Corporate psychopathy thrives perhaps as the most significant threat to ethical corporate behaviour around the world. We argue that Human Resources Management professionals should formulate strategic solutions metaphorically by balancing what strategic military planners famously call ‘Search and Destroy’ and ‘Hearts and Minds’ counter-terrorist strategy. We argue that these military metaphors offer creative inspiration to help academics and practitioners theorise CP in richer, more reflective and more balanced and complementary ways. An appreciation of both metaphors is likely to favour the (...) use of hybrid strategies comprising SD and HM elements, which may provide the best HRM solutions to CP for the same reasons as the military now considers parallel hybrid solutions optimal for combating terrorist and guerrilla insurgency. (shrink)

The view that corporate psychopathy played a significant role in causing the global financial crisis, although insightful, paints a reductionist picture of what we present as the broader issue. Our broader issue is the tendency for psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism to cluster psychologically and culturally as ‘dark leadership’ within global financial institutions. Strong evidence for their co-intensification across society and in corporations ought to alarm financial regulators. We argue that an ‘ethical revival’ of prudence within prudential regulation ought to be (...) included in any package of solutions. Referencing research on moral muteness and the role of language in framing thoughts and behaviours, we recommend that regulators define prudence in an explicitly normative sense, an approach that may be further strengthened by drawing upon a widely appealing ethic of intergenerational care. An ethical revival of prudence, we argue, would allow the core problems of greed and myopia highlighted by corporate psychopathy theory to be addressed in a politically sensitive manner which recognises the pitfalls of regulating directly against corporate psychopathy. Furthermore, it would provide a viable conceptual framework to guide regulators along the treacherous path to more intrusive cultural regulation. (shrink)

SummaryThis paper studies the context and textual structure of the Portuguese translation of Forbonnais's Elémens du commerce. This analysis is instrumental to understanding the place of this translation in the Portuguese discourse on trade, colonies and political economy in the age of Pombal. The translation of Forbonnais was one of the few to be published in Portugal in the eighteenth century. So, why the Elémens? This paper answers this question by profiling the translator, a key figure in the nomenklatura created (...) by Pombal to promote his commercial and colonial policies. This translation aimed at providing a theoretical background for Pombal's actions to defend Portuguese specialised agriculture against the exploitation of British traders, to substitute imported manufactures with local production, and to put colonial trade under national control. The paper also studies the contemporary debate on translation and its method in order to understand the reasons that led the translator to adopt a ‘paraphrastic style’, a choice that equated translation with a nationalistic politico-economic act, consisting in importing alien contents as ‘raw materials’ and ‘reselling’ them rephrased in what was considered the most ancient and perfect neo-Latin language. In this way, this paper also contributes to the history of translation in the Lusophone area. (shrink)