Corporate accounting must be managed with respect to the changing business environment, accounting and legislation regulating taxes. The requirements for the quality of financial reporting information in the company shall be met in accordance with the company’s accounting policy. The accounting policy must be based on all the accounting requirements listed in various legal acts and internal company documents. Thus, financial accountingmust present fairly the financial position of the company, performance results, cash flows, and present (...) the substance of economic transactions, the substance of events andtheir economic meaning, not only formal requirements for its implementation. However, the selected accounting methods should not focus solely on the correct presentation of the financial statements, but should also produce such operating results that are close to the company’sgoals. Consequently, the companies are required to specify accounting procedures in their accounting policies, since legislative accounting regulation at the state level cannot fully reflect the economic relationships of the market of a particular company. _Research problem. _The companies are required to specify accounting procedures in their accounting policies, but selected accounting methods should not focus solely on the correct presentation of financial statements, but should also produce such operating results that are close to the company’s goals. _Relevance of the topic._ It is mandatory for companies to prepare an accounting policy order as required by the legislation regulating accounting. The companies are required to specify accounting procedures in their accounting policies. _The aim of the research_ is to analyze the preparation of the main principles of the company’s accounting policy. _The object of the research - _company’s accounting policy. _Research methods_ - analysis of scientific literature and other sources, data collection, comparison and analysis. _Results_: Accounting policy is an opportunity for companies to determine themselves the most convenient methods, techniques, and rules for managing their accounting and preparing and presenting true and fair financial statements. Accounting policies must be tailored to the nature of the business and be consistent with the strategic objectives of the company. The objective of the accounting policy is consistent with that of the financial statements, which is to present the true and fair financial position and performance of the company. When choosing an accounting policy, it is important to apply it correctly in your day-to-day accounting and financial reporting. Accounting policies should be clearly described and should not leave room for interpretation by the accountant that could distort the presentation of the fair results. The components of accounting policies can be grouped into three dimensions: technical, organizational and methodological. Accounting policies must address all of these aspects in such a way that the objectives of all types of accounting are met- management accounting, financial, tax and budgetary assignation accounting aims. (shrink)

Policy-makers sometimes aim to improve well-being as a policy goal, but to do this they need some way to measure well-being. Instead of relying on potentially problematic theories of well-being to justify their choice of well-being measure, Daniel Hausman proposes that policy-makers can sometimes rely on preference-based measures as evidence for well-being. I claim that Hausman’s evidential account does not justify the use of any one measure more than it justifies the use of any other measure. This leaves us at (...) a loss as to which policy should be chosen in the non-trivial cases for which there is substantial disagreement between the different measures in their assessment of policy. (shrink)

This article surveys deontological retributivist thought about judgments concerning deserved punishments. A number of conceptions of desert are described: they vary with respect to their claims about consequential moral luck and the role that desert judgments play in morality. Some retributivists claim that desert claims support obligations to punish; others that they establish ceilings on permissible severity; others that they do both. Further specific conceptual issues about desert of punishment are described, for example, whether a criminal record is relevant. The (...) evidence that retributivists offer for their desert claims are critically assessed. These usually involve appeals to moral intuition. It is argued that these are often weak. The most plausible claim is that desert establishes a ceiling on permissible severity, but no retributivist has shown what amounts of punishment are deserved, so this may not be true. Retributivists might helpfully investigate if moral theory can resolve some of their disputes. (shrink)

National greenhouse-gas accounting should reflect how countries’ policies and behaviours affect global emissions. Actions that contribute to reduced global emissions should be credited, and actions that increase them should be penalized. This is essential if accounting is to serve as accurate guidance for climate policy. Yet this principle is not satisfied by the two most common accounting methods. Production-based accounting used under the Kyoto Protocol does not account for carbon leakage — the phenomenon of countries (...) reducing their domestic emissions by shifting carbon-intensive production abroad1. Consumption-based accounting2,3 does not credit countries for cleaning up their export industries, and it also punishes some types of trade that could contribute to more carbon efficient production worldwide. We propose an improvement to consumption-based carbon accounting that takes technology differences in export sectors into account and thereby tends to more correctly reflect how national policy changes affect total global emissions. We also present empirical results showing how this new measure redraws the global emissions map. (shrink)

The article delineates how actors invoke nationalizing accounts—accounts that turn local conditions, actions, and actors into national ones—in everyday talk. Taking the case of Japanese university scientists depicting their commercialization trajectories after the adoption of a set of policies that originated from the U.S., the article delineates how scientists stipulate what they do is Japanese. I outline the discursive practices through which they posit that the cause of others’ actions, or of they themselves, derives from some kind of ethno-national (...) distinctiveness. Interviews show how such nationalizing accounts were made through the inevitable gaps between local practices and formal global structures. Scientific and commercialization practices in Japan that deviated from the original form were explained not only through the institutional differences between the U.S. and Japan, but also through lay categories of “culture,” ethno-psychology, and readily available tropes about Japanese history. In such nationalizing accounts, what the Japanese scientists did under these new, and explicitly global policies, was argued to be fundamentally Japanese because they were rooted in and caused by the ethno-national character. As new institutional theory suggests, a decoupling between formal rules and local contingencies is a hallmark of any institution. The article further shows that such decoupling could then be used as a resource for everyday nationalism. At least in some cases, the global adoption and the localization of a global form may create an opportunity to enact the nation, contributing to a discourse that posits that an imagined community is distinct and special, precisely as the world becomes more globalized. (shrink)

There are many general economic policies I favour such that I would feel significantly ashamed were I to succumb to bribery, or to institutional pressure short of physical threat, to publicly support their opposites. Here are a few of these policies: (1) Rich countries should not impose trade barriers, including subsidies for their own producers, against imports from poor countries. (2) Leaders of poor countries should be regarded as irresponsible when they imply to their people that their economic (...) difficulties arise principally from wickedness and exploitative behavior on the part of rich countries – the moral urgency of (1) notwithstanding. (3) Much freer movement of people across national borders for purposes of labour should be allowed everywhere. (4) Destitution is an unduly severe penalty for laziness, lack of talent or intelligence, or bad luck. More productive people should provide the lazy, the unskilled and the unlucky with as large a basic income grant as is compatible with maximizing net social productivity (which no present society comes very close to doing, partly due to confused social morality and partly due to incentive-distorting tax systems). (shrink)

The United States juvenile justice system has primary oversight of youth who come into contact with legal authorities. This system is purposefully distinct from the adult system given the presumption of youths’ reduced culpability for delinquent behavior and increased potential for rehabilitation. Some juvenile court policies and practices are supportive of youth while others may drive youth further into the juvenile justice system. Today, we are at a point in which we can—and should—use information technology to accrue data to (...) unpack the impact of these policies and practices on and across youth. Moreover, technology-driven policies and practices such as electronic monitoring may be detrimental to the well-being of youth, whereas others such as video conferencing could be more widely used to benefit youth. While juvenile courts hold youth accountable for their behavior, courts also need to be accountable to youth by employing data-informed policies and practices that advance the health and well-being of youth. (shrink)

This volume analyses the moral and legal foundations of privacy, security, and accountability along with the tensions that arise between these important individual and social values.

We suggest that policies will be less popular when individuals personally have to pay for them rather than when others have to pay (i.e., a Not Out of My Bank Account or NOMBA effect). Dual process models of persuasion suggest that personally having to pay would motivate scrutiny of persuasive messages making it essential to use effective science communication tactics when using climate science to support climate change policies. A pilot experiment (N = 186) and main study (N (...) = 758) support a NOMBA effect with less policy support (Pilot study) and lower recommended fees (Main study) for a policy that would require participants, rather than another group, to pay a fee for community solar panels. Consistent with dual process models and suggesting systematic processing, only when participants would have to pay the fee, messages using strong (vs. weak) science communication tactics increased support for policies (Pilot study), increased the favorability of thoughts about the policy (Main study) and these thoughts subsequently predicted policy support (Main study). Inconsistent with propositions that information about expert sources would be a heuristic or bolster science messages, expert consensus information did not influence thoughts or policy support in any study condition. Efforts to understand climate change policy support would benefit from attending to research on dual process models of persuasion, including understanding how different types and degree of outcome relevance can alter how people process science information used to bolster support for climate change policies. (shrink)

This article presents two related challenges to the idea that, to ensure policy evaluation is comprehensive, all costs and benefits should be aggregated into a single, equity-weighted wellbeing metric. The first is to point out how, even allowing for equity-weighting, the use of a single metric limits the extent to which we can take distributional concerns into account. The second challenge starts from the observation that in this and many other ways, aggregating diverse effects into a single metric of evaluation (...) necessarily involves settling many moral questions that reasonable people disagree about. This raises serious questions as to what role such a method of policy evaluation can and should play in informing policy-making in liberal democracies. Ultimately, to ensure comprehensiveness of policy evaluation in a wider sense, namely, that all the diverse effects that reasonable people might think matter are kept score of, we need multiple metrics as inputs to public deliberation. (shrink)

This article surveys deontological retributivist thought about judgments concerning deserved punishments. A number of conceptions of desert are described: they vary with respect to their claims about consequential moral luck and the role that desert judgments play in morality. Some retributivists claim that desert claims support obligations to punish; others that they establish ceilings on permissible severity; others that they do both. Further specific conceptual issues about desert of punishment are described, for example, whether a criminal record is relevant. The (...) evidence that retributivists offer for their desert claims are critically assessed. These usually involve appeals to moral intuition. It is argued that these are often weak. The most plausible claim is that desert establishes a ceiling on permissible severity, but no retributivist has shown what amounts of punishment are deserved, so this may not be true. Retributivists might helpfully investigate if moral theory can resolve some of their disputes. (shrink)

Self-authorship has been established as the basis of an influential liberal principle of legislation and public policy. Being the author of one’s own life is a significant component of one’s own well-being, and therefore is better understood from the viewpoint of the person whose life it is. However, most philosophical accounts, including Raz’s conception of self-authorship, rely on general and abstract principles rather than specific, individual psychological properties of the person whose life it is. We elaborate on the principles of (...) self-authorship on the basis of self-determination theory, an empirically based psychological theory that has been at the forefront of the study of autonomy and self-authorship for more than 45 years. Our account transcends distinctions between positive and negative freedom and attempts to pinpoint the exact properties of self-authorship within the psychological processes of intrinsic motivation and internalization. If a primary objective of public policy is to support self-authorship, then it should be devised on the basis of how intrinsic motivation and internalization can be properly supported. Self-determination theory identifies three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The satisfaction of these needs is associated with the support and growth of intrinsic tendencies and the advancement of well-being. Through this analysis, we can properly evaluate the significance of rationality, basic goods, and the availability of options to self-authorship. Implications for law and policy are discussed with an emphasis on legal paternalism and what many theorists call “liberal perfectionism,” that is, the non-coercive support and promotion of the good life. (shrink)

Accountability is a cornerstone of the governance of artificial intelligence (AI). However, it is often defined too imprecisely because its multifaceted nature and the sociotechnical structure of AI systems imply a variety of values, practices, and measures to which accountability in AI can refer. We address this lack of clarity by defining accountability in terms of answerability, identifying three conditions of possibility (authority recognition, interrogation, and limitation of power), and an architecture of seven features (context, range, agent, forum, standards, process, (...) and implications). We analyse this architecture through four accountability goals (compliance, report, oversight, and enforcement). We argue that these goals are often complementary and that policy-makers emphasise or prioritise some over others depending on the proactive or reactive use of accountability and the missions of AI governance. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce a special case of epistemic injustice that I call ‘structural contributory injustice’. This conception aims to capture some dimensions of how policy—separately from individual agential interactions—can generate epistemic injustice at a group level. I first locate the case within Kristie Dotson’s original conception of contributory injustice. I then consider one potential case of structural contributory injustice—namely, the policy problem of significant financial risk burden on students considering university in the USA. Finally, I consider potential policy (...) reforms in response to this injustice. (shrink)

This article takes the role of provocateur to ‘queer(y)’ the rules of intelligibility surrounding new schooling accountabilities. Butler’s work is seldom used outside the arena of gender and sexualities research. A ‘queer(y)ing’ methodology is subsequently applied in a context very different to where it is frequently associated. Empirical data from a case study secondary school in Australia are used to contextualise the use of queer theory in thinking differently about new schooling accountabilities and how they can unfold in ways that (...) are unforeseen and unexpected. By applying Butlerian theory in a manner very different to what is commonly expected, the author also destabilises the use of queer theory as well. (shrink)

Policy making is not only about the cut and thrust of politics. It is also a bureaucratic activity. In this ground-breaking work, two leading authorities come together to examine the world of the policy bureaucrat for the first time. The volume draws in crucial debates over accountability and democratic ideology, hierarchy and expertise, and should establish itself as a central point of reference for scholars and practitioners alike.

Hospitals long ago shed their role as alms houses for the poor. What vestiges remain of the early American hospital are the tax-exempt, nonprofit hospital form and a general perception that hospitals, as charitable institutions, owe a duty to their communities. The appropriateness of the nonprofit hospital tax exemption has long been debated, and many theories have been advanced to justify the tax exemption of nonprofit hospitals. In a growing number of jurisdictions, however, state and local authorities have gone beyond (...) the theoretical debate and are challenging the tax exemption of their nonprofit hospitals. For various reasons, efforts are afoot to capture greater community benefit from nonprofit hospitals.At the heart of such challenges is the debate over the nature and extent of the duty charitable institutions owe to their communities. A demand is growing for nonprofit hospitals to earn their tax exemptions by benefiting their communities in concrete ways. Some have been stripped of their tax-exempt status by local authorities or pressured to make payments in lieu of taxes. A number of states have recently implemented initiatives in an attempt to make hospitals more accountable for their community benefits. Many hospitals are responding to this heightened scrutiny in a proactive way, by voluntarily documenting community benefits. A number of nonprofit hospitals and hospital associations are cooperating with—or even sponsoring—state legislation in this area. (shrink)

About 6% of women in the world live in countries that ban all abortions, and 34% in countries that only allow abortion to preserve maternal life or health. In the USA, over the last decades—even before Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned the federal right to abortion—various states have sought to restrict abortion access. Often times, this legislation has been advanced based on legislators’ personal moral values. At the bedside, in contrast, provision of abortion care should adhere to the (...) normative principles of medical ethics and reproductive justice, centreing patients and their individual reproductive intentions and desires. Abortion regulations, through their influence on patients and providers, may facilitate or impede such ethical care at the bedside. In this paper, we present a framework to model how abortion legislation should fit into the patient–provider relationship and to clarify the dynamics by which legislation may affect healthcare encounters. Our proposed framework serves as a tool to analyse the ethical impact of abortion regulations. We propose a model for assessing abortion policies based not on legislators’ or advocates’ individual moral claims, but on the shared, normative framework of clinical medical ethics. Through contrasting case studies, we demonstrate how a robust normative ethical framework can recentre patients and their reproductive needs. Our model is one way to account for—and safeguard—patients’ diverse viewpoints and needs in the development of abortion policy, and it can serve to ground narratives for advocacy by healthcare workers and their professional organisations. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of Norman Daniels' and James Sabin's ‘Accountability for Reasonableness’ framework for making priority-setting decisions in health care in the face of widespread disagreement about values. Accountability for Reasonableness has been rapidly gaining worldwide acceptance, arguably to the point of becoming the dominant paradigm in the field of health policy. The framework attempts to set ground rules for a procedure that ensures that whatever decisions result will be fair, reasonable, and legitimate to the extent that even (...) those who would be adversely affected will have reason to abide by them. I argue that the framework's four conditions are inadequate to this task. While we certainly require a fair and legitimate procedure for making priority setting decisions in health care despite a lack of consensus on relevant ethical and political issues, we must significantly revise the four conditions, and we cannot avoid facing our substantive disagreements head on if we hope to arrive at decisions that would (and should) be acceptable to everyone. I offer two suggestions. First, there is need for greater public involvement in all stages of deliberation. Second, we should give up on the idea that we can simplify the task of democratic deliberation by disallowing particular kinds or reasons and types of reasoning. Reasons of all kinds should be on the table, but then should be judged on their merits, such as consistency, plausibility and explanatory power, without any regard for their alleged sources of authority. (shrink)

Public reason demands that policies are justified to all reasonable citizens. Public health aims at protecting or improving aggregated health outcomes. Since health is not an uncontroversial value, an insurmountable chasm between public reason and public health seems to preclude any viable synthesis between the two outlooks. For any given public health policy, some reasonable citizen seems to have a reason to support ‘no policy’ over ‘some policy’, meaning that the policy cannot be justified to all. The paper first (...) spells out what exactly this conflict is about. Then, using smoking as a case, the paper outlines a model of reconciliation between public reason and public health that should give us some optimism if we want to have public health policies that are compatible with treating citizens as free and equal in the public reason sense. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper, three objections to the precautionary principle are outlined: the principle requires some account of how to balance risks of significant harms; the principle focuses on action and ignores the costs of inaction; and the principle threatens epistemic anarchy. I argue that these objections may overlook two distinctive features of precautionary thought: a suspicion of the value of “full scientific certainty”; and a desire to distinguish environmental doings from allowings. In Section 2, I argue (...) that any simple distinction between environmental doings and allowings is untenable. However, I argue that the appeal of such a distinction can be captured within a relational account of environmental equity. In Section 3 I show how the proposed account of environmental justice can generate a justification for distinctively “precautionary” policy-making. (shrink)

Federal credit policies toward agriculture reflect the human values of maintaining the farm production sector largely as an industry characterized by small-scale, family farms. The Farmers Home Administration has implemented various credit programs designed to carry out this policy objective. As a result of the prolonged financial crisis in the farm economy, the agricultural community is becoming more aware of the controversies surrounding the mission of FmHA and its debt restructuring program. This paper discusses the debt restructuring program administered (...) by the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA), as authorized by the Agricultural Credit Act of 1987, and amended by the recently enacted Farm Bill of 1990. It discusses the key provisions of the Agricultural Credit Act authorizing FmHA to establish a debt restructuring and debt forgiveness program aimed at achieving the public policy objective of keeping financially stressed farmers in business, whenever possible.In the course of reviewing the restructuring program, FmHA officials and congressional committees reviewed the FmHA's mission and its program implementation. This review indicated that several unintended negative consequences resulted from several abuses stemming from inadequate administrative mechanisms and controls and conflicting legislative objectives of debt forgiveness and federal tax policy. In enacting the 1990 Farm Bill, Congress sought to reorient FmHA's mission to a temporary source of credit and to eliminate various abuses associated with the implementation of FmHA's debt restructuring program. The 1990 Farm Bill reflects an effort by Congress to address some the controversies surrounding federal credit policies toward agriculture. Although Congress placed limits on debt restructuring, the overall public policy objective of maintaining a family-farm posture in the agricultural sector continues to be an important social value. (shrink)

Despite increased efforts to ensure diversity in genomic research, the exclusion of minority groups from data analyses and publications remains a critical issue. This paper addresses the ethical implications of these exclusions and proposes accountability for reasonableness (A4R) as a framework to promote fairness and equity in research. Originally conceived by Norman Daniels and James Sabin to guide resource allocation in the context of health policy, A4R emphasizes publicity, relevance of reasons, enforcement, and revision as essential for legitimacy and trust (...) in the decision‐making process. The authors argue that A4R is also relevant to resource allocation in research and that, if adequately informed and incentivized by funding agencies, institutional review boards, and scientific journals, researchers are well‐positioned to assess data‐selection justifications. The A4R framework provides a promising foundation for fostering accountability in genomics and other fields, including artificial intelligence, where lack of diversity and pervasive biases threaten equitable benefit sharing. (shrink)

Accountability policy and its negative effects on teachers’ working lives and retention is internationally recognised as a problem in education with school evaluation and inspection being a particular issue, particularly in England. Research suggests that the school inspection system Ofsted impacts negatively on the health and well-being of staff and negatively influences teachers’ working practices, which can affect teacher retention. This paper examines the findings of a recent English research project entitled ‘Beyond Ofsted’ (2023) which aimed to gather a wide (...) range of views on both the current inspection system and potential alternatives. The data discussed in this paper is from part of the data collection which was a large-scale survey of teachers and school leaders. One of the findings of the Beyond Ofsted report was that 76% of our survey respondents thought that Ofsted had a negative effect on retention, with 30% considering leaving as a result of their most recent inspection. We found many reasons for this: the overall experience of inspection, the work in preparing for inspection, and many describing the regime as ‘toxic and brutal’. We argue that this is a compelling argument for urgent reform. (shrink)

Revealing flaws in both 'green' and market-based approaches to environmental policy, O'Neill develops an Aristotolian account of well-being. He examines the implications for wider issues involving markets, civil society an.

The European policies acknowledge greenways and “Green Infrastructure” as strategically planned and delivered networks comprising the broadest range of green spaces and other environmental features. The Aniene River, linking the eastern suburbs of Rome to the City of Tivoli, has been envisaged in a multi-level approach as a Green-Blue Infrastructure able to hinder land use fragmentation and provide new continuity to remainders of open space. In turn, landscape is taken into account as a biodiversity reservoir, the scenery of outstanding (...) cultural heritage and the relevant backdrop of ordinary life. (shrink)

Cultural rights of minority groups are recognized in international human rights law. These rights include the right of minority groups to adopt various measures to protect their cultural identity, which may include closure of the group’s community from outsiders. The state in which such groups reside has a concurrent duty to respect these rights and sometimes even to take positive measures to ensure their implementation. The consideration of demographic factors, then, is regarded as legitimate when designed to protect minority groups. (...) The rights of majority groups, on the other hand, are often ensured by the mere fact that they constitute a majority within the state and as such do not require special measures. This state of affairs is challenged, however, in face of mass immigration that could change the relation existing between majority and minority groups within the state. Under these circumstances, does a majority have the right to preserve its own culture through an immigration policy that takes into account demographic factors? I argue that the duty of states under international human rights law to protect rights of minority groups might serve as an incentive to restrict immigration endangering the character of the state. This character—the state’s public culture—is the outcome of collective preferences of the majority of its citizens, which is assumed ought to be respected. (shrink)

This section will cover (a) definition of business policy: strategic decisions in the enterprise; (b) ethical behaviour above and beyond the requirements of the law: what might this involve e.g. in respect of products and markets in which the business is prepared to operate? (c) does business have a responsibility towards society? For example, should businesses decide without being legally required to do so, to undertake activities which they think are in the national interest even if this may appear to (...) conflict with strictly commercial interests? (d) if ethical/social decisions are required, who is to make them — at what levels of an enterprise — e.g. does the board make them all or are they also expected below board level? This section will also cover: (e) practical examples in the light of changing attitudes towards business and market behaviour in the 1980''s and 1990''s; (f) implications of attitudes towards corporate crime and of behaviour which may not be illegal but which may be regarded as unacceptable: this will be discussed with examples from experience in Australia and other countries. The section will first explain the meaning of the phrase business policy and will briefly outline the kinds of strategic decision which have to be made in business enterprises. It will go on to consider whether there are things a business ought or ought not to do even if they are within the law. The section will illustrate these problems with examples in the light of changing attitudes towards business policy and market behaviour in the 1980''s and 1990''s. It will take into account some recent cases of corporate crime in Australia and elsewhere and also of behaviour which while neither against the law or outside the power of the board, might be thought inappropriate. (shrink)

For a variety of policy reasons, governments throughout the world are now adopting different legislative and administrative strategies that support the development of FLOSS. Some governments have actually begun to procure FLOSS, whereas others have channeled public funds to large-scale FLOSS projects. This study demonstrates both the benefits and the risks of government policy favoring FLOSS from the perspective of economics, technology, and politics, and to further analyze whether these same policy goals can be achieved through government support of FLOSS. (...) The most fundamental argument of the study is that, in lending its support to FLOSS, the difference between a government user and a business user is that the government should take into account society’s long-term interests, not merely its own interests as a consumer. (shrink)

If philosophers of science advise government on science policy, it will have to be from a descriptive theory of scientific validity taken as hypothetically normative, as in naturalized epistemology. While logical positivism denied any normative import for the practice of science, in the area of "operational definitions" it had an unfortunate influence in psychology and sociology, and one that persists in the accountability movement. Not all philosophy of science issues have implications for the justificatory practice of scientists. For example, both (...) anti-realists and realists condone scientific quarreling about unobserved particles. Many young philosophers of science are now contributing to a sociology of scientific validity which, taken in a hypothetically normative manner, will produce recommendations on science policy. (shrink)

Renewed Accountability for Access and Excellence provides a forum for contributing scholars and practitioners to advance the discussion of Tenuto’s democratic professional practice in education by sharing additional insights, perspectives, and implications for both policy and practice. Consistent with the model itself, this collective work is intended to encourage meaningful conversations and critical thinking about inclusionary practices, equitable access, excellence, and renewed accountability for teaching and leading.

In this article, I apply a policy-oriented applied Islamic bioethics lens to two verdicts on the permissibility of using vaccines with porcine components. I begin by reviewing the decrees and then proceed to describe how they were used by health policy stakeholders. Subsequently, My analysis will highlight aspects of the verdict's ethico-legal arguments in order to illustrate salient legal concepts that must be accounted for when using Islamic verdicts as the basis for health policy. I will conclude with several suggestions (...) for facilitating a more judicious use of verdicts in policy-relevant discourse. My analysis is meant to contribute to the dialogue between science and religion, and aims to further efforts at developing health policies that value health while accommodating religious values. In the encounter between the Islamic tradition and global public health, a multidisciplinary dialogue, where Islamic legists become aware of the health policy implications of their ethico-legal pronouncements, and where health policy actors gain a literate understanding of Islamic ethico-legal theory, will lead to verdicts that better meet the needs of patients, health workers, and religious leaders. (shrink)

Working within the parameters of (their reconstruction of) World Athletics’ (WA) definition of fairness, Katerina Jennings and Esther Braun (2024) propose a categorical system better suited to meet...

Accountability in Education discusses the debate surrounding the accountability of teachers and questions the responsibility that parents, other groups and even children themselves have for their experience at school. In this book, Robert Wagner examines the assumptions underlying criticisms of major institutions for their lack of attention to the ethical and practical ramifications of their policies. Wagner questions the validity of this assumption by analyzing accountability relationships in schools, discussing the responsibility students have for the quality of their own (...) experiences--as well as the potential accountability of parents and other groups--and relating the issue of accountability in education to questions of moral and legal obligation in areas such as business, government and law. His book provides a cogent philosophical analysis of accountability and is invaluable to an understanding of a majour issue in the contemporary discussion of education. (shrink)

Public controversy over animalbiotechnology is analyzed as a case that illustratestwo broad theoretical approaches for linking science,political or ethical theory, and public policy. Moralpurification proceeds by isolating the social,environmental, animal, and human health impacts ofbiotechnology from each other in terms of discretecategories of moral significance. Each of thesecategories can also be isolated from the sense inwhich biotechnology raises religious or metaphysicalissues. Moral purification yields a comprehensive andsystematic account of normative issues raised bycontroversial science. Hybridization proceeds bytaking concern for all these (...) elements to be a mark ofsound moral character. The advocate of hybridizationinfers that those who employ a strategy ofpurification seek to avoid accountability by dividingissues, and hence are not to be trusted. Lack of trustincreases perceived risk and challenges the legitimacyof government regulations to control social,environmental, and human health risks that areestablished under separate mandate, and administeredby separate agencies.The close alignment between government agencies, theiracademic affines, and the categories of purificationplaces the purified analysis in a favored politicalposition. Legitimation of science-based policy inareas like animal biotechnology becomes problematicbecause the concern of those who would take a hybridapproach (arguably the majority of lay persons) tounderstanding controversial science are excluded.Ironically, this exclusion heightens the perception ofrisk from animal biotechnology. The paper concludeswith a call for procedural approaches to incorporatingthe hybrid view of science‘s moral significance. (shrink)