En este artículo se analiza la prestación de los servicios públicos domiciliarios de manera eficiente y oportuna como pilar fundamental en cumplimiento de los fines del Estado social de derecho, así como la función del Presidente de la República de ejercer control, inspección y vigilancia de las entidades prestadoras, a través de la Superintendencia de Servicios Públicos Domiciliarios, la cual está facultada para imponer sanciones a quienes violen las normas a las cuales están sujetas como manifestación de intervención del Estado (...) en la economía; y se finaliza con el estudio del alcance de aplicar el principio de proporcionalidad en las sanciones administrativas del derecho de los servicios públicos domiciliarios, visto como límite del poder punitivo del Estado y como mecanismo para evitar la toma de decisiones arbitrarias. (shrink)

A central debate of Agroecology is the incorporation of socioeconomic and political-cultural criteria in the evaluation of agri-food sustainability. However, the way to define and evaluate these criteria remains an unexplored terrain. In this paper, we aim to systematise how these dimensions are being defined and evaluated through the analysis of 8 initiatives of Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) considered to be part of the agroecological movement in Spain. This analysis identifies those criteria that are commonplace, widely recognised and evaluated by (...) the PGS sample. An in-depth, qualitative analysis of the difficulties that PGS are encountering in defining and evaluating these criteria provides an insight into the complexity of the task. The analysis reveals the hurdles to overcome to better define Agroecology at a supralocal level in order to promote its scaling up and out. (shrink)

This study investigated whether school closures and health-related uncertainties in the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic posed risk factors for adolescents’ mental health and whether perceived social support by parents, teachers, and friends functioned as protective factors. In particular, we argued that perceived social support would buffer negative associations between educational and health concerns and mental health. Based on a person-centered approach, we first examined resilience profiles. These profiles reflect configurations regarding the levels of these risk and protective factors (...) and levels of mental health. Second, we analyzed whether these risk and protective factors predicted adolescents’ mental health differently by using a variable-centered approach. The sample consisted of 1’562 adolescents in lower and higher secondary education from three regions: German-speaking part of Switzerland, N = 486; Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, N = 760; and Northern Italy N = 316. Results from the person-centered approach revealed three latent profiles characterized by low, average, or high resilience. Lower resilience was associated with higher educational concerns, lower perceived social support, and lower mental health, while high resilience was characterized by lower concerns, higher support, and higher mental health. Importantly, educational concerns varied more between profiles than health concerns, and perceived teacher and family support varied more than perceived friend support. Corroborating these findings, the variable-centered approach revealed that educational concerns were a stronger predictor than health concerns and pointed to a higher relative importance of perceived family support for adolescents’ mental health relative to perceived teacher and friend support. Taken together, the findings suggest that adolescents’ educational concerns and perceived family support, respectively, were stronger risk and protective factors for their mental health during school closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, adolescents from regions being more exposed to the COVID-19 pandemic, namely, Italian-speaking part of Switzerland and Northern Italy, were more likely classified in the low or the average rather than in the high resilience profile compared to students from the region with lower exposure, that is, the German-speaking part of Switzerland. (shrink)

The accuracy of proxies when they interpret advance directives or apply substituted decision-making criteria has been called into question. It therefore became important to know if the Andalusian Advance Directive Form (AADF) can help to increase the accuracy of proxies' predictions. The aim of this research was to compare the effect of the AADF on the accuracy of proxies' predictions about patients' preferences with that gained from informative and deliberative sessions about end-of-life decision making. A total of 171 pairs of (...) patients and their proxies were randomized to three groups. The control group's answers to the Life Sustaining Preferences Questionnaire (LSPQ) were compared with their proxies' answers to the same questionnaire. In one intervention group, the patients had already completed the AADF and given it to their proxies, who used it to guide their own answers to the LSPQ. In the second intervention (discussion) group, both patients and proxies attended two educative sessions guided by trained nurses and later filled in the LSPQ. Comparisons of accuracy and other variables showed a strong association with the discussion group. The findings show that promoting communication between patients and their proxies improves the accuracy of proxies' predictions much more than isolated use of the AADF form. (shrink)

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societallevel analyses. At the individual- level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub- dimensions and two sets of values dimensions. At the societal- level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each (...) society, we report the Cronbach' s? statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency as well as report interrater agreement analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country span sp. (shrink)

This article is autoethnographic, based upon the authors’ experiences and reflections upon encountered moments of ethical tension whilst conducting research in rural Malawi. Given that knowledge production, as a process, has been marred by colonial forms of power, the project was underpinned by efforts to achieve a decolonial approach to the research, including the research ethics. The authors share of their endeavours to counterbalance the challenges of power asymmetries whilst researching and working with an Indigenous community whose reality can be (...) marginalised by the Western canon. The authors attempted to ensure that the values and customs of the researched community were respected and central to the research approach. When researchers are guided by local culture and customs, the participants are able to drive the research approach, incorporate their voice and share knowledge that is true to their context and reality. In this way, the research study is illustrative of how an ethics of care can help to facilitate decolonial research practice. (shrink)

La sección de literatura de esta edición N.° 32, nos trae una selección alegremente subjetiva y, por lo tanto, abierta a controversias, de la poesía de la guatemalteca Isabel de los Ángeles Ruano. Esta escritora, periodista y docente, nació en 1945 y se le otorgó el Premio Nacional de Literatura Miguel Ángel Asturias, en el año 2001, pese a esto, su obra ha tenido escasa divulgación, no más allá de los mismos diez o quince poemas publicados por doquier. Por (...) ello, en esta sección reproducimos textos más bien poco conocidos de los poemarios publicados de la autora: Cariátides (1967, México DF: Ecuador OO’O) y Canto de Amor a la Ciudad de Guatemala (1988, Guatemala: CENALTEX, Ministerio de Educación), incluidos en la antología Torres y Tatuajes (1988, Guatemala: Grupo Literario Editorial RIN-78), así como de los poemarios publicados por primera vez en dicha antología, según lo describe Ruano en su prólogo a esta obra, los cuales son: Tratados de los Ritmos, Tratados de las Olas, Poemas de Arena, Los Muros Perdidos, Iconografía del Tiempo, El Mar y Tú, Cantar Indio, Retablo Lírico y Cartas de Fuego, estos dos últimos, una colecciónde sonetos. Igualmente, la autora ha publicado los poemarios: Los del viento (1999, Guatemala: Óscar de León Palacios), Café Express (2002, Guatemala: Editorial Cultura), Versos dorados (2006, Guatemala: Editorial Cultura), Poemas grises (2010, Guatemala: Editorial Cultura) y El perro ciego (2020, Guatemala: Editorial Cultura). A fines de la década de 1980, Ruano comenzó a padecer trastornos mentales, desde entonces es vendedora ambulante, posteriormente cambia su expresión de género y en la actualidad reside ‒con gran estrechez económica‒ en la Zona 21 de Ciudad Guatemala. (shrink)

Cet hommage à Christiane Klapisch-Zuber est mené à plusieurs voix. Mais les éditeurs ont le mérite d’avoir conféré une ligne originale à ce recueil d’essais en convainquant C. K.-Z. d’y publier un texte présenté au congrès annuel de la Renaissance Society of America qui s’était tenu à Florence en mars 2000, texte déjà publié en italien dans la revue Genesis. Rivista della Società italiana delle Storiche en 2002. Le présent volume s’ouvre donc, d’une façon plutôt inhabituelle, par les mots mê...

O presente texto é uma exposição do Direito Abstrato da Filosofia do Direito de Hegel. O seu objetivo é ressaltar o sentido do ter, conteúdo do Direito Abstrato, como pressuposto para a moralidade, isto é, para o ser livre. A argumentação consiste em lembrar que a liberdade não se restringe a discursos e interesses individuais, mas em criar as condições necessárias para que uma vida seja livre. Assim, o processo dialético dos momentos da concretização da liberdade será de fato um (...) modo de relação social onde o fundamento do direito será a personalidade em geral, na sua relação com as coisas, esfera da legalidade. Tal esfera será também, na sua concretude, um pressuposto para a moralidade. Um miserável não pode ser livre, pois, segundo Hegel, o direito de ter é um direito universal e não somente de alguns particulares. Desse modo, o Direito para Hegel é a ideia da efetivação da liberdade que compreende o direito de ter, o direito de ser livre e o direito de ter e ser livre, que constitui o direito de cidadania. Entretanto, o que justifica esta análise na atualidade é exatamente o não cumprimento deste direito de ter, numa sociedade moralmente antagônica, cujo tecido continua criando a riqueza e a miséria. Neste artigo comentamos somente o direito de ter nas suas explicitações: a personalidade, a possessão, a propriedade, o contrato, a injustiça e a violência. (shrink)

The growing capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) word processing models have demonstrated exceptional potential to impact language related tasks and functions. Their fast pace of adoption and probable effect has also given rise to controversy within certain fields. Models, such as GPT-3, are a particular concern for professionals engaged in writing, particularly as their engagement with these technologies is limited due to lack of ability to control their output. Most efforts to maximize and control output rely on a process known (...) as prompt engineering, the construction and modification of the inputted prompt with expectation for certain outputted or desired text. Consequently, prompt engineering has emerged as an important consideration for research and practice. Previous conceptions of prompt engineering have largely focused on technical and logistic modifications to the back-end processing, remaining inaccessible and, still, limited for most users. In this paper, we look to the technical communication field and its methods of text generation—the rhetorical situation—to conceptualize prompt engineering in a more comprehensible way for its users by considering the context and rhetoric. We introduce a framework, consisting of a formula, to prompt engineering, which demands all components of the rhetorical situation be present in the inputted prompt. We present discussions on the future of AI writing models and their use in both professional and educational settings. Ultimately, this discussion and its findings aim to provide a means of integrating agency and writer-centric methods to AI writing tools to advance a more human-in-the-loop approach. As the use of generative AI and especially NLP-based technologies become common across societal functions, the use of prompt engineering will play a crucial role not just in adoption of the technology, but also its productive and responsible use. (shrink)

People reject ‘paradoxical’ inferences, such as: Luisa didn't play music; therefore, if Luisa played soccer, then she didn't play music. For some theorists, they are invalid for everyday conditionals, but valid in logic. The theory of mental models implies that they are valid, but unacceptable because the conclusion refers to a possibility inconsistent with the premise. Hence, individuals should accept them if the conclusions refer only to possibilities consistent with the premises: Luisa didn't play soccer; therefore, if Luisa played a (...) game then she didn't play soccer. Two experiments corroborated this prediction for three sorts of ‘paradox’, including a disjunctive paradox. (shrink)

Este artigo discute a relação entre a mentira, a verdade factual e a tecnologia. O processo da chamada “mentira organizada”, iniciado no século XX, atualmente assume hoje proporções apocalípticas e foi abordado por Gunther Anders, Paul Virilio e Hannah Arendt, autores cujas reflexões sobre o tema são aqui retomadas e atualizadas em relação ao cenário contemporâneo. São discutidos a relação entre verdade factual e mentira e os efeitos que sobre ela têm a velocidade e o excesso de informações, de imagens (...) e de dados, assim como a visão apocalíptica que Anders, Arendt e Virilio construíram acerca desse processo. (shrink)

In this article I shall propose María Zambrano's poetic reason as a suitable method for developing a knowledge of animal being. To do so, I will follow the analyses (Derrida, Coetzee) that place animal thinking in the poetic sphere, thus showing the need for a poetic/literary knowledge to make a philosophical knowledge of the animal possible. Animal writing expresses our nature in relation to animal nature; it discloses our animal interbeingness. Finally, I will point to some of the principles of (...) ecofeminist/animal ethics, like care and empathy, which arise both in what I propose to call animal writing and in Zambranian poetic reason. (shrink)

This study provides empirical evidence on how corporate sustainability performance (CSP), as proxied by membership of the Dow Jones sustainability index, is reflected in the market value of equity. Using a theoretical framework combining institutional perspectives, stake-holder theory, and resource-based perspectives, we develop a set of hypotheses that relate the market value of equity to CSP. For a sample of North American firms, our preliminary results show that CSP has significant explanatory power for stock prices over the traditional summary accounting (...) measures such as earnings and book value of equity. However, further analyses suggest that we should not focus on corporate sustainability itself. Our findings suggest that what investors really do is to penalize large profitable firms with low level of CSP. Firms with incentives to develop a high level of CSP not engaging on such strategy are, thus, penalized by the market. (shrink)

This article compares political clientelism and datafied campaigning as two modes of relating politicians/parties and voters that are centred around voter surveillance. It contributes to the discussion on consequences of Big Data by showing similarities of datafied campaigns with a type of electoral politics that pre-dates the advent of mass media and is usually regarded as deficient. It thus departs from the predominant perspective on datafication and surveillance, which draws on Foucault, in order to identify the particular challenges that datafication (...) poses in the realm of democratic electoral politics. They are related to four major aspects in which datafied campaigning resembles political clientelism, as opposed to the combination of ideology, issue-based campaigning and media appeal that characterized Western European party politics in the second half of the 20th century. It personalizes the relationship between politicians and voters with the help of intermediaries; it is based on an asymmetric and iterative monitoring of voters; it implies a strong particularism and an affinity with populist appeals; and it is ambivalent with regard to the volition of voters. The identification of these similarities renders general concerns about the consequences of datafied campaigning for democracy more concrete. It offers a mirror in which seemingly novel practices are revealed to have implications that are well known to be problematic for the quality of democracy. (shrink)

En este trabajo se analizan, por una parte, los datos sobre la presencia de las mujeres en los movimientos de derechos de los animales en el estado español; por otro lado, tratamos de encontrar marcos explicativos que aclaren cuál es el vínculo que conecta la sensibilidad feminista con la sensibilidad animalista. Hemos realizado un sondeo sobre el porcentaje de mujeres entre los miembros de las organizaciones animalistas más importantes de España y, con estos resultados, hemos hecho una revisión de los (...) diferentes marcos teóricos que pueden explicar esta significativa orientación de género en la defensa del bienestar animal. Por último, defendemos que hay un vínculo entre la ideología patriarcal y la explotación ecológica, en tanto que ambos comparten la dominación y la opresión de género. En este sentido, la sensibilidad animalista movilizaría sentimientos morales de fraternidad con la naturaleza. (shrink)

In the UK, current policies and services for people with mental disorders, including those with intellectual disabilities (ID), presume that these men and women can, do, and should, make decisions for themselves. The new Mental Capacity Act (England and Wales) 2005 (MCA) sets this presumption into statute, and codifies how decisions relating to health and welfare should be made for those adults judged unable to make one or more such decisions autonomously. The MCA uses a procedural checklist to guide this (...) process of substitute decision-making. The personal experiences of providing direct support to seven men and women with ID living in residential care, however, showed that substitute decision-making took two forms, depending on the type of decision to be made. The first process, ‘strategic substitute decision-making’, paralleled the MCA’s legal and ethical framework, whilst the second process, ‘relational substitute decision-making’, was markedly different from these statutory procedures. In this setting, ‘relational substitute decision-making’ underpinned everyday personal and social interventions connected with residents’ daily living, and was situated within a framework of interpersonal and interdependent care relationships. The implications of these findings for residential services and the implementation of the MCA are discussed. (shrink)

Marcuse teve no Brasil na década de 1970 uma recepção unilateral, sendo visto unicamente como guru da contra-cultura. Contra esse equívoco o artigo mostra a relação intrínseca entre teoria e prática na filosofia de Marcuse, caracterizada como uma filosofia política cuja preocupação central é a transformação radical da sociedade capitalista.

In Brazil, the normative landscape around advertising is complex, not the least because of limitations inherent to dispute resolution mechanisms. Focusing on unhealthy food and beverages, this case study identifies some challenges and opportunities around advertising restrictions, including in relation to freedom of speech.

Burnout has been recognized as a serious health problem. In Portugal, before COVID-19 Pandemic, there were strong indicators of high prevalence of burnout in physicians and nurses. However, the Portuguese Health Care Service was able to efficiently respond to the increased demands. This study intends to understand how psychosocial variables might have been protective factors for burnout in physicians and nurses in Portugal. Specifically, we considered several psychosocial variables that have been found to be protective factors for burnout in previous (...) research and we compared their predictive and unique impact in the prediction of burnout. These variables are perceptions of justice (distributive, procedural, justice from colleagues, justice from patients, and their families), professional identification, meaningful work and empathy. We also included workload, as a risk factor, and controlled other variables that can be confounds for burnout, such as socio-demographic variables, ideological variables (religiosity, political orientation), and specific variables related with COVID-19 pandemic. The sample of the present study is composed by 229 physicians (aged between 23 and 70 years old,M= 36.54;SD= 10.72; 48% male and 52% female) and 268 nurses (aged between 22 and 69 years old,M= 34.96;SD= 9.52; 27% male and 73% female). An online survey was created using Qualtrics and participants were recruited via Facebook and LinkedIn. The data were collected during 29 days (between the 45th and the 74th days after the first diagnosed case of COVID-19 in Portugal). The results showed that workload was a significant risk factor, except for disengagement in physicians. The most consistent protectors across samples were procedural justice (for both dimensions of burnout, both in physicians and nurses) and professional identification (for disengagement, both in physicians and nurses; for exhaustion only in physicians). This study suggests that decreasing workload and promoting procedural justice and professional identification are key factors that might be simultaneously and independently addressed in interventions for reducing the risk of burnout or preventing it from occurring in the first place. (shrink)

Like many humans in the wake of genocide and war, most wildlife today has sustained trauma. High rates of mortality, habitat destruction, and social breakdown precipitated by human actions are unprecedented in history. Elephants are one of many species dramatically affected by violence. Although elephant communities have processes, rituals, and social structures for responding to trauma—grieving, mourning, and socialization—the scale, nature, and magnitude of human violence have disrupted their ability to use these practices. Absent the cultural, carrier groups who traditionally (...) lead and teach these healing practices, humans must assume the role. Trauma theory has brought attention to victims' severe, sustained psychological damage. Looking through the lens of trauma theory provides a better understanding of how systematic violence has affected individuals and groups and how the pervasive nature of traumatic events affects human-nonhuman animal relationships. The framing of recent trauma theory compels conservationists to create new relationships—neither anthropocentric nor powerbased—with nonhuman animals. The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, Kenya, shows how humans, taking on the role of interspecies witness, bring orphan elephants back to health and help re-build elephant communities shattered by genocide. (shrink)

This article systematises and analyses the successive Catalan nationalist governments’ main media policy strategies in the years of the so-called ‘pro-independence process’, which began with a massive separatist demonstration in September 2012 and has since been eclipsed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It highlights four main lines of action: the instrumentalisation of regional public media; the granting of broadcast licences to private firms sympathetic to the cause; clientelism in the transfer of public funds to those private firms; and the mechanisms for (...) pressurising and seducing foreign journalists. All of the above can be understood as an acceleration of the project to articulate an own media system, which had begun in the 1980s, for the purpose of furthering Catalonia’s nation-building process. (shrink)

Through case studies from diverse fields of cultural studies, this collection examines how different constructions of identity were mediated in England during the long eighteenth century. While the concept of identity has received much critical attention, the question of how identities were mediated usually remains implicit. This volume engages in a critical discussion of the connection between historically specific categories of identity determined by class, gender, nationality, religion, political factions and age, and the media available at the time, including novels, (...) newspapers, trial reports, images and the theatre. Representative case studies are the arrival of children's literature as a genre, the creation of masculine citizenship in Defoe's novels, the performance of gendered and national identities by the actress Kitty Clive or in plays by Henry Fielding and Richard Sheridan, fashion and the public sphere, the emergence of the Whig and Tory parties, the radical culture of the 1790s, and visual representations of domestic and imperial landscape. Recognizing the proliferation of identities in the epoch, these essays explore the ways in which different media determined constructions of identity and were in turn shaped by them. (shrink)

All contemporary frameworks of mental capacity stipulate that we must begin from the presumption that an adult has capacity. This presumption is crucial, as it manifests respect for autonomy and guards against prejudice and paternalism on the part of the evaluator. Given its ubiquity, we might presume that we all understand the presumption’s meaning and application in the same way. Evidence demonstrates that this is not the case and that this has led to harm in vulnerable persons. There is thus (...) strong reason to question our presumptions about the presumption of capacity. We distinguish between two main ways of understanding and applying the presumption of capacity, and advocate for the one that we argue mitigates risk of harm. Our proposed interpretation offers many advantages in that it is consonant with actual practice of capacity evaluations, precludes confused and abusive avoidance of needed evaluations, and preserves the respect for autonomy motivating the presumption in the first place. (shrink)

A common approach for measuring the effectiveness of an education system or a school is the estimation of the impact that school interventions have on students’ academic performance. However, the latest trends aim to extend the focus beyond students’ acquisition of knowledge and skills, and to consider aspects such as well-being in the academic context. For this reason, the 2015 edition of the international assessment system PISA incorporated a new tool aimed at evaluating the socio-affective variables related to the well-being (...) of students. It is based on a definition focused on the five dimensions proposed in PISA theoretical framework: cognitive, psychological, social, physical and material. The main purpose of this study is to identify the well-being components that significantly affect student academic performance and to estimate the magnitude of school effects on the well-being of students in OECD countries, the school effect being understood as the ability of schools to increase subjective student well-being. To achieve this goal, we analyzed the responses of 234,000 students from thirty-five OECD countries to PISA 2015 questionnaires. Specifically, we considered non-cognitive variables in the questionnaires and student performance in science. The results indicated that the cognitive well-being dimension, composed of enjoyment of science, self-efficacy and instrumental motivation, as well as the test anxiety all had a consistent relationship with student performance across countries. In addition, the school effect, estimated through a two-level hierarchical linear model, in terms of student well-being was systematically low. While the school effect accounted for approximately 25% of the variance in the results for the cognitive dimension, only 5-9% of variance in well-being indicators was attributable to it. This suggests that the influence of school on student welfare is weak, and the effect is similar across countries. The present study contributes to the general discussion currently underway about the definition of well-being and the connection between well-being and achievement. The results highlighted two complementary concerns: there is a clear need to promote socio-emotional education in schools, and it is important to develop a rigorous framework for well-being assessment. The implications of the results and proposals for future studies are discussed. (shrink)

The aim of our research is to analyze how different religions influence business ethics. We develop an index of practices in the field of business ethics, made up of 19 items containing practices related to workers, consumers, products, human rights, management of ethical conflicts, and crime prevention. Also, we consider a wide range of religion affiliations. To undertake this research, we use a panel data sample composed of 11,956 firm‐year observations from 18 countries. Drawing on stakeholder theory, we posit some (...) hypotheses based on the religions considered. The results obtained show that a higher percentage of religious adherents in the country where a company does business usually involve the implementation of more ethical practices in the corporate field. These findings are obtained for Christian, Islamic, Jewish, and Hindu religions. In contrast, this does not stand for Buddhist and folk religions. Also, countries where there is no predominant religion do not show a confluence between religion and ethical corporate practices. (shrink)

The clearly recognized innovation in Galileo’s work on free fall has been a stimulus and a challenge for the history and philosophy of science. This article will analyze the experimental and theoretical aspects of Galileo’s work on free fall. It draws on several authors’ results to justify the claim that the research model established by Galileo remains valid today (Sections 2 and 3). The article draws this parallel with current science by focusing on Galileo’s method, way of considering scientific instruments, (...) and practice of confrontation between theory and experiments. The Galilean mode of investigation can be interpreted from a variety of possible philosophical perspectives: Section 3 examines how relevant the so-called constructivist and conventionalist perspectives are to analysis of Galileo’s innovations. Section 4 discusses Galileo’s contribution to the mathematization of science and the Platonic character of his thought. Finally, the article attempts to show that Galileo’s Platonism also involves experiments, as he conceives them. Keywords: Inclined Plane. Mathematics. Platonism. (shrink)

This paper presents a discussion about how the necessity and teleology are present in the theory of nature in Empedocles and Aristotle. For this task we go through the fragments relate to the thought of Empedocles in the Poem From Nature as a central reference to the work The presocratic philosophers of Kirk and Raven, and the work Physics I and II of Aristotle.

Business ethics is one of the most significant demands made by institutional and individual investors, who usually require the participation of the board of directors in the planning and implementation of ethical behaviour in corporations. This is done by drawing up an ethics code and then monitoring its fulfilment. This study has a dual objective: first, to analyse the role played by the composition of the board of directors, and by that we mean its independence and the diversity of its (...) members, on the implementation and scope of an EC, and, second, to detect whether the corporate governance system moderates the level of involvement of the board in ethical issues. The findings obtained from a data panel sample made up of 760 listed companies from 12 countries for the years 2003–2009 show that the largest companies with large-sized and diverse boards implement the most developed ECs. Nevertheless, the extent of involvement of the independent directors is conditioned by the level of shareholder orientation characteristic of the system of CG in the corporation’s country of origin. (shrink)

O fio condutor dos argumentos apresentados por J. S. Mill em On Liberty é de que o aperfeiçoamento da humanidade tem como fonte infalível e permanente o espírito da liberdade. Nosso objetivo é mostrar que o conceito de liberdade milliana se equilibra entre a promoção do cultivo da individualidade, na sua mais ampla pluralidade, e o desenvolvimento moral da sociedade.

The emotional connotation of words is known to affect word and sentence processing. However, the when and how of the interaction between emotion and grammar are still up for debate. In this behavioural experiment, 35 female university students read noun phrases (NPs) composed by a determiner and a noun in their L1 (Spanish), and were asked to indicate if the NPs were grammatically correct (elmasc camareromasc) or not (*lafem tornillomasc; i.e. a gender agreement task). The type of gender (arbitrary/natural), the (...) emotionality (unpleasant/neutral), and the gender class (feminine/masculine) of the nouns were manipulated. We found an overall grammaticality effect, responses being faster in grammatically correct trials than in incorrect ones. However, the effects of emotionality and gender class varied depending on gender type. For arbitrary gender, the grammaticality effect was greater in feminine nouns than in masculine nouns and independent of emotionality. For natural gender, the grammaticality effect interacted with gender class and emotionality, this effect only emerging in unpleasant stimuli for feminine nouns. Our results reveal that it is possible to find emotional effects at the behavioural level in an intrinsically grammatical task. Yet, these effects depend on gender properties like the type of gender and the gender class. (shrink)