While there are growing bodies of research examining both the differences between strongly and poorly socially performing firms, and the impact of firm leaders on other strategic outcomes, little has been done in examining the effect of firm leaders on corporate social performance (CSP). This study directly addresses this issue by using upper echelon theory, and the KLD Research Analytics CSP ratings, to show that observable CEO characteristics predict differences in CSP between firms, even when firm and industry characteristics are (...) controlled for. Using a sample of 650 public US firms I find that strong or exemplary CSP, as measured by the strengths categories of KLD's ratings, is positively related to the CEO having a bachelor's degree in humanities, having a breadth of career experience and being female. I find that KLD strength ratings are negatively related to the CEO having a bachelor's degree in economics and to their level of short-term compensation. Preliminary tests of causality support the assertion that these effects reflect CEO discretion rather than being an artifact of reverse causality. Significant relationships between the CEO characteristics and poor social performance as measured by the concerns categories of KLD's ratings are not found. This suggests that CEOs have more discretion in influencing strong and exemplary social performance than in impacting poor CSP. Implications, particularly for economics education, are discussed. While there are many fruitful directions for future research, the benefits and challenges to conducting similar studies in other countries is focused upon to correspond to the global nature of this special issue. (shrink)

Existing scientific concepts of group or shared or collective emotion fail to appreciate several elements of collectivity in such emotions. Moreover, the idea of shared emotions is threatened by the individualism of emotions that comes in three forms: ontological, epistemological, and physical. The problem is whether or not we can provide a plausible account of ?straightforwardly shared? emotions without compromising our intuitions about the individualism of emotions. I discuss two philosophical accounts of shared emotions that explain the collectivity of emotions (...) in terms of their intentional structure: Margaret Gilbert's plural subject account, and Hans Bernhard Schmid's phenomenological account. I argue that Gilbert's view fails because it relegates affective experience into a contingent role in emotions and because a joint commitment to feel amounts to the creation of a feeling rule rather than to an emotion. The problems with Schmid's view are twofold: first, a phenomenological fusion of feelings is not necessary for shared emotions and second, Schmid is not sensitive enough to different forms of shared concerns. I then outline my own typology that distinguishes between weakly, moderately, and strongly shared emotions on the basis of the participants? shared concerns of different degree of collectivity, on the one hand, and the synchronization of their emotional responses, on the other hand. All kind of shared emotions in my typology are consistent with the individualism of emotions, while the question about ?straightforward sharing? is argued to be of secondary importance. (shrink)

Perceptual theories of emotion purport to avoid the problems of traditional cognitivism and noncognitivism by modelling emotion on perception, which shares the most conspicuous dimensions of emotion, intentionality and phenomenality. In this paper, I shall reconstrue and discuss four key arguments that perceptual theorists have presented in order to show that emotion is a kind of perception, or that there are close analogies between emotion and perception. These arguments are, from stronger to weaker claims: the perceptual system argument; the argument (...) from noninferential structure; the argument from epistemic role; and the argument from phenomenology. I argue that, while the arguments in favour of assimilating emotion to perception fail, the analogies between emotion and perception are not as close as perceptual theorists suggest even if some emotions resemble perception more than others, thanks to the two-levelled structure of emotional processing. (shrink)

Research on the phenomenology of agency for joint action has so far focused on the sense of agency and control in joint action, leaving aside questions on how it feels to act together. This paper tries to fill this gap in a way consistent with the existing theories of joint action and shared emotion. We first reconstruct Pacherie’s account on the phenomenology of agency for joint action, pointing out its two problems, namely the necessary trade-off between the sense of self- (...) and we-agency; and the lack of affective phenomenology of joint action in general. After elaborating on these criticisms based on our theory of shared emotion, we substantiate the second criticism by discussing different mechanisms of shared affect—feelings and emotions—that are present in typical joint actions. We show that our account improves on Pacherie’s, first by introducing our agentive model of we-agency to overcome her unnecessary dichotomy between a sense of self- and we-agency, and then by suggesting that the mechanisms of shared affect enhance not only the predictability of other agents’ actions as Pacherie highlights, but also an agentive sense of we-agency that emerges from shared emotions experienced in the course and consequence of joint action. (shrink)

The philosophy of mechanisms has developed rapidly during the last 30 years. As mechanisms-based explanations (MBEs) are often seen as an alternative to nomological, law-based explanations, MBEs could be relevant in IS. We begin by offering a short history of mechanistic philosophy and set out to clarify the contemporary landscape. We then suggest that mechanistic models provide an alternative to variance and process models in IS. Finally, we highlight how MBEs typically contain deliberate misrepresentations. Although MBEs have recently been advocated (...) as critical realist (CR) accounts in IS, idealizations (deliberate misrepresentations) seem to violate some fundamental tenets of CR and research method principles for CR. Idealizations in MBEs, therefore, may risk being regarded as flawed in IS. If it turns out that CR cannot account for idealizations, naturalism can, and it does so without extra-philosophical baggage. (shrink)

Philosophers widely agree that emotions may have or lack appropriateness or fittingness, which in the emotional domain is an analogue of truth. I defend de Sousa's account of emotional truth by arguing that emotions have cognitive content as digitalized evaluative perceptions of the particular object of emotion, in terms of the relevant formal property. I argue that an emotion is true if and only if there is an actual fit between the particular and the formal objects of emotion, and the (...) emotion's propositional content is semantically satisfied, or the target of the emotion exists. Emotions meet the syntactic and disciplinary requirements of minimally truth-apt states. Appropriate fit occurs when lower-level properties of particular objects of emotion provide sufficient warrant to make ascription of the relevant formal properties superassertable. (shrink)

In terms of reversal theory, both dominant and alternative explanations of the initiation of organizational wrongdoing assume that its perpetrators act in a telic state of mind. This leaves us with explanations of organizational wrongdoing that are insufficiently appreciative of the agent’s experience. The human mind can be creative and imaginative, too, and people can fully immerse in their activity. We suggest that the paratelic state of mind is relevant for the phenomenological understanding of the initiation of original, creative, daring (...) courses of action, and that the paratelic state of mind may originate courses of action that social control agents, at a later moment in time, may label as organizational wrongdoing. Our proposal is especially relevant when organizational agents are on a course of exploration, facing uncertainty, complexity, and unavailability of information. (shrink)

The decisive moment of human development is continually at hand. This is why those movements of revolutionary thought that declare everything preceding to be an irrelevance are correct – because at yet nothing has happened.In his Meridian speech Paul Celan pays homage to a dissident tradition, speaking of himself as one “who grew up with Peter Kropotkin’s and Gustav Landauers’ writings” .1 In his biography John Felstiner briefly mentions Celan’s affiliation, noting that the poet soon relinquished his communist sympathies but (...) stood loyal to the ethoi of socialism and anarchism . This holds true as a point of departure, but a detailed analysis of Celan’s anarchistic impulse is lacking .. (shrink)

Name is a powerful sign, and name-giving is also calling one intolanguage. Name identifies, summons and subjects. Paul Celan wasfamiliar with all these uses of name and addresses them in his poeticsand poetry. This article will discuss how poetry like Celan’s, which is heavily influenced by so many philosophical readings, could form a critique of naming,on a poetical basis towards philosophical concepts that underline problematics of name-giving in poetic text in particular.

The aging process involves changes in immune regulation, i.e. adaptive immunity declines whereas innate immunity becomes activated. NF‐κB signaling is the master regulator of the both immune systems. Two recent articles highlight the role of the NF‐κB system in aging and immune responses. Adler et al1 showed that the NF‐κB binding domain is the genetic regulatory motif which is most strongly associated with the aging process. Kwon et al2 studying HIV‐1 infection and subsequent immune deficiency process demonstrated that HIV‐1 Tat (...) protein binds to SIRT1 protein, a well‐known longevity factor, and inhibits the SIRT1‐mediated deacetylation of the p65 component of the NF‐κB complex. As a consequence, the transactivation efficiency of the NF‐κB factor was greatly potentiated, leading to the activation of immune system and later to the decline of adaptive immunity. These observations support the scenario where immune responses and aging process can be enforced by the potentiation of NF‐κB transactivation efficiency. Longevity factors, such as SIRT1 and its activators, might regulate the efficiency of the NF‐κB signaling, the major outcome of which is inflamm‐aging via proinflammatory responses. BioEssays 30:939–942, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This article contributes to the understanding of relations between occulture and Decadence in Finnish art at the turn of the twentieth century, focussing on occulture and Decadence in the works of the Finnish artist Oscar Parviainen. The aim is to understand what are the relations between Parviainen's art, the Decadent art movement and occulture, and what are the aspects and cultural phenomena of his time that share similar lines of thought as Parviainen? In which ways did Parviainen address questions of (...) higher truths about human existence, and what kind of role did they play in his thinking? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.2 (2001) 9-34 [Access article in PDF] Of Blackface and Paranoid KnowledgeRichard Wright, Jacques Lacan, and the Ambivalence of Black Minstrelsy Mikko Tuhkanen Only the subject—the human subject, the subject of the desire that is the essence of man—is not, unlike the animal, entirely caught up in this imaginary capture. He maps himself in it. How? In so far as he isolates the function of the mask (...) and plays with it. Man, in effect, knows how to play with the mask as that beyond which there is the gaze. —Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-AnalysisThere is a danger of corrosion of the self in this pretense, and surely a rending of integrity. How, and when does one call upon the real self to dispel the make-believe and claim humanity and dignity?... It was just possible that the trick had been too perfect; legerdemain had undone itself in a disappearance act where the self had vanished, but also the incantation to call it back again. —Nathan Irvin Huggins, Harlem RenaissanceIn late November 1998, a teacher in New York City's Public School 75 introduced an acclaimed children's book called Nappy Hair to her third-grade students as extracurricular reading material. The book, written by Carolivia Herron, is a transcript of a piece of oral history passed on in the author's family. It tells the story of a black girl with "the kinkiest, the nappiest, the fuzziest, the most screwed up, squeezed up, knotted up, tangled up, twisted up [...] hair you've ever seen in your life" [Herron, unnumbered pages]. According to the author, the book aims to celebrate racial diversity and encourage pride in black children. Some parents of the (mostly black) pupils saw it differently, however. In the days following the introduction of the book, photocopies of parts of the book were circulated among the parents, some of whom were enraged when they saw what they considered demeaning, stereotypical, and "racially insensitive" depictions of black people. A meeting was called with parents and school officials. Threats were made by the parents, and the 27-year-old teacher, a white woman, was put on desk duty while an investigation was launched. Even though the school ended up backing the teacher, she refused to return to the classroom, citing fears for her own safety [see Holloway, "School"; "Teacher"; "Threatened"; "Unswayed"].The incident received a fair amount of commentary, including a New York Times op-ed article by Jill Nelson. In the article, Nelson argues that what the Nappy Hair controversy illustrates is not the racial insensitivity of the white teacher or the school [End Page 9] system—as the black parents argued—but that the "barriers to [...] self-esteem are perpetuated not by the white community but by the black one." For Nelson, the black community remains overly sensitive about certain representations of blackness. She suggests that such attitudes may have their origin in slavery and in the adoption of the valorization of white physical features by African descendants from their masters. In this, she follows critics such as Kobena Mercer, who writes in "Black Hair/Style Politics" that "black people's hair has been historically devalued as the most visible stigmata of blackness, second only to skin" [101]. Inevitably, representations such as those at stake in the classroom controversy find their historical background in minstrelsy: "In the minstrel stereotype of Sambo [...] the 'frizzy' hair of the character is an essential part of the iconography of inferiority. In children's books and vaudeville minstrelsy, the 'woolly' hair is ridiculed, just as aspects of black people's speech were lampooned in both popular music hall and the nineteenth-century novel as evidence of the 'quaint folkways' and 'cultural backwardness of the slaves'" [102]. Nelson concludes: "Too many African-Americans," she writes, "have internalized and passed down these beliefs, as if proximity to whiteness inherently enhances our worth."Nelson's reading of the controversy is neither incorrect nor adequate. Certainly, the parents' outrage with the book—more precisely, with the... (shrink)

The on-going space settlement debate has raised questions whether it is possible to settle other planets, and if it was, is it something humans should do. The problem with this space ethical discussion is that it can easily become too vague. To avoid this problem, we suggest a framework for identifying relevant variables that affect the feasibility constraints and desirability factors of establishing space settlements. The variables we focus on include the settlement stage, scale and time frame. Based on the (...) relevant literature, we take mission cost, survival, habitation, water, in situ resources for food, oxygen and fuel energy and dependence on Earth as feasibility constraints that are relevant for the framework. None of them are hard constraints, but rather soft feasibility constraints that make it difficult to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars in the near- to medium-term future. However, in the past, humanity has achieved goals that first seemed infeasible. To justify the costs and effort, the goal must be highly morally desirable. We discuss five different desirability factors that could help justify the effort but as each framework has unique feasibility constraints, not all of these factors are sufficient or necessary to justify this effort. We argue that some of the desirability factors prominent in space ethical literature are not sufficient or necessary in our framework, and thus, we conclude that the normative grounds for establishing a permanent Mars settlement in the foreseeable future are weak. (shrink)

Interdisciplinarity is widely considered necessary to solving many contemporary problems, and new funding structures and instruments have been created to encourage interdisciplinary research at universities. In this article, we study a small technical university specializing in green technology which implemented a strategy aimed at promoting and developing interdisciplinary collaboration. It did so by reallocating its internal research funds for at least five years to “research platforms” that required researchers from at least two of the three schools within the university to (...) participate. Using data from semi-structured interviews from researchers in three of these platforms, we identify specific tensions that the strategy has generated in this case: in the allocation of platform resources, in the division of labor and disciplinary relations, in choices over scientific output and academic careers. We further show how the particular platform format exacerbates the identified tensions in our case. We suggest that certain features of the current platform policy incentivize shallow interdisciplinary interactions, highlighting potential limits on the value of attempting to push for interdisciplinarity through internal funding. (shrink)

The ethical, societal, and political issues of Mars settlement seem like very distant problems, both spatially and temporally. However, there is a certain urgency to these matters. Whatever humanity does in the coming decades will affect generations upon generations of future humans and other living beings, as well as their environments. The initial agreements about how resources are governed and what kind of regime is established can persist for a long time. There can be a “Founder Effect” in space. This (...) engenders questions about where to begin. Are the primary goals scientific, political, or economic? Will they be realised through international cooperation, or as a private enterprise? Will the first steps be taken in a just manner and for the common good? A settlement can become “locked-in” to initial technological, economic, behavioural, or political solutions, or caught in path dependencies. Inertia can take hold. Moreover, the process of designing and planning Mars settlements can itself become locked in this way, burdened by problematic histories, colonialist ways of thinking about settlements, and problematic values. It may even be the case that humans are neither technologically nor socially ready to settle other worlds. (shrink)

Background: Nurses frequently face ethically demanding situations in their work, and these may lead to stress of conscience. Working life is currently accelerating and job demands are intensifying. These intensified job demands include (1) work intensification, (2) intensified job-related planning demands, (3) intensified career-related planning demands, and (4) intensified learning demands. At the same time, many healthcare organizations are implementing major organizational changes that have an influence on personnel. Aim: The aim of the study was to investigate the association between (...) intensified job demands and stress of conscience, and whether their association is moderated by organizational change experiences among nurses. Experiences of organizational change may expose employees to stress of conscience or serve as a buffer because employees appraise, involve, and cope with changes differently. Research design: Questionnaires measuring stress of conscience, intensified job demands, and organizational change experiences were completed by nurses (n = 511) in a healthcare district undergoing a major organizational change. Ethical considerations: Throughout, the study procedures were implemented according to the guidelines of the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity and the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments. According to the Finnish regulations, because participation was voluntary, informed consent was requested, and participants were advised of their right to withdraw from the study at will. No permission from an ethics committee was necessary. Findings: Work intensification and personal worry considering organizational change were associated with more severe stress of conscience among nurses. Nurses’ experiences of managements’ competent handling of organizational change buffered the association between work intensification and stress of conscience. Conclusions: During organizational changes, management may alleviate nurses’ stress of conscience by proper communication and support procedures. (shrink)

It has been argued that moral problems in relation to Information Technology (IT) require new theories of ethics. In recent years, an interesting new theory to address such concerns has been proposed, namely the theory of Information Ethics (IE). Despite the promise of IE, the theory has not enjoyed public discussion. The aim of this paper is to initiate such discussion by critically evaluating the theory of IE.

It is this demand to address questions emerging from these experiential and normative perspectives to which this book on emotions, ethics, and authenticity ...

This chapter considers the extent to which David Hume is properly regarded as a Scottish philosopher at all. It begins by looking at A Treatise of Human Nature and argues that there is little, if any, discernible connection between it and either the education Hume received at Edinburgh or what was going on in Scottish letters in the 1720s and 1730s. It also explores ways in which Hume, like William Robertson, engaged with and subverted the usual tropes of Scottish history (...) writing. His writings on religious topics Scotland were never far from Hume’s mind. Hume repeatedly found himself involved in the struggle between ‘Moderate’ and ‘Orthodox’ wings of the Church of Scotland, and this had a significant impact on how he presented his philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Although the subjective expected utility (SEU) theory is more than 60 years old, it was recently discovered by Hartmann (Econometrica 88(1):203–205, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA17428) that one of the original seven postulates is redundant, i.e., it is implied by the other six postulates. In this brief communication, we show that this redundant axiom is the only one that is implied by the other axioms, thereby establishing that the remaining six postulates form an independent axiomatic system. This result further streamlines the preference assumptions (...) underlying the SEU theory. (shrink)

This paper seeks to establish that Bernard Mandeville's ideas on courage and honour shaped the Scottish debate about ancients and moderns by formulating a perspective how eighteenth-century civil societies grew large, luxurious and feminine without losing their ability to wage war. My focus is on Mandeville's positive influence on David Hume, whose writings were a springboard for many Mandevillean ideas in Scotland. In contrast to a recent claim in scholarship, Hume aimed to discredit, instead of developing, Shaftesburyan ideas of ancient (...) courage. The concluding part of the paper will discuss Andrew Millar and Adam Ferguson in this context. (shrink)

As artificial intelligence continues to have a fundamental impact in our world and lives, a crucial need arises for integrating ethical and constructivist principles in the design of AI ….

This article examines state-church relations in Sweden by analysing clerical appointment processes in the latter part of the 16th century. The aim is to ascertain whether the king of Sweden could appoint pastors independently, and if not, with whom he was compelled to share the power. Earlier studies argue that the power of the king grew due to the reformation. First, this article examines the number of clerical appointments that were made in the period 1560-1611. The results reveal a remarkable (...) annual variation in the number of clerical appointments. Second, the timing and share of clerical appointments made by the king are studied. The number of appointments made by the king is viewed against the total number of clerical appointments so as to reveal the importance of appointments made by the crown. Third, the article examines the proportion of appointments made by other authorities. The results suggest that the crown’s role in clerical appointment processes varied, but more interestingly, it was not as ubiquitous as earlier researchers suggest. Thus article concludes that crown’s power over the church in 16th century Sweden was not as vast as it has previously been claimed. (shrink)

While innovation is recognised as a key driver of economic growth and competitiveness, less attention has been given to the study of the underpinning capability to be innovative, which is here taken to be the ability to successfully exploit new external knowledge. This conceptual paper examines the parallels between innovation theory in the administrative context and Amartya Sen’s capability approach, a wide vision of human potential and development. It is argued that applying Sen’s approach in this fashion enables a novel (...) perspective on the link between the innovation potential that the individual may have and the constraints that social arrangements impose. This new insight can assist the formulation, management and acceptance of organisational change processes that aim to enhance the ability to see, assimilate and apply new knowledge. These processes are especially challenging in non-western contexts. This paper begins by introducing Sen’s approach, proceeds to establish a link with concepts of public sector administrative innovation, then examines some particular aspects of the relationship between the two, and concludes with some suggestions for further research. (shrink)

Spiritual violence is a modern concept expressing the abusive aspects of religion. This article observes the potential for spiritual violence within the rhetoric of the Gospel of Matthew, a principal text of the dominant world religion. Utilizing the supernatural punishment hypothesis of religion as a theoretical background, this cross-disciplinary analysis opens perspectives on the use of religious power in the past and the present.