Within the ethical debate on Machine Learning-driven decision support systems (ML_CDSS), notions such as “human in the loop” or “meaningful human control” are often cited as being necessary for ethical legitimacy. In addition, ethical principles usually serve as the major point of reference in ethical guidance documents, stating that conflicts between principles need to be weighed and balanced against each other. Starting from a neo-Kantian viewpoint inspired by Onora O'Neill, this article makes a concrete suggestion of how to interpret the (...) role of the “human in the loop” and to overcome the perspective of rivaling ethical principles in the evaluation of AI in health care. We argue that patients should be perceived as “fellow workers” and epistemic partners in the interpretation of ML_CDSS outputs. We further highlight that a meaningful process of integrating (rather than weighing and balancing) ethical principles is most appropriate in the evaluation of medical AI. (shrink)

Pour contrer le scepticisme au sujet de la connaissance des valeurs, la plupart soutiennent avec John Rawls qu’une croyance comme celle qu’une action est bonne est justifiée dans la mesure où elle appartient à un ensemble de croyances cohérent, ayant atteint un équilibre réfléchi. Christine Tappolet s’inspire des travaux de Max Scheler et d’Alexius von Meinong pour défendre une conception opposée au cohérentisme. La connaissance des valeurs est affirmée dépendre de nos émotions, ces dernières étant conçues comme des perceptions (...) des valeurs. (shrink)

Recent “connectionist” models provide a new explanatory alternative to the digital computer as a model for brain function. Evidence from our EEG research on the olfactory bulb suggests that the brain may indeed use computational mechanisms like those found in connectionist models. In the present paper we discuss our data and develop a model to describe the neural dynamics responsible for odor recognition and discrimination. The results indicate the existence of sensory- and motor-specific information in the spatial dimension of EEG (...) activity and call for new physiological metaphors and techniques of analysis. Special emphasis is placed in our model on chaotic neural activity. We hypothesize that chaotic behavior serves as the essential ground state for the neural perceptual apparatus, and we propose a mechanism for acquiring new forms of patterned activity corresponding to new learned odors. Finally, some of the implications of our neural model for behavioral theories are briefly discussed. Our research, in concert with the connectionist work, encourages a reevaluation of explanatory models that are based only on the digital computer metaphor. (shrink)

To later generations, much of the moral philosophy of the twentieth century will look like a struggle to escape from utilitarianism. We seem to succeed in disproving one utilitarian doctrine, only to find ourselves caught in the grip of another. I believe that this is because a basic feature of the consequentialist outlook still pervades and distorts our thinking: the view that the business of morality is to bring something about . Too often, the rest of us have pitched our (...) protests as if we were merely objecting to the utilitarian account of what the moral agent ought to bring about or how he ought to do it. Deontological considerations have been characterized as “side constraints,” as if they were essentially restrictions on ways to realize ends. More importantly, moral philosophers have persistently assumed that the primal scene of morality is a scene in which someone does something to or for someone else. This is the same mistake that children make about another primal scene. The primal scene of morality, I will argue, is not one in which I do something to you or you do something to me, but one in which we do something together. The subject matter of morality is not what we should bring about, but how we should relate to one another. If only Rawls has succeeded in escaping utilitarianism, it is because only Rawls has fully grasped this point. His primal scene, the original position, is one in which a group of people must make a decision together. Their task is to find the reasons they can share. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider the question of whether there exists an essential relation between emotions and wellbeing. We distinguish three ways in which emotions and wellbeing might be essentially related: constitutive, causal, and epistemic. We argue that, while there is some room for holding that emotions are constitutive ingredients of an individual’s wellbeing, all the attempts to characterise the causal and epistemic relations in an essentialist way are vulnerable to some important objections. We conclude that the causal and epistemic (...) relation between emotions and wellbeing is much less strong than is commonly thought. (shrink)

Despite rich theoretical development, empirical research on stakeholder management is scant, save its relationship with financial performance. Recent research shows significant intrafirm variability in stakeholder management across time. This study seeks to explain why firms would experience significant changes in stakeholder management. Adapting Wood’s framework to discuss three principles of stakeholder management, the authors identify antecedents of change at the institutional, organizational, and executive levels. Pressures for legitimacy at the institutional level suggest that firm age and size, along with industry (...) shifts in stakeholder management, will increase the likelihood of changes in stakeholder management for the focal firm. The authors posit that organizational risk and performance will also affect the likelihood of change, as will managerial discretion, ownership, and succession. The authors test their predictions using a longitudinal sample of stakeholder management data and discuss the implications of the findings for research and practice. (shrink)

In this article I begin by discussing the persistent problem of relations between educational inequality and the attainment gap in schools. Because benefits accruing from an education are substantial, the ‘gap’ leads to large disparities in the quality of life many young people can expect to experience in the future. Curriculum knowledge has been a focus for debate in England in relation to educational equality for over 40 years. Given the contestation surrounding views about curriculum knowledge and equality I consider (...) the thinking of two philosophers, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas, and their work on justice, to trouble the curriculum framework and discourse of knowledge promoted through the policy text of The Importance of Teaching: The Schools White Paper (2010) and later associated policy reforms to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) curriculum in England. The Schools White Paper aims to make the curriculum more challenging to students by introducing tight controls in terms of the assessment framework and curriculum knowledge. I argue that, when considered through Derrida's perspective on language and meaning and Levinas' view on the ethical responsibility for the other, the reforms present obstacles to the search for a just curriculum. I look to the work of Sharon Todd and Paul Standish for a re-imagination of curriculum as or through relations in the light of Derrida's and Levinas' philosophies. (shrink)

Film studies has largely avoided the biocultural turn that has swept through other areas of the humanities. This resistance may be understood in terms of the field’s recent distaste for grand theory—and in terms of the loose, social-constructionist thinking that is one residue of that distaste. Fortunately, a biocultural approach to cinema can offer film studies a necessary and defensible set of assumptions. It can also offer interpretive tools and potential ways of conceptualizing perennial concerns like authorship and genre. This (...) essay demonstrates the last two points through an evolutionary reading of Howard Hawks’s musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and through proposals for new ways of approaching auteurism and pornography. (shrink)

In this paper we shall introduce two types of contextual-hierarchical approaches to the strengthened liar problem. These approaches, which we call the ‘standard’ and the ‘alternative’ ch-reconstructions of the strengthened liar problem, differ in their philosophical view regarding the nature of truth and the relation between the truth predicates T r n and T r n+1 of different hierarchy-levels. The basic idea of the standard ch-reconstruction is that the T r n+1-schema should hold for all sentences of \. In contrast, (...) the alternative ch-reconstruction, for which we shall argue in section four, is motivated by the idea that T r n and T r n+1 are coherent in the sense that the same sentences of \ should be true according to T r n and T r n+1. We show that instances of the standard ch-reconstruction can be obtained by iterating Kripke’s strong Kleene jump operator. Furthermore, we will demonstrate how instances of the alternative ch-reconstruction can be obtained by a slight modification of the iterated axiom system KF and of the iterated strong Kleene jump operator. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Novelistic Incarnation and the Question of TruthChristine Orsini (bio)Translated by William A. JohnsenINTRODUCTIONLike many of you, I was overwhelmed by reading René Girard's first book Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, published in 1961.1 But I belong to a special class: Compared to all the young and less young readers and researchers who make up this assembly, I am what in high places, at the ARM [Association Recherches mimétiques], (...) we do not hesitate to qualify as a "historical Girardian": I read this book in 1961, thanks to Michel Deguy. And, of course, all his other books in the order of their publication. So I'm probably the oldest surviving groupie of René Girard. It's not a claim to fame, but it's in this way that I find a fellowship with you and that I'm happy to be before you. Indeed, I think that between Girardians, the differences matter less than the similarities.It is about another event, very recent, but directly linked to the previous one and also moving for me, that I am going to talk to you: the discovery of René Girard, biographie, the forthcoming book by Benoît Chantre, that I had the chance, once again, to read before everyone else. I read it passionately because [End Page 1] of all the things it teaches us about the genesis of Girard's work and above all because it gives this work an extraordinary and indisputable unity.I had assumed the unity of Girard's work but Benoît Chantre's book confirms it: What is called the mimetic theory is not a whole made up of separate and detachable parts, like a three-stage rocket, to which we like to compare it. Even if the writing of mimetic theory has undergone the turbulence of world history and the biography of its author, the whole determines its parts; the whole comprehends the boundaries of the work, the first writings and the last, in both senses of the word: to be taken altogether, understood as a whole, or discarded altogether. Moreover, its radical nature prohibits any form of readjustment or compromise. Girard has said it expressly in his interviews: There is no "Girardian system" but at the outset, a very compact intuition that fertilized all his research. This same intuition allowed Girard to profit from the work of his contemporaries and to maintain real relationships with the thought leaders of his time, such as Goldmann, Deguy, Foucault, Lacan, Barthes, and Derrida, without ever turning away from his own path. This intuition takes shape even before the conception of a "triangular" desire on an individual scale, a desire that will subsequently become "mimetic" on the scale of human societies.By reading the biography of Girard by Benoît Chantre, I better understood the importance of literature in the genesis of what we call mimetic theory. Marx wrote that ideas are not born like mushrooms; they always reflect a state of social reality. Girard showed, on the contrary, that social reality is not merely reflected but revealed by great literature. And with Girard, brilliant ideas are of the order of an event, intuitions inspired by readings in tune with events in his life. Reading Girard's intellectual biography therefore holds some surprises, things we did not know and things that can shed new light on those we already know.A genuine surprise is to learn that the excellent title "mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque" of his first work was imposed on him by his publisher. Girard had titled his history of the novel, which is at the same time a history of desire, "L'incarnation romanesque." At first, we will see what this mysterious title can mean; then, we will see that there are not only circumstantial reasons, linked to his teaching, to explain the confidence that Girard placed in literature, and not in philosophy and the human sciences, in his search for truth. [End Page 2]NOVELISTIC INCARNATIONIt was in Girard's personal papers, described by him as "very important papers" and carefully preserved and carried around from one move to another, that Benoît Chantre found... (shrink)

Les combats actuels contre des projets d’infrastructures écocides, des mégabassines aux autoroutes, s’inspirent directement de l’expérience, longue, emblématique et… victorieuse forgée dans la mobilisation contre le projet d’aéroport à Notre-Dame-des-Landes. Ils reprennent et actualisent ses acquis : la diversité des modes d’actions et l’unité des composantes de la lutte, l’auto-organisation et la démocratie, la créativité et la recherche de cohérence entre les buts et les moyens. Dans un moment politique et social différent, avec de nouvelles générations, les luttes d’aujourd’hui sont (...) aussi le produit des difficultés et contradictions du mouvement pour le climat et plus généralement du mouvement social. Par leurs pratiques concrètes, ils apportent de nouvelles pièces à la réflexion stratégique indispensable à la reconstruction des outils et des perspectives pour l’émancipation. (shrink)

Our recent theory of intervocality (Cahill and Hamel 2018, 2021) provided a new model of voice as material, relational, and socially constructed. However, our work did not substantially address the complex relationship between voice and emotion, or how that complex relationship could be taken up more effectively and ethically in actor training and the theater studio. Utilizing insights from affect theory, cultural psychology, and affective neuroscience, this article argues for the need for pedagogies that substantively engage with the cultural specificity (...) of emotion, affect, and voice to create more just practices and experiences within the training studio and in performance. (shrink)

This article looks at the tensions experienced by teacher trainers in National Higher Institutes for Teaching and Education (Instituts nationaux supérieurs du professorat et de l'éducation ; INSPE), following the implementation of the reform of pre-service teacher training (beginning of the 2021 academic year). Thus, the positioning of competitive examinations at the end of the master's degree has led to the reorganization of training content. A questionnaire survey (n = 725) was conducted in spring 2022. Having defined the place and (...) role of trainers in the professional development of future teachers, the analyses highlighted the tensions present in the respondents' discourse. This latest reform, between continuity and change, has generated tensions with multiple sources and has forced many trainers to reconsider their activity, judging some of the prescribed measures as paradoxical. The resulting dilemmas have forced these trainers to rethink their priorities, to readjust their practices, and to reconsider their professionalism as well as the meaning of their activities. (shrink)

"Élève-toi, mon éloquence, j'aperçois Platon qui s'élève au-dessus de l'homme! C'est sur sa bouche que les abeilles ont fait leur miel, que les rossignols ont chanté, que la déesse de la persuasion a élu son siège..." Le jésuite Nicolas Caussin témoigne ici pour nous de la mémoire du platonisme qui est celle du XVIIe siècle: un portrait de Platon en philosophe orateur s'y affirme, où la figure du Sage s'allie au prestige de l'écrivain pour consacrer comme modèle rhétorique celui que (...) Longin nomme l'Homère des philosophes. Après avoir chassé les poètes et fustigé les orateurs, le Platon des classiques redevient le théoricien du Phèdre, de l'Ion et des Lois, l'instigateur d'une philosophie éloquente et d'un lyrisme vertueux. Modèle de pensée et d'écriture pour une rhétorique du philosophique d'abord socratique, puis avec les intuitions d'un Claude Fleury, bientôt poétique, le divin philosophe nous invite alors à réfléchir sur le difficile croisement que l'humanisme classique tente d'opérer entre morale et éloquence relevée. Car ce retour d'un platonisme dans la philosophie de la rhétorique s'est effectué au sein de milieux humanistes mondains puis dévots, et a donné lieu à l'élaboration de formes extrêmement raffinées dans l'écriture de la morale. À travers la leçon de Platon, l'éloquence du Sage s'avère désormais séminale pour intégrer dans les belles-lettres une exigence de spirituel et leur accorder ainsi un nouveau prestige. C'est donc un tableau de la littérature morale à la manière de Platon qui, de La Fontaine à La Bruyère et au Fénelon du Télémaque, se trouve ici esquissé. (shrink)

To view organismic functioning in terms of integration is a mistake, although the concept has dominated scientific thinking this century. The operative concept for interpreting the organism proposed here is that of ‘articulation’ or decomposition rather than that of composition from segregated parts. It is asserted that holism is the fundamental state of all phenomena, including organisms. The impact of this changed perspective on perceptual theorizing is profound. Rather than viewing it as a process resulting from internal integration of isolated (...) features detected by receptor neurons into a perceptual whole, the new theory suggests that the task of perceptual processing is to break up what initially exists holistically in sense organs into features and eventually perceived objects. Similarly, the goal of perceptual activity is not Sherrington's, that of integrating essentially unrelated organisms with their environmental surround, but rather to generate percepts in which the environment appears as a field of objects and events independent of the perceiver which are available for manipulation. Perception is a process by which organisms use their embeddedness in physical reality as if they were independent of it. There are a number of interesting results of this conceptual reorientation. The binding problem is eliminated because the percept's holistic character is the precondition for neural activity, not its product. The concept of representation can be dispensed with since the fundamental conceptual motivation for its introduction -- the assumed need to produce an internal copy of what was assumed to exist independently outside the organism in order to integrate organismic behaviour with its environmental causes -- is rejected outright. And finally, the issue of perceptual consciousness is addressed: how does the percept acquire its objective status vis-a-vis a perceiver, and what is the basis of the experiential character of perception? (shrink)

Feminist uses of the term ‘care’ actively contribute to ongoing debates about the kind of world we currently live in, as against the one we want to inhabit in the future – a contribution directed towards effecting positive change in the world. Unsurprisingly, the various ways feminists employ the term ‘care’ entail benefits and problems, as well as being the subject of intense debate. This paper aims to summarise and critically assess the main conceptual frameworks and associated debates within feminist (...) perspectives on care. Analyses of care as labour, first- and second-generation feminist ‘ethics of care’, postmodern/poststructuralist and posthuman/new materialist uptakes and, finally, notions of ‘radical care’ are considered. In short, the paper explores the radical potential of care; specifically in feminist terms – that is, what is its potential for advancing progressive social change? (shrink)

At a time when neoliberalism and financial austerity are together encouraging academic scientists to seek market alternatives to state funding, this essay investigates why, a century ago, their predecessors explicitly rejected private enterprise and the private ownership of ideas and inventions available to them through the patent system. The early twentieth century witnessed the success of a long campaign by British scientists to persuade the state to assume responsibility for the funding of basic research : their findings would enter the (...) intellectual commons; their rewards would be primarily reputational . The essay summarizes recent research in three separate fields of British technoscience—electricity, aviation, and agricultural botany—all of which were laying claim, at this time, to a heightened commercial or military importance that raised new questions about the ownership of scientific ideas. It suggests that each of the three established an idiosyncratic relationship with the patent system or with other forms of “intellectual property,” which would both influence their emergent disciplines and affect the extent to which commercial enterprise could remain a viable funding strategy. (shrink)

Academic file-sharing services encourage students to upload materials, sometimes their own study notes for example, but can also include copyrighted university documents, in exchange for access to downloading resources from a common repository. In this process, the lines between legitimate study help and academic misconduct are unclear. Integrity-based strategies to combat these transactions have been limited. Removal by copyright mechanisms has been identified as a potential approach but has been hampered by the enormity of the task and the resource intensity (...) required to make an impact at scale. This explorative study at a large Australian university sought to remove a percentage of copyrighted material from two commonly used academic file-sharing websites and to understand the experience of users in uploading files. Findings from the study were encouraging and informative, resulting in a suite of initiatives being introduced across the institution to prevent uploading in the first instance as well as, where possible, addressing misconduct when it occurred. Limitations included that the study was only undertaken as one university and therefore does not represent the contexts of different institutions. Further, it only investigated two websites out of many available. Future research could explore the use of artificial intelligence (AI) by academic file-sharing services to retain existing users and attract new ones. This work provides a clearer picture of how an institution’s copyrighted material is hosted on two academic file-sharing websites and offers an effective and potentially scalable copyright approach that could be adapted by other higher education institutions. (shrink)

The invocation of large-scale social unities - states, societies, empires, cultures, civilizations - is a long-established and pervasive practice among sociologists, anthropologists, historians, political scientists and so on. This article examines the treatment of such unities as defined or held together by shared understandings and values, and as independent, boundary-maintaining social systems. We argue that both the ideational and the systemic presumptions at work here are dependent on what Foucault calls the figure of man: the first as an inescapable consequence (...) of that figure, the second as a tempting, but by no means necessary, one. Our first major argument concerns the remarkable persistence of concepts, such as ‘culture’, which designate unities that are ideational in character. We use the case study of anthropology to suggest that this is a consequence of the constitutive role of the figure of man within the human sciences. Human scientists and others critical of the stress on sameness resulting from the concern with ideational unities - cultures, ideologies, discourses and so on - as shared across a population, will find it well-nigh impossible either to modify significantly or to jettison altogether such concepts; as long as they rely on some version of the figure of man, scholars are committed irrevocably to the use of these concepts. Our second major argument concerns the conception of society as a systemic unity, a conception which we see as reflecting the influence of the figure of man in the field of governmental reason. In this part of the article we follow Foucault’s argument that the liberal rationality of government leads to a view of social life as traversed by numerous self-regulating spheres of social interaction. However, we dispute his further suggestion that the concept of society itself, as designating a self-regulating sphere of this kind, can be seen as a product of the liberal critique of police. (shrink)

According to Sutton et al. a “clinical decision support system (CDSS) is intended to improve healthcare delivery by enhancing medical decisions with targeted clinical knowledge, patient information...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Eva Alerby and Cecilia Ferm, “Learning Music: Embodied Experience in the Life-World”Christine A. BrownI was recently asked to settle a friendly debate between two college graduates. The first, my daughter's boyfriend, argued that someone with talent and motivation could become as creative a composer without formal musical training as with it. The other, my daughter, vigorously countered that while someone might compose well on one's own, (...) the result would not be as versatile or thoughtfully developed as it could be with good formal instruction. I saw the musical educations of the debaters reflected in their arguments. My daughter had accumulated fourteen years of formal instruction in violin, cello, voice, and dance and took part in high school choral, theatrical, and orchestral performances. Her studies continued into college and from time to time she performs in community theater. Her boyfriend was the only musically trained member of his family. At his own request he studied piano for five years, later channeling his musical energies into a rock group. Though he did not study music in college, he continues to play keyboard and guitar. Both agree that the ongoing debate between them illustrates the strong connection between musical training and musical valuing. The life-world of their experiences shaped their judgments of musical quality and left imprints on their views of what matters more, talent or training. I will return to this scenario later.I find solid points of agreement with Eva Alerby and Cecilia Ferm starting with their premise that music learning is most effective when taught within a context. While some students prefer learning in a linear, rule-oriented setting, more often than not a musical concept will be comprehended best if it is first experienced within a variety of works. Regarding extra-musical contexts, furthermore, recent evidence supporting the integration of subject areas at the elementary level appears to extend the boundaries of musical learning in a positive direction. Additionally, the authors' description of embodied musical learning holds great interest. Their argument that musical learning must be appropriated within the body resonates strongly within me as I reflect upon performing and teaching piano. Experience with beginning level adult pianists suggests to me that once the awkwardness of newly-learned movements fades with time and effort, students often discover a close interaction between their physical and conceptual knowledge of music. Of related interest is the authors' definition of musicality as taking embodied musical knowledge and making it one's own. This surpasses physical mastery of an instrument and describes a personal [End Page 208] and emotional investment in music. It is at this point in the essay that the recognizable link between mind, body, and emotion in music is most clear.Alongside these engaging ideas, however, are statements throughout the essay that invite further questions or comments. First among these is the statement that the knowledge resulting from learning is not always what was intended or planned. While this is often the case, elaboration upon modes of knowledge in question would help clarify the authors' ideas. Since knowledge takes a variety of forms, as the authors imply, these forms should be explored, defined, and applied to the process of teaching and learning music.Related to that suggestion is my response to the statement that the aim of music education is to produce musical knowledge. I am assuming that musical knowledge includes an age-appropriate blend of performance skill, reading ability, ear training, historical and cultural connections, basic theoretical and stylistic understanding, and acquaintance with creative processes. In many regions of our country, public arts education has been de-valued to the extent that we must convince administrators, parents, and sometimes students, of its importance. Until this situation improves, I must personally consider the aim of music education as producing, alongside musical knowledge, the desire for music as a lifelong pursuit, be it active or passive. Without this desire, musical knowledge gained often goes unused. Referring to my opening anecdote, my daughter is not participating in music while her less extensively trained boyfriend is. I know of several students like her who gained expertise on an instrument and who have now stopped playing for... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Virtual GalleryPhotographs are by Christine Chin, a student in the MFA program in Photography at Purdue University. Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution Click for (...) larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolutionCopyright © 2001 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

The issue at stake in this volume is the role of science as a way to fulfil a quest for knowledge, a tool in the exploration of foreign lands, a central paradigm in the discourse on and representations of Otherness. The interweaving of scientific and ideological discourses is not limited to the geopolitical frame of the British empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but extends to the rise of the American empire as well. The fields of research tackled (...) are human and social sciences (anthropology, ethnography, cartography, phrenology), which thrived during the period of imperial expansion, racial theories couched in pseudo-scientific discourse, natural sciences, as they are presented in specialised or popularised works, in the press, in travel narratives at the crossroads of science and literature in essays, but also in literary texts. Contributors examine such issues as the plurality of scientific discourses, their historicity, the alienating dangers of reduction, fragmentation and reification of the Other, the interaction between scientific discourse and literary discourse, the way certain texts use scientific discourse to serve their imperialist views or, conversely, deconstruct and question them. Such approaches allow for the analysis of the link between knowledge and power as well as of the paradox of a scientific discourse which claims to seek the truth while at the same time both masking and revealing the political and economic stakes of Anglo-saxon imperialism. The analysis of various types of discourse and/or representation highlights the tension between science and ideology, between scientific "objectivity" and propaganda, and stresses the limits of an imperialist epistemology which has sometimes been questioned in more ambiguous or subversive texts. (shrink)

BackgroundThe spread of COVID-19 has disrupted the lifestyles of the world’s population. In the workplace, the pandemic has affected all sectors and has changed the way work is organized and carried out. The health sector has been severely impacted by the pandemic and has faced enormous challenges in maintaining healthcare services while providing care to those infected by the virus. At the heart of this battle, healthcare managers were key players in ensuring the orchestration of operations and the physical and (...) mental availability of employees during the crisis. Although few studies have been conducted to identify organizational practices or leadership skills to be adopted in a crisis context, the concrete behaviors of managers have not been documented yet. Therefore, this study aims at filling this gap by studying middle managers’ behaviors facing COVID-19 crisis in the healthcare sector.MethodsUsing a qualitative approach, eight focus groups were conducted online during the pandemic with 37 middle managers from the healthcare community of a Quebec health establishment from April to June 2020. Thematic analyses were conducted, and a mixed-methods approach was used to analyse the data based on Viitala’s hierarchical model of management skills.ResultsBased on the six managerial skills proposed in the model of Viitala, 21 specific management behaviors were identified as having been deployed by middle managers at the beginning of the pandemic. Considering that the health sector has been profoundly shaken by this health crisis, in addition to being an environment likely to experience other crises, managers need to develop practical skills in various crisis management situations. Thus, the results guide practitioners by highlighting the importance of team-oriented management behaviors, especially in a crisis context. (shrink)