Leadership has become a more popular term than management, even though it is understood that both phenomena represent important organizational behaviors. This paper focuses on empathy in leadership, and presents the findings of a study conducted among business students over the course of 3 years. Finding that empathy consistently ranked lowest in the ratings, the researchers set out to discover the driving motives behind this invariable trend, and conducted a second study to obtain opinions about possible underlying factors. The paper (...) presents the findings of both studies, as well as literature reviews on the differences between management and leadership, a historical overview of leadership, a reflection of 21st century leadership, the ongoing debate on the effects of corporate psychopaths on ethical performance, and scholars’ perception on empathy in corporate leadership. The findings indicate the need for a paradigm shift in corporations as well as business schools in regards to leaders’ required skills, and suggest a proactive approach from business faculty to change the current paradigm. (shrink)
A brief review of recent experimental work by T.D. Wilson et al. on the disruptive effects of deliberation provides an opportunity for extending an alternative interpretation of those effects first offered in this journal [D.L. Holt (1993) Rationality is hard work: an alternative interpretation of the disruptive effects of thinking about reasons, Philosophical Psychology, 6, 251-266]. I therefore propose a thought experiment in which the favored parameters of much social psychological experimentation, including the specific parameters of Wilson et al., (...) are reversed. (shrink)
Although speech categories are defined by multiple acoustic dimensions, some are perceptually weighted more than others and there are residual effects of native-language weightings in non-native speech perception. Recent research on nonlinguistic sound category learning suggests that the distribution characteristics of experienced sounds influence perceptual cue weights: Increasing variability across a dimension leads listeners to rely upon it less in subsequent category learning (Holt & Lotto, 2006). The present experiment investigated the implications of this among native Japanese learning English (...) /r/-/l/ categories. Training was accomplished using a videogame paradigm that emphasizes associations among sound categories, visual information, and players’ responses to videogame characters rather than overt categorization or explicit feedback. Subjects who played the game for 2.5 h across 5 days exhibited improvements in /r/-/l/ perception on par with 2–4 weeks of explicit categorization training in previous research and exhibited a shift toward more native-like perceptual cue weights. (shrink)
Laws of nature have been traditionally thought to express regularities in the systems which they describe, and, via their expression of regularities, to allow us to explain and predict the behavior of these systems. Using the driven simple pendulum as a paradigm, we identify three senses that regularity might have in connection with nonlinear dynamical systems: periodicity, uniqueness, and perturbative stability. Such systems are always regular only in the second of these senses, and that sense is not robust enough to (...) support predictions. We thus illustrate precisely how physical laws in the classical regime of dynamical systems fail to exhibit predictive power. *R. G. Holt gratefully acknowledges the support of the National Center for Physical Acoustics at Oxford, Mississippi, and the Office of Naval Research. (shrink)
Abstract This paper introduces the controversy surrounding active voluntary euthanasia and describes the legal position on euthanasia and assisted suicide in the UK. Findings from studies of the nurses' attitudes to euthanasia from the national and international literature are reviewed. There are acknowledged difficulties in carrying out research into attitudes to euthanasia and hence the review of findings from the published studies is followed by a methodological review. This methodological review examines the research design and data collection methods used in (...) the published studies, problems with understanding definitions of euthanasia and the measurement of attitudes. The paper concludes with a discussion of how research in this area may influence nursing practice. (shrink)
Ethics has been identified as a significant issue among those in leadership positions. The purpose of this research was to assess the ethics and integrity of leaders in today's manufacturing environment as perceived by their employees. This study included a total of 10 manufacturing companies in the United States. A total of 59 surveys were used to calculate data for this study. A demographic survey and the Perceived Leader Integrity Scale (PLIS) were used to collect data from respondents. The research (...) addressed the following question: To what degree are leaders in the manufacturing industry considered "low ethical," "moderate ethical," and "high ethical" on the PLIS? It was determined through descriptive data analysis that the majority of supervisors in this study, as rated by their employees were highly ethical. Male and female employees equally rated their supervisors as highly ethical. Employees in the age category (18-25) rated their supervisors higher ethically than other age groups in the study. However, considering ethnicity categories, African-Americans scored their supervisors lower ethically than the European-American category. The education level of the employees did not provide any significant findings in rating their supervisors. (shrink)
THE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS CHAPTER I THE RENAISSANCE OF LOGIC WITHIN the last two decades the scholarly world has witnessed a revival of interest in logic ...
Pharmaceutical advertising is one of the most important kinds of advertising that can have a direct impact on the health of a consumer. Hence, this necessitates the fact that it is essential for advertisers of such products to take special care and additional responsibility when devising the promotional strategies of these products. In reality, it has been observed that pharmaceutical product advertisers often promoted their products to achieve their own goals at the potential risk of having an adverse effect on (...) the consumerÕs health. This type of advertising is most often seen in over-the-counter drug product advertisements, and not as often in the case of prescription drug advertisements, which is relatively new. This article analyzes various purposes of advertising pharmaceutical products and also the potential problems that arise from the way pharmaceutical products have quite frequently been promoted. (shrink)
Authenticity as an ideal is construed in general as an expression of existentialist unhappiness with the perceived dehumanization of man in modern society. Existential journalism can be seen as rejection of the demands of conformism and compromise of personal convictions that many journalists face. Ethically, existential journalism calls on journalists to live authentic lives, as private individuals as well as in their profession. This means to resist external pressures and to choose to follow a path that can be defended by (...) the individual journalist's inner conscience. Existential journalism, in general, has been more debated in the field of mass media ethics than authenticity. Authenticity is, however, a contested concept, and this essay applies a critical discussion about authenticity as an ethical guide to the field of journalism. Weaknesses in the idea of existential authenticity problematize the existential construal of authenticity as a route to heightened ethical awareness for contemporary journalists. (shrink)
Over the past decade, the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) has increased solvability of violent crimes by linking evidence DNA profiles to known offenders. At present, an in-depth analysis of the United States National DNA Data Bank effort has not assessed the success of this national public safety endeavor. Critics of this effort often focus on laboratory and police investigators unable to provide timely investigative support as a root cause(s) of CODIS' failure to increase public safety. By studying a group (...) of nearly 200 DNA cold hits obtained in SFPD criminal investigations from 2001–2006, three key performance metrics (Significance of Cold Hits, Case Progression & Judicial Resolution, and Potential Reduction of Future Criminal Activity) provide a proper context in which to define the impact of CODIS at the City and County level. Further, the analysis of a recidivist group of cold hit offenders and their past interaction with law enforcement established five noteworthy criminal case resolution trends; these trends signify challenges to CODIS in achieving meaningful case resolutions. CODIS' effectiveness and critical activities to support case resolutions are the responsibility of all criminal justice partners in order to achieve long-lasting public safety within the United States. (shrink)
Recently, the ethical rather than just the economic resonance of entrepreneurship has attracted attention with researchers highlighting entrepreneurship and ethics as interwoven processes of value creation and management. Recognising that traditional normative perspectives on ethics are limited in application in entrepreneurial contexts, this stream of research has theorised entrepreneurship and ethics as the pragmatic production of useful effects through the alignment of public–private values. In this article, we critique this view and use Kant’s concept of reflective judgement as discussed in (...) his Critique of the Power of Judgement to theorise ethical entrepreneurial practice as the capacity to routinely break free from current conventions through the imaginative creation and use of self-legislating maxims. Through an analysis of the narratives of 12 entrepreneurs, we suggest there are three dimensions to reflective judgement in entrepreneurial contexts: (1) Social Performance; (2) Public Challenge and; (3) Personal Autonomy. Whilst the entrepreneurs were alive to the importance of commercial return, their narratives demonstrated further concern for, and commitment to, standards that they rationally and imaginatively felt as being appropriate. In our discussion, we integrate the findings into existing theoretical categories from entrepreneurship studies to better appreciate ethics within the context of value creation. (shrink)
The first is that we are wrong to suggest that the mainstream is no longer limited to a restrictive orthodoxy of beliefs and assumptions that discourages dissenting voices. In developing his argument, Vernengo claims that our characterization of a cutting edge branch of the mainstream that does not hold to a neoclassical orthodoxy is misleading. Although he states that he accepts our characterization of the economics profession as a complex adaptive system, with many competing views, he sees the cutting edge (...) as a sham. He argues that the true role of the cutting edge is to allow the mainstream to “sound reasonable when talking about reality, while orthodoxy provides authority to the cutting edge.” He calls this an “organized hypocrisy” and calls us naive about the sociology of the economics profession. Because of this naiveté on our part he believes that we are giving bad advice to advocate that heterodox economists should think of themselves as economists first and heterodox economists second. (shrink)
I consider an alleged example of a non-transitive causal chain, on the basis of which J. Lee has argued that causation is non-transitive. I show that his analysis of the example rests on too coarse-grained an approach to causal relata. I develop a fine-grained analysis of events which owes much to Dretske’s notion of an allomorphic event, and I use this analysis to show that in the example all the genuine causal chains are indeed transitive. It emerges that when fine-grained (...) analyses of events are possible, causal contexts are aIlomorphicaIly sensitive. (shrink)
This article argues that the neoclassical era in economics has ended and is being replaced by a new era. What best characterizes the new era is its acceptance that the economy is complex, and thus that it might be called the complexity era. The complexity era has not arrived through a revolution. Instead, it has evolved out of the many strains of neoclassical work, along with work done by less orthodox mainstream and heterodox economists. It is only in its beginning (...) stages. The article discusses the work that is forming the foundation of the complexity era, and how that work will likely change the way in which we understand economic phenomena and the economics profession. (shrink)
This paper reports laboratory data for games that are played only once. These games span the standard categories: static and dynamic games with complete and incomplete information. For each game, the treasure is a treatment in which behavior conforms nicely to predictions of the Nash equilibrium or relevant refinement. In each case, however, a change in the payoff structure produces a large inconsistency between theoretical predictions and observed behavior. These contradictions are generally consistent with simple intuition based on the interaction (...) of payoff asymmetries and noisy introspection about others’ decisions. (shrink)
This book is about the economics profession, or more precisely, the process by which economic thinking changes. We believe that this process is important because economics is currently at a turning point; it is changing from a static approach to understanding, in which deductive reasoning is the key method used, to a complexity approach to understanding, in which inductive and deductive methods are used simultaneously, and the full complexity of the system is acknowledged and dealt with. The change is ongoing (...) and has many levels and dimensions, most of which have not coalesced to the degree that they have reached the lay public. But anyone involved in economic research recognizes the changes, although they do not necessarily understand how they all fit together. (shrink)
We attempt to clarify divisions made by us in previous work (Colander et al., 2004a,b) between “orthodox, mainstream, and heterodox” in economics, following very useful remarks in Dequech (2007-08), whom we thank. We also provide specific advice for heterodox economists, namely: worry less about methodology, focus on being economists first and heterodox economists second, and prepare ideas to leave the incubator of heterodoxy to enter the mainstream economic debate.
Includes discussion of both The Daily Show and its spin-off show, The Colbert Report Showcases philosophers at their best, discussing truth, knowledge, reality ...
Abstract The thesis that teleological explanations are best understood as causal explanations is defended (contra Valentine). I shift the focus of debate from behavior simpliciter to allegedly rational behavior. Teleological explanation, in the case of rational agents, involves reason?giving; and the reasons agents give for acting must be causative of that action if those agents are to be rational in practice. I argue initially that to abandon the claim that reasons are causes of action is to abandon that which renders (...) many generalisations of systematic human behavior intelligible. I then adduce and defend against two major objections to the secondary thesis that reasons can be causes of action: (1) Experiments in attribution research suggest that agents are characteristically mistaken when reporting on the causes of their behavior; (2) Causal explanation must refer to some law, and reasons cannot enter into such laws as causes of action. In responding to these objections, I note that strict predictability is probably not a reliable indicator of genuine causal explanation; some explanations will afford predictions, others will not. (shrink)
The use of high hypothetical payoffs has been justified by the realism and relevance of large monetary consequences and by the impracticality of making high cash payments. We argue that subjects may not be able to imagine how they would behave in high payoff situations.
Recent experimental work by T.D. Wilson et al. indicates that a consequence of asking subjects to reflect on their attitudes is that they not only reduce the consistency between their attitudes and behavior, but they perform actions which they come to regret. Wilson interprets this work via intra-psychic concepts, and arrives at the conclusion that it is rational to avoid deliberating about a wide range of attitudes and behaviors. This consequence has objectionable implications for philosophical theories of deliberative practical rationality. (...) I respond to this challenge by reinterpreting the experimental results in a way which is not only consistent with a certain theory of deliberative practical rationality but in which the results lend support to that theory. My interpretive focus is on attending closely to the social circumstances of subjects in the experiments[1]. (shrink)
With a historicist sensibility and attention to the ancient language, this paper attempts to sort out the question of how the ultimate end, and therefore how the starting point, of Aristotelian practical reasoning is determined. Some have argued that AristotIe’s practical reasoning must begin with desire in order to be motivational, beginning with his psychological works and interpreting his ethical works from that standpoint. I counter with the claim that an appropriate and sufficiently motivational form of reason grasps the end, (...) beginning with the ethical works and interpreting the psychological works from that aIternative standpoint. Along the way, I sort out questions of interpretive strategy and the relationship between AristotIe’s psychological and ethical works. (shrink)
This book is about the economics profession, or more precisely, the cutting edge of the economics profession. Economics is currently at a turning point; it is changing from a static approach to understanding, in which deductive reasoning is the key method used, to a complexity approach to understanding, in which inductive and deductive methods are used simultaneously, and the full complexity of the system is acknowledged and dealt with. The change is just beginning, but the groundwork is currently being laid. (...) This book is about that groundwork and those economists who are developing it. They are the cutting edge of economics. Those who are doing cutting edge work are researchers who are pushing and testing the boundaries of the profession in such a way that it draws the attention of the elite in the profession. The cutting edge has the potential of changing mainstream economics and ultimately what is considered the orthodoxy. (shrink)
This essay explores similarities in the arguments of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin in order to claim, against the commonplace assumptionthat social actionism is the only legitimate mode of political engagement, that actionism bears within it both fear and refusal of critical thought. In contrast, theauthor argues that the works of these two thinkers offer an alternative approach to political regeneration: The attentiveness of speculative thought and interpretation to distortion, to the accumulated garbage of history, and to thought’s own powerlessness (...) or lack of efficacy in the world is necessary for a realization of the possibilities for real political change. On this reading, speculative philosophical thought is tasked with developing the capacity to sustain remembrance of the horrors of the past and the demand for critical thought placed by those horrors upon our own mutilated capacity for thinking. (shrink)
