Environmental, Social, and Governance criteria are now considered significant, global non-financial evaluating factors of corporate value. However, no attention is given to what influences the integration of ESG information by individual investors in their investment decisions. This study first identifies different types of information investors use to make investment decisions. Risks identified in information integration in investment decision making is reviewed. Next, the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model is used to identify individual investors’ investment tendencies and (...) the factors affecting integration of ESG information into investment decisions. Each of four categories for UTAUT innovation adoption factors are discussed in relation to how they affect individual investors’ integration of ESG information. Standardization of ESG reporting and evaluation frameworks would reduce efforts to adopt ESG information and could build a strong foundation for facilitating ESG information integration. Corporates’ efforts to further communicate their ESG management through their investor relations and active governmental well as non-governmental organizations’ participation are recommended. (shrink)

The unprecedented outbreak of the novel coronavirus has led to a great shift toward online retailing and accelerated the need for contactless delivery. This study investigates how technological and health belief factors influence consumer acceptance of autonomous delivery robots. Anchored in four behavioral theories [i.e., technology acceptance model, health belief model, perceived value theory and trust theory], a synthesized model is developed. A total of 500 valid responses were collected through an online questionnaire in Singapore, and structural equation modeling was (...) conducted to examine the responses. The results revealed that perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, self-efficacy and cues to action have a positive and significant influence on consumers’ perceptions of the value of ADRs. The total effect analysis also showed that perceived VAL strongly affects consumer acceptance of ADRs. Academically, this study introduces both technological and health belief factors to explain consumer acceptance of ADRs. It also provides recommendations for policymakers and autonomous delivery robot developers on policy formulation, public communication, product design and infrastructure development. (shrink)

This book presents a rich collection of research studies on the theory and practice of CSR in Asia. It includes valuable contributions of practice-oriented researchers from various Asian countries such as Brunei, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore, and from several non-Asian countries, such as Australia, Canada and the USA. The book presents a comprehensive overview of the practice of CSR in Asia. Normally CSR is seen in the Western angles, but here, in this book, Asian philosophies and (...) thoughts are also examined. Touted as the first of its kind, the book also compares Western and Asian perspectives on CSR and presents them in the light of Asian philosophies and thoughts, such as Confucian, Islamic (Koranic), Indian (Vedantic) and other Asian ways of looking at CSR in their own rights and perspectives. (shrink)

Nurses are frequently confronted with ethical dilemmas in their nursing practice. As a consequence, nurses report experiencing moral distress. The aim of this review was to synthesize the available quantitative evidence in the literature on moral distress experienced by nurses. We appraised 19 articles published between January 1984 and December 2011. This review revealed that many nurses experience moral distress associated with difficult care situations and feel burnout, which can have an impact on their professional position. Further research is required (...) to examine worksite strategies to support nurses in these situations and to develop coping strategies for dealing with moral distress. (shrink)

This paper examines the influence of CEO career horizon problems on corporate social responsibility. We assume that as CEOs are getting older, they tend to disengage in CSR due to their shorter career horizons. We further argue that high levels of industry-level discretion and blockholder ownership amplify the negative effects of CEO age on CSR. Using a panel sample of US-based firms over 2004–2009, we do not find the main effect of CEO age on CSR, but find support for the (...) moderating effects, such that CEO age is negatively associated with CSR when there are high levels of ILD and blockholder ownership. Therefore, results suggest that CEO career horizon problems matter for CSR when CEOs have sufficient discretion over the firm’s strategic decisions and outside blockholders put more pressure on CEOs to engage in financial earning management. (shrink)

The article aims at reconstructing how pain is used in contemporary societies in the process of engraving power. Firstly, a social phenomenological analysis of pain is conducted: Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s ideas are used for clarifying the experience of pain itself; Elaine Scarry’s analyses are overviewed in order to reconstruct how pain contributes to the establishing of power. Secondly, this complex approach is applied in early modern context: the parallel processes of the decline of a transcendental and the emergence of a (...) medical interpretation of pain is introduced, along with the marginalization of violence. Thirdly, the era characterized by the triumph of medical pain management is analysed: it is argued that the constitutive role of pain in establishing power does not cease to exist with the emergence of technologies of discursive governance ; it is an open question, what sort of power is engraved through pain understood in strictly medical frames. (shrink)

This article aims at grounding critical theories with the help of psy discourses. Even if the relationship between the two disciplines has always been a controversial one, the article argues that therapeutic knowledge that accesses empirical forms of social suffering may offer important insights for critical theory. This general argument is demonstrated by complementing the theories of Bourdieu and Habermas with a clinical description of depression. First, the limitations of the capabilities of these influential theories in terms of how they (...) can be used to conceptualize the variety of social suffering are introduced. Second, the psy discourses on depression are reviewed to identify and highlight latent references to the social. Third, by combining models of depressive suffering and various distortions of integration, an extended normative basis is elaborated. Instead of solely criticizing inequalities or distortions of communication, those social constellations are criticized that trap actors by producing a homogenous pattern of suffering. (shrink)

The article aims at exploring the social constituents of anxiety, which is considered to be a phenomenological cost of late modern social distortions. Firstly, the social theoretical background is elaborated based on a network theoretical synthesis of Bourdieu’s and Habermas’ phenomenologically grounded social theories, which aim at elaborating the social suffering caused by unfair competition and distorted communication. Secondly, an attempt is made to identify the key phenomenological characteristics of anxiety: based on psychoanalytic and cognitive psychological descriptions, it is defined (...) as a non-reactive, non-targeted fear, resulting in the generalization of worry. These two approaches are connected in order to identify those social distortions, which contribute to the emergence of such diffuse fear. The most typical examples are networks characterized by unstable competition and non-transparent and volatile competition or collective traumas, distrust or inefficient systems. (shrink)

The article aims at elaborating a non-speculative concept of social pathology. In the first section, various conceptualizations (e.g. Habermas, Honneth) are critically revaluated. It is argued that (a) applying the originally medical concept of ‘pathology’ on social entities has untenable connotations (due to the lacking social equivalent of death); (b) grounding social pathology on the level of ‘social suffering’ is not in accordance with the actors’ horizon shaped by biomedical- and psy-discourses. To avoid these dead-ends, social pathologies are reinterpreted as (...) structural distortions causing diseases or mental disorders. To refine this initial definition, in the second section, Merleau-Ponty’s concept of chiasm is used as an ontological framework translating between medical and social diagnoses. The proposed concept of social pathology refers to those patterns of disrupted pre-intentional, intentional and mediated intertwining, which manifest as ill or psychopathological chiasm. In the third section, two case studies are elaborated: the intersubjective structures of depressed and asthmatic chiasm. Finally, the implications for critical theory and praxis are overviewed. (shrink)

Emotion is an essential component of human nature, and therefore it is necessary to explore the issue of a desirable emotional state if we want to properly discuss human well-being. This article examines the issue by advocating a new understanding of the Zhuangzi’s 莊子 ideas on emotion. In terms of the Zhuangzi’s ideas on the desirable emotional state, scholars have presented various interpretations to date, even arguing that the ideas themselves are mutually contradictory or inconsistent. This article shows that the (...) Zhuangzi’s ideas about emotions are in fact consistent by dividing emotions into two types: “conventional knowledge-dependent emotions” and “true knowledge-dependent emotions.” It then examines the characteristics of a desirable emotional state and the conditions necessary to reach it and explores the implications of the Zhuangzi’s ideas for discussions on well-being in modern times. (shrink)

This article aims to investigate Alain Locke and Richard Rorty’s accounts of cultural pluralism. First, I argue that Rorty’s anti-foundationalism and Locke’s critique of absolutes are similar with respect to the nature of value. I then explain their respective conceptions of culture and cultural pluralism. Finally, I argue that their fundamental differences with each other in regards to culture and cultural pluralism lie in their differing theories of value. Whereas Rorty’s nominalist understanding of value only finds the relativity and contingency (...) of culture and value, Locke’s functionalist theory of value allows for the objectivity and universality of culture and value. To make these differences explicit, I introduce a distinction between value content and value process. If my reading of Locke and Rorty’s accounts of cultural pluralism is convincing, then we can find a more robust view of tolerance in Locke’s version of cultural pluralism than in Rorty’s. -/- . (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 56 Heft: 2 Seiten: 141-159.

This article follows up a previous study, which has investigated English speakers’ practices of employing zero anaphora in ordinary conversations, with special reference to the kind of interactional work that they accomplish by the practice. The findings of Oh have demonstrated that unlike previously-held assumptions, zero anaphora may be systematically deployed by English speakers in order to achieve certain interactional functions, for example, marking the current talk as a second or re-saying or displaying the secondary-level of the action being done (...) by the current talk. The current article identifies three additional functions of zero anaphora, that is, resuming the prior turn-constructional unit after a parenthetical insert, marking maximum continuity, and avoiding a choice among alternative reference forms. The point is thus reasserted that zero anaphora must be regarded as a serious resource in the construction of conversational interaction by English speakers. (shrink)

The article aims at expanding the horizon of phenomenological psychopathology of depression from a social theoretical perspective. Based on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological ontology, in the first section, depression is reinterpreted as a disruption of chiasm: it is not merely the illness of the body, the disorder of the mind, or a specific form of social suffering, but the interrelated distortion of time consciousness, agency, and interaffectivity. The phenomenological clarification of these components provides opportunity for connecting sociological and psychopathological insight. In the (...) second part, contemporary critical theories of acceleration, globalization, biopolitics, and system colonization are reinterpreted to highlight the structural and cultural context of late modern time consciousness, agency, and interaffectivity. In the third section, it is analyzed, how these social constituents shape the space of contemporary socialization processes, including the emergence of those intersubjective distortions, which potentially affect the entirety of chiasm in a depressive way. In the final section, the conclusions for therapy are explored, including the potentials for expanding the epistemological, substantive, and emancipatory horizon of phenomenological psychopathology. (shrink)

Children are vulnerable to adverse effects of food advertising. Food commercials are known to increase hedonic, taste-oriented, and unhealthy food decisions. The current study examined how promoting resilience to food commercials impacted susceptibility to unhealthy food decision-making in children. To promote resilience to food commercials, we utilized the food advertising literacy intervention intended to enhance cognitive skepticism and critical thinking, and decrease positive attitudes toward commercials. Thirty-six children aged 8–12 years were randomly assigned to the food advertising literacy intervention or (...) the control condition. Eighteen children received four brief intervention sessions via video over 1 week period. In each session, children watched six food commercials with interspersed embedded intervention narratives. While watching food commercials and narratives, children were encouraged to speak their thoughts out loud spontaneously (“think-aloud”), which provided children's attitudes toward commercials. Eighteen children in the control condition had four control sessions over 1 week, and watched the same food commercials without intervention narratives while thinking aloud. The first and last sessions were held in the laboratory, and the second and third sessions were held at the children's homes. Susceptibility to unhealthy food decision-making was indicated by the decision weights of taste attributes, taste perception, food choices,ad libitumsnacking, and cognitive and affective attitudes toward food commercials. As hypothesized, the intervention successfully decreased susceptibility to unhealthy food decision-making evidenced by reduced decision weights of the taste in food decisions, decreased tasty perception of unhealthy foods, and increased cognitive skepticism and critical thinking toward food commercials. In addition, as children's opinions assimilated to intervention narratives, their cognitive skepticism and critical thinking toward commercials increased. The aforementioned results were not shown in the control condition. However, this brief intervention was not enough to change actual food choices or food consumption. Results of this study suggest that promoting resilience to food commercials by enhancing cognitive skepticism and critical thinking effectively reduced children's susceptibility to unhealthy food-decision making. (shrink)

Past research has provided some evidence of positive relationships between leisure and cognitive functioning, but questions remain regarding their mechanisms. We argue that specific negative emotio...

ANALYZED THROUGH THE WORK OF FEMINIST AND QUEER THEORIST JUDITH Butler, anthropologist Saba Mahmood, and philosopher Martha Nussbaum, motherhood complicates theories of performativity that separate sex from gender and that equate women's agency with progressive politics. Motherhood should be understood as performative, that is, entailing self-reflective agency but not entirely separable from women's bodies. While motherhood may be manipulated to support patriarchal institutions, experiences of motherhood also inspire fresh interpretations and critiques of anthropocentric Christian theology and Muslim religious texts. Given (...) the political dimensions of motherhood, the appearance of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin as prominent politicians attests to the variety of performativity and the need to protect women's agency. (shrink)

Technology has been at the centre of existentialist (e.g. Heidegger) and sociological (e.g. Marcuse) critique for a long time. The latest versions of criticism rely on the results of “science and technology studies”: they argue that essentialist conceptualisations of technology should be replaced while aiming at “democratizing technology” (e.g. Feenberg). However, even these approaches are characterised by a shortcoming when it comes to providing a normative basis: as contemporary technology intermeshes with the elementary levels of existence (such as perception or (...) cognition), it remains in the blind spot of those users, who could “democratize” it through their critique. Accordingly, the formal normative bases (e.g. the one provided by Feenberg, who relies on Habermas’ democracy principle), need to be complemented with substantive claims. For this purpose, a phenomenological-existentialist framework is elaborated with the help of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. It is argued that due to the ongoing expansion of social systems relying on various forms of technology (Luhmann), the “mediated flesh” becomes rigid. By losing the plasticity of the chiasm, subjects are exposed to existential crises unmanageable by mere technology (e.g. mental disorders). Such experience of technologically induced social suffering could serve as a normative basis for criticising the over-expansion of technology. (shrink)

Late modern existence is built around ambivalences: subjects experience the structural paradoxes of global capitalism or information society as social suffering; yet they follow behaviour patterns reinforcing the unsustainable trajectories. The article explores the discourses justifying such structural paradoxes, while normalizing the related suffering. First, the pragmatic theory of justification (Boltanski, Thévenot) is reinterpreted from a modernization theoretical perspective: a distinction is drawn between traditional, classic and late modern ‘tests’, ‘critique’ and ‘cités’. In the second and third sections, the gradual (...) emptying of critique is analysed: as disillusionment reaches the sphere of subjective experiences, not even personal suffering can ground critique any more (Berlant), thus the impossibility of critique is demonstrated in a cynical manner (Sloterdijk). In the fourth section, the various cynical modalities of justification fitting the ambivalent contemporary existence are overviewed. Finally, a way out from the naturalized, quotidian cynicism is sketched: by turning cynicism’s logic against itself, the dialectics of justification can move forward. (shrink)

It is well-known that Gilles Deleuze (and Félix Guattari) are critical of the notion of ideology. However, it is not very clear why they seem to be so dismissive of it. In what follows, I will begin my discussion by showing what Deleuze means by ideology and reconstructing why Deleuze thinks that ideology is a misused concept and that the misuse of the concept warrants its dismissal. In Anti-Oedipus, the insufficiency or inadequacy of the concept of ideology can be understood (...) in light of the opposition between production and representation. Next, I will show that—in A Thousand Plateaus—this very opposition between production and representation is relaxed in favor of the notion of assemblage. By looking at Althusser’s theory of ideology, I will argue that ideology is not merely a cognitive representation in the sense that it can be considered as having its own material existence. If so, the concept of ideology does not have to be too narrowly conceived. Rather, I propose that Deleuze and Guattari offer a different kind of ideology critique through noology and the critical analysis of microfascism. Finally, I will conclude by arguing that Deleuze is still enacting a novel form of ideology critique despite his dismissal of the very terminology. (shrink)

On the basic concepts of Indian philosophy, as found in the Vedas and Upanishads.

Due to the ‘civilizing process’ (Elias), the overall level of violence is decreasing; yet its transforming patterns persist. The article aims at examining the contemporary structures and mechanisms responsible for violence control, while also exploring the newly emerging, naturalized patterns of cruelty. Firstly, René Girard’s mimetic theory is overviewed: while in archaic societies, mimetic crisis is controlled by sacrificial rites, modernization reconfigures this paradigm. Secondly, these transformations are mapped: mimetic desire is channelled into the market processes, while mimetic crisis is (...) managed by the state monopolizing violence. Thirdly, the structural transformations of late modernity upsetting the fragile balance of state and market are analysed: secular scapegoating becomes part of the political toolset, while the private sphere is overwhelmed by undetectable new forms of hurting and self-harming. As a culture of cruelty is naturalized, mimetic crisis becomes a continuous threat, which generates a need for the functional equivalents of sacrificial violence control. (shrink)

This study is an Asian ecofeminist reading of two Great Mother Goddesses, Seolmundae (the Creator of Jeju Island in Korea) and Nüwa (the Protector Goddess of Chinese mythology). Nüwa (yin) cannot be reduced to just a counter part of Fuxi (yang) while Seolmundae cannot be shadowed as one of many other creation myths. Rather, they are the Great Mother, the Divine Feminine as the fecundity of Life, the healing Spirit, and the caring Heart which we have to discover and rescue (...) from our forgotten histories to transform violent culture into caring and healing culture. The purpose of this study is to say yes to salim (enlivening, healing, caring-Life with a capital L) and to say no to disruptions of Life (war, violence, destroying nature) as we witness the physical and spiritual sufferings and degradation caused by oppression of those that rendered subaltern. Discovering the Goddess is our ethical imperative for expanding healing culture and loving nature and recognizing the agencies/subjectivities of the subaltern, including Asian women and nature. (shrink)

A dialogical approach to understanding Islamic ethics rejects objectivist methods in favor of a conversational model in which participants accept each other as rational moral agents. Hans-Georg Gadamer asserts the importance of agreement upon a subject matter through conversation as a means to gaining insight into other persons and cultures, and Jürgen Habermas stresses the importance of fairness in dialogue. Using human rights as a subject matter for engaging in dialogue with Islamic scholars, Muslim perspectives on issues such as democracy, (...) toleration, and freedom of conscience emerge. A capabilities approach to human rights, such as that developed by Martha Nussbaum, enables the coexistence of multiple religious ethical visions while insisting upon the need to protect and nurture essential human abilities. (shrink)

In this response to Johnson, Oh reaffirms the scholarly vision of Kelsay and Twiss, elaborates upon Muslim perspectives on human rights, and questions the emphasis on violent humanitarian interventions as part of the Responsibility to Protect mandate. Oh suggests that, in light of the historical relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim states and the aftermath of the second Iraq War, more consideration be given to the rebuilding of Muslim-majority societies. Oh also highlights the concept of duty as a religiously based ideal (...) to which governments of Muslim nations ought to be held. (shrink)

SummaryThe approaches to the possibility of theology as science are divided roughly into three types: first, the internalist approach which rejects any attempt to verify the objective validity of revelation under the general concept of science. Second, the externalist approach which demands the verification of objective validity of revelatory truth. Third, the inclusivist approach which seeks the scientificity of theology from a hermeneutic perspective. Outlining the crucial points and limits of these approaches and replacing the question about theology as science (...) with a theological reexamination of the possibility of science in general, this paper tries to suggest an alternative approach by establishing the possibility of scientific knowledge in general from the trinitarian perspective. Under this reformulation of the question, the philosophy of science set forth by Fichte as the most rigorous model of theory of science is critically explored. In conclusion, it is argued that the ultimate ground of all human knowledge and science consists in the eternal divine love and trust in it. (shrink)

Social contract theories serve a twofold purpose: by addressing acute crises, they elaborate solutions to long-standing social paradoxes. The article reinterprets the stakes of the Covid pandemic from this perspective. Firstly, the long-lasting structural paradoxes of late modernity are linked to the acute crisis of the pandemic with the help of critical theories of late modernity. It is argued that the pandemic provides opportunity for revaluating those social contracts, which are based on universalist principles of justice. Secondly, two paradigmatic historical (...) examples (Hobbes, Rawls) are overviewed in a meta-theoretical fashion, so that the dimensions of revaluation could be highlighted. Thirdly, the foundations of a post-pandemic social contract are outlined. As the pandemic is inseparable from the structural paradoxes caused by unconstrained systems based on universal principles of justice, the post-pandemic social contract aims at preventing the system paradoxes by revaluating their universal principles in a ‘trial of particularity’ (Derrida, Levinas). (shrink)