violence that surrogates experience due to such stratification as women of color in a transnational space. I discuss how discourses of race and existing racial hierarchies play out in international surrogacy and ways in which these, and indeed, the very category of “woman of color” get complicated in international contexts when they intermingle with other localized social forms and global inequities. For the purposes of my argument, I engage several insights from feminist of color Dorothy Roberts's work on race and reproductive technologies in the US. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the shifting roles played by non-state actors in governing areas of limited statehood. In particular, we focus on the emergence of voluntary grassroots organizations in Palestine and describe how regimes of international development aid transformed these organizations into professional nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that created new forms of colonial control. Based on in-depth interviews with 145 NGO members and key stakeholders and a historical analysis of limited statehood in Palestine, we found that social relations became disembedded (...) from the local context and re-embedded in new relations with international donor organizations resulting in a depoliticized public sphere. NGOization of the economy also resulted in new forms of exclusion and inclusion as well as contestations between a new class of urban middle-class professionals working in NGOs and the older generation of activists who were involved in grassroots organizations. Our findings have implications for business and human rights and governance in areas of limited statehood, in particular how private actors such as NGOs are able to exercise power in the economy. (shrink)

In recent years, political theorists have come to recognize the central role of affect in social and political life. A host of scholars, coming from a number of distinct traditions, have variously drawn our attention to the importance of the emotions to the tradition of the history of political thought, as well as to normative political theory. This attentiveness to affect is often cast as a break with earlier, Enlightenment-inspired liberal approaches towards politics, approaches that marginalized the emotions, dismissing the (...) passions as potentially dangerous, or neglected them altogether. According to the conventional liberal view, emotions are said to have no place in the public sphere, while proceduralist institutions abstract away from citizens’ affective attachments, now cast as private preferences of individuals qua citizens. In this paper we challenge this prevalent view. We argue that no less a liberal theorist than John Rawls is deeply attentive to the place of emotions in his account of liberalism. This may seem counterintuitive given that Rawls' work has been frequently criticized for epitomizing some of the deepest problems of contemporary liberal theory, as a result of the emphasis on rationalism and reasonableness in his account of liberal justice. However, against this prevalent reading, we demonstrate that Rawls is in fact highly concerned with the role of affect and presents us with an account of the embedded liberal subject. By drawing out these dimensions of Rawls' thought, we hope to contribute to upending the conventional view of liberalism as affect-blind in order to encourage a more nuanced reading of the liberal tradition. (shrink)

Very few researchers have reported on procedures of recruiting, obtaining informed consent, and compensating participants in health research in the Arabian Gulf Region. Empirical research can inform the debate about whether to adjust these procedures for culturally diverse settings. Our objective was to delineate procedures related to recruiting, obtaining informed consent, and compensating health research participants in the extremely high-density multicultural setting of Qatar.

Objective: To explore the relationship between the presentation of suffering and support for euthanasia in the British news media.Method: Data was retrieved by searching the British newspaper database LexisNexis from 1996 to 2000. Twenty-nine articles covering three cases of family assisted suicide were found. Presentations of suffering were analysed employing Heidegger’s distinction between technological ordering and poetic revealing.Findings: With few exceptions, the press constructed the complex terrain of FAS as an orderly or orderable performance. This was enabled by containing the (...) contradictions of FAS through a number of journalistic strategies: treating degenerative dying as an aberrant condition, smoothing over botched attempts, locating the object of ethical evaluation in persons, not contexts, abbreviating the decision making process, constructing community consensus and marginalising opposing views.Conclusion: The findings of this study support the view that news reporting of FAS is not neutral or inconsequential. In particular, those reports presenting FAS as an orderly, rational performance were biased in favor of technical solutions by way of the legalisation of euthanasia and/or the involvement of medical professionals. In contrast, while news reports sensitive to contradiction did not necessarily oppose euthanasia, they were less inclined to overtly support technical solutions, recognising the importance of a trial to address the complexity of FAS. (shrink)

A translation of the ancient book of faith charts man's search for life's meaning and reveals his relationship with nature and God.

On logic and reasoning in Hindu philosophy.

Enck and Condley’s “Agent-Regret in Healthcare” (Enck and Condley 2025) explores an essential yet often overlooked emotional response faced by those in the healthcare system and highlights the impo...

The issue of surrogacy has received a great deal of attention in the West ever since the famous Baby M case in the latter part of the 1980s. Ethicists, psychologists, and legal experts have struggled with the meanings and implications of this practice, especially in its commercial form. In contemporary times, however, the phenomenon of surrogacy has assumed new dimensions as it travels across national borders in the context of globalization. As a transnational phenomenon, it is now marketed as an (...) attractive part of "Reproductive Tourism," for the most part, by various clinics and organizations located in the global south to some of the so-called "First World nations."Until now, most of the philosophical literature. (shrink)

IntroductionFrontline healthcare workers have faced significant plight during the ongoing Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Studies have shown their vulnerabilities to depression, anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress, and insomnia. In a developing country like India, with a rising caseload, resource limitations, and stigma, the adversities faced by the physicians are more significant. We attempted to hear their “voices” to understand their adversities and conceptualize their resilience framework.MethodsA qualitative approach was used with a constructivist paradigm. After an initial pilot, a socio-demographically heterogeneous population (...) of 172 physicians working in COVID-designated centers were purposively sampled from all over India. Following in-depth virtual interviews using a pre-formed semi-structured guide, the data was transcribed and translated verbatim. The interview was focused on their challenges, needs, and processes of coping and support. Charmaz’s grounded theory was used for analysis supplemented by NVivo 10 software.ResultsFear of infection, uncertainty, stigma, guilt, and social isolation emerged as the main challenges. Simultaneously, their “unmet needs” were flexible work policies, administrative measures for better medical protection, the sensitivity of media toward the image of HCW, effective risk communication for their health, and finally, social inclusion. Their resilience “framework” emerged as a process while navigating these adversities and consisted of three facets: forming a “resilient identity,” managing the resilience, and working through the socio-occupational distress. The role of mental well-being, social network, peer support, problem negotiation, and self-care emerged as the key coping strategies.ConclusionThe study findings support the global call for better psychosocial health and quality of life of the frontline HCWs. Their “unheard voices” explored in the study can anchor subsequent resilience-enhancing interventions and policies. Guidelines focusing on the psychological wellbeing of frontline HCWs need to be grounded in their unmet needs and lived experiences. (shrink)

RésuméTard dans sa vie intellectuelle, Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī a adopté une position dualiste sur la nature de l’âme, niant que l’âme est en tout sens un corps matériel. Ce point de vue, qui, de manière générale, concorde avec celui d’Avicenne, oppose al-Rāzī à la position matérialiste des théologiens. Pour clarifier sa position, dans son dernier ouvrage, Al-maṭālib, al-Rāzī expose un argument approfondi en faveur du matérialisme des théologiens, avant de critiquer cette position. Cet article offre une reconstruction des arguments d’al-Rāzī (...) en faveur du matérialisme des théologiens, offrant une perception des arguments dans la philosophie de l’esprit pendant le Moyen Âge islamique. (shrink)

In Indonesia, scholars differ on how to deal with religious fundamentalism and intolerance. On the one hand, there are supporters of a militant approach, but on the other hand, there are those who prefer a moderate one. This article aims to analyze Indonesia's largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama/NU and its responses towards the puritanical Wahhabi ideology. The organization is renowned for its contest against fundamentalist Muslim groups in post-New Order Indonesia. Focusing on the local branch of NU in Jember, East (...) Java, this article argues that NU adopts an intolerant approach in dealing with Wahhabi groups and their Islamic da'wah activism. NU’s approach is double-barreled first still within its moderation framework, the second falling out. NU rejects Wahhabi's religious orthodoxy, anti-pluralist, and discriminatory attitude towards different faiths who are lumped together as “infidels.” Yet, its attitude towards Wahhabi right to establish Islamic educational institutions represents authoritarianism. This article analyzes the impact of the local NU’s dualism of weakening intolerance on the one hand and undermining pluralism on the other hand. (shrink)

Journal Name: The Law & Ethics of Human Rights Issue: Ahead of print.

BackgroundPreconception Expanded Carrier Screening (ECS) is a genetic test offered to a general population or to couples who have no known risk of recessive and X-linked genetic diseases and are interested in becoming parents. A test may screen for carrier status of several autosomal recessive diseases at one go. Such a program has been piloted in the Netherlands and may become a reality in more European countries in the future. The ethical rationale for such tests is that they enhance reproductive (...) autonomy. The dominant conception of autonomy is individual-based. However, at the clinic, people deciding on preconception ECS will be counselledtogetherand are expected to make a joint decision, asa couple. The aim of the present study was to develop an understanding of autonomous decisions made by couples in the context of reproductive technologies in general and of preconception ECS in particular. Further, to shed light on what occurs in reproductive clinics and suggest concrete implications for healthcare professionals.Main textBased on the shift in emphasis from individual autonomy to relational autonomy, a notion ofcouple autonomywas suggested and some features of this concept were outlined. First, that both partners are individually autonomous and that the decision is reached through a communicative process. In this process each partner should feel free to express his or her concerns and preferences, so no one partner dominates the discussion. Further, there should be adequate time for the couple to negotiate possible differences and conclude that the decision is right for them. The final decision should be reached through consensus of both partners without coercion, manipulation or miscommunication. Through concrete examples, the suggested notion of couple autonomy was applied to diverse clinical situations.ConclusionsA notion of couple autonomy can be fruitful for healthcare professionals by structuring their attention to and support of a couple who is required to make an autonomous joint decision concerning preconception ECS. A normative implication for healthcare staff is to allow the necessary time for decision-making and to promote a dialogue that can increase the power of the weaker part in a relationship. (shrink)