This paper describes an exploratory study of corporate responsibility, corporate reputation, and stakeholder support in Norway, Sweden and Denmark—countries recognized worldwide as providing an institutional climate uniquely conducive to responsible business practice. Conducting a secondary analysis of Scandinavian data from Reputation Institute’s extensive global research on corporate reputation and responsibility, we examine four key questions: First, do Scandinavians agree with external observers that firms in their countries demonstrate superior levels of corporate responsibility? Second, relative to other reputation drivers, to what (...) extent does corporate responsibility predict corporate reputation for the countries in our dataset? Third, to what extent does corporate responsibility predict stakeholder intent in these countries to engage in supportive behavior toward the firm? Finally, are stakeholder perceptions of and responses to corporate responsibility sufficiently similar across Norway, Sweden, and Denmark to justify claims for a monolithic “Scandinavian approach” to CSR? Previous research examining the relationship of corporate responsibility to corporate reputation and stakeholder support is reviewed, analytical methods are described, results presented, and implications discussed. The article concludes with analysis of study limitations and directions for future research. (shrink)

In 2000, Business and Society Review published a Special Issue of the journal to explore scholars’ ideas about how the practice of corporate citizenship would evolve in the 21st century. Contributors to the volume predicted a change in business motives for engaging in social initiatives, suggesting that managers would begin to see corporate citizenship as a strategic necessity to preserve organizational legitimacy in the face of changing social values. This article uses data from a study of corporate citizenship practices in (...) over 500 Norwegian companies to explore the validity of the Special Issue predictions. We begin by reviewing the foundations of organizational legitimacy theory and examine recent research documenting the growing importance of corporate citizenship for assessments of business legitimacy. We describe our study methods, present our results, and discuss the implications of our findings in this context. (shrink)

This article presents results of exploratory research conducted with managers from over 500 Norwegian companies to examine corporate motives for engaging in social initiatives. Three key questions were addressed. First, what do managers in this sample see as the primary reasons their companies engage in activities that benefit society? Second, do motives for such social initiative vary across the industries represented? Third, can further empirical support be provided for the theoretical classifications of social initiative motives outlined in the literature? Previous (...) research on the topic is reviewed, study methods are described, results, are presented, and implications of findings are discussed. The article concludes with the analysis of study limitations and directions for future research. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay responds to Patricia Werhane’s 1994 Ruffin Lecture address, “Moral Imagination and the Search for Ethical Decision-making in Management,” using institutional theory as an analytical framework to explore conditions that either inhibit or promote moral imagination in organizational problem-solving. Implications of the analysis for managing organizational change and for business ethics theory development are proposed.

This paper examines how unethical behavior in the workplace occurs when management places inordinately strong emphasis on goalattainment without a corresponding emphasis on following legitimate procedures. Robert Merton's theory of sodal structure and anomie provides a foundation to discuss this argument. Key factors affecting ethical climates in work organizations are also addressed. Based on this analysis, the paper proposes strategies for developing and changing aspects of organizational culture to reduce anomie, thereby creating work climates which discourage unethical practices and provide (...) employees with mechanisms to resolve ethical conflicts in a constructive way. (shrink)

This paper examines how unethical behavior in the workplace occurs when management places inordinately strong emphasis on goalattainment without a corresponding emphasis on following legitimate procedures. Robert Merton's theory of sodal structure and anomie provides a foundation to discuss this argument. Key factors affecting ethical climates in work organizations are also addressed. Based on this analysis, the paper proposes strategies for developing and changing aspects of organizational culture to reduce anomie, thereby creating work climates which discourage unethical practices and provide (...) employees with mechanisms to resolve ethical conflicts in a constructive way. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay responds to Patricia Werhane’s 1994 Ruffin Lecture address, “Moral Imagination and the Search for Ethical Decision-making in Management,” using institutional theory as an analytical framework to explore conditions that either inhibit or promote moral imagination in organizational problem-solving. Implications of the analysis for managing organizational change and for business ethics theory development are proposed.

Abstract:This essay examines how normative theories of enterprise can be strengthened by incorporating the empirical study of motivation into the theory-development process. The link between moral conduct and motivation in the literature is reviewed, the framework for Motivational Appeal Analysis introduced and applied, and implications for theory and research are discussed.

:This essay responds to Patricia Werhane’s 1994 Ruffin Lecture address, “Moral Imagination and the Search for Ethical Decision-making in Management,” using institutional theory as an analytical framework to explore conditions that either inhibit or promote moral imagination in organizational problem-solving. Implications of the analysis for managing organizational change and for business ethics theory development are proposed.

This paper introduces a new conceptual framework for studying moral climate in business firms, offering an alternative to other theoretical models currently in the literature. The framework integrates recent advances in organizational climate theory into a new conceptualization of the moral climate construct that explains how moral climates evolve in organizations and suggests moral climate change.

This article introduces a new scale to measure executive servant leadership, situating the need for this scale within the context of ethical leadership and its impacts on followers, organizations and the greater society. The literature on servant leadership is reviewed and servant leadership is compared to other concepts that share dimensions of ethical leadership (e.g., transformational, authentic, and spiritual leadership). Next, the Executive Servant Leadership Scale (ESLS) is introduced, and its contributions and limitations discussed. We conclude with an agenda for (...) future research, describing ways the measure can be used to test hypotheses about organizational moral climate, ethical organizational culture, corporate responsibility, and institutional theory. (shrink)

This article examines the role of the business school Dean in curriculum planning for ethics. First it explores why Deans must take the lead to introduce required professional responsibility courses in the business curriculum. Next it addresses how Deans can exercise both formal and informal authority to accomplish this task Finally, the article concludes with ways Deans can further promote the ethics message—both within and outside their institutions.

Although recent years have seen an increase in professional learning communities, use of video and lesson study groups, most teachers still work and learn in isolation. What they know is personal and remains private; little opportunity exists for most teachers to develop shared knowledge or language. The scale of the teaching force, and the rapid turnover of new teachers, makes this lack of shared knowledge an acute problem. This paper explores the potential of records of practice for developing collective professional (...) knowledge about teaching and learning. We define and illustrate what we mean by records of practice and elaborate the meaning of the term collective professional knowledge. Three concrete examples of records of practice, originating in different contexts and times, are presented and their special features are analyzed and discussed. The paper clarifies that records are not in themselves professional knowledge, but constitute a valuable and unique resource for the study of practice and the generation of knowledge originating in and useful for practice. To illustrate varied approaches for studying practice, possible uses of records of practice for the generation of collective professional knowledge are described and analyzed. The paper concludes with questions about records of practice and their uses. (shrink)

Although the role played by narratives and particularly by narratives of personal experience in the construction of identity has been widely investigated, the presence and contribution of such narratives in institutional discourse has received comparatively little attention. Our study focuses on two narratives in university lectures, which show that such narratives are a means of textually constructing not only personal but also professional identities. Analysis reveals that the professors position themselves as experts, exploiting the use of pronouns and other referring (...) expressions in addition to self and other evaluation, in order to distance themselves from non-expert others. In doing so, they make little use of the technical terminology often found in representations of professional selves. In offsetting self-aggrandizement with self-mockery, the professors' narratives display an ideological dilemma typical of the expert in current North American culture, which involves see-sawing between expressions of expertise and equality. (shrink)

Comparing estimates of the cost-effectiveness of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) interventions can help communities select an HIV prevention portfolio to meet local needs efficiently. The authors developed a spreadsheet tool to estimate the relative cost-effectiveness of 26 HIV prevention interventions. HIV prevalence of the population at risk and the cost per person reached were the two most important factors determining cost-effectiveness. In low-prevalence populations, the most cost-effective interventions had a low per-person cost. Among the most cost-effective interventions overall were showing (...) videos in sexually transmitted disease clinics and raising alcohol taxes. (shrink)

Crises and social revolts in the historiography of contemporary France Refusing to apprehend the category as a simple empirical fact, the article examine the notion of crisis against the perspective offered by the series of French Revolutions : . This enables the authors to question these « moments of crisis » in relation to the historiographical contribution of successive generations of historians. In opposition to a liberal vision where social revolts are devoid of any political project, such an approach on (...) the part of the historian places the focus on a people, a proletariat, a group which, above all, reveals itself to be a political subject. To be effective, and to avoid stifling the comprehension of a revolutionary phenomenon, the concept of conjunctural crisis is thus combined with the invocation of a longer temporality and with a comprehension of the organic movements of society. The focus placed on the moment of crisis enables the authors to propose a different way of apprehending revolution, to grasp its rootedness in time that is both profound and immediate, organic and circumstantial. (shrink)

À l’aube de la Révolution française, alors que l’idée de sphère domestique et intime n’est pas finalisée, la famille est encore pensée comme une société politique : en conséquence, les bouleversements ouverts dans la sphère publique s’appliquent également à la sphère familiale. C’est le cas de la pensée de ces interruptions temporelles que sont la révolution comme rupture du contrat politique et le divorce comme rupture du contrat familial. L’article montre qu’une révolution soucieuse de stabilité a cherché, entre 1789 et (...) 1794, à instaurer et à justifier la possibilité de ces ruptures dans des contrats qui ne peuvent désormais plus tenir que sur le consentement renouvelé d’individus libres, mais s’est également montrée soucieuse d’en légiférer le cours et d’en limiter les possibles. En marge de ces processus où le temps de la rupture est contrôlé et limité par la loi, on trouve quelques individus et penseurs qui, dans un tout autre rapport au temps, se montrent soucieux d’en faire l’occasion d’une ouverture permanente des possibles. (shrink)

As the national debate intensifies over what marriage is and who may marry, Mary Lyndon Shanley argues that although the state should continue to play a role in regulating personal relations, the law must be fundamentally reformed if marriage is to become a more just institution. Thirteen prominent writers and thinkers respond, including Nancy F. Cott, William N. Eskridge, Jr., Amitai Etzioni, Martha Albertson Fineman, and Cass R. Sunstein.

Sumit Sarkar, one of the leading Indian historians of his generation, participated in the Indian-British Subaltern Studies Collective that established new standards in the historiography of colonialism in the 1980’s. In this Interview, Déborah Cohen and Urs Lindner ask him about the achievements and oversights of the Subaltern Studies project, the prospects of global history, Marx’s eurocentrism and the problem of religion.

In this interview M. Riot-Sarcey returns to a number of marginalized figures in labour history. Against the domination of the form of the party, as established since the end of the 19th century, which discounts the hypothesis of the proletariat’s ability to liberate itself, the author re-emphasises here the vitality of the forms of worker self-organization that had preceded the hegemony of the party, in particular after 1848 and the disillusionment of the labour movement regarding the republic. These autonomous worker (...) organizations constituted the site for the exercise of a collective liberty, the modality of which was a fraternity, that is, a form of mutual assistance coupled with the acknowledgement of a plurality of capacities. In the face of the entrenchment of naturalized categories, M. Riot-Sarcey’s intention here is to explore a series of dissonant voices, in particular those of rebel women who seized on the opportunity of the revolution in order to destabilize established norms. Against the imposition of a consensual version of the political discourse (Republic, Fraternity) the author invites us to reactivate the repressed potentialities of these terms. She envisages her work as a historian as a reactivation of those past experiences which have been marginalized by the party through the naturalization of categories and the imposition of a consensual reading. This marginalized memory is a resource for present-day struggles. (shrink)

Cet article se pose la question de la relation « genrée » entre la visibilité sociale – définie comme la reconnaissance d’un individu (ou d’une collectivité) comme membre de la nation – et la construction de la nation elle-même. L’analyse porte sur le moment de la mise en place du Bracero Program qui, entre 1942 et 1964, a conduit des Mexicains à travailler aux États-Unis : les hommes, exclus de la nation par leur position sociale et territoriale, ont été alors, (...) au cours d’un spectacle fortement « genré », reconnus formellement par l’État mexicain qui leur a donné (l’illusion) de l’inclusion, de la reconnaissance, et des privilèges. (shrink)

Cet article sur l’état de la recherche sur le genre et la (les) sexualité(s) dans les études sur les années 68 fait suite à une année de colloques et de rétrospectives médiatiques célébrant le quarantième anniversaire, ainsi qu’à une élection présidentielle américaine où les deux candidats, avec chacun leur mode d’autorité charismatique genrée – l’un héros militaire du Vietnam, l’autre jeune homme dynamique proposant « un nouveau Camelot » –, se sont implicitement situés par rapport à la rupt...

It is widely held that intuitive dualism—an implicit default mode of thought that takes minds to be separable from bodies and capable of independent existence—is a human universal. Among the findings taken to support universal intuitive dualism is a pattern of evidence in which “psychological” traits (knowledge, desires) are judged more likely to continue after death than bodily or “biological” traits (perceptual, physiological, and bodily states). Here, we present cross-cultural evidence from six study populations, including non-Western societies with diverse belief (...) systems, that shows that while this pattern exists, the overall pattern of responses nonetheless does not support intuitive dualism in afterlife beliefs. Most responses of most participants across all cultures tested were not dualist. While our sample is in no way intended to capture the full range of human societies and afterlife beliefs, it captures a far broader range of cultures than in any prior study, and thus puts the case for afterlife beliefs as evidence for universal intuitive dualism to a strong test. Based on these findings, we suggest that while dualist thinking is a possible mode of thought enabled by evolved human psychology, such thinking does not constitute a default mode of thought. Rather, our data support what we will call intuitive materialism—the view that the underlying intuitive systems for reasoning about minds and death produce as a default judgment that mental states cease to exist with bodily death. (shrink)

Chow correctly pinpoints several confusions in the criticisms of statistical hypothesis testing but his book is considerably weakened by its own confusions about concepts of testing (perhaps owing to an often very confusing literature). My focus is on his critique of power analysis (Ch. 6). Having denied that NHSTP considers alternative statistical hypotheses, and having been misled by a quotation from Cohen, Chow finds power analysis conceptually suspect.

This book is a collection of biographical sketches of some of the leading figures of our time, though the figures aren't people but configurations of words.

Xu Bing ranks among the most recognized contemporary Chinese artists in the world today. His lifelong interest in word and image paired with his experiences as part of the Chinese diaspora have made him the subject of numerous publications dedicated to exploring culture and communication. With Xu Bing and Contemporary Chinese Art, editors Hsingyuan Tsao and Roger T. Ames bring a welcome addition to this corpus. Compiling seven essays from scholars of art history and philosophy, this volume in the SUNY (...) series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture offers a remarkable range of approaches for thinking about not only Xu Bing's work but also contemporary art and culture at large.In their introduction, the editors foreground .. (shrink)

In this incisive new book one of Britain's most eminent philosophers explores the often overlooked tension between voluntariness and involuntariness in human cognition. He seeks to counter the widespread tendency for analytic epistemology to be dominated by the concept of belief. Is scientific knowledge properly conceived as being embodied, at its best, in a passive feeling of belief or in an active policy of acceptance? Should a jury's verdict declare what its members involuntarily believe or what they voluntarily accept? And (...) should statements and assertions be presumed to express what their authors believe or what they accept? Does such a distinction between belief and acceptance help to resolve the paradoxes of self-deception and akrasia? Must people be taken to believe everything entailed by what they believe, or merely to accept everything entailed by what they accept? Through a systematic examination of these problems, the author sheds new light on issues of crucial importance in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. (shrink)

In the social sciences and in everyday speech we often talk about groups as if they behaved in the same way as individuals, thinking and acting as a singular being. We say for example that "Google intends to develop an automated car", "the U.S. Government believes that Syria has used chemical weapons on its people", or that "the NRA wants to protect the rights of gun owners". We also often ascribe legal and moral responsibility to groups. But could groups literally (...) intend things? Is there such a thing as a collective mind? If so, should groups be held morally responsible? Such questions are of vital importance to our understanding of the social world. In this lively, engaging introduction Deborah Tollefsen offers a careful survey of contemporary philosophers? answers to these questions, and argues for the unorthodox view that certain groups should, indeed, be treated as agents and deserve to be held morally accountable. Tollefsen explores the nature of belief, action and intention, and shows the reader how a belief in group agency can be reconciled with our understanding of individual agency and accountability. _Groups as Agents_ will be a vital resource for scholars as well as for students of philosophy and the social sciences encountering the topic for the first time. (shrink)

Most Probably: Epistemic Modality in Old Babylonian by Nathan Wasserman is the first attempt to provide a description of the domain of epistemic modality in Old Babylonian Akkadian. This attempt is not entirely successful, for several reasons. Methodological inconsistency often impairs the author’s ability to convince the reader of his solutions. Both primary data and existing secondary literature are used only selectively, which renders the proposed description problematic. Finally, the lack of cross-referencing between the chapters evokes the feeling that the (...) different particles do not quite constitute a system. (shrink)

Nurses working in a newborn intensive care unit report that treatment decision disagreements for infants in their care may lead to ethical dilemmas involving all health-care providers. Applying Rest’s Four-Component Model of Moral Action as the theoretical framework, this study examined the responses of 224 newborn intensive care unit nurses to the Nurses Ethical Involvement Survey. The three most frequent actions selected were as follows: talking with other nurses, talking with doctors, and requesting a team meeting. The multiple regression analysis (...) indicates that newborn intensive care unit nurses with greater concern for the ethical aspects of clinical practice (p =.001) and an increased perception of their ability to influence ethical decision making (p =.018) were more likely to display Nurse Activism. Future research is necessary to identify other factors leading to and inhibiting Nurse Activism as these findings explained just 8.5% of the variance. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend what may seem a surprising view: that John Stuart Mill’s famous harm principle would, if taken to be what justifies government action, disallow the existence of corporations. My claim is not that harmful activities of currently existing corporations warrants their losing corporate status according to the harm principle. The claim, rather, is that taken strictly, the harm principle and the legal possibility of incorporation are mutually exclusive. This view may be surprising—and I do not at (...) all mean to attribute it to Mill—but if I am right, it should be obvious. It should also encourage us to think more about the nature of the markets within which business occurs. (shrink)