This paper explores the ethical dilemma of conflicting loyalties found in whistleblowing. Central to this dilemma is the internal/external disclosure dichotomy; disclosure of organisational wrongdoing to an external recipient is seen as disloyal, whilst disclosure to an internal recipient is seen as loyal. Understanding how the organisation and society have dealt with these problems over the last 30 years is undertaken through an analysis of Vandekerckhove’s project, which seeks to place the normative legitimisations of whistleblowing legislation and organisational whistleblowing policies (...) within a globalisation semantic able to contain this conflict between society and the organisation. This project fails, it is argued, because of Vandekerckhove’s particular understanding of the organisation as an autopoietic system, i.e. an operationally closed system. A case is made to understand organisations as complex systems, i.e. operationally open systems. Critical Complexity theory sees the identities of systems and components as coterminous. In the context of the organisation, this means that the identities of the corporation and its corporate members arise and die together. The whistleblower’s disclosure reconfigures the organisation by forcing the organisation to open up and make its boundaries flexible, making the designation ‘internal’ or ‘external’ to the organisation, and, therefore, who qualifies as a recipient of a disclosure of wrongdoing, flexible. The organisation is restrained from retailing against the whistleblower, because its identities are coterminous. Furthermore, as the disclosure cannot be categorically defined as either internal or external, the question of whether an external disclosure can qualify as an act of organisational loyalty becomes moot. (shrink)

My starting point in this article is that investigating the ethics of autonomous vehicles through the lens of the trolley problem is not only limited but also unethical. I construct my case by aligning myself with Niklas Toivakainen, who argues against David Gunkel’s reading of Levinasian ethics as an answer to the “Machine Question”. I adumbrate Toivakainen’s critique that the attempt to give a Levinasian face to the machine is an example of a compensatory logic – a way to avoid (...) a deeper exploration of the moral dynamics from which our technologies emerge. I offer an extended reading of Levinas’s formulation of the face of the other to argue that while the machine cannot signify as a face, the machine can announce or anticipate the signification of the face which the self is infinitely responsible to. I reach this conclusion through focusing on the uncertainty and ambiguity of the signification of the face. I then argue that current approaches to the ethics of autonomous vehicles, based on variations of the trolley problem, fail to locate ethical responsibility to the other, precisely in its attempts to evade uncertainty. I demonstrate how an embrace of uncertainty can make the ethics of autonomous vehicles more ethical through a consideration of the concept of shared space and naked streets in the work of the late Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman. (shrink)

Conditional independence tests have received special attention lately in machine learning and computational intelligence related literature as an important indicator of the relationship among the variables used by their models. In the field of probabilistic graphical models, which includes Bayesian network models, conditional independence tests are especially important for the task of learning the probabilistic graphical model structure from data. In this paper, we propose the full Bayesian significance test for tests of conditional independence for discrete datasets. The full Bayesian (...) significance test is a powerful Bayesian test for precise hypothesis, as an alternative to the frequentist’s significance tests (characterized by the calculation of the p-value). (shrink)

This book presents a conceptual mapping of supererogation in the analytic moral philosophical tradition. It first asks whether supererogation can be conceptualised in the absence of obligation or duty and then makes the case that it can be. It does so by enlisting the resources of the continental tradition, specifically using the work of Emmanuel Levinas and his notion of infinite responsibility. In so doing the book contributes to the ongoing efforts to create a common ethical terminology between the analytic (...) and continental traditions within moral philosophy. Supererogatory actions are praiseworthy actions that go ‘beyond duty’, and yet are not blameworthy when not performed. In responding to this paradox, moral philosophy either brackets or attempts a reductionism of supererogation. Supererogation is epitomised in the paradigmatic figures of the saint and hero. Yet, most would agree that emulating these figures is too morally demanding. We rightly ask: where does moral obligation end? Is it even possible, or desirable to demarcate such a boundary? Besides the important theoretical issues these questions raise, they also speak to practical ethical dilemmas in the contemporary milieu, as they concern the global wealthy’s responsibility to the poor and the challenges of development aid work. (shrink)

In this paper I seek to critically examine UCT’s and CCT’s and consider how a Levinasian ethics might offer normative guidelines to evaluate such aid programmes. Such an analysis will serve to both critique and supplement the traditional utilitarian analyses of such programmes. In so doing, this paper also hopes to contribute to the business ethics literature in which a Levinasian ethics may be brought to bear on real world problems. I proceed by enlisting Jordaan who argues that a Levinasian (...) ethical politics can be instantiated in institutional designs by allowing a more complex representation of the other’s alterity. Two UCT programmes are interrogated in light of this finding – the first, a UCT programme in a community in Vietnam; the second, a joint CCT/UCT programme targeting adolescent girls in Malawi, designed to test the efficacy of conditionality to achieve certain. (shrink)

Although from a philosophical perspective, many reflections can be brought up about the theorizing process, in this essay, we aim to reflect on the importance of the alignment between ontology and epistemology. This is particularly relevant because deeper discussions about the philosophical roots that underlay the theorizing processes remain as a lack in organizational and management studies. To support our work, we adopted the epistemic-ontological alignment model as a conceptual tool and the Resource-Based View (RBV) and some of its questionings (...) as an example to carry out a reflection exercise about its epistemic-ontological alignment. RBV is a theory that plays a prominent role in management studies, especially in the strategy field. Nevertheless, discussions regarding RBV philosophical foundations are not common in the mainstream of strategic management. After our analysis, we advise that scholars care about the philosophical roots of their theoretical proposals to promote constructive dialogue in their research communities. This can avoid empty discussions and criticisms based on incongruous worldviews. Our reflections also suggest that future research should embrace the plurality of paradigms as a source of renewal and transcendence in the production of knowledge. A multi-paradigmatic movement towards more eclecticism in Administrative Science can help produce new and underexploited combinations of knowledge in the theorizing process. (shrink)

This study aimed to determine the predictive character of organizational socialization and occupational positive mental health on organizational commitment in higher education teachers. A sample of 279 teachers from higher education institutions who signed an informed consent form was used. Fifty-four point five percent of the participants were women, with a mean age of 44.05 years. The participants completed the Organizational Socialization Inventory, the Positive Occupational Mental Health Questionnaire and the Organizational Commitment Scale, and for data analysis descriptive statistics, correlation (...) analysis and multiple linear regression with stepwise method were applied, entering each dimension of organizational commitment separately as a dependent variable. As a result, moderate to weak correlations were identified between the study variables, and it was found that the final models indicate that the future perspectives and socio-affective dimensions predict affective commitment by 38%; that future perspectives, spirituality and age predict normative commitment by 22.8%; and that the future perspectives dimension predicts commitment of continuity by 9.2%. It is concluded that teachers’ expectations about their development in the institution, as well as their interactions at the socio-affective and spiritual level with the work context, are factors that partially influence their attachment to the educational organization. (shrink)

Julio A Andrade African Journal of Business Ethics 2013 7(1):40-42.

How can dispute records shed light on the study of dispute settlement processes and their social and political underpinnings? This volume addresses this question by investigating the interplay between record-making, disputing process, and the social and political contexts of conflicts. The authors make use of exceptionally rich charter materials from the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and Scandinavia, including different types of texts directly and indirectly related to conflicts, in order to contribute to a comparative survey of early medieval dispute records and (...) to a better understanding of the interplay between judicial and other less formal modes of conflict resolution. Contributors are Isabel Alfonso, José M. Andrade, François Bougard, Warren C. Brown, Wendy Davies, Julio Escalona, Kim Esmark, Adam J. Kosto, Juan José Larrea, André Evangelista Marques, Josep M. Salrach, Igor Santos Salazar, and Francesca Tinti. (shrink)

A novel thermodynamic perspective on natural selection is presented. In the case that life continuity is optimized in an ideal system, where relatively constant and homogeneous selective pressures favour a given competing species, natural selection leads that system to a stationary state of maximum genotypic uniformity of life and maximum sustainable consumption of available energy by life (competitive equilibrium). Structurally and functionally, this optimizing tendency towards competitive equilibrium looks similar to the optimizing tendency towards thermodynamic equilibrium of classical thermodynamics (maximum (...) energetic uniformity and maximum degradation of available energy). The principle of competitive exclusion may thus be conceptually viewed as an ecological manifestation of the second law of (classical) thermodynamics. On the other hand, the novel thermodynamic perspective on natural selection is discussed with regard to the open and nonequilibrium system of nature, where selective pressures vary in space and time. In this case, natural selection can induce diversity instead of uniformity, though an optimizing tendendcy towards maximum sustainable consumption of resources (optimization of life continuity) always remains. Overall, it is concluded that the action of natural selection favours the maximization of the sustainable consumption of energy at the level of individual organism. (shrink)

The Shannon information function (H) has been extensively used in ecology as a statistic of species diversity. Yet, the use of Shannon diversity index has also been criticized, mainly because of its ambiguous ecological interpretation and because of its relatively great sensitivity to the relative abundances of species in the community. In my opinion, the major shortcoming of the traditional perspective (on the possible relation of species diversity with information theory) is that species need for an external receiver (the scientist (...) or ecologist) to exist and transmit information. Because organisms are self-catalized replicating structures that can transmit genotypic information to offspring, it should be evident that any single species has two possible states or alternatives: to be or not to be. In other words, species have no need for an external receiver since they are their own receivers. Therefore, the amount of biological information (at the species scale) in a community with one only species would be species, and not bits as in the traditional perspective. Moreover, species diversity appears to be a monotonic increasing function of (or S) when all species are equally probable (S being species richness), and not a function of as in the traditional perspective. To avoid the noted shortcoming, we could use 2H (instead of H) for calculating species diversity and species evenness (= 2H/S). However, owing to the relatively great sensitivity of H to the relative abundances of species in the community, the value of species dominance (= 1 − 2H/S) is unreasonably high when differences between dominant and subordinate species are considerable, thereby lowering the value of species evenness and diversity. This unsatisfactory behaviour is even more evident for Simpson index and related algorithms. I propose the use of other statistics for a better analysis of community structure, their relationship being: species evenness + species dominance = 1; species diversity × species uniformity = 1; and species diversity = species richness × species evenness. (shrink)

El trabajo pone en cuestión la pertinência de la atribución de una concepción contractualista de estilo moderno a Marsilio de Pactua. El análisis de los principales textos del Defensor pacis no muestra la afirmación de un hipotético estado no social dei hombre, ni un fundamento exclusivamente voluntarista o racionalista de la sociedad política, ni una fundamentación de la legitimidad del poder político en la figura de um contrato efectuado por indivíduos autónomos que precedan - temporal o lógicamente - a la (...) constitución de la sociedad política. (shrink)

La doctrtna de Tomás de Aquinorespecto de la delimitación ·entre e! ámbito de lo"natural" - entendiendo por tal la naturaleza"Inferior", esta.. es, e! · ámbito de lo. máterial,corporal y sensible - y el ámbito de lo humanopuede ser reconstruida entres momentos: a) unaintegración inicial dei hombre ai ámbito de lonatural - en particular por la doctrina de launidad esencial de alma y cuerpo; b) una relativaemergencia o trascendencia dei hombre respectodei lo material - en especial por · 1a subsistenciadei alma (...) racional humana y la trascendencia desu fin último; c) una slntesis que marca lacontinuatio entre naturaleza. y hombre, en lamedida en que éste es concebido como "fin detàda la generación". La orientación teleológica dela naturaleza que tiende hacia el hombre, puedeadvertirse en la creciente perfección dei disefiodei orden de las formas naturales, en lascondiciones físicas propias de la corporalidad.humana, y el en proceso generativo dei embriónhumano. En cada caso, ai tender hacia elhombre, la naturaleza busca, en forma mediata,trascenderse a sí misma. (shrink)

El pensamiento politico medieval concibe a la ley como esencialmente ligada a un concepto de justicia superior y objetivo. El trabajo procura zanjar las divergencias en tomo del concepto ley en Marsilio de Padua. Para ella, se efectua un analisis de la ecuacion entre las facultades cognoscitivas y volitivas que aparecen en el tratamiento del fin de la ley, de las cualidades personales requeridas para el juez, y de la idoneidad dellegislador humano. La ley debe poseer un contenido de justicia (...) que es objeto de una captacion racional y de un recto querer. Sin embargo, ese concepto de justicia adquiere en Marsilio una definicion estrictamente politica: se trata del "equilibria" o la "medida" que deben alcanzar los actos transitivos de los hombres, can el fin de preservar la comunidad politica. (shrink)

Nos últimos anos, cada vez mais os "ismos" estão sendo deixados de lado. Neste sentido, quando se fala de aristotelismo ou de averroísmo de Marsílio de Pádua, torna-se necessário examinar o que se entende precisamente por tais atributos e, depois, até que ponto, mesmo de forma aproximativa, eles podem ser aplicados a Marsílio.

El trabajo se ocupa de la concepción acerca de la función y los límites de la enseñanza en el diálogo De magistro de Agustín de Hipona y en la undécima de las Cuestiones disputadas sobre la verdad de Tomás de Aquino. Explorando los límites del lenguaje y de la comunicación, Agustín concluye que el maestro propiamente no enseña, a lo sumo, advierte al discípulo para que pueda reconocer la verdad iluminado por el Maestro Interior. Para Aquino, el maestro propiamente puede (...) enseñar, pero con ello no hace más que asistir al discípulo para que efectúe con su razón el mismo recorrido que hace la razón humana al derivar las conclusiones de la ciencia a partir de los principios del conocimiento humano. A pesar de sus diferencias, ambos coinciden en que la enseñanza es cualquier cosa menos una “transferencia del saber”. (shrink)

O presente artigo trata do caráter contingente ou necessário da relação causal entre a causa primeira e seu efeito, tal como apresentada por Avicena e Tomás de Aquino. Para tanto, aborda o paralelismo no tratamento da inteligência e vontade divinas por parte de ambos os autores. Ambos aceitam que Deus conhece a si mesmo e, conhecendo-se, conhece aquilo que lhe é distinto. Aceitam igualmente que Deus quer ou ama a si mesmo e, querendo a si mesmo, quer acidentalmente o que (...) lhe é distinto. No entanto, discordam com respeito à necessidade ou contingência do mundo. Para Avicena, o mundo é possível em si mesmo, mas “necessário por outro”. Para Tomás, que Deus queira o mundo com necessidade hipotética corresponde mais à necessidade do querer divino, sem que isso determine a contingência ou necessidade do mundo. Com efeito, na visão tomista, é preferível um universo no qual haja mescla de necessidade e contingência, pois isso representa melhor as múltiplas perfeições divinas. (shrink)

El trabajo se ocupa de la sección de las Glosas a la Isagogé de Porfirio de Pedro Abelardo dedicada a las tres cuestiones sobre los universales. La parte “destructiva”, en la que Abelardo somete a crítica las doctrinas realistas de Guillermo de Champeaux no tiene un sentido meramente negativo, sino que busca llegar al punto de partida de la propia posición de Abelardo: las cosas no sólo difieren por sus formas (accidentes), sino también por sus materias (esencias). Al hablar de (...) la imagen correspondiente al nombre universal, Abelardo no se detiene a explicar la formación del concepto universal a partir de la cosa, sino que más bien se refiere a la significación intelectual de los términos, en tanto “generan intelecciones”. Esta omisión puede explicarse por el hecho de que, para Abelardo, la inteligencia humana rara vez o nunca llega a captar las esencias de las cosas. (shrink)

We study active set methods for optimization problems in Block Angular Form (BAF). We begin by reviewing some standard basis factorizations, including Saunders' orthogonal factorization and updates for the simplex method that do not impose any restriction on the pivot sequence and maintain the basis factorization structured in BAF throughout the algorithm. We then suggest orthogonal factorization and updating procedures that allow coarse grain parallelization, pivot updates local to the affected blocks, and independent block reinversion. A simple parallel environment appropriate (...) to the description and complexity analysis of test procedures is defined in Section 5. The factorization and updating procedures are presented in Sections 6 and 7. Our update procedure outperforms conventional Updating procedures even in a purely sequential environment. (shrink)

Las miopatías metabólicas son un grupo de trastornos genéticos que disminuyen la capacidad del músculo esquelético para utilizar sustratos energéticos y sintetizar ATP. Estas alteraciones pueden clasificarse en tres tipos fundamentalmente: i) trastornos del metabolismo de los carbohidratos (del glucógeno y de la glucosa), ii) defectos del metabolismo lipídico, y iii) alteraciones de la fosforilación oxidativa –OXPHOS-. Las dos primeras se deben a deficiencias enzimáticas de las rutas metabólicas de degradación y síntesis de glúcidos y lípidos y muestran diversas manifestaciones (...) clínicas, pero una buena parte de ellas cursan con intolerancia al ejercicio. Aunque un buen número de pacientes con estos trastornos musculares presentan síntomas en la infancia, el diagnóstico normalmente se retrasa hasta la segunda y tercera década de la vida. Por tanto, reconocer las características clínicas de estas deficiencias conduce a un diagnóstico precoz y a un mejor tratamiento. Las enfermedades mitocondriales son un grupo de trastornos originados por una deficiencia en la síntesis de ATP a través del sistema de fosforilación oxidativa. Este sistema está formado por proteínas codificadas en los dos genomas de la célula (nuclear y mitocondrial) y, por tanto, pueden presentar un modelo de herencia mendeliano o materno. En esta revisión se describirán las características especiales del sistema genético mitocondrial y las principales mutaciones que causan enfermedades en humanos. (shrink)

This work has two objectives. The first is to begin a mathematical formalism appropriate to treating particles which only interact with each otherindirectly due to hypothesized memory effects in a stochastic medium. More specifically we treat a situation in which a sequence of particles consecutively passes through a region (e.g., a measuring apparatus) in such a way that one particle leaves the region before the next one enters. We want to study a situation in which a particle may interact with (...) other particles that previously passed through the system via disturbances made in the region by these previous particles.Second, we apply the type of stochastic process appearing in this context to the stochastic interpretation of quantum mechanics to obtain a modified version of this interpretation. This version is free of many of the criticisms made against the stochastic interpretation of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

A obra pretende indicar a bipolaridade que constitui o objeto central da abordagem; por um lado, a problematização da funcionalidade do sistema penal e da expansão, sem precedentes, que experimenta na era da globalização; de outro, o problema dos déficits do conceito e da dimensão da cidadania, que experimentam ímpar minimização.

In today’s world, given the relative importance that companies are giving to corporate social responsibility, sustainability, human rights, and ethics, it is logical to assume that the humanistic trend is gaining support over the economistic, especially in the most developed countries. The paper serves both to introduce the topic of circular migration and to suggest that humanistic management principles are not applied to circular migration programs. First, we contrast humanism with economism as fundamental approaches to business goal setting. Then, we (...) discuss in more depth the concept of circular migration and explain the mechanisms under which this migration happens in the US and Canada. Next, by relying on Melé’s propositions, we elaborate on the case of the Mexican workers who enroll in these temporary job programs, with attention to the programs’ pitfalls and outcomes. Finally, we conclude with reflections on further research in humanistic management as a tool for improving temporary migration movements. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Plotinus does not limit the sphere of free human agency simply to intellectual contemplation, but rather extends it all the way to human praxis. Plotinus’s goal in the first six chapters of Ennead 6.8 is, accordingly, to demarcate the space of freedom within human practical actions. He ultimately concludes that our external actions are free whenever they actualize, in unhindered fashion, the moral principles derived from intellectual contemplation. This raises the question of how the (...) freedom of practical actions might relate to the freedom of intellectual contemplation. After considering two previously offered models—a model of double activity, and an Aristotelian model of practical syllogism—I offer a third alternative, namely a model of moral attunement, according to which our rational desires assume a kind of ‘care of the soul’ through active supervision. Practical life is thus imbued with freedom to the extent that the soul supervises its actions to conform to its will and choice of the good. (shrink)

Departing from Anderson’s (2016) suggestion that there are three communities in Peirce’s thought corresponding to his three normative sciences of logic, ethics, and esthetics, I argue that these communities partake in a relationship of dependence similar to that found among the normative sciences. In this way, just as logic relies on ethics which relies on esthetics, so too would a logical community of inquirers rely on an ethical community of love, which would rely on an esthetic community of artists. A (...) community could conduct inquiry together only if it pursued the same goal; and it could pursue the same goal only if it first imaginatively construed it. Any logical or ethical community requires a shared imaginative repertoire of ideal ends. (shrink)

Brazilian writer Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914–1977) was born in a rural community and spent most of her life in a slum. Despite this, her literary work achieved remarkable editorial success, having its value recognized by critics and academic circles. This paper analyzes Carolina Maria de Jesus’s autobiographical narratives in the light of John Dewey’s aesthetic theory, with the purpose of investigating the factors responsible for the development of her aesthetic sensitivity – intellectual and emotional dispositions favorable to involvement with (...) artistic practices. The results suggest that Carolina Maria de Jesus’s literary skills, which express not only individual but also collective yearnings, resulted from the incentive she received to think about things that do not exist and from her relationship with people who favored the formation of a personality open to varied experiences. Such results are presented as requirements for a democratic and humanist education that aims at the flowering of aesthetic sensitivity and encourages educators and students to believe in their creative potential. (shrink)

The objective of this study was to develop and determine the psychometric properties of an instrument designed to detect traits and behavior that are associated with predatory violent behavior, which is defined as a determined, planned, controlled, and proactive aggression. The sample was comprised of 546 students, mostly in their last year of high school or in their first year of college. The initial instrument had 78 items, ultimately resulting in 15 with good internal consistency (α =.825). Factor analysis showed (...) four factors: anger-in, appeal for weapons, suicidal ideation, and the tendency to take justice into one’s own hands. Said factors showed significant correlations of convergent validity. Data shown here allows inferring that the instrument is a novel and concise tool that evaluates and detects the potential of predatory violent behavior. (shrink)