“Political” corporate social responsibility involves businesses taking a political role to address “regulatory gaps” caused by weak or insufficient social and environmental standards and norms. The literature on political CSR focuses mostly on how large multinational corporations can address environmental and social problems that arise globally along their supply chains. This article addresses political CSR of small- and medium-sized enterprises. SMEs represent a major share of economic value creation worldwide and are increasingly exposed to regulatory gaps. Although SMEs differ substantially (...) from MNCs in terms of organizational characteristics, behavioral guiding principles, and financial and human resources, they should still tackle such regulatory gaps by accepting a political role. Drawing on Zadek’s model of CSR-based organizational learning and Young’s concept of social connection, this study develops a conceptual framework as the basis for discussing why SMEs should become involved in political CSR, how they can manage political CSR internally and systematically, and how their progress can be assessed by third-party observers externally. (shrink)

Ausgehend von der Finanzkrise fordert Ulrich Wickert eine Rückbesinnung auf ethische Werte als Grundpfeiler des Zusammenlebens: Anstand, Ehrlichkeit und Solidarität.

Edward Erwin's clear analysis addresses some of the fundamental questions on behavior therapy that remained in 1978, when this book was first published.

In this paper, we explore the empirical phenomenon of large multinational corporations acquiring socially oriented enterprises, such as the Unilever–Ben & Jerry’s, and the L`Oréal-The Body Shop takeovers. When focusing on these cases, we argue that variance in organisational identity orientations, as the dominant logic of managers within the acquiring organisations, determines whether MNCs consider the transaction not only in financial terms, but also decide to adopt “social technology” in the form of CSR-related organisational practices from the acquired unit. We (...) argue that in turn based on a “match” with the organisational identity of the acquired unit, managers will opt to adopt CSR practices more fully or selectively, and in more substantial or symbolic ways. With these propositional arguments we not only aim to contribute to the literature on CSR adoption by MNCs, but we also set out to develop theory on the widespread but so far undocumented phenomenon of MNCs “buying CSR” by acquiring socially oriented enterprises. (shrink)

Despite medicine's achievements, medical errors and the difficulty of reproducing research prove medicine is far from perfect. This book provides a critical and historical analysis of medical reasoning that recognizes the constant need for certainty despite the enormous variety of disease, illness, symptoms, and behavior in patients. According to Erwin Montgomery, Jr., medicine depends on logic, balancing utility with certainty, and anticipating errors in judgment.

Die 1990 gegründete Reihe, die auf eine Anregung von Mazzino Montinari zurückgeht, publiziert Quellenmaterialien zu Nietzsches Leben, seinem Umkreis und seiner Wirkung. Die Supplementa stellen somit eine Ergänzung zu den Kritischen Ausgaben von Nietzsches Werken (KGW) und Briefen (KGB) dar.

The English version of the first chapter of Erwin Rogler and Gerhard Preyer: Materialismus, anomaler Monismus und mentale Kausalität. Zur gegenwärtigen Philosophie des Mentalen bei Donald Davidson und David Lewis »Anomaler Monismus und Mentale Kausalität. Ein Beitrag zur Debatte über Donald Davidsons Philosophie des Mentalen« is a contribution to the current debates on the philosophy of the mental and mental causality initiated from Donald Davidson's philosophy with his article »Mental Events«. It is the intent of the English version to (...) give a response to the controversy among American, British and Australian philosophers in the context of a global exchange of ideas on problems understanding the mental. Contents 1. Preliminary Remarks 2. The Critique of Property-Epiphenomenalism and Counterarguments The Enlargement of Nomological Reasoning The Counterfactual Analysis Supervenient Causality 3. Are Mental Properties real or unreal?Things and events are fundamental entities in Davidson's ontology. Less distinct is the ontological status of properties, especially of mental types. Despite of some eliminative allusions there are weighty reasons to understand Davidson's philosophy of mind as including intentional realism. With it, the question of mental causality arises. There are two striking solutions to this problem: the epiphenomenalism of mental properties and the downward causation of mental events. Davidson cannot accept either. He claims to justify the mental as supervenient causality in order to thus integrate it into physicalism. But his argument at best proves the explanatory, not the causal relevance of mental properties. For this and for other reasons, Davidson fails the aspired synthesis of a sufficiently strong physicalism and the autonomy of the mental; a project whose realization is anyhow hard to achieve. (shrink)

With the conviction that "the gap between traditional morality and the avant-garde approach is widening," Erwin W. Lutzer offers this precise, easy-to-understand, and knowledgeable critique of situation ethics. This presentation adds new insights to the discussion of morality and the ethic of love. Lutzer pinpoints the fallacies of the situationist's philosophy and offers a biblical alternative that clearly recognizes and deals with moral conflicts.

Many theories of fairness distinguish between compensation factors and responsibility factors. Whereas the distinction between both types of factors is a matter of definition in theory, empirical work usually requires a sharp cut. All determinants of the outcome of interest have to be classified as either a compensation factor or a responsibility factor. We argue that the determinants are often hard to classify. A pragmatic solution to the problem at hand is to introduce a more general soft cut: determinants can (...) be partly compensation, partly responsibility. Still, in a first-best income tax framework, such a soft cut is possible only if the gross income function is additively separable. In case separability fits the data, a simple partial sharing rule emerges as a natural candidate for partial redistribution. This rule can be characterized on the basis of two simple properties, equal treatment of equals and partial solidarity. In case additive separability is rejected by the data, we propose two alternative solutions. (shrink)

Out of the shadows -- It's not all your fault -- The voice of God or the voice of the devil -- No condemnation: no need for suicide -- The truth that hurts and heals -- The healing power of light -- Conflicts of conscience -- Becoming an impossible person -- Forever forgiven -- When sorry isn't enough -- A clear conscience in a dark world.

Research on the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has revealed the critical role of CSR departments vis-à-vis functional departments. While both CSR and functional departments influence CSR implementation, the question of how they work together remains underexamined. We address this question by mobilizing and merging two complementary yet separate perspectives on CSR implementation: “coordination” and “enactment.” Building on a comparative case study involving seven large Swiss financial institutions that have established CSR departments and implemented CSR to varying extents, we (...) inductively derive six courses of actions conducing to CSR implementation, involving both coordination and enactment. We distinguish between four courses of actions in the CSR departments ( centralizing, coalescing, orchestrating, and consulting) and two courses of actions in the functional departments ( decentralizing and tailoring). As our data suggest that coordination and enactment work in tandem, we capture these insights in a model of CSR implementation as coordinated enactment. Our research contributes to the literature by explaining how CSR departments and functional departments enact and simultaneously coordinate CSR at a particular implementation stage, thus illuminating how and why the variance in CSR implementation occurs. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The three essays reprinted in this book were first published in 1963 as individual chapters of a psychiatric treatise entitled Psychiatrie der Gegen wart (Psychiatry of the Present Day). The editors, W. H. GRUHLE (Bonn), R. JUNG (Freiburg/Br. ), W. MAYER-GROSS (Birmingham, England), M. MUL LER (Bern, Switzerland), had not planned an encyclopedic presentation; they did not intend to present a "handbook" which would be as complete as possible in details and bibliographic reference. Their intention was to "raze the walls" (...) separating Continental and Anglo-Saxon psychiatries and to offer a synopsis of developments in psychiatry during the last decades on an international basis. The editors requested, therefore, cooperation of scholars from many foreign countries, large and small, on both sides of the Atlantic. A section entitled "Borderlands of Psychiatry", in which MARGARET MEAD (New York) discusses the relation of "Psychiatry and Ethnology", HANS HEIMAN (Bern), the relation of "Religion und Psychiatrie", and ROBERT VOLMER (Paris), "Art et Psychiatrie", is a good illustration of the trilingual character of the whole work. Two of the editors, GRUHLE and MAYER-GROSS, died before the publi cation had been completed. In a kind of posthumous eulogy, Professor JUNG and Professor MULLER praised the initiative and accomplishments of MAYER-GROSS, "who during the last five years of his life had given a great deal of his time to this work. He had set his mind on a synthesis of German and Anglo-Saxon psychiatry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Siren Songs: Gender, Audiences, and Narrators in the OdysseyErwin F. CookLillian Doherty. Siren Songs: Gender, Audiences, and Narrators in the Odyssey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995. viii 1 220 pp. Cloth, $37.50.Siren Songs makes a significant contribution to feminist literature on Homer. Most importantly, Doherty is able to show in detail how the very sensibilities that make Homer appealing to the modern reader can seduce the (...) unwary into accepting the poem’s androcentric frame of reference. If her book’s ideological model based on gender and class hierarchy leads to repeated imprecisions and reductionism, this affects its argument in detail, but not in outline.Doherty’s methodology is objectivist, assumes an essentialist definition of the female, and consciously avoids positioning the Odyssey in the context of archaic Greek gender constructions. One place where she at least acknowledges that the Odyssey originated in a specific culture exposes a problem some will have with this book: “It may be objected that my conclusions are hardly surprising given the aristocratic focus of early Greek epic and the patriarchal norms of archaic Greek society. In this context, it may be urged, the surprise is to see lower-class and female characters even this fully represented” (170). She responds that her conclusions refute arguments by Farron and Rose that in giving prominence to female and lower-class characters Homer makes an antiaristocratic statement. This tactic runs the risk of reducing her own efforts to a book-length refutation of a pair of articles.Many Homerists will also be surprised to read that “the production and reception of a narrative text is never a direct act of communication between the author and the external audience but a ‘bracketed’ or mediated communication” (87). Thus, the poem’s external audience is not “composed of living human beings, who have read and judged the epic since its creation, but... a hypothetical audience posited by the epic narrator” (19). Further, no true repetition exists in literature (182–83). These assertions derive from critical approaches to the modern novel, and although true to a certain extent of all literature they are arguably least true of poetry composed in performance using metrical formulae.Chapter 1 surveys scholarship on whether Penelope recognizes Odysseus before the mnesterophonia. Doherty argues that Penelope’s motivation remains obscure because of an accumulation of narrative indeterminacies created by multiple focalization (45–46; though cf. her apparent assumptions on 143). She lauds Felson-Rubin and Winkler for their insistence on regarding Penelope as an agent capable of acting in her own self-interest, and equal to her husband in metis. Yet they ultimately fail to stand outside the poem’s androcentric frame of [End Page 461] reference and to see that Penelope’s excellence is based on traits she shares with males. It thus becomes necessary to establish narrative openings that expose “instabilities within ideology” (52) or permit the reader “to project active and even subversive female subject positions” (63). Narrative redundancies serving to reinforce the androcentric frame must also be acknowledged, however, for opening the text may inadvertently render its androcentric frame more palatable.Chapters 2 and 3 reconstruct the poem’s internal and external audiences. Doherty argues that these audiences included women. Although Eumaeus’ ability to evaluate the beggar’s storytelling ability proves he is no stranger to epic performance, he “must be considered an ‘overhearer’ rather than a member of the regular audience” (72–73). Eumaeus can, however, support a very different view of class relationships in Homer: when Telemachus appears unexpectedly, Eumaeus kisses his eyes and greets him as a father greets a long-absent son, and Telemachus addresses him as atta; Eumaeus is able to buy a slave on his own; and he may have an advisory role at court since he says he used to question people claiming to have seen his master.The Nekuia is central to Doherty’s project in these chapters. Odysseus’ decision to pause after his catalogue of women divides the Nekuia “roughly along gender lines, and draws attention to the fact that the internal audience of Phaeacians is also marked for gender” (67). In her approval of Odysseus’ tale, Arete... (shrink)

This volume offers a comparative analysis of the challenges facing center-left parties in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, the European Union, Poland, and Russia. Among the questions addressed are: -If the traditional social bases of left parties are now too limited for winning in majoritarian politics, what kind of coalitions and ideas, which reach beyond those bases and yet retain them, may be effective? - If the answer to the first question is that such umbrella coalitions are too (...) torn to be workable, what is the alternative? What is gained and lost in moves toward the center or further to the left? - Is coalition politics sufficient for governance in terms of both policy and the long-term political health of a party, or must there be a central, guiding set of ideas around which coalitions are formed? - What are the inherent weaknesses of market-oriented parties against which democratic center-left parties might appeal and win? - To what extent do national histories and political cultures both provide resources for, and set constraints and limits on, what parties may creatively do with political appeals and policies? The center of political gravity differs in these countries, with the United States and United Kingdom to the right and France and Germany to the left. Neither Poland nor Russia has been able to develop a party of this kind with any political strength. These essays explore how center-left parties, positioned as they are in the electoral spectrum, cope with the challenge of establishing an ideology to distinguish themselves from center-right parties and, while remaining both moderate and progressive, or even radical, try also to capture the center of politics. Contributors are David S. Bell, Alonzo L. Hamby, Uwe Jun, Robert Ladrech, Thomas F. Remington, Hubert Tworzecki, and Mark Wickham-Jones. (shrink)