Book reviewed in this article:F.H. Bradley, Collected Works Volumes 1–5.

Corporate governance is increasingly becoming an issue of global concern, not least because we are more and more living in a corporate world that transcends international boundaries. The main purpose and motivation of this study is to determine how the international community should motivate businesses in fostering exemplary corporate governance, therefore eliminating obstacles to ethically exemplary behavior. The empirical approach utilized here has been applied to 161 businesses, both listed and over-the-counter (OTC) companies, with the results indicating that ethical considerations, (...) corporate governance and organizational performance are inextricably linked and, to an extent, demonstrably proportional. This study also indicates a major finding that family management is a significant mediating variable of the ethical considerations of corporate governance and organizational performance. Finally, this study has developed an operational model of ethical considerations of corporate governance as a consultancy aid for businesses that wish to implement and/or boost their performance in respect to corporate governance. (shrink)

Discourse communities are groups of people who share common ideologies, and common ways of speaking about things. They can be sharply or loosely defined. We are each members of multiple discourse communities. Discourse can colonize the members of discourse communities, taking over domains of thought by means of ideology. The development of new discourse communities can serve positive ends, but discourse communities create risks as well. In our own work on the narratives of people with interests in health care, for (...) example, we find that patients speak of their illness experiences as victims of circumstance; policy makers construct adverse experiences and challenges as opportunities to be taken; health care workers speak from a mixed perspective, seeing themselves as both victims and opportunists depending on context. To be trapped within the discourse of a particular community is to put at risk the ability to communicate across discourses. Membership of a discourse community can impair the habit of critique, and deny opportunities for heteroglossic discourse. Privileging critique as a mode of discourse perhaps might define the ethical community, suggesting that ethical community may be an antidote to the constraining effects of conventional discourse community. (shrink)

Companies do have ethical responsibility and are not protected by limited liability from the consequences of their actions. A company's record and the preception of its ethics affect its reputation and ensure long term success or failure.The financial community has a history of placing moral considerations above legal or opportunistic expedients. But we are often exposed to moral dangers and the dangers of contamination are increasing. Deregulation and the technological revolution are sharpening ethical conflicts.

Book Information Substantial Knowledge: Aristotle's Metaphysics. Substantial Knowledge: Aristotle's Metaphysics C.D.C. Reeve Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 2000 xviii + 322 US$34.95 By C.D.C. Reeve. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Pp. xviii + 322. US$34.95.

It is generally believed that Polybios mistook L. Iunius Pullus (cos. 249) for one of the consuls of 248 B. C. The internal evidence of Polybios’ narrative shows clearly that he knew the correct year of Iunius’ consulship, and inadvertently created a false impression of the date by structuring his account so as to tell the story of the Roman siege of Lilybaeum without interruption, from its inception in 250 to Claudius Pulcher’s defeat at Drepana in the following year. This (...) narrative objective led him to postpone the paragraph (1.52.4-5) detailing the Roman reaction to the disastrous siege operations of 250 and the consular elections for 249 until after his account of Drepana, without considering how such an arrangement could mislead readers two millenia hence. (shrink)

Curio’s six lictors with laureled fasces (Cic. Att. 10.4.9) are best explained by his holding command in 49 BC not as Caesar’s legatus, but pro praetore with imperium nominally in his own right, granted (‘extra-constitutionally’) by Caesar directly, without vote of Senate and People.