Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 2, Page 419-437, April 2022.

The aim of this study is to explore social media marketing activities and their impact on consumer intentions. This study also analyzes the mediating roles of social identification and satisfaction. The participants in this study were experienced users of two social media platforms Facebook and Instagram in Pakistan. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from respondents. We used an online community to invite Facebook and Instagram users to complete the questionnaire in the designated online questionnaire system. Data were (...) collected from 353 respondents, and structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. Results show that SMMAs have a significant impact on the intentions of users. Furthermore, social identification mediates the relationship between social media activities and satisfaction, and satisfaction mediates the relationship between social media activities and the intentions of users. This will help marketers how to attract customers to develop their intentions. This is the first novel study that used SMMAs to address the user intentions with the role of social identification and satisfaction in the context of Pakistan. (shrink)

Could some social kinds be natural kinds? In this paper, I argue that there are three kinds of social kinds: 1) social kinds whose existence does not depend on human beings having any beliefs or other propositional attitudes towards them ; 2) social kinds whose existence depends in part on specific attitudes that human beings have towards them, though attitudes need not be manifested towards their particular instances ; 3) social kinds whose existence and that of their instances depend in (...) part on specific attitudes that human beings have towards them . Although all three kinds of social kinds are mind-dependent, this does not make them ontologically subjective or preclude them from being natural kinds. Rather, what prevents the third kind of social kinds from being natural kinds is that their properties are conventionally rather than causally linked. (shrink)

Includes an introd. of 49 p. by S. G. Abbas.

The search for the “furniture of the mind” has acquired added impetus with the rise of new technologies to study the brain and identify its main structures and processes. Philosophers and scientists are increasingly concerned to understand the ways in which psychological functions relate to brain structures. Meanwhile, the taxonomic practices of cognitive scientists are coming under increased scrutiny, as researchers ask which of them identify the real kinds of cognition and which are mere vestiges of folk psychology. Muhammad Ali (...) Khalidi presents a naturalistic account of “real kinds” to validate some central taxonomic categories in the cognitive domain, including concepts, episodic memory, innateness, domain specificity, and cognitive bias. He argues that cognitive kinds are often individuated relationally, with reference to the environment and etiology of the thinking subject, whereas neural kinds tend to be individuated intrinsically, resulting in crosscutting relationships among cognitive and neural categories. (shrink)

[1] al-Manṭiq. 1. al-Madkhal. 2. al-Maqūlāt. 3. al-ʻIbārah. 4. al-Qiyās. 5. al-Burhān. 6. al-Jadal. 7. al-Safsaṭah. 8. al-Khaṭābah. 9. al-Shiʻr (4 v.) -- [2] al-Ṭabīʻīyat. 2. al-Samāʼ wa-al-ʻālam. 3. al-Kawn wa-al-fasād. 4. al-Afʻāl wa-al-infiʻālāt. 5. al-Maʻādin wa-al-āthār al-ʻulwīyah. 6. al-Nafs. 7. al-Nabāt -- [3] al-Riyāḍīyāt. [1] Uṣūl al-handasah. 2. al-Ḥisāb. 3. Jawāmiʻ ʻilm al-mūsīqá. [4] al-Ilāhīyāt.

This paper examines the phenomenon of ‘interactive kinds’ first identified by Ian Hacking. An interactive kind is one that is created or significantly modified once a concept of it has been formulated and acted upon in certain ways. Interactive kinds may also ‘loop back’ to influence our concepts and classifications. According to Hacking, interactive kinds are found exclusively in the human domain. After providing a general account of interactive kinds and outlining their philosophical significance, I argue that they are not (...) confined to the human realm, but that they can also occur elsewhere. Hence, I conclude by arguing that interactive kinds pose a challenge to scientific realism about kinds by making it difficult to make a distinction between real and non-real kinds. (shrink)

The current research examines the possible outcomes of cronyism like organizational deviance, organizational cynicism, and counterproductive work behavior and also investigates the mediating variable violation of psychological contract among cronyism and its possible outcomes. Many studies have investigated the presence of organizational cronyism at the workplace and its impacts on certain variables. However, the outcomes observed in this study, i.e., OD, OCy, and counter-productive work behavior were not empirically investigated previously as per researchers’ knowledge. The second gap this study fills (...) is the mediating effect of VPC between the studied variables. Thirdly, the study was conducted in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan, which is almost the first attempt to investigate this phenomenon in Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Data were collected from the employees working under different ministries of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan like education, forest, sports, information, local government, finance, and tourism. The data from 350 employees were collected through convenience sampling. The data collection process was conducted at two distinct time lags. Results show that OC significantly and positively relates with OD, OCy, and counter-productive work behavior, whereas VPC mediates the relationship among OC and OD, OC, and counter-productive work behavior. Employees enjoying special favors from the leadership seem to be more dedicated toward the organization than the employees who do not have this favor, and the ultimate result is negative for the organization. (shrink)

Soft neutrosophic group and soft neutrosophic subgroup are generalized to soft neutrosophic bigroup and soft neutrosophic N-group respectively in this paper. Different kinds of soft neutrosophic bigroup and soft neutrosophic N-group are given. The structural properties and theorems have been discussed with a lot of examples to disclose many aspects of this beautiful man made structure.

In this paper I offer a unified causal account of natural kinds. Using as a starting point the widely held view that natural kind terms or predicates are projectible, I argue that the ontological bases of their projectibility are the causal properties and relations associated with the natural kinds themselves. Natural kinds are not just concatenations of properties but ordered hierarchies of properties, whose instances are related to one another as causes and effects in recurrent causal processes. The resulting account (...) of natural kinds as clusters of core causal properties that give rise to clusters of derivative properties enables us to distinguish genuine natural kinds from non-natural kinds. For instance, it enables us to say why some of the purely conventional categories derived from the social domain do not correspond to natural kinds, though other social categories may. (shrink)

Nūr Muḥammad is one of the teachings in Sufism that studies the beginning of the creation of the universe. The Sufis discussed Nūr Muḥammad through God's tajallī (manifestation), and they believed that only Insan Kamil (Perfect Humans) possessed the perfection of His tajallī. This Sufi theory can be comprehended through the dhawqi approach. This research will deal with Nūr Muḥammad's theory of Sufism through the perspective of Tijaniyah Tarekat. The data for this study was obtained through library research utilizing a (...) documentary technique. The collected data will be analyzed using the descriptive analysis method. This study finds that the Tijaniyah Tarekat is a Sufism institution that bases its teachings and practices on the concept of Nūr Muḥammad in the form of ṣalawāt al-fātiḥ and ṣalawāt jawharah al-kamāl. This Tarekat's elucidation of Nūr Muḥammad is also built on and consistent with the explication of authoritative Sufis in Islam's intellectual and spiritual tradition. (shrink)

Mankind is faced with a number of serious problems that demand an effective solution. The prevalence of injustice and the frequency of financial crises are two of the most serious of these problems. Consisting of an in-depth introduction along with a selection of eight of Muhammad Umer Chapra's essays--four on Islamic economics and four on Islamic finance--this timely book raises the question of what can be done to not only minimize the frequency and severity of the financial crises, but also (...) make the financial system more equitable. The author considers the origins of Islamic economics and outlines its development and underlying principles. He compares the approach taken to ethics and economics in Islam with that taken in the West, considering whether lessons can be applied to the global financial architecture in order to mitigate against financial crises. The book also examines the case against interest and looks at both innovation in Islamic finance, as well as challenges facing the industry. Written by a leading authority in the field, this book will be a stimulating resource for students and researchers in Islamic economics and finance, as well as providing valuable insight to all of those with an interest in financial systems and their interaction with society. (shrink)

This article constitutes the new fixed point results of dynamic process D through FIC-integral contractions of the Ciric kind and investigates the said contraction to iterate a fixed point of set-valued mappings in the module of metric space. To do so, we use the dynamic process instead of the conventional Picard sequence. The main results are examined by tangible nontrivial examples which display the motivation for such investigation. The work is completed by giving an application to Liouville‐Caputo fractional differential equations.

Muhammad al-Shahrastani, the famous Muslim theologian of the 12th century and author of the Book of Religious and Philosophical Sects, was greatly influenced by Ismaili teachings. In this work al-Shahrastani refutes the metaphysics of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) from an Ismaili point of view.

Critical study of the works of Sir Muhammad Iqbal, 1877-1938.

Kinds that share historical properties are dubbed “historical kinds” or “etiological kinds,” and they have some distinctive features. I will try to characterize etiological kinds in general terms and briefly survey some previous philosophical discussions of these kinds. Then I will take a closer look at a few case studies involving different types of etiological kinds. Finally, I will try to understand the rationale for classifying on the basis of etiology, putting forward reasons for classifying phenomena on the basis of (...) diachronic features, thereby making a provisional case for considering at least some etiological kinds to be natural kinds. (shrink)

Features new to the second edition include a foreword by Tynnetta Muhammad, wife and student of Elijah Muhammad; opening comments by world renowned mathematician Dr. Abdulalim Sahabazz; a new chapter co-authored with Dr. Dorothy Blake Fardan; plus guided questions and power point notes to stimulate discourse around Elijah Muhammad's educational ideas.

Publication date: 14 June 2017 Source: Author: Muhammad Hussein Oroskhan, Sayyed Mohammad Anoosheh By the 1930s, the Iranian society was driven toward modernization. Consisted with the concept of modernization, feminism ushered a whole new era in Iranian history. Besides, the outbreak of World War II and the consequent abdication of Reza Khan afforded women a golden opportunity to fight for their rights and emancipations. This movement was also supported by the famous male writers of the time among whom Jalal Al-e-Ahmad (...) marked a prominent place. He was keen enough to properly explore women's situation in his works and notice the drastic effect of modernization upon women's situation. Hence, in this study, we try to investigate Al-e-Ahmad's short story entitled “Pink Nail Polish” 1948 with respect to Bakhtin's Carnivalesque's theory. Furthermore, it is shown how Bakhtin's new literary mode can create the excellent chance of studying Iranian women's situation properly. Finally, we explain that due to the drastic change of Iranian women's situation towards modernity, they may lead a double life if their rights are not respected. This can lead to a disproportionate relationship between the husband and the wife as the marital infidelity becomes rampant. (shrink)

The notion of 'natural kinds' has been central to contemporary discussions of metaphysics and philosophy of science. Although explicitly articulated by nineteenth-century philosophers like Mill, Whewell and Venn, it has a much older history dating back to Plato and Aristotle. In recent years, essentialism has been the dominant account of natural kinds among philosophers, but the essentialist view has encountered resistance, especially among naturalist metaphysicians and philosophers of science. Informed by detailed examination of classification in the natural and social sciences, (...) this book argues against essentialism and for a naturalist account of natural kinds. By looking at case studies drawn from diverse scientific disciplines, from fluid mechanics to virology and polymer science to psychiatry, the author argues that natural kinds are nodes in causal networks. On the basis of this account, he maintains that there can be natural kinds in the social sciences as well as the natural sciences. (shrink)

The philosopher's stone : the epitome of my knowledge -- Preface -- Introduction -- Collectania -- The need for a tool -- A dream to organize chaos -- Substance abuse and a headache -- A habit from paradise -- A sealed story -- Stealing a seal -- Loosing a tool -- Believe it or not -- A blessing in curse-dressing -- Growing pains -- Lost paradises -- Diaries, my beloved diaries -- A taste like honey -- Physics of the heart (...) -- Gems of a child -- A story of a lawyer -- Optical memories -- The talisman -- Prayer...prayer -- Meditation, concentration, contemplation and other buzz words -- The neurotic need for completion -- The microsoft way -- Anatomy of a need -- A side that shuns mattresses -- I want a tool -- The treatment device for the mujahid salah mustafa -- Meditation tips -- Epilogue: the case for I don't know. (shrink)

Substituted judgment assumes adequate knowledge of patient’s mind-set. However, surrogates’ prediction of individual healthcare decisions is often inadequate and may be based on shared background rather than patient-specific knowledge. It is not known whether surrogate’s prediction of patient’s integrative life-story narrative is better. Respondents in 90 family pairs rank-ordered 47 end-of-life statements as life-story narrative measure and completed instruments on decision-control preference and healthcare-outcomes acceptability as control measures, from respondent’s view and predicted pair’s view. They also scored their confidence in (...) surrogate’s decision-making and familiarity with pair’s healthcare-preferences. Life-story narratives’ prediction was examined by calculating correlation of statements’ ranking scores between respondent-personal and respondent-surrogate Q-sorts and between respondent-surrogate and pair-personal Q-sorts before and after controlling for correlation with respondent-personal scores, and by comparing percentages of respondent-surrogate Q-sorts co-loading with pair-personal vs. respondent-personal Q-sorts. Accuracy in predicting decision-control preference and healthcare-outcomes acceptability was determined by percent concordance. Results were compared among subgroups defined by intra-pair relationship, surrogate’s decision-making confidence, and healthcare-preferences familiarity. Mean age was 35.4 years, 69% were females, and 73 and 80% reported ≥ very good health and life-quality, respectively. Mean surrogate’s decision-making confidence score was 3.35 and 75% were ≥ familiar with pair’s healthcare-preferences. Mean projection, simulation, and adjusted-simulation correlations were 0.68, 0.42, and 0.26, respectively. Out of 180 respondent-surrogate Q-sorts, 24, 9, and 32% co-loaded with respondent-personal, pair-personal, or both Q-sorts, respectively. Accuracy in predicting decision-control preference and healthcare-outcomes acceptability was 47 and 52%, respectively. Surrogate’s decision-making confidence score correlated with adjusted-simulation’s correlation score. There were significant differences among the husband-wife, parent-child, and sibling-sibling subgroups in percentage of respondent-surrogate Q-sorts co-loading with pair-personal Q-sorts and percent agreement on healthcare-outcomes acceptability. Despite high self-reported surrogate’s decision-making confidence and healthcare-preferences familiarity, family surrogates are variably inadequate in simulating life-story narratives. Simulation accuracy may not follow the next-of-kin concept and is 38% based on shared background. (shrink)

'O men, serve your Lord who created you and those before you, so that you may guard against evil. Deals with Allah, Prophet Muhammad PBUH, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Sahib -- What are the signs of the appearance of the promised messiah? and do these signs appear in the being of Hazrat Mirza Sahib?

There are many ways of construing the claim that some categories are more “natural" than others. One can ask whether a system of categories is innate or acquired by learning, whether it pertains to a natural phenomenon or to a social institution, whether it is lexicalized in natural language or requires a compound linguistic expression. This renders suspect any univocal answer to this question in any particular case. Yet another question one can ask, which some authors take to have a (...) bearing on the issue of the naturalness of categories, is whether a system of categories constitutes a unique way of organizing a particular set of entities or phenomena, or whether there are other legitimate classification schemes that can coexist with it. Another way of putting this is by asking whether systems of categories can cut across one another, and if so, under what circumstances. Some philosophers have claimed that crosscutting systems of categories cannot exist as genuine natural kinds. This paper examines that claim and puts forward some counterexamples, concluding that this notion of natural kind is not in tune with scientific classification and ought to be rejected in favor of an alternative. (shrink)

Study on acculturation of Islamic brotherhood values in Islamic religious training centers in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam Province, Indonesia.

Although informed consent is an integral part of clinical practice, its current doctrine remains mostly a matter of law and mainstream ethics rather than empirical research. There are scarce empirical data on patients’ perceived purpose of informed consent, which may include administrative routine/courtesy gesture, simple honest permission, informed permission, patient-clinician shared decision-making, and enabling patient’s self decision-making. Different purposes require different processes.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cities of Alexander the GreatMuhammad Usman ErdosyP. M. Fraser. Cities of Alexander the Great. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. xii 1 263 pp. Cloth, $72.Fraser’s survey aims at determining “what cities [Alexander] did indeed found, how many out of the large number attributed to him by our various sources are actually historical, and in what sense” (vi). Resolving these issues requires the analysis of sources which are plagued by (...) inconsistent geographical information on the one hand, and a general silence concerning Alexander’s motives behind his foundations on the other. Consequently, Fraser opens with a critical survey of the Alexandrias listed in Stephanus of Byzantium’s as well as in the corpus of texts preserving, or inspired by, the Western traditions of the Alexander Romance. This is followed, in chapter 2, by an analysis of lists found in the Perso-Arabic and Syriac versions of the Romance. Having disposed of the baggage of mythical foundations, Fraser then identifies those Alexandrias which are authenticated by historical and geographical texts, in chapters 3 and 4, and attempts, in chapter 5, to locate them on the ground. In conclusion, chapter 6 considers Alexander’s motives in founding cities, and the Epilogue surveys the subsequent fortunes of those few foundations which Fraser feels justified at the end of his analysis in attributing to Alexander himself. The book is also supplied with appendices detailing the formation of the Alexander Romance and the accounts of Chinese pilgrims to India, with a table summarizing references to Alexander foundations known from literature, and with detailed indices.As in his Ptolemaic Alexandria, Fraser brings an encyclopedic knowledge of sources—both primary and secondary—to the issues at hand, reserving the text for general discussion and relegating detailed argumentation to the notes. Although the material available to him had been known to previous generations, his study is the first comprehensive survey of the various Alexander foundations since Tarn’s The Greeks in Bactria and India (Cambridge 1951). Unlike Tarn, however, he prefers to dismiss (or assimilate to attested foundations) most of the Alexandrias named in Stephanus and the Romance; some because they are unsubstantiated in historical and geographical texts, and others because they represent cities actually founded by the Seleucids. In doing so, he lays strong emphasis on identifying the “pre-texts” of the Alexander Romance (in appendix 2), as well as the political motivations of their Ptolemaic authors (in chapter 1), and while he concedes that his conclusion can “only be reached by as much unverifiable argument as that of Droysen and Tarn” (viii), this part of the book is highly valuable for creating a framework with which to approach the mythical accretions to Alexander’s historical achievements.Similarly useful is the analysis of Alexander’s aims in creating a network of new cities, in chapter 6, even if it is based only partly on statements attributable to Alexander, and relies heavily on patterns observable in his foundations, on general geopolitical considerations, and, consequently, on our ability to locate [End Page 133] the historical Alexandrias. As above, there is little to quarrel with in the general conclusion that the foundations represent rather Alexander’s ambition to recreate the Achaemenid Empire under Macedonian domination than an attempt to spread Greek culture, and that even reduced to a historical scale they are of a magnitude to foreshadow the strategic thinking of the British Raj.Although Fraser considers the task of locating authentic Alexander foundations subordinate to the study of sources, his assertion (102) that the historicity of the foundations does not rest, even partly, on their precise identification on the ground is surprising, given the inability of the textual evidence to resolve many geographical and historical questions, and the difficulty, just mentioned, of establishing Alexander’s motives in founding cities without pinpointing their location. Consequently, the lengthy excursus on topography, making up chapter 5, carries considerable importance. It also testifies to the complexity of the issues, since the evidence consists of conflicting geographical data regarding cities, which remain frequently unreconcilable with the archaeological record even when supplemented by the presumed course of troop movements, in turn determined by logistics and by the presumed political motives of... (shrink)

Asking whether the sexes are natural kinds amounts to asking whether the categories, female and male, identify real divisions in nature, like the distinctions between biological species, or whether they mark merely artificial or arbitrary distinctions. The distinction between females and males in the animal kingdom is based on the relative size of the gametes they produce, with females producing larger gametes (ova) and males producing smaller gametes (sperm). This chapter argues that the properties of producing relatively large and small (...) gametes are causally correlated with a range of other properties in a wide variety of organisms, and this is what makes females and males natural kinds in the animal kingdom. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the relationship between sex and gender: while the difference between the sexes is biologically grounded, the difference between genders is socially based. Since gender depends in part on the perception of sex, whether or not gender is real or not does not depend on whether sex is, since social reality is constituted in part by our perceptions. The claim that sexes are natural kinds in the animal kingdom does not imply that the biological differences among female and male humans do and should have social consequences. (shrink)

The present study examined the direct and indirect (via relational social capital) relationships between supervisors’ ethical leadership and knowledge hiding. It also tested the moderating role of instrumental thinking in the relationship between supervisors’ ethical leadership and knowledge hiding and the relationship between supervisors’ ethical leadership and relational social capital. Data were collected from 245 employees in different firms spanning different manufacturing and service sectors. The results showed that supervisors’ ethical leadership was negatively related to knowledge hiding, both directly and (...) via relational social capital. The results revealed that instrumental thinking moderated the positive relationship between supervisors’ ethical leadership and relational social capital, such that the relationship was weak when instrumental thinking was high. The results also showed that instrumental thinking moderated both direct and indirect relationships between supervisors’ ethical leadership and knowledge hiding, such that the relationships were weak when instrumental thinking was high. The study carries important practical implications for managers concerned about the destructive consequences of knowledge hiding. (shrink)

Consumers occasionally buy commodity products without much thought but purchase high involvement products or services after rigorous information collection and detailed comparisons of the different options. At the core, research on consumer behavior comprises studies on the cognitive processes involved in consumer purchasing decisions and the way buying decisions are made. The discipline of consumer research and marketing has remained dominated by positivist, empiricist, and realist philosophies. Since consumer behaviour is a social phenomenon, the researchers have used logical positivist and (...) interpretivist philosophies to study and develop various theories about consumer behaviour. However, both of these philosophies have inherent limitations to capture the complete knowledge of consumer reality. Pragmatist philosophy is capable of providing solutions to real-life problems by starting with research question and exploring the issues from multiple perspectives. It is, therefore, suggested to explore the various aspects of consumer behaviour research from a pragmatist perspective and contribute more effective information to the body of knowledge in this discipline. (shrink)

Prior research suggests that Corporate Environmental Performance enables businesses to build strong corporate image and reputation, thus leading to improved firm financial performance. However, studies relating to the relationship between CEP and firm risk are scarce. This research intends to bridge the gap in the literature by examining whether CEP helps firms to reduce their financial risk. Results of the Ordinary Least Squares regression with fixed effects provide strong evidence that environmental performance is negatively associated with firm volatility and firm (...) downside risk. The results are robust after controlling for moderating effects such as financial, institutional and environmental management. (shrink)

This paper attempts to articulate a dispositional account of innateness that applies to cognitive capacities. After criticizing an alternative account of innateness proposed by Cowie (1999) and Samuels (2002), the dispositional account of innateness is explicated and defended against a number of objections. The dispositional account states that an innate cognitive capacity (output) is one that has a tendency to be triggered as a result of impoverished environmental conditions (input). Hence, the challenge is to demonstrate how the input can be (...) compared to the output and shown to be relatively impoverished. I argue that there are robust methods of comparing input to output without measuring them quantitatively. (shrink)