This article integrates research on gendered organizations and the work-family interface to investigate an innovative workplace initiative, the Results-Only Work Environment, implemented in the corporate headquarters of Best Buy, Inc. While flexible work policies common in other organizations “accommodate” individuals, this initiative attempts a broader and deeper critique of the organizational culture. We address two research questions: How does this initiative attempt to change the masculinized ideal worker norm? And what do women’s and men’s responses reveal about the persistent ways (...) that gender structures work and family life? Data demonstrate the ideal worker norm is pervasive and powerful, even as employees begin critically examining expectations regarding work time that have historically privileged men. Employees’ responses to ROWE are also gendered. Women are more enthusiastic, while men are more cautious. Ambivalence about and resistance to change is expressed in different ways depending on gender and occupational status. (shrink)

The rising tide of corporate scandals and audit failures has shocked the public, and the integrity of auditors is being increasingly questioned. It is crucial for auditors and regulators to understand the main causes of audit failure and devise preventive measures accordingly. This study analyzes enforcement actions issued by the China Securities Regulatory Commission against auditors in respect of fraudulent financial reporting committed by listed companies in China. We find that auditors are more likely to be sanctioned by the regulators (...) for failing to detect and report material misstatement frauds rather than disclosure frauds. Further analysis of the material misstatements indicates that auditors are more likely to be sanctioned for failing to detect and report revenue-related frauds rather than assets-related frauds. In sum, our results suggest that regulators believe auditors have the responsibility to detect and report frauds that are egregious, transaction-based, and related to accounting earnings. The results contribute to our knowledge of auditors’ responsibilities for detecting frauds as perceived by regulators. (shrink)

Constitutivist approaches to the normativity of rationality have recently come into vogue. Unlike their moral counterparts, however, they have not been confronted with the shmagency objection. In this paper, I challenge them with two versions of the objection based on recent developments in the debate surrounding the normativity of morality. These are shmagency as modal escapability, which is based on taking sophisticated shmagents to be able to modally escape various norms, and shmagency as underdetermination, which is based on taking constitutive (...) norms that allegedly have independent value to be underdetermined by that value. I consider three different kinds of constitutivist theories of the normativity of rationality: first-person-authority views, single-mental-state views, and systems-of-mental-states views. None of the three are able to deal with either of these shmagency objections. There are sophisticated shmagents who escape all these types of constitutivist principles of rationality, so they are modally escapable, and the value of rationality underdetermines all the views. Upshot: constitutivists about structural rationality ought to worry about shmagency. (shrink)

Ethics and professionalism -- Ethical theory and philosophy -- Ethical principles and values -- Social responsibility -- Codes of ethics -- Ethical decision making in dental hygiene and dentistry -- Society and the State Dental Practice Act -- Dental hygienist/patient relationship -- Dental hygienist/dentist-employer relationship -- Risk management -- Case studies, activities, and testlets -- Appendix A : American Dental Association Principles of Ethics and Code of Professional Conduct.

After a decade of intense debate about mechanisms, there is still no consensus characterization. In this paper we argue for a characterization that applies widely to mechanisms across the sciences. We examine and defend our disagreements with the major current contenders for characterizations of mechanisms. Ultimately, we indicate that the major contenders can all sign up to our characterization.

Scientific and philosophical literature on causality has become highly specialised. It is hard to find suitable access points for students, young researchers, or professionals outside this domain. This book provides a guide to the complex literature, explains the scientific problems of causality and the philosophical tools needed to address them.

Mechanisms have become much-discussed, yet there is still no consensus on how to characterise them. In this paper, we start with something everyone is agreed on – that mechanisms explain – and investigate what constraints this imposes on our metaphysics of mechanisms. We examine two widely shared premises about how to understand mechanistic explanation: (1) that mechanistic explanation offers a welcome alternative to traditional laws-based explanation and (2) that there are two senses of mechanistic explanation that we call ‘epistemic explanation’ (...) and ‘physical explanation’. We argue that mechanistic explanation requires that mechanisms are both real and local. We then go on to argue that real, local mechanisms require a broadly active metaphysics for mechanisms, such as a capacities metaphysics. (shrink)

Through essays, Mount Mary College professors from various disciplines analyze several pieces of literature from a variety of genres and authors to show how ...

Emphasizing the importance of etiquette and ethics in promoting success in American business, this helpful handbook describes how values reveal a company's relationships with customers, stockholders, and employees, covering such topics as listening skills, making a positive impression, dealing with allies and enemies, technology etiquette, presentation skills, and political skills.

Although we all learn differently, we all need to be able to engage certain fundamental reasoning skills if we are to manoeuvre successfully through life—however we define success. Peirce's philosophy provides us with a framework for helping students develop and hone the ability for making deliberate and well‐considered choices. For, embedded within Peirce's complete body of work is a design for thinking that provides a sturdy foundation for the development of three important learning capabilities. These capabilities are 1) the ability (...) to identify, compare, and contrast qualities, 2) the ability to perform analyses, and 3) the ability to interpret the meaning of signs. Although these capabilities may seem like the sort of skills that only older and academically inclined students can master, even young children and the intellectually challenged can learn to use them as well. Once teachers learn to develop their own intellectual potential by expanding these capabilities within themselves, they will be able to begin bringing about the development of these capabilities in their students. Once identified, developed, and applied to the mastery of educational skills and subject matter, these three fundamental learning capabilities , can form the foundation of a common‐sense approach to educational reform. Peirce asserts that good reasoning must be informed by ethical considerations, which in turn has been informed by the highest of aesthetic impulses. From this, we can extrapolate the importance that an educational model based upon Peirce's philosophy must place upon aesthetic and ethical considerations, as well as logical ones. Once fully understood, the philosophy of education embedded within Peirce's epistemology can revolutionize educational practices at all levels of learning. (shrink)

Russo and Williamson claim that establishing causal claims requires mechanistic and difference-making evidence. In this article, I will argue that Russo and Williamson's formulation of their thesis is multiply ambiguous. I will make three distinctions: mechanistic evidence as type vs object of evidence; what mechanism or mechanisms we want evidence of; and how much evidence of a mechanism we require. I will feed these more precise meanings back into the Russo–Williamson thesis and argue that it is both true and false: (...) two weaker versions of the thesis are worth supporting, while the stronger versions are not. Further, my distinctions are of wider concern because they allow us to make more precise claims about what kinds of evidence are required in particular cases. (shrink)

Craver claims that mechanistic explanation is ontic, while Bechtel claims that it is epistemic. While this distinction between ontic and epistemic explanation originates with Salmon, the ideas have changed in the modern debate on mechanistic explanation, where the frame of the debate is changing. I will explore what Bechtel and Craver’s claims mean, and argue that good mechanistic explanations must satisfy both ontic and epistemic normative constraints on what is a good explanation. I will argue for ontic constraints by drawing (...) on Craver’s work in Sect. 2.1, and argue for epistemic constraints by drawing on Bechtel’s work in Sect. 2.2. Along the way, I will argue that Bechtel and Craver actually agree with this claim. I argue that we should not take either kind of constraints to be fundamental, in Sect. 3, and close in Sect. 4 by considering what remains at stake in making a distinction between ontic and epistemic constraints on mechanistic explanation. I suggest that we should not concentrate on either kind of constraint, to the neglect of the other, arguing for the importance of seeing the relationship as one of integration. (shrink)

Although we all learn differently, we all need to be able to engage certain fundamental reasoning skills if we are to manoeuvre successfully through life—however we define success. Peirce's philosophy provides us with a framework for helping students (and ourselves) develop and hone the ability for making deliberate and well‐considered choices. For, embedded within Peirce's complete body of work is a design for thinking that provides a sturdy foundation for the development of three important learning capabilities. These capabilities are 1) (...) the ability to identify, compare, and contrast qualities, 2) the ability to perform analyses, and 3) the ability to interpret the meaning of signs. Although these capabilities may seem like the sort of skills that only older and academically inclined students can master, even young children and the intellectually challenged can learn to use them as well. Once teachers learn to develop their own intellectual potential by expanding these capabilities within themselves, they will be able to begin bringing about the development of these capabilities in their students. Once identified, developed, and applied to the mastery of educational skills and subject matter, these three fundamental learning capabilities (qualification, analysis, and interpretation), can form the foundation of a common‐sense approach to educational reform. Peirce asserts that good reasoning must be informed by ethical considerations, which in turn has been informed by the highest of aesthetic impulses. From this, we can extrapolate the importance that an educational model based upon Peirce's philosophy must place upon aesthetic and ethical considerations, as well as logical ones. Once fully understood, the philosophy of education embedded within Peirce's epistemology can revolutionize educational practices at all levels of learning. (shrink)

Why do ideas of how mechanisms relate to causality and probability differ so much across the sciences? Can progress in understanding the tools of causal inference in some sciences lead to progress in others? This book tackles these questions and others concerning the use of causality in the sciences.

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 , a federal law regulating private employer-sponsored employee benefit plans, was primarily designed for pension plans, but has had a profound impact on state health care reform efforts. ERISA's broad preemption language has been judicially interpreted to preclude states from most forms of regulation of employer health plans, including benefit design and incorporating employer expenditure requirements in state health reform financing. But since 1974, Congress has never seriously returned to reexamine several fundamental (...) questions: Should employers be required to offer or contribute to employee health coverage? Should ERISA preempt state efforts to take such actions? Or should ERISA incorporate more comprehensive regulation of health plans in these areas? Although the politics of ERISA preemption have thus far blocked federal reform, while allowing state reform activity to be simultaneously curtailed, new health reform efforts may force Congress to address these questions. (shrink)

Hrotsvit wrote stories, plays, and histories during the reign of Emperor Otto the Great. Twelve original essays survey her work, showing historical roots and contexts, Christian values, and a surprisingly modern grappling with questions of identity and female self-realization.

In this paper, we compare the mechanisms of protein synthesis and natural selection. We identify three core elements of mechanistic explanation: functional individuation, hierarchical nestedness or decomposition, and organization. These are now well understood elements of mechanistic explanation in fields such as protein synthesis, and widely accepted in the mechanisms literature. But Skipper and Millstein have argued that natural selection is neither decomposable nor organized. This would mean that much of the current mechanisms literature does not apply to the mechanism (...) of natural selection.We take each element of mechanistic explanation in turn. Having appreciated the importance of functional individuation, we show how decomposition and organization should be better understood in these terms. We thereby show that mechanistic explanation by protein synthesis and natural selection are more closely analogous than they appear—both possess all three of these core elements of a mechanism widely recognized in the mechanisms literature. (shrink)

Constitutivism explains norms in terms of their being constitutive of agency, actions, or certain propositional attitudes. However, the shmagency objection says that if we can be shmagents – like agents, minus the norm-explaining features of agency – we can avoid the norms, so the explanation fails. This paper extends this objection, arguing that constitutivists about practical norms suffer from it despite their recent attempts to solve it. The standard response to the objection is that it is self-defeating for agents to (...) become shmagents. I agree, but the response ignores the possibility of shmagents who consider whether to be agents while already standing outside agency. Another response says that we ought to be agents because agency is, in some sense, normatively valuable, and if so, we can explain norms in terms of this valuable form of agency. But then the norms that our constitutions are supposed to explain are underdetermined because it is unclear how much we ought to care about this value. I conclude that the shmagency objection has yet to be answered. (shrink)

Philosophy’s adversarial argumentation style is often noted as a factor contributing to the low numbers of women in philosophy. I argue that there is a level of adversariality peculiar to philosophy that merits specific feminist examination, yet doesn’t assume controversial gender differences claims. The dominance of the argument-as-war metaphor is not warranted, since this metaphor misconstrues the epistemic role of good argument as a tool of rational persuasion. This metaphor is entangled with the persisting narrative of embattled reason, which, in (...) turn, is linked to the sexism-informed narrative of the “man of reason” continually warding off or battling “feminine” unreason. (shrink)

In recent discussions of the Humean Theory of Motivation (HTM), several authors – not to mention other philosophers around the proverbial water cooler – have appealed to the simplicity of the theory to defend it. But the argument from simplicity has rarely been explicated or received much critical attention – until now. I begin by reconstructing the argument and then argue that it suffers from a number of problems. Most importantly, first, I argue that HTM is unlikely to be simpler (...) than even close competing theories, and second, it is unlikely that a plausible version of the theory will be very simple. Moreover, I argue that a convincing case for HTM is likely to have to show that it is more virtuous than defenders have done so far. (shrink)

Qualitative research poses ethical issues and challenges unique to the study of human beings. In developing the interpersonal relationship that is critical to qualitative research, investigator and participant engage in a dialogic process that often evokes stories and memories that are remembered and reconstituted in ways that otherwise would not occur. Ethical issues are raised when this relationship not only provides qualitative research data, but also leads to some degree of therapeutic interaction for the participant. The purpose of this article (...) is to examine some of the controversies inherent in the researcher's dilemma when this occurs, set within the context of a nursing caring theory (Swanson), and the International Council of Nurses Code of ethics for nurses, which provides guidance on global nursing practice. (shrink)

This book cuts through the complex writing style of the seminal philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce. It disentangles his ideas, explains them one by one, and then puts the pieces back together for application to educational issues. Accessible to a general readership, this study provides useful insights into Peirce's pragmatism for educators and philosophers.

In this paper, we examine what is to be said in defence of Machamer, Darden and Craver’s (MDC) controversial dualism about activities and entities (Machamer, Darden and Craver’s in Philos Sci 67:1–25, 2000). We explain why we believe the notion of an activity to be a novel, valuable one, and set about clearing away some initial objections that can lead to its being brushed aside unexamined. We argue that substantive debate about ontology can only be effective when desiderata for an (...) ontology are explicitly articulated. We distinguish three such desiderata. The first is a more permissive descriptive ontology of science, the second a more reductive ontology prioritising understanding, and the third a more reductive ontology prioritising minimalism. We compare MDC’s entities-activities ontology to its closest rival, the entities-capacities ontology, and argue that the entities-activities ontology does better on all three desiderata. (shrink)

Realists about group agency, according to whom corporate agents may have mental states and perform actions over and above those of their individual members, think that individual agents may switch between participating in individual and corporate agency. My aim is, however, to argue that the inescapability of individual agency spells out a difficulty for this kind of switching – and, therefore, for realism about corporate agency. To do so, I develop Korsgaard's notion of plight inescapability. On my take, it suggests (...) that individual agents are continuously faced with fully exercising their own individual agency (absent external limits at the time of its exercise). But then individual agents may not switch to acting as members of corporate agents, in the sense of taking on irreducible mental states that differ from their own. As it nevertheless is possible to participate fully in the action of a corporate entity, this incompatibility between individual and corporate mental states suggests a challenge for group agent realism. (shrink)

Women are underrepresented in managerial positions and company international assignments, in part due to gender discrimination. There is a lack of fair and just treatment of women in selection, assignment and promotion processes, as well as a lack of virtue shown by business leaders in not upholding the principle of assigning comparable women and men equally to positions in management and postings abroad. Female professionals, however, initiate their own expatriation more often than they are assigned abroad by their company, and (...) usually as often as men self-expatriate. What causes women to self-initiate expatriation? Women's proactivity, in part an attempt to redress the disadvantage they face in managerial career advancement, appears influential, as are career and family motivations. Indeed, during expatriation, women fare well in their career and they repatriate only at the same rate as men. Compared with men, however, women repatriate less often for career than for family reasons. On their return, despite their international experience, women do not gain as much of a financial return on their investment in self-expatriation as do men, suggesting that women may suffer unfair, non-meritorious treatment at home. Overall, self-initiated expatriation provides a new, gendered, social context for researching women's career advancement. The ethical issues associated with women's self-expatriation — a lack of fairness and justice in selection, assignment and promotion decisions, and a lack of virtue shown by business leaders in upholding fair and just human resource decisions by gender -suggest practical avenues to resolve these issues. (shrink)

Women are underrepresented in managerial positions and company international assignments, in part due to gender discrimination. There is a lack of fair and just treatment of women in selection, assignment and promotion processes, as well as a lack of virtue shown by business leaders in not upholding the principle of assigning comparable women and men equally to positions in management and postings abroad. Female professionals, however, initiate their own expatriation more often than they are assigned abroad by their company, and (...) usually as often as men self-expatriate. What causes women to self-initiate expatriation? Women’s proactivity, in part an attempt to redress the disadvantage they face in managerial career advancement, appears influential, as are career and family motivations. Indeed, during expatriation, women fare well in their career and they repatriate only at the same rate as men. Compared with men, however, women repatriate less often for career than for family reasons. On their return, despite their international experience, women do not gain as much of a financial return on their investment in self-expatriation as do men, suggesting that women may suffer unfair, non-meritorious treatment at home. Overall, self-initiated expatriation provides a new, gendered, social context for researching women’s career advancement. The ethical issues associated with women’s self-expatriation – a lack of fairness and justice in selection, assignment and promotion decisions, and a lack of virtue shown by business leaders in upholding fair and just human resource decisions by gender – suggest practical avenues to resolve these issues. (shrink)

The debate about the rational and the social in science has sometimes been developed in the context of a distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values. Paying particular attention to two important discussion in the last decade, by Longino and by McMullin, I argue that a fuller understanding of values in science ultimately requires abandoning the distinction itself. This is argued directly in terms of an analysis of the lack of clarity concerning what epistemic values are. I also argue that the (...) philosophical import of much of the feminist work in philosophy of science is restricted by any kind of strict adherence to the distinction. (shrink)

The Recursive Bayesian Net formalism was originally developed for modelling nested causal relationships. In this paper we argue that the formalism can also be applied to modelling the hierarchical structure of mechanisms. The resulting network contains quantitative information about probabilities, as well as qualitative information about mechanistic structure and causal relations. Since information about probabilities, mechanisms and causal relations is vital for prediction, explanation and control respectively, an RBN can be applied to all these tasks. We show in particular how (...) a simple two-level RBN can be used to model a mechanism in cancer science. The higher level of our model contains variables at the clinical level, while the lower level maps the structure of the cell's mechanism for apoptosis. (shrink)

Why be moral? According to constitutivism, there are features constitutive of agency, actual or ideal, the properties of which explain why moral norms are normative for us. I aim to investigate whether this idea is plausible. I start off critically. After defining constitutivism and outlining its attractions and problems (chapter 1), I discuss the theories of various features of agency that are supposed to ground morality according to the leading constitutivists in the literature. I find these theories wanting. They are (...) based on implausible assumptions about agency (chapter 2), and they fail to make sense of moral (and other) norms because the so-called shmagency objection, according to which we can shirk from our normative commitments by being ‘shmagents’ rather than agents, appears in new ways for them (chapter 3). Then I get more constructive. I defend a two-tiered form of constitutivism. The first tier captures practical rationality, and the second tier captures reasons for action. Starting with the first tier, I defend a Humean theory of agency (chapter 4) and add a principle of instrumental rationality to it (chapter 5). Appendices A and B supplement these chapters with replies to criticisms of the Humean picture. In chapters 6 and 7, I put this conception of agency to work to reach the second tier of the view. I start by defending a form of reasons internalism which treats practical reasons as grounded in the desires of ideal agents (chapter 6). Then I extend this theory to moral reasons, arguing – unexpectedly for a Humean – that we have universally prescriptive reasons to cooperate with other cooperative agents to satisfy our other respective desires (chapter 7). Hence, the constitutive features of ideal agency ground a morality of cooperation. I conclude by summarizing the case for constitutivism (chapter 8). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:POETRY AS THE NAMING OF THE GODS by Phyllis Zagano There have been many attempts to define poetry, and there is copious advice to would-be poets. Horace writes somewhere "Sit quod vis, simplex dumtaxat et unum" which can be comfortably rendered as "make anything at all, so long as it hangs together." The hanging together is the quality most writers point to as evidence of success: simply, it (...) works. What poetry does is the more complex question, since it is the understanding of its internal kinesis which allows for its definition. Essentially, it takes an object from objective reality (insofar as we can agree such exists) and creates an oxymoronic entity: a static consciousness. This is always seen in phenomenological terms, that is, it must be consciousness of something. The poet recognizes this in deference to the common consciousness and the common understanding of the everyday, by the use of metaphor, simile, and the other accouterments of the trade. Things must be as they appear, and they must be as they appear to some majority of the people, in order for the poet to argue his private vision with clarity. The analogy must have some common ground before it has meaning, before the "naming" takes place. For Martin Heidegger the activity of creating poetry, dichten, is not only an indispensable part of human life, it signals the humanness of the person. He has two principal essays on poetry which show how this activity ofdichten combines his concepts Dasein and Vorhandenheit (despite his later abandonment of Dasein for Lichtung). Heidegger's essay, "Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry," seeks to determine what is common to poetry, that is, what constitutes its essence. 340 Phyllis Zagano341 Another ofhis essays, "What are Poets For?" begins where the first ends (with considerations of Friedrich Hölderlin's "Bread and Wine"). Each essay comments on specific poems and somewhat imperfectly attempts a poetic theory in consonance with the rest of Heidegger's work. Since "Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry" concentrates more on poetic theory than "What are Poets For?," investigation of it will prove more helpful in understanding and appropriating Heidegger's contention that "The writing of poetry is the fundamental naming of the Gods____"· In his "Letter on Humanism," Heidegger calls language the "House of Being," while man is the "Shepherd of Being." This understanding ofthe function oflanguage and the methodweuse tocreateand recreate ourselves and our world recurs often in Heidegger's work. The essay, "Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry," stands as a seeking after what is common to poetry and, while Heidegger recognizes that Hölderlin's work is "only one among many others" (p. 294) and therefore cannot be used as the sole criterion to determine what constitutes poetry, he says that if what we recognize as the "essence of poetry" is present in a universal concept, then it ought to be able to be extrapolated from Hölderlin's poetry as well as from that of any other poet. What constitutes the "essence" of poetry, Heidegger argues, ought to be equally valid in every poem, but it is perhaps well to remind him that what ought to be equally valid in every poem is only equally valid in every poem which "hangs together," that is, every poem which performs its function as poem. Such insistence is ofcourse mere definition of terms, but in this case, without prior argument on the metaphysics of art, it is necessary. In any event, Heidegger concludes that the essence of Hölderlin's poetry is the "essence ofpoetry" itself (p. 294), and that what is common to poetry is found in it. While some critics might argue that Heidegger makes too much of Hölderlin here, the more dangerous weakness in this method of argumentation is the possibility that an idiosyncrasy might be mistaken for an essential element or, more probably, that too much will be generalized from this particular example or set of examples. The trained literary critic can cast a cold eye on such magnification of a single poet as the presenter of both form and content for the meaning of the "essence of poetry." In fact, it... (shrink)