How do senior business executives rank their preferences for various ethical principles? And how strongly do the executives believe in these principles? Also, how do these preference (...) rankings relate to the way the executives see the future (wherein business decisions play out)? Research on these questions may provide us with an appreciation of the complexities of ethical behavior in management beyond the traditional issues concerning ethical decision-making in business. Based on a survey of 585 vice presidents of U.S. businesses it was found that: (1) there is a distinct set of principles of ethical conduct that is considered favorable as opposed to another set considered unfavorable among a comprehensive list of 14 ethical principles; (2) the executives believed overwhelmingly that their own individual ethical preferences are better than those of other executives; (3) the strength of their preferences for ethical principles is associated with whether the executives are relatively near-future oriented or more distant-future oriented; and (4), there are very few significant differences in terms of gender, age, education level, private/public education, prestigious/other schools, business/non-business academic backgrounds, and length of job experience. Implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)
In this paper which consists of two parts (Teil I and Teil II) we champion Diophantus of Alexandria and Isabella BaÅ¡makova against Norbert Schappacher. In two (...) class='Hi'>publications ([Schappacher 1998a] and [Schappacher 1998b]) he puts forward inter alia two propositions: Questioning Diophantusâ originality he considers affirmatively the possibility that the Arithmetica are the joint work of a team of authors like Bourbaki. And he calls BaÅ¡makovaâs claim (in [BaÅ¡makova 1972]) that Diophantus uses negative numbers, a nonsense , reproaching her for her thoughtlessness . Teil I: First, we disprove Schappacherâs Bourbaki thesis. Second, we investigate the semantic meaning and historical significance of Diophantusâ keywords $ λvarepsilon tildeιψιζ and á½ÏαÏξιζ. Next, we discuss Schappacherâs epistemology of the history of mathematics and defend BaÅ¡makovaâs methods. Finally we analyse in detail three problems from Diophantusâ Arithmetica (and their solutions) given by Thomas Heath and Helmuth Gericke as proof of the their claim that Diophantus did not use negative numbers. Teil II: In this Part, we give 33 places where Diophantus uses negative quantities as intermediate results; they appear as differences a â b of positive rational numbers, the subtrahend b being bigger than the minuend a; they each represent the (negative) basis ( πλvarepsilonυρacuteα ) of a square number ( τvarepsilonτρacuteαγω ν o ζ ), which is afterwards computed by the formula (a - b) 2 = a 2 + b 2 - 2ab $ . Finally, we report how the topic Diophantus and the negative numbers has been dealt with by translators and commentators from Maximus Planudes onwards. Und er kommt zu dem Ergebnis: âªNur ein Traum war das Erlebnis. Weilâ«, so schlieβt er messerscharf, âªnicht sein k a n n, was nicht sein d a r f.â« CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN: Palmstrm. (shrink)
Die Methodologien des Erklärens und Verstehens hängen miteinander zusammen: vom pragmatischen Standpunkt aus gesehen kann das Erklären als Operationalisierung des Verstehens aufgefaßt werden, sodaß das Verstehen damit (...) den Charakter einer Disposition hat. - Den Arten des Verstehens entsprechen damit eindeutig Arten des Erklärens, von denen dann einige nach pragmatischen Gesichtspunkten weiterentwickelt werden. — Ein pragmatischer Gesichtspunkt ist es auch, der zur Unterscheidung von realen und irrealen Konditionalsätzen führt, wobei die Frage, welchen Wahrheitswert ein vorgegebener irrealer Konditionalsatz hat, von der Frage abhängig gemacht wird, in welchem deduktiven Zusammenhang er mit entsprechenden Naturgesetzen steht, die für seine Erklärung in Frage kommen; wegen dieses Zusammenhangs mit dem logischen Folgerungsbegriff sind sowohl irreale Konditionalsätze als auch singuläre Kausalurteile als metasprachliche Urteile anzusehen. (shrink)