Despite major advances in research on musical ability in infants, relatively little attention has been paid to individual differences in general musicality in infants. A fundamental problem has been the lack of a clear definition of what constitutes “general musicality” or “musical ability” in infants and toddlers, resulting in a wide range of test procedures that rely on different models of musicality. However, musicality can be seen as a social construct that can take on different meanings across cultures, sub-groups, and (...) individuals, and may be subject to change over time. Therefore, one way to get a clearer picture of infant musicality is to assess conceptions of musicality in the general population. Using this approach, we surveyed 174 German adults, asking about their view and conceptions regarding behaviors that characterize a musical child under 3 years. Based on previous studies on adult and child musicality, we designed a survey containing 41 statements describing musical behaviors in children. Participants were asked to rate how indicative these behaviors were of musicality in infants and toddlers. PCA analysis revealed 4 components of musical abilities and behaviors in under-3-year-olds: Musical Communication, Enthusiasm and Motivation, Adaptive Expressiveness, and Musical Abilities as traditionally defined. Professional background and musical expertise of the respondents did not significantly influence participants’ conceptions. Our results suggest that, in order to capture musicality in young children, a wider range of skills and observable behaviors should be taken into account than those assessed by traditional musical ability tests for young children. (shrink)

"... a major contribution to Heidegger scholarship..." —Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences "Van Buren’s portrayal of these formative years is striking and vital to all future Heidegger scholarship." —Christian Century "Van Buren presents a clear and cogent argument for the theory that Martin Heidegger’s mature thought, epitomized in Being and Time, actually was a return to his youthful theory and concerns.... Van Buren’s ability to present a rounded discussion while using Heidegger’s own technical vocabulary is (...) highly commendable." —Library Journal "... here at last is a work on the philosopher that is of fundamental philosophical-historical import. Van Buren’s book is both interesting and well written... " —Choice "... a readable, interesting, and first-rate book." —John D. Caputo A startling new reading of Martin Heidegger’s early thought leading up to Being and Time and its subsequent development in his later writings. (shrink)

One of the essential ethical issues in the employment relationship is the loss of employee voice. Many of the ways employees have previously exercised voice in the employment relationship have been rendered less effective by (1) the changing nature of work, (2) employer preferences for flexibility that often work to the disadvantage of employees, and (3) changes in public policy and institutional systems that have failed to protect workers. We will begin with a discussion of how work has changed in (...) the last 20 years in countries like Australia and the United States, and then take up the issue of employees as organizational stakeholders and the ethical duties that are owed them, with special attention given to issues of power. We will then consider whether voluntary action by employers such as social auditing is sufficient to ensure equity for employees, and conclude with a discussion of how changes in public policy might ensure greater fairness in the employment relationship by bringing employers and employees together in partnership. (shrink)

Abstract:Work on stakeholder theory has proceeded on a variety of fronts; as Donaldson and Preston (1995) have noted, such work can be parsed into descriptive, instrumental, and normative research streams. In a normative vein, Phillips (1997) has made an argument for a principle of fairness as a means of identifying and adjudicating among stakeholders. In this essay, I propose that a reconstructed principle of fairness can be combined with the idea of consent as outlined in integrative social contract theory (ISCT) (...) to bring about a more normative stakeholder theory that also has ramifications for corporate governance. (shrink)

Although not always termed “organizational justice,” the fairness of organizations has been a consistent concern of management thinkers. A review of the 1900–1965 time period indicates that management theorists primarily conceptualized organizational justice in utilitarian terms, although each theory emphasized distributive and procedural justice to different degrees. There is clearly a need for contemporary scholars to consider non-economic rationales for organizational justice, but the willingness of earlier scholars to make utilitarian arguments about organizational justice and productive efficiency helped legitimize the (...) idea of fairness in organizations as an arbiter of value. Further, each theory tempered absolute managerial autonomy with some inherent check thereon. Researchers interested in organizational justice should therefore take a historical perspective in considering how management theory includes consideration of justice-related concerns. (shrink)

Downsizing has become a significant public issue that has not yet been significantly studied by business ethicists. It is proposed that reasonable social and psychological contracts bound the moral free space of managers contemplating downsizing; the degree of constraint is also dependent on the organization's resource munificence. A framework for considering the extent of managerial moral free space and implications thereof for managerial practice are offered.

1 Das Paradox des Regelfolgens Regeln im Sinne von Handlungsvorschriften setzen ihre Anwendbarkeit schon begrifflich voraus. Alle Regeln regeln mögliches Verhalten, seien es Verkehrsregeln, juridische Gesetze, mathematische und logische Verfahren, und selbst „Bedeutungs-postulate“, die festlegen, wie ein Ausdruck verständlich zu verwenden ist. Regeln ohne irgendeinen möglichen Anwendungsspielraum sind sinnlos. Dabei werden durch Regeln nicht nur mögliche Anwendungen präsupponiert, sondern umgekehrt aus gegebenen Tatsachen oder Ereignissen Regelmäßigkeiten herausgelesen, die sich in der Regel ausdrücken. Die Regel bezeichnet in diesem Sinne das „Prinzip (...) hinter den Tatsachen“, das sie diesen freilich in gewisser Weise erst andichtet. Zweck dieses Vorgehens ist nicht zuletzt, die mögliche Fortsetzung der Tatsachenreihe gleichzeitig zu bestimmen und zu begründen, jedenfalls aber eine gewisse Ordnung, Rechtfertigung und Voraussagbarkeit des Handelns zu gewährleisten. Regelanwendung verlangt deshalb eine komplexe geistige Kompetenz, die nicht nur Fähigkeiten der Abstraktion und Reflexion, sondern auch Können und Erfahrung voraussetzt. (shrink)

Entrepreneurship is the dominant form of enterprise in conflict-affected settings, yet little is known about the role of entrepreneurship in peacebuilding. In response, this article undertakes a review of entrepreneurship in conflict-affected regions to integrate research from business and management with research from political science, international relations, and parallel domains. Three views of entrepreneurship emerge—the destructive view, economic view, and social cohesion view—showing how entrepreneurship can concurrently create conflict but also potentially generate peace. The article identifies new avenues for pro-peace (...) entrepreneurship: namely, through personal transformation, social contributions, inclusive interactions, conflict trigger removal, intergroup policy persuasion, and acting as legal champions. This article also discusses several pathways forward for business-for-peace research alongside additional implications for the deployment of business-based support programs in conflict settings. (shrink)

In this article, we underscore the importance of stakeholder relationships for research on stakeholder engagement. We do so by integrating a practice-based understanding with the relational view. Based on a revealing case study of a civic engagement process in a large German city, we develop a conceptual framework that explains how relational practices shape stakeholder engagement. We identify three relational practices (i.e., connecting, facilitating, and containing) and their associated outcomes (i.e., implication, solidarization, and distinction), as well as effects on stakeholder (...) heterogeneity. Our findings contribute to the relational view on stakeholder engagement by providing insights into practices that shape relationships between heterogeneous stakeholders, explaining how these relational practices influence stakeholder heterogeneity, and identifying unintended impacts of stakeholder engagement. (shrink)

We explore the issue of media content and corporate social responsibility by considering three questions:1. Why is this issue becoming so salient to a variety of stakeholders across the political spectrum at this time?2. What are the ethical issues that companies and policy makers should be concerned about with regard to media content?3. How can media-related companies and industries either better self-regulate or enhance consumer choice to respond to legitimate concerns about access tocontent?

Compatibilist methods borrowed from the free will debate are often used to establish doxastic freedom and epistemic responsibility. Certain analogies between the formation of intention and belief make this approach especially promising. Despite being a compatibilist myself in the practical debate, I will argue that compatibilist methods fail to establish doxastic freedom. My rejection is not based on an argument against the analogy of free will and free belief. Rather, I aim at showing that compatibilist free will and free belief (...) are equally misguided because freedom is a concept that only applies to an agent’s actions and not to her mental attitudes. Compatibilist strategies that seek to define control by reason-responsiveness merely weaken the conditions for freedom such that arbitrary forms of control can be defined. I will demonstrate that these methods also commit to freedom of fear, freedom of hope and freedom of anger. However, I accept the compatibilist challenge to account for the addict’s and the paranoid’s unfreedom. I will sketch a unified approach to compatibilist free agency that does justice to these phenomena without the help of free will or free belief. (shrink)

Modern nursing evolved out of a war. Today’s nurses not only work in war zones but the profession as a whole needs to consider its responsibility in caring for victims of conflict and what its international duty is in preventing wars. This means that nurses must be informed of the devastation caused by conflict not only in countries where conflicts and war take place but also world-wide. Nurses’ responsibility is to prevent illness and alleviate suffering, which includes the long-term morbidity (...) caused by wars. They need to be more politically active in conflict resolution and prevention at local, community, national and international levels. The purpose of this article is to address these issues from an ethical perspective and to suggest implications for nursing education and practice. (shrink)

Downsizing has become a significant public issue that has not yet been significantly studied by business ethicists. It is proposed that reasonable social and psychological contracts bound the moral free space of managers contemplating downsizing; the degree of constraint is also dependent on the organization's resource munificence. A framework for considering the extent of managerial moral free space and implications thereof for managerial practice are offered.

This article addresses intraorganizational pressures for organizational transformation toward more responsible business practices by exploring the role of internal activists. Building on the interactive framing perspective, I ask how internal activists develop a framing of their company’s responsibilities as they attempt to transform its business practices from the inside out. I explore this question in the context of a Danish pharmaceutical company’s responsibilities regarding the rising diabetes problem. Grounded in an inductive, interpretive analysis, I show how internal activists developed a (...) framing of the company’s responsibility over time and eventually instigated new ways of thinking about and doing business in their organization. I theorize the constitutive processes that strengthened frame alignment and allowed the internal activists to shape business practices. My study contributes to the literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication by explaining how intraorganizational processes of meaning making may constitute more responsible business practices and by explicating the distinct role of internal activists as agents of organizational transformation. (shrink)

Given the growing interest in religion and spirituality in the community and workplace, we consider what light one of the oldest sources of human ethics, the Torah, can throw on the vexing issues of contemporary employment ethics and social sustainability. We specifically consider the Torah because it is the primary document of Judaism, the source of all the basic Biblical commandments, and a framework of ethics. A distinctive feature of Jewish ethics is its interpretive approach to moral philosophy: that is, (...) immersion and sense making in a dense, lived-in, complicated moral world, which is particularly useful with regard to ethical analyses of the workplace. Rather than discover or create a new ethic for the employer–employee relationship, we seek to harness general principles and norms from the Torah to contemporary business conditions. In the spirit of sustainability, rather than plunder the new, we recreate from existing resources. Interpretations from the Torah provide a rich source of moral and practical guidance for contemporary business ethics while also responding to academic and popular interest in spirituality and business. These tenets, however, have not to date been specifically directed at current predicaments in employment. We redress this by deriving principles from the Torah and applying them to ethical issues in contemporary employment practices. Practical guidance for both research in and practice of employment ethics is also provided. (shrink)

Local, national, and international conflicts over the use of forests between logging companies, governments, environmentalists, native peoples, local residents, recreationalists, and others—e.g., the controversy over the spotted owl in the old-growth forests of the Northwestern United States and over the rain forests in South America—have shown the need for philosophical reflection to help clarify the basic issues involved. Joining other philosophers who are addressing this problem, my own response takes the form of a sketch of the rough outlines of a (...) critical environmental hermeneutics. I apply hermeneutics, narrative theory, and critical theory to environmental ethics, and use this hermeneutical theory as a method to illuminate the “deep” underlying issues relating to the perception and use of forests. In applying this method, I first take up the analytical problem of identifying, clarifying, and ordering the different interpretive narratives about forests in terms of the underlying epistemological, ethical, and political issuesinvolved. I then address the critical problem of deciding conflicts between these different interpretations of forests by working out a set of legitimation criteria to which all parties concerned would ideally be able to subscribe. (shrink)

Human resource management (HRM) education has tended to focus on specific functions and tasks within organizations, such as compensation, staffing, and evaluation. This task orientation within HRM education fails to account for the bigger questions facing human resource management and employment relationships, questions which address the roles and responsibilities of the HR function and HR practitioners. An educational focus on HRM that does not explicitly address larger ethical questions fails to equip students to address stakeholder concerns about how employees are (...) treated or the ethical dilemmas facing employers with regard to the employment relationship, and ironically makes the HRM function less strategic to the organization. In this paper, we identify some of the key ethical issues within the employment relationship, discuss how extant HRM education often fails to address these issues or help students to become aware of them, and offer a framework for integrating ethics into HRM education. (shrink)

Die hier versammelten Beiträge analysieren Typen und Funktionen der Ambiguität an Beispielen aus der mittelalterlichen bis zur zeitgenössischen Kunst.

Although not always termed “organizational justice,” the fairness of organizations has been a consistent concern of management thinkers. A review of the 1900–1965 time period indicates that management theorists primarily conceptualized organizational justice in utilitarian terms, although each theory emphasized distributive and procedural justice to different degrees. There is clearly a need for contemporary scholars to consider non-economic rationales for organizational justice, but the willingness of earlier scholars to make utilitarian arguments about organizational justice and productive efficiency helped legitimize the (...) idea of fairness in organizations as an arbiter of value. Further, each theory tempered absolute managerial autonomy with some inherent check thereon. Researchers interested in organizational justice should therefore take a historical perspective in considering how management theory includes consideration of justice-related concerns. (shrink)

The paper addresses the nature of seemings in light of their role in inquiry. Seemings are mental states or events with propositional content that have a specific phenomenology often referred to as “felt truth”. In epistemology, seemings are mainly discussed as possible (non-inferential) justifications for belief. Yet, epistemology has recently taken a zetetic turn, that is, a turn toward the study of inquiry. I will argue that the role of seemings in epistemology should be re-assessed from the perspective of inquiry (...) and deliberation. Seemings may fall short of justifying beliefs, but there is an important role for seemings in the zetetic realm, which may also explain why seemings lack direct justificatory force for beliefs. Seemings, so I will suggest, can provide normative reasons for performing certain zetetic tasks, but they cannot provide normative reasons for making up one’s mind about the inquired question. In this sense, the zetetic role of seemings can be described as guiding rational inquiry. I will suggest that a modified version of the so-called Taking Evidence View about the nature of seemings is best fitted to accommodate their zetetic role. Yet, contra existing versions of the Taking Evidence View, my modified account acknowledges that seemings are genuine experiences (of one’s evidential standing during inquiry) that are accompanied by the characteristic phenomenology of what is called a “feeling of truth”. By doing so, my modified version of the Taking Evidence View incorporates the (as I take it) most important feature of the rival Experience View of seemings. (shrink)

Even simple geometric shapes are seen as animate and goal-directed when they move in certain ways. Previous research has revealed a great deal about the cues that elicit such percepts, but much less about the consequences for other aspects of perception and cognition. Here we explored whether simple shapes that are perceived as animate and goal-directed are prioritized in memory. We investigated this by asking whether subjects better remember the locations of displays that are seen as animate vs. inanimate, con- (...) trolling for lower-level factors. We exploited the ‘Wolfpack effect’: moving darts (or discs with ‘eyes’) that stay oriented toward a particular target are seen to be actively pursuing that target, even when they actually move randomly. (In contrast, shapes that stay oriented perpendicular to a target are correctly perceived to be drifting randomly.) Subjects played a ‘matching game’ – clicking on pairs of panels to reveal animations with moving shapes. Across four experiments, the locations of Wolfpack animations (compared to control animations equated on lower-level visual factors) were better remembered, in terms of more efficient matching. Thus perceiving animacy influences subsequent visual memory, perhaps due to the adaptive significance of such stimuli. (shrink)

Abstract:Work on stakeholder theory has proceeded on a variety of fronts; as Donaldson and Preston (1995) have noted, such work can be parsed into descriptive, instrumental, and normative research streams. In a normative vein, Phillips (1997) has made an argument for a principle of fairness as a means of identifying and adjudicating among stakeholders. In this essay, I propose that a reconstructed principle of fairness can be combined with the idea of consent as outlined in integrative social contract theory (ISCT) (...) to bring about a more normative stakeholder theory that also has ramifications for corporate governance. (shrink)

Suspension of judgment or belief is often described as the neutral doxastic position or stance, alongside belief and disbelief. However, in this contribution, I will demonstrate that there is more than one way of being neutral. I will introduce paradigmatic cases involving cognitive neutrality and highlight significant differences in their nature, such as their relation to inquiry. I will argue that judgment suspension is an act of committing to indecision, leading to a qualified neutral state of mind. However, subjects can (...) commit to indecision in different ways: depending on their epistemic situation and goals, they can suspend agnostically, precautionarily, or hypothetically. These three resulting states of committed indecision must be distinguished from uncommitted indecision, which is the basic state of doxastic neutrality. (shrink)

Ecopolitics is a study of environmental awareness--or non-awareness--in contemporary French theory. Arguing that it is now impossible not to think in an ecological way, Verena Andermatt Conley traces the roots of today's concern for the environment back to the intellectual climate of the late '50s and '60s. Major thinkers of 1968, the author argues, changed the way we think the world; this owes much to an ecological awareness that remains at the heart of issues concerning cultural theory in general. (...) The book points to critiques of ecology in the work of Luc Ferry and Jean Baudrillard before turning to more complicated ecological awareness primarily in French thought. The author considers key texts by influential figures such as Michael Serres, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Michel de Certeau, Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray. (shrink)

Age attitudes and age stereotypes in the workplace can lead to discrimination and impaired productivity. Previous studies have predominantly assessed age stereotypes with explicit measures. However, sole explicit measurement is insufficient because of social desirability and potential inaccessibility of stereotypical age evaluations to introspection. We aimed to advance the implicit and explicit assessment of work-related evaluations of age groups and age stereotypes and report data collected in three samples: students ( n = 50), older adults ( n = 53), and (...) workers ( n = 93). Evaluative age attitudes were measured implicitly with an Implicit Association Test. Regardless of group, age, and condition (neutral or semantically biased stimuli), the results confirm a stable, moderate implicitly measurable preference for younger over older workers. Whereas explicit measures of general age preferences showed no clear age preference, differentiated explicit measures of work-related age stereotypes also revealed stable preferences in all three samples: Younger workers were rated higher on performance and adaptability and older workers were rated higher on competence, reliability, and warmth. The explicit-implicit correlations were relatively low. Although explicit work-related age stereotypes are differentiated, the stable implicitly measured age bias raises concern. We suggest to apply implicit and explicit measures in the field of ageism in the workplace. (shrink)

Scholars have studied the various pressures that companies face related to socially responsible behavior when stakeholders know the particular social issues under consideration. Many have examined social responsibility in the context of environmental responsibility and the general approaches companies take regarding environmental management. The issue of currently unregulated, but potentially hazardous, chemicals in consumer products is not well understood by the general public, but a number of proactive consumer product companies have voluntarily adopted strategies to minimize use of such chemicals. (...) These companies are exceeding regulatory requirements by restricting from their products chemicals that could harm human or environmental health, despite the fact that these actions are costly. They do not usually advertise the details of their strategies to end consumers. This article uses interviews with senior environmental directors of 20 multinational consumer product companies to investigate why these companies engage in voluntary chemicals management. The authors conclude that the most significant reasons are to achieve a competitive advantage and stay ahead of regulations, manage relationships and maintain legitimacy with stakeholders, and put managerial values into practice. Many of the characteristics related to the case of chemicals management are extendable to other areas of stakeholder management in which risks to stakeholders are either unknown or poorly understood. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been increasing managerial and academic attention given to a variety of mechanisms for companies to respond to stakeholder concerns about global business ethics. One area that merits further analysis is the role of industry‐level cooperation regarding issues in global business ethics such as labor practices. There are two main issues that we will address in this article: institutional pressures that predict when an industry will create a code of conduct and institutional complements for an industry‐level (...) code of conduct to be “successful” with regard to responding to stakeholder concerns about international business operations. We offer a number of propositions—bringing together work from both the corporate social responsibility and (neo)institutional theory literatures—with regard to both predictors and complements of industry self‐regulation in reference to labor practices. (shrink)

In a world dominated by speed, global cities have become all powerful. They often seem to impose one world culture and eradicate citizens’ rights. In this article I will argue that, without going back to older ways of being, we can adapt the concept of cosmopolis to propose a world (as) city with multiple tiny centers that would diverge from the hegemonic global city. In a world as cosmopolis, singularities and aesthetics, multiplicities and ethics would prevail.

Desde las últimas décadas del siglo XIX el liberalismo económico ha ido progresivamente perdiendo consenso en las sociedades europeas lo que desemboco en un conjunto de reformas sociales a favor de los sectores trabadores, de ello no solo fue testigo participe la sociedad en su conjunto, sino también la disciplina económica. Sin embargo, desde allí en adelante se han generado intentos de retornos al liberalismo económico puro cuyo ascenso al poder se cristalizaron en la puesta en la marcha y sostenimiento (...) del modelo económico, político y social neoliberal en las últimas décadas del siglo XX. Su expansión alcanzó tanto a la sociedad política como a la sociedad civil, es decir alcanzo los espacios de poder estatal y se expandió en las creencias y formas de comprender lo social que permitieron sustentar y mantener las reformas aplicadas por el primero. En este contexto, este trabajo pretende rescatar el herramental analítico que el estudio de los intelectuales de Antonio Gramsci propicia para analizar de qué forma la disciplina económica ha contribuido a la construcción de esta nueva hegemonía, de este nuevo consenso, intentando analizar el modo en que ella ha conquistado un espacio disciplinar. (shrink)