This study investigated the proficiency of CPAs in recognizing and evaluating ethical and unethical situations. In addition, CPAs provided attitudes on ethics education. Respondents were asked to evaluate the ethical acceptability of CPA behavior as presented in six vignettes involving a variety of ethical dilemmas from questions of conflict of interest to questions of personal honor. The results tend to signify that CPAs can, to a degree, distinguish ethical and unethical behaviors. It appears that ethical behaviors and very specific unethical (...) behaviors were more easily identified by practitioners. This may reveal uncertainty and apprehension as to exactly what constitutes unethical behavior since, in many circumstances, this resolution is made on a case-specific basis rather that via a universal rule. In addition, it is interesting to note that CPAs tend to picture themselves as more ethically-oriented than their peers.With respect to ethics education, the CPAs indicated that instruction in ethical concepts and literacy was important and should definitely be embodied in the accounting curriculum as well as at all educational levels. However, the CPAs were remarkably uncertain and ambivalent as to the qualifications of university faculty to provide this instruction and guidance. (shrink)

The award-winning engineer, Air Force lieutenant colonel, and author of F.I.R.E offers a road map for designing winning new products, services, and business models, and shows how to avoid complexity-related pitfalls in the process. With a foreword by design guru Don Norman.Humans make things every day, whether it's composing an e-mail, cooking a meal, or constructing the Mars Rover. While complexity is often necessary in the development process, unnecessary complexity adds complications. The Simplicity Cycle provides the secret to striking the (...) proper balance. Dan Ward shines a light on how complexity affects the things we make for good or ill, taking us on a journey through the process of making things, with a particular focus on identifying and avoiding complexity-related pitfalls.The standard development process involves increasing complexity to improve the outcome, Ward explains. The problem comes when the complexity starts getting in the way--but often we don't know where that point is until we pass it. He suggests a number of techniques for identifying the problem and fixing it, including how to overcome several types of wrongheaded thinking--such as the idea that complexity and quality are the same. In clear, compelling language, and using his trademark mix of examples from research, personal experience, and pop culture, Ward offers a universal concept, visually described with a single, evolving diagram.Ideal for business leaders and technologists, The Simplicity Cycle is helpful for anyone looking to simplify and improve everything we do, whether we work in an office, at home, or at the Pentagon. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RICOEUR, WNERGAN, AND THE 1 INTELLIGIBILITY OF COSM.lC TIME JAMES R. PAMBRUN Bt. Paul University Ottawa, Oanada Introduot:Wn HE QUESTION OF TIME ihas entered into the work f ·every major philosopher s1ince Aristotle. As Heidegger (who is 1fond oif il'eco·vering these forgotten questions) has shown, time is not merely an ar.bitrary WJay of reckoning or calculating the fleeting moments of day-to-day life; rather, it is an exipressrion of our (...) very mode of heing.1 One of the major philosophers who!has taken up this question rin our own day and has pfaced it at the center of his·continuing work in rpib.ilosophical anthropology is Pia.JUI Ricoeur. He has ·shown how the ·symbols, metaphors, and narratives of time offer orientations to reflection: they not only point to the existential romplexities of human iftfe in its personal, social, and cosmic dimensions ibut also to its fundamental intentionrulities to.ward meaning that undergird these objectifications of time. Beyond this, Ricoeur himself has set up the question of time on new foundations. In his own elaho!I'ation of this question, he ib.as identified two distinct objectifications of time: cosmic 1 "Have we not, as Heidegger says, gained access, thanks to time, to the 'original phenomenological knowledge of the inner and unified structure of transcendence'?" Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1967), p. 66. Besides Heidegger's classic Being and Time, see also his Basic Problems in Phenomenology (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1982): "Dasein's basic constitution is grounded in Temporality" (p. 228). Also, The History of the Concept of Time (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1985), especially pp. 140-141. 471 47~ JAMES R. PAMBRUN time ;and the time of the human spirit. When taken together these obj.ecbifications create ia paradox or pairadoxes (he names them "aporias ") for the general :intelligibility of time. They occur when ·oosmic time oonfronts existential time. Co.smic time, wihich :identifies the relationship between a;ny two arbitrarily chosen moments in ovder to measure a specific magnitude of time, is indifferent to eristentiail time, which is based on existentially, therefo!l.'e, meaningfully-detemiined categories of past, present, 1and foture.2 Fail' from parrulyziing his thinking, howevier, these apori.:as invite Ricoeur not only to probe mo!l.'e deeply the intelli~hilities he is seeking to understand ibut also to seek &om different disciplmes a Jight which may he shed on resolving these aporias.3 In this article, I do not wish to address tihe question of the intelligibility of time '3.t the more general ihermeneuticaJ level that Ricoeur has identified for his own work. I wish ·rather to engage RicoeUT's :analysii.s o[ one s1ide of this question, namely, the meaning and mtel:l.igibility of cosmic ti.me. And f& this purpose the general :ftmmework that Ricoeur has set urp in his discussion on the phenomenology of time in the thivd volume of ihis most rrecent work, Time and Narrative, is ru:t a;pproprri.ate starting point for our o.wn study. 2 Paul Ricoeur, Temps et reoit, Tome 3 (Paris: Cerf, 198·5), pp. 30 & 31. The other volumes in this trilogy are Temps et reoit, Tome 1 (Paris: Seuil, 1983) [Eng. Time and Narrative, Vol. 1 [trans. by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer] (Chicago.and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984)]; Temps et reoit, Tome 2, La configuaration dans le 1'ecit de fiction (Paris: Seuil, 1984) [Eng. Time and Narrative, Vol. 2 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985)]; the English translation of the third volume appeared from the same publisher in 1988. For a good outline of Ricoeur's program in these three volumes see John Van den Hengel's review of Volume 2 in Eglise et TMologie 18 (1987) : 401-405. a Note, for example, the three disciplines Ricoeur engages in dialogue in his recent three-volume work Temps et recit: literary works on narrative, historiography, and phenomenology. Earlier he wrote, "Finally, by carrying the debate to the level of language, I have the feeling of encountering other currently viable philosophies on a common terrain." "Existence and Hermeneutics," in Oonfiict of Interpretations (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974... (shrink)

The reception and interpretation of the writings of St Paul in the early modern period forms the subject of this volume. Written by experts in the field, the articles offer a critical overview of current research, and introduce the major themes in Pauline interpretation in the Reformation.

This text provides a lively introduction to the developments in philosophy of language in this century, and to the way these have impinged upon religious language. Included is the relevance of analytical philosophy of language, but the text also covers important historical debates about religious language that have had increasing impact upon biblical studies and theology.

Abstract:This paper examines two recent trends relative to boards of directors’ compensation, and their potential incompatibility. There has been some progress in increasing board diversity, specifically the inclusion of women and minorities on boards. The increasing trend requiring directors to hold/purchase equity as a requirement of board membership may seriously compromise further improvements in diversifying boards. Also, an increasing number of companies compensate directors partially or fully in stock grants and options. These compensation policies may be exclusionary, especially for women (...) and minorities, impacting the quality of boardroom discussions and decisions. This study systematically examines whether corporations requiring director equity are exclusionary toward women and minority directors. Contrary to being exclusionary, companies with director stock requirements and annual stock awards have greater representation by women and minorities on their board. Moreover, larger companies are both more likely to have such policies and have higher proportions of women and minorities on the board. (shrink)

We introduce a game model for an Algol-like programming language with primitives for parallel composition and synchronization on semaphores. The semantics is based on a simplified version of Hyland–Ong-style games and it emphasizes the intuitive connection between the concurrent nature of games and that of computation. The model is fully abstract for may-equivalence.

Overestimation of one’s ability to argue their position on socio-political issues may partially underlie the current climate of political extremism in the U.S. Yet very little is known about what factors influence overestimation in argumentation of socio-political issues. Across three experiments, emotional investment substantially increased participants’ overestimation. Potential confounding factors like topic complexity and familiarity were ruled out as alternative explanations. Belief-based cues were established as a mechanism underlying the relationship between emotional investment and overestimation in a measurement-of-mediation and manipulation-of-mediator (...) design. Representing a new bias blind spot, participants believed emotional investment helps them argue better than it helps others ; where in reality emotional investment harmed or had no effect on argument quality. These studies highlight misguided beliefs about emotional investment as a factor underlying metacognitive miscalibration in the context of socio-political issues. (shrink)

Many areas of business ethics research are “sensitive.” We provide an empirical assessment of the randomized response techniquewhich provides absolute anonymity to subjects and “legal immunity” to the researcher. Beyond that, RRT techniques provide complete disclosure to subjects, unconditional privacy is maintained, and there is no deception.

This research, relying on companies continuously listed on the Fortune 500 over a five-year period (n=384), provides an empirical assessment of two hypotheses. Based on 334 violations over the period the results indicate: (1) gross differences in illegal activity based on corporate size, and (2) similar differences in corporate recidivism also based on size. Discussion includes a number of size related dynamics which may account in part for such results.

Federal legislation (the Employee Polygraph Protection Act) adopted in 1988 prohibits virtually all private sector employers from requiring or requesting preemployment polygraph examinations for prospective employees. Since then, written integrity testing designed to reliably distinguish those prospective employees who may steal from the company from those who are far less likely to do so has been something of a growth industry. Indeed, the American Psychological Association has recently noted that honesty tests have demonstrated useful levels of validity as an employee (...) selection measure. We provide an alternative perspective. We argue that, even under the most charitable of assumptions, the propensity of integrity tests to generate false positives (i.e., to identify prospective employees as potential thieves when, in fact, they are not) is unsuitably large. Thus, the integrity test as currently configured is largely without merit as a personnel selection device. (shrink)

Some would argue that the more promising areas of business ethics research are "sensitive." In such areas, it would be expected that subjects, if inclined to respond at all, would be guarded in their responses, or respond inaccurately. We provide an introduction to an empirical approach -- the unmatched block count (UCT) -- for collecting these potentially sensitive data which provides absolute anonymity and confidentiality to subjects and "legal immunity" to the researcher. Interestingly, under UCT protocol researchers could not divulge (...) subjects' responses even if they were inclined to do so. Beyond that, UCTs provide complete disclosure to subjects and there is no deception. (shrink)

This book offers a sustained engagement with the political philosophy of Paul Ricoeur and demonstrates both the significance of the political in his own thinking throughout his career, and how his understanding of the political offers something valuable to current discussions of issues in political philosophy.

Paul’s Ricoeur’s Lectures on Ideology and Utopia are more pertinent than ever forty years later. The chapters in this book reflect the lectures’ original intricacy as the authors not only insightfully analyze them but also creatively apply them.

This study of major corporations (n=481) provides an empirical assessment of the effects of several corporate governance variables (CEO duality, boards of director composition, officers and directors common stock holdings, institutional common stock holdings, number of majority owners) on the adoption of so-called severance agreements. A discriminant analysis indicates a significant multivariate function. Wilks lambda univariate analyses suggest that the percentage of common stock held by owners and directors and number of majority stock holders are the more robust discriminators.

While the notion of establishing a value for human life may be uncomfortable for some, we argue that it is a fundamental requirement for many aspects of public policy. We compare a number of approaches which have been traditionally relied on to make estimations. Also, we provide an exercise which provides an unusual, but we hope provocative, perspective on the evaluation of human life.

Director compensation can potentially represent an ethical minefield. When faced with supporting strategic decisions that can lead to an increase in director pay, directors may consider their own interests and not solely those of the shareholders to whom they are legally bound to represent. In such cases, directors essentially become agents, rather than those installed to protect principals (shareholders) from agents. Using acquisitions as a study context, we employ a matched-pair design and find a statistically significant difference in outside director (...) compensation between acquiring and control firms. Outside directors of acquiring firms earn more than twice as much as their counterparts in the matched-sample. (shrink)

This paper presents an enhanced ontology formalization, combining previous work in Conceptual Structure Theory and Order-Sorted Logic. Most existing ontology formalisms place greater importance on concept types, but in this paper we focus on relation types, which are in essence predicates on concept types. We formalize the notion of ‘predicate of predicates’ as meta-relation type and introduce the new hierarchy of meta-relation types as part of the ontology definition. The new notion of closure of a relation or meta-relation type is (...) presented as a means to complete that relation or meta-relation type by transferring extra arguments and properties from other related types. The end result is an expanded ontology, called the closure of the original ontology, on which automated inference could be more easily performed. Our proposal could be viewed as a novel and improved ontology formalization within Conceptual Structure Theory and a contribution to knowledge representation and formal reasoning (e.g., to build a query-answering system for legal knowledge). (shrink)

This study of 481 corporations provides an assessment of the relationship between several corporate governance variables (board composition, type of board leadership, officer and director stock holdings, institutional stock holdings, number of majority owners, existence of severance agreements) and adoption of anti-takeover amendments. The results of analysis suggest that the two groups (adopters/non-adopters) differ significantly in regards to these variables.

This paper discusses legal and ethical issues related to genetic screening. It is argued that persons identified with actual or perceived deleterious genetic markers are protected by the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Civil Rights Act of 1991, if members of a protected group, regardless of whether or not they are currently ill. However, legislation may not protect all employees in all scenarios, in which case, ethical principles should guide decision-making. In doing so a model of preventive (...) ethics is proposed to better understand the multiple levels on which this issue resides. (shrink)

Dimensions of character are often overlooked in professional practice at the expense of the development of technical competence and operational efficiency. Drawing on philosophical accounts of virtue ethics and positive psychology, the present work attempts to elevate the role of ‘good’ character in the professional domain. A ‘good’ professional is ideally one that exemplifies dimensions of character informed by sound judgement. A total of 2340 professionals, from five discrete professions, were profiled based on their valuation of qualities pertaining to character (...) and judgement. Profile differences were subsequently examined in the self-reported experience of professional purpose towards a wider societal ‘good’. Analysis of covariance, controlling for stage of career, revealed that professionals valuing character reported higher professional purpose than those overweighting the importance of judgement or valuing neither character nor judgement, F = 7.92, p <.001. No differences were found between the two groups valuing character, irrespective of whether judgement was valued simultaneously. This profiling analysis of entry-level and in-service professionals, based on their holistic character composition, paves the way for fresh philosophical discussion regarding what constitutes a ‘good’ professional and the interplay between character and judgement. The empirical findings may be of substantive value in helping to recognise how the dimensions of character and judgement may impact upon practitioners’ professional purpose. (shrink)

The percentage of female entrepreneurs is far below the level of males, although it has increased over the past several years. Based on the theory of planned behavior, the purpose of this article is to specify a model in which the relationship among entrepreneurial potential, gender and entrepreneurial intention are explored, by analyzing how perceived behavioral control (PBC) and perceived entrepreneurial skills, as exogenous variables, affect expression of intention for business, and how these are mediated by their entrepreneurial motivations and (...) risk taking propensity. Control variables where also included in this model, such as necessity-driven motives for business, in order to observe whether these are an influential factor. An implementation of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to analyze data collected from 677 students. Variables within the model were compared by gender using t-Test, and all multivariate analysis were done by each one separately as well in order to better gauge their perceptions. Results showed that mean differences between males and females are not abundant, and come only from intentions, PBC and subjective norm, which are higher in males; and motives for business higher in females. Multivariate analysis shows gender differences at the mediation level and that necessity-driven motives are an influencing factor, more so in males, and it hampers the significance of subjective norm. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications of the results within the framework of entrepreneurship in Spain and future alternatives to improve the entrepreneurial potential are discussed. (shrink)