Triple Bottom Line (TBL) reports, outlining the economic, environmental and social impact of organisations, are increasingly viewed as a business requirement. Unfortunately, despite global frameworks, there is no one established standard against which to evaluate the social dimension. Thus, current social reporting is often disparagingly described as a public relations exercise with limited accountability, consistency or comparability. This article outlines the development of a generic TBL social impact framework and questionnaire designed to quantify an organisation's social impact. Based on valid (...) preexisting measures appropriate for organisations in the industrialised world, the proposed framework and questionnaire offers a comparable and objective social impact assessment tool for organisations. The aim is to prompt informed debate and discussion about current organisational social impact reporting, whilst providing organisations with a tool which enables the identification, quantification and comparability of social impact reporting. (shrink)

It is estimated that more than half of all online transactions are abandoned before completion. This paper investigates the psychological factors that influence online shopping behavior, with a view to improving transactional success rates. Through a critical review of the literature, we identify a range of factors which predict abandonment of online shopping, highlighting affective and motivational dimensions in addition to processing style and characteristics of the consumer, device, and product. We conclude that online purchasing and payment systems that boost (...) consumers’ motivation to buy and prevent or attenuate negative affective states will demonstrate the greatest rates of transactional success. However, with rapid advancement in technology, continued research is needed to fully understand the potential impact on future online purchasing behavior. (shrink)

Graeme Laurie stepped down from the Chair in Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh in 2019. This edited collection pays tribute to his extraordinary contributions to the field. Graeme has often spoken about the importance of 'legacy' in academic work and has forged a remarkable intellectual legacy of his own, notably through his work on genetic privacy, human tissue and information governance, and on the regulatory salience of the concept of liminality. The essays in this volume animate the (...) concept of legacy as lens of analysis for the study and practice of medical jurisprudence. In this light, legacy reveals characteristics of both benefit and burden, as both an encumbrance to and facilitator of the development of law, policy and regulation. Overall, the contributions reconcile the ideas of legacy and responsiveness and show that both dimensions are critical to achieve and sustain the health of medical jurisprudence itself as a dynamic, interdisciplinary and policy-engaged field of thinking. (shrink)

How should we make choices when we know so little about our futures? L. A. Paul argues that we must view life decisions as choices to make discoveries about the nature of experience. Her account of transformative experience holds that part of the value of living authentically is to experience our lives and preferences in whatever ways they evolve.

The paper addresses Thiodolf Rein’s (1838–1919) view of empiricist philosophies, which arrived in Finland in the second half of the nineteenth century. Rein was the key figure of Finnish philosophy towards the end of the nineteenth century. His philosophy was strongly influenced by Hermann Lotze (1817–1881), probably the most distinguished German philosopher of the time. In his main work, "Försök till en framställning af psykologin eller vetenskapen om själen" (Attempt at a presentation of psychology, or the science of the soul, (...) 1876–1891), Rein attempts to reconcile modern natural science and its empirical methodology with idealist metaphysics. His chief concern is to refute the claim that the results of natural science corroborate materialism. Whereas Lotze had only shortly commented on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Rein attempts to integrate Darwin’s theory into his idealist metaphysics. Besides philosophy, Rein’s arguments had also implications for broader political and cultural issues of the time. (shrink)

Autocommunication, communication with oneself, may become distinct from communication with an “other” both in form and function. Autocommunication has a special role in the development of thinking in small children, as differentiation of speech for oneself, known as “private speech,” from communication for social purposes entails the child’s organization of her or his own cognition and behavior with the aid of symbols. Recent studies have suggested that speech distinctly for the child him or herself is particularly observable during what is (...) called “crib speech” and thus it appears to support already early language acquisition. The purpose and functions of crib speech in child development have been topics of interest until recently, but they are still debated. In autocommunication, instead of transfer of signs from one mind to another as when in communication with an “other,” there is transfer of signs from one state of mind to another, as in the case of recalling something with the help of signs. Next to this mnemonic type autocommunication, Juri Lotman was interested in the type in which textual devices within a text guide the communicative interpretation in relation to the text itself, particularly characteristic to poetry. The paper provides a semiotic analysis of crib speech in terms of Lotman’s concept of autocommunication explaining its particular appearance both in form and content, as well as what initiates and inspires it for the small child and why does it bring such joy. From the point of view of semiotics, crib speech presents as an exceptionally rich phenomenon. In addition to being small children’s language practice, crib speech appears as language play, if not poetry, serving as a modelling system for enacting and representing the world as it appears for the small child. (shrink)

I argue for a property mereology and for mereological bundle theory. I then apply this theory to the one over many problem (universals) and puzzles concerning persistence and material constitution.

W. Labov's & T. Labov's findings concerning their child grammar acquisition ("Learning the Syntax of Questions" in Recent Advances in the Psychology of Language, Campbell, R. & Smith, P. Eds, New York: Plenum Press, 1978) are interpreted in terms of different semantics of why & other wh-questions. Z. Dubiel.

Figuring prominently in their decisions regarding which theories to pursue are scientists' appeals to the promise or lack of promise of those theories. Yet philosophy of science has had little to say about how one is to assess theory promise. This essay identifies several indices that might be consulted to determine whether or not a theory is promising and worthy of pursuit. Various historical examples of appeals to such indices are introduced.

This article represents an attempt to organize, critique, and extend research findings on gender differences in business ethics. The focus is on two dependent variables—ethical judgment and behavioral intent. Differences in findings between student and professional groups are noted and theoretical implications are discussed. The new research provided for this article contains two benchmark studies undertaken with identical stimuli and identical measures. These studies were followed by two additional studies, using the same measures but different stimuli, as a partial replication (...) and extension of the first two. Findings suggest that little difference exists between the genders on behavioral intent for professional groups and only minimal differences for the ethical judgment measures. Student results, however, produced more substantial differences for behavioral intention. (shrink)

In the real world, there can be constraints on rational decision-making: there can be limitations on what I can know and on what you can know. There can also be constraints on my ability to deliberate or on your ability to deliberate. It is useful to know what the norms of rational deliberation should be in ideal contexts, for fully informed agents, in an ideal world. But it is also useful to know what the norms of rational deliberation should be (...) in the actual world, in non-ideal contexts, for imperfectly informed agents, especially for big, life-changing decisions. That is, we want to know how to deliberate as best we can, given the real-world limitations on what we can know, and given real-world limitations on how we are able to deliberate. In this paper, our concern is with the norms of rational deliberation in certain, important, non-ideal contexts, where the reasoning occurs from the agent’s first person, subjective point of view. The norms governing the process of deliberation for real people in the sorts of non-ideal contexts we’ll consider need to reflect the way that real agents, with an incomplete grasp on the facts and an imperfect ability to deliberate, can be expected to proceed. Our central contention is that framing and exploring the deliberative process from the first person perspective allows us to uncover and explore important, real-world constraints on boundedly rational agents deliberating from the subjective perspective. (shrink)

Dr Andorno and I have corresponded for some time on the question of a right not to know information. I enjoyed reading his paper and I am struck by the degree of agreement that we share. We both agree—for example, that unsolicited knowledge can be a burden which can significantly compromise an individual’s psychological integrity. We both share a desire to respect individual self determination. Also we each consider it reasonable for individuals to choose not to receive potentially harmful information. (...) I have already made these arguments, and more, elsewhere,1 but my starting point has not been autonomy, as advocated by Andorno, but rather privacy. In essence, my argument is that individuals enjoy, and are entitled to enjoy, a measure of psychological privacy which can be invaded by unwarranted disclosures of information.The reason that I prefer privacy to autonomy is not because I have any wish to “deny people the right to self determination”2 but rather because I perceive deficiencies in the autonomy model. Indeed, my approach and that of Andorno are not mutually exclusive; it is simply that my approach is broader and encompasses some of the harder cases which an autonomy based approach cannot help us to resolve. Thus, most of the substance of Andorno’s approach is subsumed within my model. I have—for example, no disagreement whatsoever with the view that if you have an indication that an individual would not wish to know then this wish should be respected. One might even establish novel means of discerning individuals’ wishes by establishing a register to record advance refusals, as Andorno …. (shrink)

Across three studies, the authors examine the interactive effects of moral identity and the negative reciprocity norm in predicting revenge. The general argument is that moral identity provides the motivational impetus for individuals’ responses, whereas the normative framework that people adopt as a basis for guiding moral action influences the direction of the response. Results indicated that moral identity and the negative reciprocity norm significantly interacted to predict revenge. More specifically, the symbolization dimension of moral identity interacted with the negative (...) reciprocity norm to predict revenge when individuals were the targets of mistreatment, whereas the internalization dimension of moral identity interacted with the negative reciprocity norm to predict revenge when individuals were the observers of mistreatment. Theoretical implications related to the differences between the symbolization and internalization dimensions of moral identity, the importance of examining normative frameworks, and the functionality of revenge are discussed. (shrink)

This essay engages the work of Italian feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero and her concept of the narratable self. Her relational humanism, rooted in our exposure to others, offers an ontology of uniqueness whose critique of abstraction, masculinism, and identity politics still resonates today where the meaning of a unique “you” is negotiated in embodied exchanges that may offer care or wounds. Cavarero develops an altruistic ethics that cultivates this humanism. I argue that her work should be extended to better capture (...) the political purchase of the narratable self that interacts dynamically and often ambiguously with the “we” of collective politics. Putting her work into conversation with the nineteenth‐century abolitionist and women's rights advocate Sojourner Truth, I suggest that Cavarero's work illuminates Truth as a philosopher of the narratable self. Moreover, Truth's work extends Cavarero's concerns with exposure that may do violence or offer care by making explicit the challenges of narration in the context of inequality, especially in terms of race and class. Exposure as an ontological and phenomenological condition then needs to take account of a broader publicity of textual, individual, and collective exposure to others to develop the critical, ethical, and political purchase it offers. (shrink)

The concept of a generalized quantifier of a given similarity type was defined in [12]. Our main result says that on finite structures different similarity types give rise to different classes of generalized quantifiers. More exactly, for every similarity type t there is a generalized quantifier of type t which is not definable in the extension of first order logic by all generalized quantifiers of type smaller than t. This was proved for unary similarity types by Per Lindström [17] with (...) a counting argument. We extend his method to arbitrary similarity types. (shrink)

This article explores and compares cross-gender interactions of first and third graders in one child care center. Three prevalent forms of interaction are discussed: teasing, disputing, and playing. The author argues that these three forms of interaction are related to the use of space: Teasing often occurs when space is constricted, disputing is often the result of invaded space, and playing requires shared space and varying levels of cooperation. By focusing on the relationship between space and interaction, important power asymmetries (...) appear. Since boys are more likely to initiate invasions and more likely to determine the rules and terms of the play, they maintain a greater amount of power and control. (shrink)

To practice medicine and ethics, physicians need wisdom and integrity to integrate scientific knowledge, patient preferences, their own moral commitments, and society's expectations. This work of integration requires a physician to pursue certain goals of care, determine moral priorities, and understand that conscience or integrity require harmony among a person's beliefs, values, reasoning, actions, and identity. But the moral and religious pluralism of contemporary society makes this integration challenging and uncertain. How physicians treat patients will depend on the particular beliefs (...) and values they and other health professionals bring to each instance of shared decision making. This book offers a framework for practical wisdom in medicine that addresses the need for integrity in the life of each health professional. In doing so, it acknowledges the challenge of moral pluralism and the need for moral dialogue and humility as professionals fulfil their obligations to patients, themselves, and society. (shrink)

We attempt in this paper to define a new field of study for philosophy: philosophy of management. We briefly speculate why the interest some managers and management writers take in philosophy has been so little reciprocated and why it needs to be. Then we suggest the scope of this new branch of philosophy and how it relates to and overlaps with other branches. We summarise some key matters philosophers of management should concern themselves with and pursue one in some detail. (...) We conclude with an invitation. (shrink)

Academic incivility can create divisiveness and affect learners’ sustainability towards degree attainment. Therefore, there is a need to empirically assess learner views on what constitutes academic incivility in higher education. To fill this gap, we developed the Incivility Indicators Instrument (i3), a multifaceted scale that measures the extent to which students view cumulative behaviors and dynamics as instances of academic incivility. To examine the reliability and factor structure of the i3, we conducted a two-part study with two samples of adults (...) in the United States who were enrolled in higher education programs. In study 1 (N = 342), we conducted an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and found the initial three-factor structure. In study 2, we administered the instrument to a validating sample (N = 510) and examined the stability of the three-factor model and scores through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In this study, we describe the results of the study, provide implications, and discuss future directions. (shrink)

Drawing on diverse historical cases, this paper describes and examines various aspects of a modality of scientific appraisal which has remained largely unexplored, theory pursuit. Specifically, it addresses the following issues: the epistemic and pragmatic commitments involved in theory pursuit, including how these differ from those characteristic of theory acceptance; how the research interests of scientists enter into their pursuit decisions; some of the strategies for the refinement and extension of a theory's empirical abilities which typify theory pursuit; and the (...) need to distinguish between individual and community rationality in contexts of pursuit. (shrink)

When health professionals experience moral distress during routine clinical practice, they are challenged to maintain integrity through conscientious practice guided by ethical principles and virtues that promote the dignity of all human beings who need care. Their integrity also needs preservation during a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, especially when faced with triage protocols that allocate scarce resources. Although a crisis may change our ability to provide life-saving treatment to all who need it, a crisis should not change the ethical (...) values that should always be guiding clinical care. Enduring ethical commitments should encourage clinicians to base treatment decisions on the medical needs of individual patients. This approach contrasts with utilitarian attempts to maximize selected aggregate outcomes by using scoring systems that use short-term and possibly long-term prognostic estimates to discriminate between patients and thereby treat them unequally in terms of their eligibility for life-sustaining treatment. During times of crisis and calm, moral communication allows clinicians to exercise moral agency and advocate for their individual patients, thereby demonstrating conscientious practice and resisting influences that may contribute to compartmentalization, moral injury, and burnout. (shrink)

Discussion of uses of biomedical data often proceeds on the assumption that the data are generated and shared solely or largely within the health sector. However, this assumption must be challenged because increasingly large amounts of health and well-being data are being gathered and deployed in cross-sectoral contexts such as social media and through the internet of things and wearable devices. Cross-sectoral sharing of data thus refers to the generation, use and linkage of biomedical data beyond the health sector. This (...) paper considers the challenges that arise from this phenomenon. If we are to benefit fully, it is important to consider which ethical values are at stake and to reflect on ways to resolve emerging ethical issues across ecosystems where values, laws and cultures might be quite distinct. In considering such issues, this paper applies the deliberative balancing approach of the Ethics Framework for Big Data in Health and Research to the domain of cross-sectoral big data. Please refer to that article for more information on how this framework is to be used, including a full explanation of the key values involved and the balancing approach used in the case study at the end. (shrink)

The phenomenon of the New Genetics raises complex social problems, particularly those of privacy. This book offers ethical and legal perspectives on the questions of a right to know and not to know genetic information from the standpoint of individuals, their relatives, employers, insurers and the state. Graeme Laurie provides a unique definition of privacy, including a concept of property rights in the person, and argues for stronger legal protection of privacy in the shadow of developments in human genetics. (...) He challenges the role and the limits of established principles in medical law and ethics, including respect for patient autonomy and confidentiality. This book will interest lawyers, philosophers and doctors concerned both with genetic information and issues of privacy; it will also interest genetic counsellors, researchers, and policy makers worldwide for its practical stance on dilemmas in modern genetic medicine. (shrink)

Laurie Johnson Bagby examines the loss of the appreciation for honor in modern Western society through an examination of the political philosophy of English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes. She finds in Hobbes's thought a 'turning point for honor,' in which honor is rejected as too dangerous, and fear and self-interest are put in its place as the chief means of peace and good order.

Many models of word recognition assume that processing proceeds sequentially from analysis of form to analysis of meaning. In the context of morphological processing, this implies that morphemes are processed as units of form prior to any influence of their meanings. Some interpret the apparent absence of differences in recognition latencies to targets (SNEAK) in form and semantically similar (sneaky-SNEAK) and in form similar and semantically dissimilar (sneaker-SNEAK) prime contexts at an SOA of 48 ms as consistent with this claim. (...) To determine the time course over which degree of semantic similarity between morphologically structured primes and their targets influences recognition in the forward masked priming variant of the lexical decision paradigm, we compared facilitation for the same targets after semantically similar and dissimilar primes across a range of SOAs. The effect of shared semantics on recognition latency increased linearly with SOA when long SOAs were intermixed (Exp. 1) and latencies were significantly faster after semantically similar than dissimilar primes at homogeneous SOAs of 48 ms (Exp. 2) and 34 ms (Exp. 3). Results limit the scope of form-then-semantics models of recognition and demonstrate that semantics influences even the very early stages of recognition. Finally, once general behavior across trials has been accounted for, we fail to provide evidence for individual differences in morphological processing that can be linked to measures of reading proficiency. (shrink)

Phenomenal character is the what-it's-likeness of subjective experience. I develop an ontology of phenomenal feel as process. My being in some phenomenal state R is the process of my instantiating R’s neurological correlate. The ontology explains why we have asymmetric epistemic access to phenomenal characters: the ontological ground for the subjective or first-personal stance is different from the ontological ground for the objective or third-personal stance. I end by situating my account in debates about physicalism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:My Circumcision Decision:A Journey of Inquiry, Courage and DiscoveryLaurie EvansBefore becoming a mother, I was teaching parents to massage their babies and offering trainings for professionals. To promote my work, in 1984, I exhibited at the Whole Life Expo in New York City. When I returned to my booth after a break, I noticed someone had left a pamphlet by Edward Wallerstein, who wrote "Circumcision: An American Health Fallacy." (...) Since I am naturally curious, I read it. Disturbed, I thought of tossing it. But, how could I be teaching a nurturing technique for newborns and avoid this topic? As a Jewish woman, how would I make the decision for my own future sons? Little did I know this one piece of paper would lead me on a path of inquiry that would change my life.One of the presenters at this conference was Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, an Orthodox pediatrician. Although Dr. Mendelsohn realized some parents would allow circumcision for religious reasons, he was honest enough to dispel every medical myth and explain the harm of removing normal functioning tissue. He also described possible complications from removing the foreskin, including infection, hemorrhage, and although rare, death.To learn more, I read whatever I could find on the topic. I attended midwifery and childbirth conferences to promote my work and prepare for when I became pregnant. I decided to ask about circumcision, but the conversations were awkward and I received little helpful information. I found that circumcision was a taboo topic; few people wanted to talk about it. Why? Doctors who perform circumcisions, nurses who recommend it, and parents who consent to it do not want to face the reality of the harm they cause. Instead of facing the pain, they avoid the topic, and the procedure continues. Most men do not want to discuss or think about their own circumcisions. I learned that we need to have compassion during these conversations.A Jewish ritual ceremony (bris) is performed on the eighth day after the boy's birth, and includes circumcision and prayers. At a bris, friends and relatives are invited to observe and celebrate. It is part of my heritage. I tried to talk to my relatives about the information I had found, but everyone refused to discuss it. This avoidance made my decision very difficult. Then, for the first time, I was invited to a bris; I didn't want to attend. However, I had been at the boy's birth, so I decided to go to offer support. During the circumcision, my reaction was intense: I wanted to take the baby and run. I felt like an accomplice. I wanted to grab people by the [End Page E2] shoulders and scream, "How dare you?" I vowed I would never attend another bris, and I made the decision to write publicly instead of anonymously.I still had doubts, because I didn't know one intact adult male. What if I were to have a son, keep him intact, and he developed a complication later in life? I have learned that doctors are not taught non-invasive solutions, so most circumcisions performed after infancy are unnecessary. A Jewish doctor recommended a circumcision for a seventynine year old man who had a persistent rash that would not respond to treatment. Our organization suggested that he apply topical acidophilus. After he followed the recommendation, the rash disappeared, so he canceled the circumcision.In 1985, I became pregnant. Like many women I spoke to, I didn't want to face the circumcision decision, so I prayed for a girl. Our childbirth educator shared about male circumcision, which led to conversations with my husband. These tense interactions ended in an impasse. I wondered how this decision would impact my marriage. I experienced immense relief that my firstborn was a girl. Time was on my side.One day while walking in New York City, I serendipitously crossed paths with my childbirth educator. She was going to the United Nations to oppose female circumcision. I was in my 30s and had a master's degree in teaching. I had studied massage and anatomy. Yet, I had never heard about this tribal ritual. I had... (shrink)

This descriptive qualitative study examined how the Storypath (also known as Storyline) approach to teaching social studies involves elementary school students in action civics (authentic civic activities, self-chosen issues, ongoing reflection, decisions valued). Storypath, a project-based approach, utilizes the story structure to frame learning through an inquiry process whereby students consider an overarching question about a topic, create a relevant setting, become characters in the setting, and engage in the plot of the story (critical incidents). This Storypath engaged a class (...) of ethnically and culturally diverse fifth graders in creating a music company (setting) dedicated to producing songs for social change. As company employees (characters), students researched issues they chose (affirming their agency in the learning process), then created songs and music videos for social impact. The arts (songs and videos) and technology (digital media) became integral to students’ efforts as they created and recorded music to share with the world. Students responded to Padlet and worksheet prompts, wrote song lyrics, and recorded music videos which all were analyzed to address this research question: What did authentic civic advocacy through creating music within the Storypath approach reveal about elementary students’ civic disciplinary knowledge, thinking, and skills? Findings revealed two overarching types of thinking: civic and political. Evidence indicates that civic thinking was justice-oriented for social well-being while political thinking was influence-oriented for strategic impact. This suggests that the Storypath implemented in this study can engage elementary school students in authentic civic advocacy within the classroom to cultivate civic and political thinking for meaningful participation in democratic life beyond the classroom. (shrink)

We introduce a new framework for classifying logics on finite structures and studying their expressive power. This framework is based on the concept of almost everywhere equivalence of logics, that is to say, two logics having the same expressive power on a class of asymptotic measure 1. More precisely, if L, L ′ are two logics and μ is an asymptotic measure on finite structures, then $\scr{L}\equiv _{\text{a.e.}}\scr{L}^{\prime}(\mu)$ means that there is a class C of finite structures with μ (C)=1 (...) and such that L and L ′ define the same queries on C. We carry out a systematic investigation of $\equiv _{\text{a.e.}}$ with respect to the uniform measure and analyze the $\equiv _{\text{a.e.}}$ -equivalence classes of several logics that have been studied extensively in finite model theory. Moreover, we explore connections with descriptive complexity theory and examine the status of certain classical results of model theory in the context of this new framework. (shrink)

Provides a collection of essays that offer varying viewpoints on the subject of ethics, covering such topics as what motivates people to act ethically, why ethical behavior is necessary, and how moral standards impact corporations and biomedical science.

New possibilities to modify function and direct repair in the central nervous system (CNS) have been established by the merger of gene transfer technology with neural transplantation. Rapid advances in viral‐mediated DNA‐delivery procedures permit the study of novel gene expression in neurons and glial cells. Foreign genes, transferred by a virus vector, can be used to generate new cell lines, identify transplanted cells, and express growth factors or enzymes for neurotransmitter synthesis. In addition to CNS cell types, non‐neural cells are (...) also being studied with transgene technology in the nervous system. Functional effects have been obtained with grafts of genetically modified cells in animal models of several nervous system disorders, and the recent results set the stage for potential application of these techniques to human CNS gene therapy. (shrink)

Charles Taylor has argued that recognition is a vital human need. This essay discusses recognition as a philosophical concept, following a line of argumentation that can be traced back to Hegel’s early philosophy. An important premise of this tradition is that because a subject’s freedom is conditioned by other subjects, individual agency cannot develop without recognition. Moreover, recognition implies struggle, through which self-realization fulfills the conditions of ethical growth. I will examine the educational implications of these ideas in relation to (...) contemporary social philosophy and pedagogical theory, focusing especially on the potential of the theory of social recognition as a critique of calls for symmetric pedagogy. Using Axel Honneth’s work as a reflective surface, I will then draw some conclusions as to how to develop the concept of recognition within the contemporary philosophy of music education. (shrink)

We examine the processes involved in the escalation of a plant closure from a local concern to a perceived organizational moral failure that commands national attention. Our empirical case covers the controversy over the decision of telecommunications giant Nokia to close a plant in Germany, despite having received significant state subsidies, and the relocation of production to Hungary and Romania. We conducted an inductive study that utilizes a semiotic analysis to identify how various actors framed the controversial plant closure and (...) sought to cast it as moral failure. Our analysis uncovered two distinctive moral framings of the plant closure and revealed how key actors used evocative labels to frame these events in moral terms. These moral framings drew in additional stakeholders, generated more widespread media coverage, and turned the case into an organizational moral failure in the eyes of the national public. We contribute to the literature on organizational moral failure by theorizing its escalating process and elaborating why and how local events may become moral issues of interest to broader stakeholder groups. (shrink)