Online research in philosophy

Reid offers an under-appreciated account of the primary/secondary quality distinction. He gives sound reasons for rejecting the views of Locke, Boyle, Galileo and others, and presents a better alternative, according to which the distinction is epistemic rather than metaphysical. Primary qualities, for Reid, are qualities whose intrinsic natures can be known through sensation. Secondary qualities, on the other hand, are unknown causes of sensations. Some may object that Reid's view is internally inconsistent, or unacceptably relativistic. However, a deeper understanding (...) shows that it is consistent, and relative only to normal humans. To acquire this deeper understanding, one must also explore the nature of dispositions, Reid's rejection of the theory of ideas, his distinction between sensation and perception, and his distinction between natural and acquired perceptions. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with a quality space model as an account of the intelligibility of explanation. I argue that descriptions of causal or functional roles (Chalmers Levine, 2001) are not the only basis for intelligible explanations. If we accept that phenomenal concepts refer directly, not via descriptions of causal or functional roles, then it is difficult to find role fillers for the described causal roles. This constitutes a vagueness constraint on the intelligibility of explanation. Thus, I propose to (...) use quality space models to develop a systematic way of studying different modalities of perception and feelings, e.g., visual and auditory perception, pain, and emotion, that can reveal some structural relations among these modalities. It might turn out that topological explanation can be more intelligible than causal explanation in this case. I discuss two accounts of a quality space for color vision (Clark, 2000; Rosenthal, 2010) and propose how to construct a quality space for pain. Daniel Kostic is Associated Researcher at Berlin School of Mind and Brain. (shrink)

As the quality movement in health care now enters its fourth decade, the language of quality is ubiquitous. Practitioners, organizations, and government agencies alike vociferously testify their commitments to quality and accept numerous forms of governance aimed at improving quality of care. Remarkably, the powerful phrase ‘‘quality of care’’ is rarely defined in the health care literature. Instead it operates as an accepted and assumed goal worth pursuing. The status of evidence-based medicine, for instance, hinges (...) on its ability to improve quality of care, and efforts are made by both proponents and detractors to unpack the contents and outcomes of evidence-based practice while the contents of ‘‘quality of care’’ are presumed to be understood. Because the goals of medicine are far from obvious, this paper investigates the neglected term, ‘‘quality of care,’’ in an effort to understand what it is that health care practices are so uncritically assumed to be striving for. Finding lack of consensus on the terminology in the quality literature, I propose that the term operates rhetorically by way of persuasive appeal (and lack of descriptive meaning). Unsatisfied that ‘‘quality of care’’ operates as a mere buzzword in morally contentious debates over resource allocation and duties of care, I implore health care communities to go beyond mere commitments to quality and, instead, to focus attention on the difficult task of specifying what counts as quality care within an economically constrained health care system. (shrink)

The pursuit of happiness is a long-enshrined tradition that has recently become the cornerstone of the American Positive Psychology movement. However, “happiness” is an over-worked and ambiguous word, which, it is argued, should be restricted and only used as the label for a brief emotional state that typically lasts a few seconds or minutes. The corollary proposal for positive psychology is that optimism is a preferable stance over pessimism or realism. Examples are presented both from psychology and economics that illustrate (...) the dangers of optimism, and in which better outcomes can occur with a pessimistic stance. A more sophisticated approach is then presented in which, in relation to well-being and quality of life, neither optimism nor pessimism is seen as inherently better than the other, but, rather, in which psychological flexibility may contribute optimally to health and well-being. (shrink)

The present paper proposes a theoretical model of institutional quality of a higher education institution (HEI) which, in addition to the internal dimensions of quality, incorporates also the external dimension, i.e. the outcomes dimension. This dimension has been neglected by the quality standards and models examined in our paper. Furthermore, the standards and models analyzed consider stakeholders as one of the quality factors of a HEI. The stakeholders’ perspective is seen as a lens through which stakeholders (...) define, control and assess the quality of a HEI. The proposed model therefore gives stakeholders greater significance compared to the dimensions of institutional quality of a HEI. The model has been validated from the employers’ perspective. On the basis of 339 completed questionnaires or a 39.74 % response rate we concluded that outcomes constitute the most important dimension of institutional quality of a HEI from the perspective of employers in Slovenia. The outcomes dimension is followed, in descending order, by the non-financial resources and inputs, sustainable development, value chain, and, finally, the financial resources and inputs dimensions. The results of the study have shown that of the 44 quality factors of a HEI the following data are of key importance to employers: information on the participation of students in practical training, achievements of graduates at the workplace, implementation of a HEI’s research achievements in practice, graduate employability, and a HEI’s responsiveness to the demands and changes in the environment. (shrink)

One of the fundamental aims of nursing is to safeguard or promote patients' "quality of life." Perspectives on Quality of Life examines existing ways of defining the concept and argues that nurses need to adopt a fresh approach, which more accurately reflects patients' concerns and helps them to develop practical ways of promoting the well-being of people in their care. Part One provides an analysis of statistical approaches to quality of life, including social indicators, the Quality (...) Adjusted Life Year (QALY), and the medical outcomes literature. Part Two proposes an alternative, qualitative approach to organizing care, which respects the patients' choice and individuality. Part three presents the findings of new research into the quality of life of older people in hospital wards. (shrink)

Together with large biobanks of human samples, medical registries with aggregated data from many clinical centers are vital parts of an infrastructure for maintaining high standards of quality with regard to medical diagnosis and treatment. The rapid development in personalized medicine and pharmaco-genomics only underscores the future need for these infrastructures. However, registries and biobanks have been criticized as constituting great risks to individual privacy. In this article, I suggest that quality with regard to diagnosis and treatment is (...) an inherent, morally normative requirement of health care, and argue that quality concerns in this sense may be balanced with privacy concerns. (shrink)

Poor quality medical care is sometimes attributed to physicians’ unwillingness to act on evidence about what works best. Evidence-based performance standards (EBPSs) are one response to this problem, and they are increasingly employed by health care regulators and payers. Evidence in this instance is judged according to the precepts of evidence-based medicine (EBM); it is probabilistic, and the randomized controlled trial (RCT) is the gold standard. This means that EBPSs suffer all the infirmities of EBM generally—well rehearsed problems with (...) the external validity of research findings as well as the inferential leap from study results in the aggregate to individual patient care. These theoretical weaknesses promise to have a practical impact on the care of patients. To avoid this, EBPSs should be understood as guidelines indicative of average effectiveness rather than standards to be applied in every case. (shrink)

Frank Jackson formulated his knowledge argument as an argument for dualism. In this paper I show how the argument can be modified to also establish the irreducibility of the secondary qualities to the properties of physical theory, and ultimately.

Our perceptual systems make information about the world available to our cognitive faculties. We come to think about the colors and shapes of objects because we are built somehow to register the instantiation of these properties around us. Just how we register the presence of properties and come to think about them is one of the central problems with understanding perceptual cognition. Another problem in the philosophy of perception concerns the nature of the properties whose presence we register. Among the (...) perceptible properties are colors and shapes, for example, and there is a long philosophical tradition of drawing and refusing to draw metaphysical distinctions between them. This paper makes a claim about the information-theoretic approach to perceptual cognition in order to argue for a fundamentally epistemological distinction between colors and shapes. What makes shapes and colors seem so different to us is how we carry information about their presence around us. In particular, we can come to know more about the shapes on the basis of perceiving them than we can come to know about the colors. One interesting feature of how this distinction is drawn is that it partially vindicates Locke’s claim that our ideas of primary qualities like shapes resemble them in ways our ideas of colors do not. (shrink)

The social quality approach (SQA) can be considered as a specific collective representation that has the possibilities to be used as a policy instrument, thus as a method of social, cultural and economic change. The SQA contains important conditional factors: socioeconomic security, social cohesion, social inclusion and social empowerment. These factors seem to be in the first place objectives of social and economic change. In reference to the constructionalist factors, this article also analyses the specific nature of collective representations (...) and their many variations. They are regarded as fundamental elements in social quality studies. In the last part, this study assesses the relevance of social quality studies and their usefulness in relation with various issues in a democratic society or in societies that are on the road towards a democratic future. (shrink)

Global governance, central to international rule-making, is rapidly evolving; thus, there is a need for a way to evaluate whether institutions have the capacity to address the problems of the contemporary era. Current methods of evaluating the democratic quality of contemporary governance are closely linked to legitimacy, about which there are competing definitional theories. This article uses a theoretical approach based around “new“ governance and the environmental policy arena to argue that contemporary governance is best understood as social-political interaction (...) built on “participation as structure“ and “deliberation as process“, with the level of interaction ultimately determining legitimacy. It presents a new arrangement of the accepted attributes of “good“ governance using a set of principles, criteria and indicators, and relates these to the structures and processes of governance. The implications and application of the analytical framework are also discussed. (shrink)

This article concerns challenges arising from the development of economic globalization as the so-called “creator of a new world order“ and its tendency to deteriorate the foundation of a global order in terms of social justice, solidarity, and human dignity. As main point of referral functions, the report of the “Commission Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi cs“ on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress that refers to the European Commission's strategy of development, acknowledges the need for these values. On (...) behalf of this reflection, this article is based on the recent outcomes of the exploration of these social quality issues in a recent published book by the Foundation on Social Quality. The article argues that indicators are needed in order to understand the effects of societal changes in response to the current economic globalization, which increases inequality and the fragmentation of the labor market. (shrink)

This article argues that the social quality approach can be usefully applied to studying “models of elderly care“ that enhance the wellbeing of the elderly and empower them to participate in social activities. Examining three cases in Japan and another three cases in e Netherlands, the study identifies actors, institutions and processes that have provided services for the elderly, highlighting the importance of history and culture in influencing the “social“ of the elderly. The article deals with a range of (...) opportunities and possibilities for optimizing care for the elderly, both as individuals and as a group, through promoting their social inclusion, social cohesion, socio-economic security and social empowerment. Grounded in community networks, as well as in social and intergenerational interaction, these “models“ demonstrate how care-givers, including nurses and family members, are also empowered in these processes. These discussions, reflecting empirical reality and conceptual insights, provide the basis of sustainable welfare policies that improve the social quality of the elderly. (shrink)

In contemporary European policy discussion, “innovation“ is a term popularly used for finding responses to the pressure of global competition. In various forms of innovation, the accent is mainly given to technical and business innovation but less to social innovation. This article studies the issue of social innovation with reference to the local practice in Hangzhou city, which aims to strengthen the life quality of citizens in this city. These practices develop various forms of inter-sectoral collaboration, resulting in numerous (...) “common denominator subject“ (CDS) groups that are promoted by the local government. These practices follow the principles of cooperation and partnership, and thus develop a corporatist mechanism for urban development. Through discussion of these practices this article explores the nature and the features of these CDS groups, and evaluates its meaning for social innovation, local administration, life quality and social quality. (shrink)

Sensibility theorists such as John McDowell have argued that once we appreciate certain similarities between moral values and secondary qualities, a new meta-ethical position might emerge, one that avoids the alleged difficulties with moral intuitionism and non-cognitivism. The aim of this paper is to examine the meta-ethical prospects of this secondary-quality analogy. Of particular concern will be the extent to which McDowell’s comparison of values to secondary qualities supports a viewpoint unique from that of the moral intuitionist. Once we (...) disentangle the various metaphysical and epistemological strands of McDowell’s analogy, McDowell’s position might appear closer to moral intuitionism than initially supposed. This discussion will also help clarify the intended meaning of the secondary-quality analogy, as well as its significance for ethics more generally. (shrink)

How many people should there be? Can there be overpopulation: too many people living? I shall present a puzzling argument about these questions, show how this argument can be strengthened, then sketch a possible reply.1 1. QUALITY AND QUANTITY Consider the outcomes that might be produced, in some part of the world, by two rates of population growth. Suppose that, if there is faster growth, there would later be (...) more people, who would all be worse off. These outcomes are shown in Fig. I. (shrink)

: Interpretations of Kant's transcendental idealism have been dominated by two extreme views: phenomenalist and merely epistemic readings. There are serious objections to both of these extremes, and the aim of this paper is to develop a middle ground between the two. In the Prolegomena, Kant suggests that his idealism about appearances can be understood in terms of an analogy with secondary qualities like color. Commentators have rejected this option because they have assumed that the analogy should be read in (...) terms of either a Lockean or a Berkelean account of qualities such as color, and have argued, rightly, that neither can provide the basis for a coherent interpretation of Kant's position. I argue that the account of color that the analogy requires is one within the context of a direct theory of perception, as opposed to Locke's representative account. Using this account of color, the secondary quality analogy enables us to explain how appearances can be mind-dependent without existing in the mind. (shrink)

In this paper I clarify what Newton could have meant when he insisted that gravity is a real force. I interpret Newton’s speculative treatment of gravity as a relational, accidental quality of matter that arises through what Newton calls “the shared action” of two bodies. I argue that when Newton drafted the first edition of the Principia in the mid 1680s, he thought that (at least a part of) the cause of gravity is the disposition inherent in any individual (...) body, but that the force of gravity is the actualization of that disposition; a necessary condition for the actualization of the disposition is the actual obtaining of a relation between two bodies having the disposition. The cause of gravity is not essential to matter because God could have created matter without that disposition. Nevertheless, at least a part of the cause of gravity inheres in individual bodies and were there one body in the universe it would inhere in that body. On the other hand, the force of gravity is neither essential to matter nor inherent in matter, because (to repeat) it is the actualization of a shared disposition. A lone part-less particle would, thus, not generate a gravity field. (shrink)

A classical moral defense of profit seeking as the social responsibility of business in a competitive market is examined. That defense rests on claims about the directness of relationships between (a) profit seeking activity and standards of living and (b) standards of living and the quality of life. Responses to the classical argument tend to raise doubts about the directness of the first relationship. This essay challenges the directness of the second relationship, argues that the classical argument is invalid, (...) and claims that an alternative description of the social responsibility of business is entailed by the classical premisses. (shrink)

There are not enough solid organs available to meet the needs of patients with organ failure. Thousands of patients every year die on the waiting lists for transplantation. Yet there is one currently available, underutilized, potential source of organs. Many patients die in intensive care following withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment whose organs could be used to save the lives of others. At present the majority of these organs go to waste.In this paper we consider and evaluate a range of ways (...) to improve the number and quality of organs available from this group of patients. Changes to consent arrangements (for example conscription of organs after death) or changes to organ donation practice could dramatically increase the numbers of organs available, though they would conflict with currently accepted norms governing transplantation.We argue that one alternative, Organ Donation Euthanasia, would be a rational improvement over current practice regarding withdrawal of life support. It would give individuals the greatest chance of being able to help others with their organs after death. It would increase patient autonomy. It would reduce the chance of suffering during the dying process. We argue that patients should be given the choice of whether and how they would like to donate their organs in the event of withdrawal of life support in intensive care.Continuing current transplantation practice comes at the cost of death and prolonged organ failure. We should seriously consider all of the alternatives. (shrink)

When a mental state is conscious – in the sense that there is something it is like for the subject to have it – it instantiates a certain property F in virtue of which it is a conscious state. It is customary to suppose that F is the property of having sensory quality. The paper argues that this supposition is false. The first part of the paper discusses reasons for thinking that unconscious mental states can have a sensory (...) class='Hi'>quality, for example in cases of absent-minded perception. If unconscious mental states can have a sensory quality, then sensory quality is an insufficient condition for consciousness. The second part of the paper argues that there are even better reasons to think that sensory quality is an unnecessary condition for consciousness. The idea is that mental states can be conscious even when they lack sensory quality, for example, in the case of certain conscious propositional attitudes. In the third part of the paper, an alternative to the rejected supposition, drawn from the phenomenological tradition, is offered: that consciousness is a matter of implicit self-awareness, rather than of sensory quality. According to this alternative, a mental state is conscious when, and only when, it involves implicit self-awareness. (shrink)

During the past three decades, there has been an ongoing debate on the quality of health care. Defining quality is an important part of it. This paper offers a review of definitions and a conceptual analysis in order to understand and explain the differences between them. The analysis results in a semantic rule, expressing the meaning of quality as an optimal balance between possibilities realised and a framework of norms and values. This rule is postulated as a (...) formal criterion of meaning, e.g. when (correctly) applied people understand each other. The rule suits the abstract nature of the term quality. Quality doesn't exist as such. It is constructed in an interaction between people. This interaction is guided by rules in order to transfer information, e.g. communicate on quality. The rule improves our ability to discuss the debate on quality and to develop a theory grounding actions such as quality assurance or quality improvement. (shrink)

This paper examines a model of income and quality of life that controls the love of money, job satisfaction, gender, and marital status and treats employment status (full-time versus part-time), income level, and gender as moderators. For the whole sample, income was not significantly related to quality of life when this path was examined alone. When all variables were controlled, income was negatively related to quality of life. When (1) the love of money was negatively correlated to (...) job satisfaction and (2) job satisfaction was positively related to both income and quality of life, income was negatively related to quality of life for full-time, high-income, and male employees. When these two conditions failed to exist, income was not related to quality of life for part-time, median- or low-income, and female employees. This model provides new insights regarding the impact of the love of money and job satisfaction on the income–quality of life relationship. (shrink)

I argue that Mill introduced the distinction between quality and quantity of pleasures in order to fend off the then common charge that utilitarianism is ‘a philosophy for swine’ and to accommodate the (still) widespread intuition that the life of a human is better, in the sense of being intrinsically more valuable, than the life of an animal. I argue that in this he fails because in order to do successfully he would have to show not only that the (...) life of a human is preferable to that of an animal on hedonistic grounds, but also that it is in some sense nobler or more dignified to be a human, which he cannot do without tacitly presupposing non-hedonistic standards of what it means to lead a good life. (shrink)

In this paper three questions concerning quality of life in medicine and health care are analysed and discussed: the motives for measuring the quality of life, the methods used in assessing it, and the definition of the concept. The purposes of the study are to find an ethically acceptable motive for measuring the quality of life; to identify the methodological advantages and disadvantages of the most prevalent current methods of measurement; and to present an approach towards measuring (...) and defining the quality of life which evades the difficulties encountered and discussed. The analysis comprises measurements both in the clinical situation concerning individual patients and in research concerning whole populations.Three motives are found for evaluating the quality of human life: allocation of scarce medical resources, facilitating clinical decision making, and assisting patients towards autonomous decision making. It is argued that the third alternative is the only one which does not evoke ethical problems. (shrink)

Gilbert Harman (1990) seeks to defend psychophysical functionalism by articulating a representationalist view of the qualities of experience. The negative side of the present paper argues that the resources of this representationalist view are insufficient to ground the evident distinction between perception and (mere) thought. This failure makes the view unable to support the uses to which Harman wishes to put it. Several rescuing moves by other representationalists are considered, but none is found successful. Part of the difficulty in Harman's (...) (...) work is that he does not adequately specify the view he rejects. The positive aim of the present paper is to provide a robust intrinsic quality account of experience that offers advantages in comparison with Harman's view, and that plainly does not fall to any of the arguments he advances. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to describe three different attempts, which have been made by philosophers, to define what quality of life is; and to spell out some of the difficulties that faces each definition. One, Perfectionism, focuses on the capacities that human beings possess: capacities for friendship, knowledge and creative activity, for instance. It says that the good life consists in the development and use of these capacities. Another account, the Preference Theory, urges that satisfying one's (...) preferences, or desires, is what improves one's quality of life. And a third account, Hedonism, sees life-quality as consisting in the enjoyment of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. The paper describes and evaluates objections to each of these views, thereby displaying their weaknesses and strengths. Since no view comes out as the right one there is a choice to be made. At the end of the paper it is being discussed how well each of the views cohere with different methodologies used in quality of life research. Also it is suggested that considerations about what the research is to be used for are relevant. (shrink)

Abstract: The 'special composition question' is this: given objects O1, . . . , On, under what conditions is there an object O, such that O1, . . . , On compose O? This paper explores a heterodox answer to this question, one that casts composition as a secondary quality. According to the approach I want to consider, there is an O that O1, . . . , On compose (roughly) just in case a normal intuiter would, under normal (...) conditions, intuit that there is. (shrink)

A well known paragraph in Mill’s ‘Utilitarianism’ has standardly been misread. Mill does not claim that if some pleasure is of ‘higher quality’, then it will be (or ought to be) chosen over the pleasure of lower quality regardless of their respective quantities. Instead he says that if some pleasure will be chosen over another available in larger quantity, then we are justified in saying that the pleasure so chosen is of higher quality than the other. This (...) assertion is unproblematic. (shrink)

This article proposes and empirically tests a theoretical framework incorporating Reidenbach and Robin’s (J Bus Ethics 10(4):273–284, 1991 ) conceptual model of corporate moral development. The framework is used to examine the relation between governance and business ethics, as proxied by diversity management (DM), and financial reporting quality, as proxied by the magnitude of earnings management (EM). The level of DM and governance quality are measured in accordance with the ratings of Jantzi Research (JR), a leading provider of (...) social and governance research for institutional investors. This DM score is part of an index developed by JR that investment managers use to integrate DM criteria into their investment decisions. As expected, a negative relation between corporate DM development and financial reporting quality is found while controlling for other factors known in the literatures on governance and accounting choices to affect earnings quality. Despite some caveats presented in conclusion, this study contributes to the ethics, governance, and financial reporting literatures by studying the dynamics between governance and ethics in the prevention of EM. (shrink)

The implementation of international human rights law has traditionally been undermined by the dichotomy between universalism and cultural relativism. Some groups regard human rights as more reflective of other culture’s and are unwilling to subscribe to them. One response to this is to enable groups to take co-ownership of human rights. Quality Circles based on institutions and technology, and the collaboration they encourage, provide one such means for doing so. What is required is for states to facilitate rather than (...) undermine and censor these processes. Human Rights Quality Circles at different levels represent one way in which the cultural relativism and universalism division can be addressed, particularly in an ever-globalising world. (shrink)

Frank Jackson formulated his knowledge argument as an argument for dualism. In this paper I show how the argument can be modified to also establish the irreducibility of the secondary qualities to the properties of physical theory, and ultimately "secondary quality eliminativism"- the view that the secondary qualities are physically uninstantiated.

This study examines the impact of the strength of an accounting firm’s ethical environment (presence and reinforcement vis-à-vis the presence of a code of conduct) on the quality of auditor judgment, across different levels of audit expertise. Using a 2 × 2 full factorial ‹between subjects’ experimental design, with audit managers and audit seniors, the impact of different levels of strength of the ethical environment on auditor judgments was assessed with a realistic audit scenario, requiring participants to make judgments (...) in respect of an inventory writedown. Based on prior research, and as hypothesized, participants possessing greater auditing experience made higher quality technical judgments. While there were no significant differences between the quality of audit judgments made by participants in the stronger ethical environment, over-all results indicate that managers are more sensitive to differences in the strength of the ethical environment than seniors. This is consistent with the hypothesis, and with prior research which suggests that the impact of the code will only be significant if it has been bilaterally internalized by individuals. This has important implications for accounting firms and regulators, given that the International Standard on Quality Control 1, requires the communication and reinforcement of ethical principles as part of firms' quality control processes. It suggests that firms will need to carefully consider the means by which they communicate and reinforce ethical principles, as it is possible to differentially impact auditors of different rank. (shrink)

The article will focus on the implicit values dimension that is evident in research findings concerning quality teaching. Furthermore, it sets out to demonstrate that maximizing the effects of quality teaching requires explicit attention to this values dimension and that this can be achieved through a well-crafted values education program. Evidence for this latter claim will come from international studies as well as from the Australian Government's Values Education Program and, especially from the Values Education Good Practice Schools (...) Project Stage 1 Report (DEST, 2006). (shrink)

What this book is about -- Theoretical perspectives : modernity and postmodernity, power and ethics -- Constructing early childhood institution : what do we think it is? -- Constructing the early childhood institution : what do we think they are for? -- Beyond the discourse of quality to the discourse of meaning making -- The stockholm project : constructing a pedagogy that speaks in the voice of the child, the pedagogue and the parent -- Pedagogical documentation : a practice (...) for reflection and democracy -- Minority directions in the majority world : threats and possibilities. (shrink)

Two major management philosophies of the 20th Century, scientific management and quality management, are often contrasted. Scientific management is seen as a system that focuses on task efficiencies whereas quality management is described as a collaborative, people-centered process approach to continuous improvement. This paper examines the ethical implications of these diverse approaches, particularly in the way information is used to decide which employees to lay off in times of economic difficulty. The paper uses case examples of quality (...) management as teaching tools to place the conduct of managers within utilitarian, deontological and justice approaches to ethical decision making. Finally, it suggests that a third system, open-book management, may help deal with this ethical dilemma, though not without risk. (shrink)

Substitute decision-makers for severely disabled neonates who can be kept alive but who will require constant medical interventions and will die at the latest in their teens are faced with a difficult decision when trying to decide whether to keep the infant alive. By and large, the primary focus of their decision-making centers on what is in the best interests of the newborn. The best-interests criterion, in turn, is importantly conditioned by quality-of-life considerations. However, the concept of quality (...) of life is logically and ethically different for patients with a developing as opposed to a developed awareness. Unfortunately, this difference is ignored by current quality-of-life considerations, there are no quality-of-life measures that take this difference into account, and decision-making proceeds entirely without acknowledging this fact. This note outlines why this is a problem and why there is a need for a new set of tools that incorporates this distinction if the substitute decision-makers are to apply the best-interest criterion in a meaningful way. (shrink)

This paper reflects on quality assessment and performance evaluation in higher education, namely by analysing the insufficient link between those two aspects. We start by reviewing the current state of the art regarding different processes and mechanisms of quality assessment and performance evaluation and discuss some of the major issues regarding the implementation of some of them. In particular, we analyse the current limitations regarding data collected, available and publicised on the performance of HEIs and the problems those (...) limitations bring to a fair evaluation of higher education. Through this analysis we intend to contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms of evaluation in higher education and the way these may lead to the promotion of better quality assessment practices and institutional management. (shrink)

This article argues that certain philosophically devised quality control parameters should guide approaches to interdisciplinary education. We sketch the kind of reflections we think are necessary in order to produce epistemologically responsible curricula. We suggest that the two overarching epistemic dimensions of levels of analysis and basic viewpoints go a long way towards clarifying the structure of interdisciplinary validity claims. Through a discussion of how best to teach basic ideas about numeracy in Mind, Brain, and Education, we discuss what (...) it means for an interdisciplinary curriculum to respect both the minds of students and the complexity of the subject matter. (shrink)

Quality in clinical research may be defined as compliance with requirements together with credibility and reliability of the data obtained. Sponsors usually apply Quality Management Systems (QMS) to ensure, control, maintain, and improve quality. These systems encompass several preventive measures, tools, and controls. Standard QMS applied by clinical research sponsors may be based on ISO 9000.

A broad-scale quantification of the measure of quality for scholarship is under way. This trend has fundamental implications for the future of academic publishing and employment. In this essay we want to raise questions about these burgeoning practices, particularly how they affect philosophy of education and similar sub-disciplines. First, details are given of how an ‘impact factor’ is calculated. The various meanings that can be attached to it are scrutinised. Second, we examine how impact factors are used to make (...) various ‘high stakes’ academic decisions, such as hiring and promotion, funding of research projects and how much money is to be awarded to a particular area. By focusing on a particular practice, problems with the application of the metric generally are outlined. Finally, we offer some general observations about the unintended consequences and other problems arising from the widespread use of this metric, including attempts to ‘game the system’. We argue that the use of impact factors increasingly shapes the kind of topics and issues scholars write on, their choices of methodology, and their choice of publication venues for their work. Technical measures and mechanisms tend to ‘colonise’ the qualitative and professional judgments that must also be part of the process of evaluation, and for which bibliometrics alone cannot offer a substitute. (shrink)

Quality of life is part of many different discourses and has been used in a variety of meanings ranging from purely descriptive (as in some medical contexts) to distinctly evaluative meanings (as in some social science and political contexts). The paper argues that there are good normative reasons to make the concept as descriptive as possible at least in its medical applications and, furthermore, to reconstruct it in a thoroughgoing subjectivist way, making the reflexive self-evaluation of the subject him- (...) or herself the ultimate standard. Attention is drawn to the fact that only few of the measures of quality of life applied in present-day medicine correspond to these requirements. (shrink)

During much of the past century, it was widely believed that phonemes--the human speech sounds that constitute words--have no inherent semantic meaning, and that the relationship between a combination of phonemes (a word) and its referent is simply arbitrary. Although recent work has challenged this picture by revealing psychological associations between certain phonemes and particular semantic contents, the precise mechanisms underlying these associations have not been fully elucidated. Here we provide novel evidence that certain phonemes have an inherent, nonarbitrary emotional (...) quality. Moreover, we show that the perceived emotional valence of certain phoneme combinations depends on a specific acoustic feature--namely, the dynamic shift within the phonemes’ first two frequency components. These data suggest a phoneme-relevant acoustic property influencing the communication of emotion in humans, and provide further evidence against previously held assumptions regarding the structure of human language. This finding has potential applications for a variety of social, educational, clinical, and marketing contexts. (shrink)

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of requests formercy killings by patients and their relatives. Under certain conditions,the patient may prefer death to a life devoid of quality. In contrast to thosewho uphold this quality of life approach, those who hold the sanctity oflife approach claim that life has intrinsic value and must be preservedregardless of its quality. This essay describes these two approaches,examines their flaws, and offers a golden path between the (...) two extremepositions.We discuss the halachic and the secular views, arguing for a balancebetween the sanctity of life and the quality of life. We argue that, indeed,such a balance exists in practice, and that life is important, but it is not sacred. Life can be evaluated, but quality of life is not the solecriterion. (shrink)

Standard versions of the requirement of informed consent state that patients who are offered to enter a clinical trial of a medical procedure should be informed about risks and possible benefits of this procedure (compared to available alternatives) in order to facilitate a rational decision whether or not to participate. However, in many real cases where new medical procedures are to be clinically tested for the first time the information available for such communication to prospective patients is very scarce, vague (...) and/or uncertain. This phenomenon is illustrated by the clinical introduction of new procedures in reproductive medicine, such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Regarding such procedures, it has ben argued that, in such cases, the quality of the available information may be too low for the obtaining of informed consent to be possible, even if it is successfully communicated. Others, instead, holds that informed consent may always be obtained regardless of the quality of the available information. Unfortunately, the standard litterature on informed consent give no clue as to which of these interpretations is correct. This issue is explored by connecting the concept of informed consent to ethical ideas of respect for autonomy and ideas of rational decision making. It is argued, first, that low quality of available information regarding the risks and possible benefits of a medical procedure may indeed make the obtaining of informed consent from patients to undergo this procedure impossible even in theory. However, it is also argued that whether or not this is the case must be relativized to the actual needs and deires of individual patients. Thus, regarding one and the same procedure, informed consent may be impossible to obtain from some patients due to the low quality of the available information regarding this procedure, but still be possible to obtain from other patients. (shrink)

We investigate a phenomenon which we have experienced as common when dealing with an assortment of Italian public and private institutions: people promise to exchange high-quality goods and services, but then something goes wrong and the quality delivered is lower than had been promised. While this is perceived as ‘cheating’ by outsiders, insiders seem not only to adapt to, but to rely on this outcome. They do not resent low-quality exchanges; in fact, they seem to resent high- (...) class='Hi'>quality ones, and are inclined to put pressure on or avoid dealing with agents who deliver high quality. The equilibrium among low-quality producers relies on an unusual preference ranking which differs from that associated with the Prisoners’ Dilemma and similar games, whereby self-interested rational agents prefer to dish out low quality in exchange for high quality. While equally ‘lazy’, agents in our low-quality worlds are oddly ‘pro-social’: for the advantage of maximizing their raw self-interest, they prefer to receive low-quality goods and services, provided that they too can in exchange deliver low quality without embarrassment. They develop a set of oblique social norms to sustain their preferred equilibrium when threatened by the intrusion of high quality. We argue that high-quality collective outcomes are endangered not only by self-interested individual defectors, but by ‘cartels’ of mutually satisfied mediocrities. (shrink)

For stakeholders, such as investors and lenders, to appropriately assess a company's financial performance, the reported accounting earnings must closely reflect the economic reality of the organization's financial activity throughout the reporting period. The degree to which reported earnings capture economic reality is called earnings quality. Managers have an ethical obligation to report high quality earnings to interested stakeholders in a timely matter. Accounting research has identified conditions within an organization, such as management compensation contracts and pending litigation (...) that can impact earnings quality. We extend this line of research by exploring whether another characteristic of an organization, gender diversity in senior management, influences the quality of reported earnings. Companies with more women in senior management are found to be more profitable and have higher stock returns after initial public offerings than those with fewer women in the management ranks. Our findings suggest that the improved bottom line for companies with more women senior executives is not produced through the management of earnings or lower quality earnings. Instead, earnings quality is positively associated with gender diversity in senior management. (shrink)

The term "quality of life" has a long history in the bioethics literature. It is usually used in one of two contexts: in resource allocation discussions in the hope of arriving at an objective measure of the worth of an intervention; and in end-of-life discussions as a concept that can justify the forgoing of life-sustaining treatment. In both contexts, the term has valid uses as it is meant to measure the efficacy of a treatment. However, the term has the (...) unfortunate rhetorical problem that it often seems to be a judgment on the life of a human being. As such, it is highly inflammatory. We suggest that a return to a rhetoric that suggests a judgment on the treatment rather than the person is needed. (shrink)

Only in recent years have the German bioethical and biopolitical debates begun to decline due to rationalization concerning stem cell research or the pre-implantation diagnosis related to the ethical status of the beginning of human life. This is due to the fact that in these contexts we have to ask whether quality of life assessment is ethically acceptable in principle. A fundamental premise in the current debate is that quality of life assessment and human dignity are incompatible. In (...) this paper four different standards of quality of life assessment are distinguished (the naturalistic, the social, the interpersonal and the personal standard). Then an interpretation of human dignity is developed which rests on the essential feature of human beings to develop the capacity for personal autonomy. Finally it is argued that human dignity in this sense is compatible with quality of life assessments based on the personal and the interpersonal standard. (shrink)

This study explores the linear logic between consumer ethical beliefs (CEBs) and consumer unethical behavior (CUB) in a Chinese context. A relational view helps fill the belief–behavior gap by exploring the moderating role of relationship quality in reducing CUBs. Specifically, when consumers are more receptive to a set of actions that may be deemed inappropriate by moral principles, they are more likely to engage in unethical behaviors. However, when consumers perceive their misconduct as possibly damaging to the relationship developed (...) with the seller, they tend to refrain from unethical behaviors. CEBs and relationship quality also combine to affect unethical behaviors. Although consumers find the misconduct acceptable according to their ethical beliefs, they become less likely to conduct the behavior if they have a close relationship with the seller. The results contribute to a better understanding of the simplistic logic that connects CEBs and their unethical behaviors and shed light on how close relationships with consumers help contain CUBs. (shrink)

Whereas previous studies have criticized low-quality products for inadequate safety, this paper considers only safe products, and it examines the ethics of designing and selling low-quality products. Product quality is defined as suitability to a general purpose. The duty that companies owe to consumers is summarized in the Consumer-Oriented Process principle: “to place an increase in the consumer’s quality of life as the primary goal for producing products.” This principle is applied in analyzing the primary ethical (...) justifications for low-quality products: availability and applicability. Finally, a low-quality product should be designed afresh, not by altering an existing high-quality product. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that one of the main objectives ofgovernment expenditure on health care is to generate health. Sincehealth is a function of both length of life and quality of life, thequality-adjusted life-year (QALY) has been developed in an attempt tocombine the value of these attributes into a single index number. TheQALY approach – and particularly the decision rule that healthcare resources should be allocated so as to maximise the number of QALYsgenerated – has often been equated with (...) the utilitarian philosophyof maximising `the greatest happiness of the greatest number'. Thispaper considers the extent to which the measurement and aggregation ofQALYs really is utilitarian by developing a new taxonomy in order toclassify utilitarianism and the different aspects of the QALY approach.It is shown that the measurement of QALYs is consistent with a number ofdifferent moral positions and that QALYs do not have to be aggregatedaccording to the maximisation rule. Therefore it is inappropriate tonecessarily equate QALYs with utilitarianism. It is shown thatmuch turns on what in principle the QALY represents and howin practice it can be operationalised. The paper highlights thecategory confusion that is often present here and suggests possibleavenues for future theoretical and empirical research. (shrink)

A remarkable surge in efforts to assess the quality of life of patients has occurred in recent years in medical research. Philosophical discussions of these developments have focused, on the one hand, on epistemological reservations about the plausibility of measuring quality of life and, on the other hand, on moral and ethical qualms about the meaning of life conveyed in such assessments. Whilst providing an important note of caution, such critiques fail to recognise two basic principles of (...) class='Hi'>quality of life in medical research. Firstly it is intended to provide understanding about groups and categories of patients rather than individuals. Secondly the purpose of such research is to produce generalisations about the relative costs and benefits of specific health care interventions rather than absolute judgements regarding the quality of life of patients per se. Selecting a good quality of life measure for a clinical trial requires balancing criteria such as validity with practical feasibility. Such measures will play an increasingly central role in providing research evidence to improve health care. (shrink)

It is often argued that scientific developments in the area of biomedicine call for new ethical paradigms. Given the inadequacies of the traditional “sanctity-of-life ethics” (SLE), many have argued for a quality-of-life ethics (QLE), based on a non-speciesistic theory ofthe value of life. In this paper, I claim that QLE cannot account for the normativity of moral judgments, which can be explained only within the context of a theory of practical rationality: the peculiarity of moral normativity calls for an (...) ethics based on respect for rational creatures. I then go on to argue that the ethics of respect for persons (ERP) is not equivalent to SLE; that it can ground the moral protection of human “marginal cases”; that it does not rely on a scientifically implausible notion of human nature; and that it is not vulnerable to the charge of speciesism. Lastly, I suggest that ERP is a strictly philosophical interpretation of the Judeo-Christian moral tradition, and that is a better interpretation than SLE. If these assertions are correct, then the necessity of a new moral paradigm is seriously undermined. (shrink)

An emerging ethical philosophy in marketing is developing. This philosophy is based on quality-of-life studies which are becoming an important topic of research in behavioral and social sciences (basic and applied research). This paper addresses the QOL orientation in marketing from a decision-making perspective. Specifically, this paper shows how marketers can engage in strategic marketing planning guided by the QOL concept.

In recent decades there has been increasing demand for and considerable efforts to conduct cross-disciplinary research. However, assessment of research quality in such endeavours still is often based on mono-disciplinary criteria and not seldom carried out by reviewers without strong cross-disciplinary experience. The authors suggest a two-pronged approach to cross-disciplinary research evaluation. One part should comprise an individual review of all the disciplines involved based on their mono-disciplinary sets of criteria. The other part should be a separate evaluation of (...) the cross-disciplinary aspects based on the review of “problem formulation”, “integration and scope of the disciplines”, “parts and the whole”, “practical managerial aspects” and “the applied aspects” (when relevant). The pros and cons of implementing this approach in a stepwise manner or simultaneously is discussed. It is suggested that funding agencies develop more fair sets of review procedures for cross-disciplinary research and show willingness to allocate extra funds and time to such forms of research that sometimes are regarded as relatively more “risky” than conventional mono-disciplinary types. (shrink)

Failings in patient care and quality in NHS Trusts have become a recurring theme over the past few years. In this paper, we examine the Care Quality Commission’s Guidance about Compliance : Essential Standards of Quality and Safety and ask how NHS Trusts might be better supported in fulfilling the regulations specified therein. We argue that clinical ethics committees (CECs) have a role to play in this regard. We make this argument by attending to the many ethical (...) elements that are highlighted in the Commission’s Regulations and by providing practical examples of how CECs can (and in some case already do) provide ethics support to health professionals and trusts. Although CECs have been traditionally associated with case consultation, i.e., discrete problems caused by individual circumstances, in the previous 10 years the literature suggests that clinical ethics services have become more integrated into the life of the health care organization and are increasing construed as proactive agents of systematic change. We provide evidence from a recent survey of UK clinical ethics services that this trend is present in the UK. (shrink)

What is the appropriate division of power between public officials and private individuals? The straightforward answer to this question, it seems, is that an official should have a power if she employs it (morally) better compared to a private individual. However, Alon Harel argues that this answer is misguided, or at least partially, since there are some decisions—mainly concerning the employment of violence—that should be made and implemented only by public officials regardless of the (relative) moral quality of the (...) decision or action. In this comment I consider and criticize this argument. (shrink)

Science is about evaluation, persuasion and logic. In scientific debate, scientists collectively evaluate theories by persuading each other in regard to epistemological qualities such as deduction and fact. There is, however, a flaw intrinsic to evaluation-by-persuasion: an individual can attempt and even succeed in persuading others by asserting that their reasoning is logical when it is not. This is a problem since, from an epistemological perspective, it is not always transparent nor obvious when a persuasive assertion is actually deductively warranted. (...) Empirical research upon reasoning, indeed, supports the notion that assertions are often strongly persuasive for reasons other than their logic. The unreliability of the link between persuasion and logic raises an important methodological issue: how do scientists debate in a manner such that claimed but false “logical” arguments are ignored, and only warranted arguments get to determine theory preference? This need for soundness in debate is a particularly important epistemological concern in cases where the deductive qualities of persuasive argument are not overt, and so cannot be directly checked --such as when they are founded upon Bayesianism probabilistic coherence. The argument presented here is that scientists make the qualities of probabilistic and nonprobabilistic inference sound (and so warranted) through how they organize their debate. Scientists, I argue, abide by “epistemological quality control practices” that limit the persuasive power of unsound arguments upon theory evaluation. Examples of such debate quality control practices are publicness, clarity, openness to criticism, and the collective promotion of attempts at theory conjecture and refutation. Methodologically, these quality control practices are extralogical since they do not directly provide scientific inferences with additional logical warrantedness. They function instead in science to generate an epistemological evaluative environment in which persuasiveness is due, and only due, to logic (i.e. sound). Their methodological role is therefore to make what is warranted de papyri (in our principles of rationality – epistemologically competence) also what is persuasive in evaluation and debate de cognitio (in our exercise of such principles – epistemologically performance). Several limitations exist upon the soundness of Bayesian inferential coherence – surreptitious revision, logical omniscience, uncertain evidence, old evidence, and new hypotheses. Bayesianism, as a result, can only exist if it is pursued in a debate that is regulated by quality control practices over its inferences (for instance, practices that ensure there is autonomy of inference, diligence of inference, probity of evidence, auditability of inference and assiduousness of conjecture). In this context, one can reinterpret Popper’s concern with criticism, openness, refutation and conjecture, as deriving not (as he thought) directly from the needs of logic, but, indirectly, from the need of scientists to create epistemological soundness. (shrink)

This article presents a systematic literature review on quality management and social responsibility (focusing on ethical and social issues). It uses the literature review to identify the parallels between quality management and social responsibility, the extent to which qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods are used, the countries that have contributed most to this area, and how the most common quality management practices facilitate social responsibility. The literature review covers articles about quality management and social responsibility (focusing (...) on ethical and social categories) based on a computer search in three databases, namely ABI Inform, Emerald and Science Direct, and includes articles dealing with the subject that were found in the lists of references of the articles found in the primary search, as well as a search in six top management journals. The results show (1) the journals most likely to publish this type of article; (2) the range of qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods used; (3) the most productive countries in this field; (4) the parallels between quality management and social responsibility; and (5) how the most common quality management practices facilitate ethical behaviour and social aspects. (shrink)

In this paper a corporate social responsibility audit is developed following the underlying methodology of the quality award/excellence models. Firstly the extent to which the quality awards already incorporate the development of social responsibility is examined by looking at the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the European Quality Award. It will be shown that the quality awards do not yet include ethical aspects in relation to social responsibility. Both a clear definition of social responsibility (...) and an improved audit instrument are required. A definition and an audit instrument are developed which stimulate movement in that direction and help organisations to reflect on their position in relation to social responsibility. (shrink)

User satisfaction as the ultimate goal of recreation planning and management is contested by a discussion of human adaptability which makes it possible for people to adjust to a progressively lower quality of recreation opportunities without loss of satisfaction. Recreation planning and management based on such satisfaction levels are then shown to perpetuate a deterioration in the quality of recreationenvironments themselves. To arrest this trend, a new goal for recreation planning and management is proposed based on the equation (...) of quality of opportunity with diversity of environmental settings. The article concludes with a discussion of this goal in light of the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum (ROS) concept developed recently by members of the United States Forest Service. (shrink)

The main measure of quality of life is well-being. The aim of this article is to compare insights about well-being from contemporary philosophy with the practice-related opinions of palliative care professionals. In the first part of the paper two philosophical theories on well-being are introduced: Sumner’s theory of authentic happiness and Griffin’s theory of prudential perfectionism. The second part presents opinions derived from interviews with 19 professional palliative caregivers. Both the well-being of patients and the well-being of the carers (...) themselves are considered in this empirical exploration. In the third part the attention shifts from the description of “well-being” to prescriptions for the promotion of well-being. Our interview data are analysed in light of the theories of Sumner and Griffin for clues to the promotion of “well-being.” The analysis (1) underscores the subject-relativity of well-being, (2) points out that values that are considered important in every life still seem to be relevant (at least in palliative care practice), and (3) shows the importance of living a certain sort of life when aiming to enhance dying patients’ well-being. (shrink)

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an overall management philosophy that includes a set of principles whose application is increasing. In fact, the business world and public institutions, such as hospitals, universities or city councils, are implementing quality programs. However, despite the wide diffusion of TQM, the success rate of this type of initiative is limited and the results, heterogeneous. Academics and professionals are therefore trying to identify the keys that explain the success or failure of this kind of (...) initiative. Different explanations have been given, but most of the literature agrees that managerial commitment, implication and leadership are indispensable elements in a successful implementation of TQM.Nevertheless, a study on the specialised literature shows a terminological confusion between managerial commitment and managerial leadership. Is it the same to have a committed manager in the implementation process as to have a leader of the implementation process? The author of this paper defends the thesis that "commitment" and "leadership" are not synonymous, and states that only managerial leadership is able to promote and sustain profound organisational changes. (shrink)

This paper reviews the published empirical evidence concerning journal peer review consisting of 68 papers, all but three published since 1975. Peer review improves quality, but its use to screen papers has met with limited success. Current procedures to assure quality and fairness seem to discourage scientific advancement, especially important innovations, because findings that conflict with current beliefs are often judged to have defects. Editors can use procedures to encourage the publication of papers with innovative findings such as (...) invited papers, early-acceptance procedures, author nominations of reviewers, structured rating sheets, open peer review, results-blind review, and, in particular, electronic publication. Some journals are currently using these procedures. The basic principle behind the proposals is to change the decision from whether to publish a paper to how to publish it. (shrink)

: This paper defends the commonsense view that judgments about the quality of human achievement in the arts can be true or false and shown to be so by objective reasoning, as against both subjectivist views and, more particularly, the view that they can be quantitatively expressed and scientifically demonstrated. It focuses on Charles Murray's recent attempt to rank-order the great achievers in an objective manner, arguing that it is fundamentally flawed, especially in confusing the quantification of references with (...) an argument for quality. Any attempt to justify a judgment relating to the quality of achievement must involve expertise in the sense, at least, of a thorough understanding of the nature of the activity in question. Nothing in Murray's lengthy book in fact relates to justification for any of the judgments. The paper concludes that the trappings of science do not make for science; that expertise in a field is necessary for making sound judgments in that field; that the broader the judgment, the harder it is to justify; that objectivity is to be distinguished from precision (as truth is from certainty); and that understanding of what counts as literature (art, sculpture, etc.) is an indispensable part of arguing for the quality of a work or an artist. (shrink)

The use of wireless, electronic, medical records and communications in the prehospital and disaster field is increasing. Objective: This study examines the role of wireless, electronic, medical records and com- munications technologies on the quality of patient documentation by emergency field responders during a mass-casualty exercise.

Two types of guanxi have a close association with auditor independence in China: firm-level connections derived from state ownership and personal connections developed through management affiliations with external auditors. This article examines the effects of these two types of connection and their joint effect on audit quality. We find that state ownership and management affiliations with the external auditor both increase the probability of receiving a clean audit opinion in China. Furthermore, the probability increment brought by management affiliations for (...) non-state-owned enterprises (NSOEs) is greater than that for state-owned enterprises (SOEs). These results suggest that state ownership and management affiliations are two important types of connection that impair auditor independence, and that management affiliations are of greater importance to private-sector firms than to SOEs. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine a puzzle that emerges from what J. P. Moreland has called the traditional realist view of quality instances. Briefly put, the puzzle is to figure out how quality instances fit into the overall structure of a concrete particular, given that the traditional realist view of quality instances prima facie seems incompatible with what might be called the traditional realist view of concrete particulars. After having discussed the traditional realist views involved and the (...) puzzle that emerges from their juxtaposition, I propose an alternative realist view of quality instances which resolves the puzzle. In short, the puzzle is solved by treating the distinction between a concrete particular and its quality instances as a distinction of reason, and by adopting the view that the individuating element of a concrete particular must also serve as its unifying element – a view which Moreland, one of traditional realism’s most stalwart contemporary defenders, rejects. (shrink)

The 2005 Report on Social Responsibility and Health of the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee (Ibc) proposes a new approach to implementing the right to healthcare and suggests a number of Courses of Action to be followed in various fields. Based on the latest available data, we intend to present an overview of the current state of European health systems in two of those fields—decision-making procedures and quality assurance in health care—and to attempt a comparison of the situation with the (...) Report’s provisions, in order to pave the way for the identification of what still has to be done to bridge international recommendations and the reality of policy and practice in Europe’s health care. (shrink)

The quality of working life and the quality of business ethics cannot be separated. In the private sector, the profit priority motivates most employer behavior, which can be characterized as mean and rationalistic. Management-initiated quality of life programs are usually disguised attempts to achieve a speedup. From the union perspective, fair wages and working conditions are synonymous with the quality of working life, and unions pursue these through collective bargaining, which is essentially adversarial in both the (...) public and private sectors. AFSCME's approach is to negotiate for better staffing, career ladders, and other workplace improvements that contribute to a worker's sense of dignity and satisfaction. (shrink)

This paper investigates under what conditions a good corporate social responsibility (CSR) can compensate for a relatively poor corporate ability (CA) (quality), and vice versa. The authors conducted an experiment among business administration students, in which information about a financial services company’s CA and CSR was provided. Participants indicated their preferences for the company’s products, stocks, and jobs. The results show that for stock and job preferences, a poor CA can be compensated by a good CSR. For product preferences, (...) a poor CA could not be compensated by a good CSR, at least when people thought that CA is personally relevant to them. Furthermore, a poor CSR could be compensated by a good CA for product, stocks, and job preferences. (shrink)

This study examines the relationship between corporate commitment to business ethics and financial reporting quality. We posit that companies with a higher level of ethical commitment exhibit better quality financial reporting than those with a lower level of ethical commitment. Consistent with our prediction, we find that companies with a higher level of ethical commitment are engaged in less earnings management, report earnings more conservatively, and predict future cash flows more accurately than those with a lower level of (...) ethical commitment. We also find that corporate commitment to business ethics has perpetuating effects on future financial reporting quality. (shrink)

into treatment decisions is viewed as pernicious by some who claim that these presuppose the Nazi position that those who are ‘devoid of value’ must be exterminated. ‘Quality of life’ judgments are said to deny the equal value of human beings and to assume that some lives are not ‘worthy to be lived’. It is argued that the analogy misconstrues the senses of ‘value’ and ‘quality’ employed by Naziism and a ‘quality of life’ position. This leads the (...) analogizers incorrectly to claim that both views assimilate the value of human beings to the value of their condition. A ‘quality of life’ position is grounded in recognition of the logical priority of the value of human beings as self-reflective evaluators and agents, which is a matter of kind, not degree. The ‘quality of life’ is explicated in terms of the standards of well-being of individuals, which are derived from their basic human needs and their individual priorities and goals. The use of ‘quality of life’ judgments is morally required to ensure that considerations of justice and individual autonomy govern treatment decisions. The purported analogy misconstrues the views of both the Nazi position and a ‘quality of life’ position and so is seriously misdirected. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Are the categories used to study the social world and acting on it real or conventional ? An empirical answer to that question is given by an analysis of the debates about the quality of statistics produced by the European National Institues of statistics in the 1990s. Six criteria of quality were then specified: relevance, accuracy, timeliness, accessibility, comparability and coherence. How do statisticians and users of statistics deal with the tension produced by their objects being both real (...) (they exist before their measurement) and conventionally constructed (they are in a way, created by these conventions)? In particular, the technical and sociological distinction between the criteria of relevance and accuracy implies a realistic interpretation, desired by users, but that is nonetheless problematic. (shrink)

Mere possession of generic professional credentials cannot be used as justification of necessary and sufficient skill to perform in a forensic role. Case examples are used to illustrate problems of both competence and quality that sometimes accompany mental health clinicians to the witness stand.

At least since the publication of Isaiah Berlin's famous essay "Two Concepts of Liberty" nearly half a century ago, political philosophers have argued vigorously over the relative merits of "positive" and "negative" accounts of freedom. Matthew Kramer writes squarely within the negative-liberty tradition, but he incorporates a number of ideas that are quite often associated with theories of positive liberty. Much of The Quality of Freedom is devoted to elaborating the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of particular (...) freedoms and unfreedoms; however, the book's cardinal objective is to establish the measurability of each person's overall freedom and of each society's aggregate freedom. On the one hand, Kramer contends that the existence of any particular instance of liberty or unfreedom is a matter of fact that can be confirmed or disconfirmed without any reliance on evaluative or normative considerations. On the other hand, he argues that the extent of each person's overall freedom or unfreedom cannot be ascertained entirely in the absence of evaluative assumptions. By combining those two positions and developing them in detail, Kramer pits himself against all positive accounts of liberty and most negative accounts. In the course of so doing, he aims to demonstrate the rigorous measurability of overall liberty - something that many writers on freedom have casually dismissed as impossible. Although Kramer concentrates principally on constructing a systematic analysis of sociopolitical freedom, he engages critically with the work of many of the leading contemporary writers on the topic. (shrink)

Health care organizations are constantly seeking ways to improve quality of care and one of the often-posed solutions to deliver ‘good care’ is reflexivity. Several authors stress that enhancing the organizations’ and caregivers’ reflexivity allows for more situated, and therefore better care. Within quality improvement initiatives, devices that guarantee quality are also seen as key to the delivery of good care. These devices do not solely aim at standardizing work practices, but are also of importance in facilitating (...) reflexivity. In this article, we study how quality improvement devices position the relationship between situated reflection and standardization of work processes. By exploring the work of Michel Callon, Michael Lynch, and Lucy Suchman on reflexivity in work practices, we study the development and introduction of the Care Living Plan. This device aimed to transform care organizations of older people from their orientation towards the system of care into organizations that take a client-centred approach. Our analysis of the construction of specific forms of reflexivity in quality devices indicates that the question of reflexivity does not need to be opposed to standardization and needs to be addressed not only at the level of where reflexivity is organizationally situated and who gets to do the reflecting, but also on the content of reflexivity, such as what are the issues that care workers can and cannot reflect upon. In this paper we point out the theoretical importance of a more detailed empirical study of the framing of reflexivity in care practices. (shrink)

Narrative is increasingly being recognised as an important tool both to manage and understand organisations. In particular, narrative is recognised to have an important influence on the perception of environmental issues in business, a particularly contested area of modern management. Management literature is, however, only beginning to develop a framework for evaluating the quality and legitimacy of narratives. Due to the highly fluid nature of narratives, the traditional notion of truth as reflecting ' objective reality' is not useful here. (...) In this article, an alternative approach that evaluates a narrative in two stages is developed. First, a horizontal reading investigates the surface of the narrative, its textual features, instrumental devices and its integrity as a text, to assess the quality of a narrative. Second, a more philosophical or vertical reading makes explicit the underlying value assumptions that author and reader bring to the writing and reading of the narrative to assess the narrative's claim to legitimacy. The framework is then tested against a narrative on the relationship between business and environment as espoused by a supply chain manager of a UK-based manufacturing company. (shrink)

Howe, Davidson & Sloboda's focus on learning has important implications because the amount and quality of training are relevant to all learners, not just those acquiring exceptional abilities. In this commentary, I discuss learning goals as an indicator of learning quality, and suggest that all learners can be guided towards more effective learning by shifting their learning goals.

We propose using a bi-axial map as a heuristic for categorizing different dynamics involved in the relationship between quality and popularity. The east–west axis represents the degree to which an agent’s decision is influenced by those of other agents. This ranges from the extreme western edge, where an agent learns individually (no outside influence), to the extreme eastern edge, where an agent is influenced by a large number of other agents. The vertical axis represents how easy or difficult it (...) is for an agent to discern the relative quality of available choices. When a case study is located on the map, it becomes easier to select the range of tools to use for understanding and predicting the relation between quality and popularity. (shrink)

(2013). The Authority of Competence and Quality as Extrinsic. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 78-99. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2012.689752.

A number of factors must be considered in facility location decisions. Recent research on job design suggests that the effects jobs may have on quality of work life and quality of life in general should be considered in facility location decisions in addition to other normal factors. The present study was designed to examine quality of work life and quality of life factors of residents in a low income and low education area. The intent was to (...) determine what types of jobs might have the most positive effect on people in this type of region. Data were collected from 409 households in a low income/education region. The results showed that people from this region were as satisfied with their quality of work life and quality of life as people in other regions with better jobs, higher incomes, and better general life situations. Results are discussed in light of facility location decisions and types of jobs having the most positive impact. (shrink)

Habitat fragmentation produces isolated patches characterized by increased edge effects from an originally continuous habitat. The shapes of these patches often show a high degree of irregularity: their shapes deviate significantly from regular geometrical shapes such as rectangular and elliptical ones. In fractal theory, the geometry of patches created by a common landscape transformation process should be statistically similar, i.e. their fractal dimensions and their form factors should be equal. In this paper, we analyze 49 woodlot fragments (Pinus sylvestris L.) (...) in the Belgian Kempen region to study the direct relationship between a transformation process and the concomitant patch geometry. Although the fractal dimension of the woodlots is scattered (i.e. they are not statistically similar), the perimeter-area relation of the fragments is characterized by a single, ‘dimension-like’ exponent. This exponent suggests a certain shape homogeneity among the patches, which is confirmed by the absence of hierarchical levels associated with sharp increases of the fractal dimension at scale transitions. The interaction of different natural (soil factor, vegetation type) and anthropogenic (afforestation, urbanization) processes during patch development is assumed to have generated this feature. Comparison of the area and perimeter fractal dimension with an ecological index for habitat quality, the interior-to-edge ratio, shows that the fractal dimension is suitable for predicting interior habitat presence, which is more likely for patches with smooth perimeters and compact areas. The ratio of the area to the perimeter fractal dimension confirms this observation, with high values for high interior-to-edge ratios, characteristic for regularly shaped patches. (shrink)

The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 requires audit committees of public companies’ boards of directors to install an anonymous reporting channel to assist in deterring and detecting accounting fraud and control weaknesses. While it is generally accepted that the availability of such a reporting channel may reduce the reporting cost of the observer of a questionable act, there is concern that the addition of such a channel may decrease the overall effectiveness compared to a system employing only non-anonymous reporting options. The (...) rationale underlying this concern involves the would-be reporter’s likelihood of reporting, the seriousness with which the organization treats an anonymous report, and the organization’s ability to thoroughly follow-up the report. Thus, we explore the extent to which the availability of an anonymous reporting channel influences intended use of non-anonymous reporting channels. Further, in response to Sarbanes–Oxley and the environment of financial scandals that led to its passage, many firms are strengthening their internal audit departments, and providing them with greater independence from upper management’s direct control. Accordingly, our examination tests whether the intended use of the internal audit department as an internal reporting channel is greater when the internal audit department is of “high” versus “low” quality. Finally, the study investigates intended reporting behavior across three different cases (e.g., settings). Results show that the existence of an anonymous channel does reduce the likelihood of reporting to non-anonymous channels, that generally the internal audit department quality does not affect reporting to non-anonymous channels, and that case-setting affects the type of channel to be used. Implications from the study are discussed. (shrink)

This paper examines the effects of moral philosophy and ethnocentrism on quality of life orientation in international marketing. It also provides a cross-cultural comparison of ethical values between Koreans and Americans. International quality-of-life (IQOL) orientation refers to marketers' disposition to make decisions to enhance the well-being of consumers in foreign markets while preserving the well-being of other stakeholders. It is hypothesized that marketers' moral philosophy and ethnocentrism influence the development of marketers' IQOL. Specifically, the higher the IQOL orientation (...) of international managers, the higher their moral idealism, the higher their moral relativism, and the lower their ethnocentrism. Also, it is hypothesized that American managers are likely to score higher on moral relativism but lower on moral idealism compared to their Korean counterparts. Also, Korean managers are expected to be more ethnocentric than American managers. Data were collected from business professionals who enrolled in professional MBA courses both from the U.S. and Korea. The results provided support for the hypothesized relationships. Managerial implications of these relationships are discussed. (shrink)

Corporate diversity initiatives have neither yielded higher financial returns for companies nor created significantly greater equity and equality of outcome for socially disadvantaged groups within organisations. There has been a systematic failure of diversity initiatives, as the strategic business importance of diversity has been avoided. Researchers argue that effective diversity management is dependent upon appropriate structures and systems, not upon human resource management training alone. This article discusses the impact of the design, introduction and application of the ‘Diversity Quality (...) Cycle’. This model allows for the embedding of the values of equality of opportunity and cultural diversity throughout core business functions, and for positive long-term change. A mixed-method approach was taken; Participative Action Research is the main methodology employed, within which quantitative data were generated, analysed and interpreted. The main case study organisation is a Further Education College in the West of England. (shrink)

I argue that the issues of foodquality, in the most general sense includingpurity, safety, and ethics, can no longer beresolved through ``normal'' science andregulation. The reliance on reductionistscience as the basis for policy andimplementation has shown itself to beinadequate. I use several borderline examplesbetween drugs and foods, particularly coffeeand sucrose, to show that ``quality'' is now acomplex attribute. For in those cases thesubstance is either a pure drug, or a bad foodwith drug-like properties; both are marketed asif they were (...) foods. An example of theinadequacy of old ways of thinking is obesity,whose causes are as yet outside the purview ofmedicine, while its effects constitute anepidemic disease. The new drug/food syndromeneeds a new sort of science, what we call``post-normal.'' This is inquiry at the contestedinterfaces of science and policy; typically itdeals with issues where facts are uncertain,values in dispute, stakes high, and decisionsurgent. With the perspective of post-normalscience, we can better understand some keyissues. We see that ``safety'' is different from``risk,'' being pragmatic, moral, and recursive.Also, we understand that an appropriatefoundation for regulation and ethics is not somuch ``objectivity'' as ``awareness.'' In an agewhen ``consumers'' are becoming concerned``citizens,'' the relevant science must becomepost-normal. (shrink)

Israel Scheffler's ground-breaking essay, On Human Potential, deserves to be more widely known among educational policy analysts, especially in light of the popularity in educationist circles of W.E. Deming's organizational philosophy known as Total Quality Management . In what follows,I argue that the heuristical value of Deming's perscriptions are entailed in Scheffler's On Human Potential. More importantly, I argue, where Deming's work falls short, especially in being naive about the human condition, Scheffler's analysis provides a foundation for management theory (...) in education that insures the flourishing of an optimal number of contributing participants. In fashioning these ideas, Scheffler brings pioneering thinking to the emerging fields of management studies generally and educational policy specifically. (shrink)

Quality is usually considered to be an attribute of an object, its degree of excellence or, more subjectively, fitness for use. Stemming from this point of view, the goal of most ranking systems is to find efficient ways of discovering, or rather uncovering, the quality of specific products or services. However, from a social psychological perspective it seems that the notion of quality belongs predominantly to the realm of social relationships. We argue that quality exists mainly (...) between the users of an object, not within the object itself, and its functions are predominantly social, i.e. promoting interactions, creating a shared reality, or building social relationships. Quality is constructed in social interactions and used as a token therein. In the present paper we outline the social functions of quality, and discuss the implications of this perspective for designing more useful recommendation systems. (shrink)