Many prescriptions offered in the literature for enhancing creativity and innovation in organizations raise ethical concerns, yet creativity researchers rarely discuss ethics. We identify four categories of behavior proffered as a means for fostering creativity that raise serious ethical issues: (1) breaking rules and standard operating procedures; (2) challenging authority and avoiding tradition; (3) creating conflict, competition and stress; and (4) taking risks. We discuss each category, briefly identifying research supporting these prescriptions for fostering creativity and then we delve into (...) ethical issues associated with engaging in the prescribed behavior. These four rubrics illustrate ethical issues that need to be incorporated into the creativity and innovation literature. Recommendations for how organizations can respond to the ethical issues are offered based on practices of exemplary organizations and theories of organizational ethics. A research agenda for empirically investigating the ethical impact these four categories of behavior have on organizations concludes the article. (shrink)

Quality is commonly applied to products and processes, but we can also define human quality in dealing with people. This requires first establishing what treatment is appropriate to the human condition. Through an inquiry into the characteristics that define the human being and what ethical requirements constitute a good treatment, we define “Human Quality Treatment” as dealing with persons in a way appropriate to the human condition, which entails acting with respect for (...) their human dignity and rights, caring for their problems and legitimate interests, and fostering their personal development. With this in mind, we can distinguish between five different levels or degrees of HQT in organizations which can be characterized by the following terms: maltreatment, indifference, justice, care, and development. (shrink)

Human Quality Treatment (HQT) is a theoretical approach expressing different ways of dealing with employees within an organization and is embedded in humanistic management tenants of dignity, care, and personal development, seeking to produce morally excellent employees. We build on the theoretical exposition and present a measure of HQT-Scale across several studies including cross-culturally to enhance confidence in our results. Our first study generates the 25 items for the HQT-Scale and provides initial support for the items. We then (...) followed up with a large study of managers (n = 363) from Nigeria in study 2, which confirms the theoretical properties of the five dimensions of HQT and highlights a two-factor construct: HQT Ethically Unacceptable and HQT Ethically Acceptable using a 20-item HQT-Scale. Study 3 with a large sample of New Zealand employees (n = 452) again confirms the nature of the construct and provides construct validity tests. Finally, using time-lagged data, study 4 (n = 308) focuses on New Zealand employees and job attitudes and behaviors, and a well-being outcome. That study not only confirms the theoretically implied effects but also shows the HQT Ethically Acceptable factor mediates the detrimental effects of HQT Ethically Unacceptable. Overall, our four studies provide strong support for the HQT-Scale and highlight important understandings of HQT and humanistic management in the workplace. (shrink)

This study brings together two important literatures together in the one volume. One concerns the role of quality assessments in social policy, especially health policy. The second concerns ethical and social issues raised by prenatal testing for disability. Hitherto, these two literatures have had little contact with each other: few scholars have written about both, or have compared the two domains in a systematic way, while people with disabilities and disability scholars are underrepresented in recent discussion on health policy (...) and quality of assessment. This book turns the perspectives of disability scholars on issues that have largely been the province of health methodology, policy and philosophy, while angling philosophical policy analysis on problems that have largely been the province of disability scholarship. This volume will be sought after by bioethicists, philosophers, and specialists in disability studies and healthcare economics. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultation is largely outside the scope of regulation and oversight, despite its importance. For decades, the bioethics community has been unable to reach a consensus on whether there should be accountability in this work, as there is for other clinical activities that influence the care of patients. The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, the primary society of bioethicists and scholars in the medical humanities and the organizational home for individuals who perform CEC in the United States, has (...) initiated a two‐step quality attestation process as a means to assess clinical ethics consultants and help identify individuals who are qualified to perform this role. This article describes the process. (shrink)

This paper presents a structured comparison of the social quality approach with the UNDP-led 'human development' approach and its sister work on 'human security'. Through clarification of their respective foci, roles and underlying theoretical and value assumptions, the paper suggests that partnership of the social quality approach with these 'human' approaches appears possible and relevant for each side.

Machine behavior that is based on learning algorithms can be significantly influenced by the exposure to data of different qualities. Up to now, those qualities are solely measured in technical terms, but not in ethical ones, despite the significant role of training and annotation data in supervised machine learning. This is the first study to fill this gap by describing new dimensions of data quality for supervised machine learning applications. Based on the rationale that different social and psychological backgrounds (...) of individuals correlate in practice with different modes of human–computer-interaction, the paper describes from an ethical perspective how varying qualities of behavioral data that individuals leave behind while using digital technologies have socially relevant ramification for the development of machine learning applications. The specific objective of this study is to describe how training data can be selected according to ethical assessments of the behavior it originates from, establishing an innovative filter regime to transition from the big data rationale n = all to a more selective way of processing data for training sets in machine learning. The overarching aim of this research is to promote methods for achieving beneficial machine learning applications that could be widely useful for industry as well as academia. (shrink)

In a deeper sense, quality of worklife refers to the quality of life of individuals in their working organizations—commercial, educational, cultural, religious, philanthropic or whatever they are. Modern society is organizational society. Individuals spend much of their lives in organizations. Hence, the impor tance of QWL is unquestionable. It has an ideological core comprising the perceptual gap across individu als about the real connotation of QL as well as QWL. In addition to this ideological problem, the study of (...) QWL presents serious methodological problems too. A positivist attitude is always sceptical about the deeper meaning of life, maybe out of honest lack of knowledge, or maybe with some ulterior motives. The present paper therefore is an attempt to touch upon three aspects of QWL: QWL from a human values approach; some viewpoints for subjective observation of QWL; and some ameliorative measures towards im proving QWL. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between disability and quality of life and some of its implications for bioethics and healthcare. It focuses on the neglected perfectionist approach that ties well-being to the flourishing of human nature, which provides the strongest support for the common view of disability as a harm. After critiquing the traditional Aristotelian version of perfectionism, which excludes the disabled from flourishing by prioritizing rationalistic goods, I defend a new version that prioritizes the social capacities of (...) human nature and the goods of personal relationship. This relationship-centered perfectionism is able to accommodate and explain disabled thriving. I also show how these issues have important implications for specific bioethical debates and clinical practices, using a cluster of issues related to Down syndrome as timely illustrations. My goal is to sketch a perfectionist theory that gives a more plausible account of the relationship between disability and well-being, and that provides better practical guidance in cases involving judgments about the quality of disabled lives. (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)

Metaphors are central in communication and sense-making processes in health-related contexts. Yet how the metaphors used by health-care-professionals to make sense of their patients and their relations to them are associated to the perceived valence of their clinical encounters is underexplored. Drawing-upon the ABC Model of Dehumanization, this study investigated how the humanizing or dehumanizing metaphors nurses’ use for making sense of their pain patients are associated with how they perceived their relationships with them. Fifty female nurses undertook individual narrative-episodic (...) interviews about easy/difficult cases in pain care. A content analysis classified the metaphors, identifying eight classes reflecting different types of patients (de)humanization. A multiple correspondence analysis extracted patterns of metaphors and their association with the perceived characteristics of the patient-nurse relationship. It showed how these patterns were not associated with patient sex or socioeconomic status (SES) but were related to the perceived valence of the clinical relationship. By uncovering how patient metaphors guide nurses’ sense-making and potentially modulate interactions in clinical encounters, these findings may contribute to improve quality of pain care. (shrink)

As pressures on the service economy from globalisation increase, new techniques may be appropriate for designing service systems. This paper examines the tradition of service quality and argues that its unique characteristics, such as the joint production of offerings by operators and customers, could benefit from the techniques of human factors. The interaction between human factors and quality is reviewed and four issues are extracted that should be directly applicable to service encounters. These are interface design, (...) the understanding of error causation, a design for operator well-being and human/automation function allocation. A framework is proposed for considering technology explicitly in the design of service systems. (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)

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)

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)

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)

What explains the unique features of human culture? Culture is not uniquely human, but human culture is uniquely cumulative. Cumulative culture is a product of our collective intelligence and is supported by cognitive processes and learning strategies that enable people to acquire, transform, and transmit information and technologies within and across generations. Technological and social innovations are currently driving unprecedented changes in cultural complexity and diversity. Innovation is a cognitively and socially complex, multistep process that typically requires (...) (cumulative) cultural learning to achieve. I argue that the technological solutions that characterize twenty-first-century innovation can only be explained by understanding both the capacity to learn from and build upon the insights of others and the transmission systems that store the knowledge and technologies of previous generations. Human uniqueness is a product of cumulative cultural learning, transmission, and innovation. (shrink)

Recent advances in mobile electroencephalogram (EEG) systems, featuring non-prep dry electrodes and wireless telemetry, have urged the needs of mobile brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) for applications in our daily life. Since the brain may behave differently while people are actively situated in ecologically-valid environments versus highly-controlled laboratory environments, it remains unclear how well the current laboratory-oriented BCI demonstrations can be translated into operational BCIs for users with naturalistic movements. Understanding inherent links between natural human behaviors and brain activities is the (...) key to ensuring the applicability and stability of mobile BCIs. This study aims to assess the quality of steady-state visual-evoked potentials (SSVEPs), which is one of promising channels for functioning BCI systems, recorded using a mobile EEG system under challenging recording conditions, e.g., walking. To systemati-cally explore the effects of walking locomotion on the SSVEPs, this study instructed subjects to stand or walk on a treadmill running at speeds of 1, 2, and 3 mile (s) per hour (MPH) while con-currently perceiving visual flickers (11 and 12 Hz). Empirical results of this study showed that the SSVEP amplitude tended to deteriorate when subjects switched from standing to walking. Such SSVEP suppression could be attributed to the walking locomotion, leading to distinctly deteriorated SSVEP detectability from standing (84.87±13.55%) to walking (1 MPH: 83.03±13.24%, 2 MPH: 79.47±13.53%, and 3 MPH: 75.26±17.89%). These findings not only demonstrated the applicability and limitations of SSVEPs recorded from freely behaving humans in realistic environments, but also provide useful methods and techniques for boosting the translation of the BCI technology from laboratory demonstrations to practical applications. (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, non-arbitrary (...) 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)

Introduction: human rights in healthcare -- A right to treatment? the allocation of resouces in the National Health Service -- Ensuring quality healthcare: an issue of rights or duties? -- Autonomy and consent in medical treatment -- Treating incompetent patients: beneficence, welfare and rights -- Medical confidentiality and the right to privacy -- Property right in the body -- Medically assisted conception and a right to reproduce? -- Termination of pregnancy: a conflict of rights -- Pregnancy and freedom (...) of choice -- The right to life at the end of life -- The law and ethics of assisted dying: is there a right to die? (shrink)

Small-scale research projects involving human subjects have been identified as being effective in developing critical appraisal skills in undergraduate students. In deciding whether to grant ethical approval to such projects, university research ethics committees must weigh the benefits of the research against the risk of harm or discomfort to the participants. As the learning objectives associated with student research can be met without the need for human subjects, the benefit associated with training new healthcare professionals cannot, in itself, (...) justify such risks. The outputs of research must be shared with the wider scientific community if it is to influence future practice. Our survey of 19 UK universities indicates that undergraduate dissertations associated with the disciplines of medicine, dentistry and pharmacy are not routinely retained in their library catalogues, thus closing a major avenue to the dissemination of their findings. If such research is unlikely to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, presented at a conference, or otherwise made available to other researchers, then the risks of harm, discomfort or inconvenience to participants are unlikely to be offset by societal benefits. Ethics committees should be satisfied that undergraduate research will be funnelled into further research that is likely to inform clinical practice before granting ethical approval. (shrink)

Developing countries face numerous barriers to conducting effective and efficient ethics reviews of international collaborative research. In addition to potentially overlooking important scientific and ethical considerations, inadequate or insufficiently trained ethics committees may insist on unwarranted changes to protocols that can impair a study's scientific or ethical validity. Moreover, poorly functioning review systems can impose substantial delays on the commencement of research, which needlessly undermine the development of new interventions for urgent medical needs. In response to these concerns, the Drugs (...) for Neglected Diseases Initiative, an independent nonprofit organization founded by a coalition of public sector and international organizations, developed a mechanism to facilitate more effective and efficient host country ethics review for a study of the use of fexinidazole for the treatment of late stage African Trypanosomiasis. The project involved the implementation of a novel ‘pre-review’ process of ethical oversight, conducted by an ad hoc committee of ethics committee representatives from African and European countries, in collaboration with internationally recognized scientific experts. This article examines the process and outcomes of this collaborative process. (shrink)

Considerable efforts have been made in recent years to improve the safety of human subjects who participate in research. However, there are no data to demonstrate that we have made human research safer. There is a critical need to determine whether we have achieved our goal of better protecting research subjects. We have developed 16 quality indicators for assessing the quality of human research protection programs at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Our experience implementing these (...) quality indicators at the VA may help other institutions to develop appropriate quality indicators for assessing their own human research protection programs. (shrink)

This essay claims that one can consistently maintain a sanctity of human life principle that is explicitly grounded in theology, while making a kind of quality-of-life judgment regarding withholding or discontinuing life-sustaining treatments for those with advanced illnesses. For those who embrace them, resources that are specific to the Christian tradition delineate the parameters of responsibility for people dying with advanced illness and those who care for them. Those who embrace the sanctity of human life for the (...) theological reasons provided in this essay are under no moral obligation to continue merely to sustain life at the end of life—that is, when, in view of our best available judgment, the human being (who remains inherently valuable nonetheless) will not ever be able to exemplify other human values that contribute to human flourishing, theologically understood. (shrink)

In an (indirectly or involuntarily) iconoclastic subject, Claude Fintz proposes to put in perspective the conceptual universe of the humanities by confronting it with the thought of a master of contemporary Indian advaita, Nisargadatta Maharaj—as reflected by his disciple Ramesh S. Balsekar. In this “between” of the scientific and spiritual quest, the great notions of the philosophy of the subject will resonate. The author hypothesizes that this paradoxical encounter is likely to bring out the mystery of a first-person search where, (...) in the context of a certain philosophy of consciousness (resonating with the quest of Henri Michaux), the looking subject turns out to be the mirror of the looked object. This apocalypse projects vitriol on the conceptual bubbles that are the so-called subject (and his free will), knowledge and imagination—all constituents of the human “sciences”, bordered in fact by nothingness, according to a “vacant” anthropology. (shrink)

Any discipline of human knowledge is characterized by three fundamental elements: the complexity of its content, the method used for its elaboration, and the language used for its expression. This article argues that any method for making knowledge is a particular combination of three main components that we can call science, art, and revelation. The right combination depends on the complexity of the slice of reality that we wish to understand in each case. Is there a relationship between the (...) quantity and quality of a particular piece of knowledge and the quantity and quality of its eventual audience? Such a relationship serves, I believe, to avoid certain old misunderstandings. (shrink)

Any discipline of human knowledge is characterized by three fundamental elements: the complexity of its content, the method used for its elaboration, and the language used for its expression. This article argues that any method for making knowledge is a particular combination of three main components that we can call (a) science, (b) art, and (c) revelation. The right combination depends on the complexity of the slice of reality that we wish to understand in each case. Is there a (...) relationship between the quantity and quality of a particular piece of knowledge and the quantity and quality of its eventual audience? Such a relationship serves, I believe, to avoid certain old misunderstandings. -/- . (shrink)

Background Meaningfully evaluating the quality of institutional review boards (IRBs) and human research protection programs (HRPPs) is a long-recognized challenge. To be accredited by the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP), organizations must demonstrate that they measure and improve HRPP “quality, effectiveness, and efficiency” (QEE). We sought to learn how AAHRPP-accredited organizations interpret and satisfy this standard, in order to assess strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in current approaches and to inform recommendations for (...) improvement.Methods We conducted 3 small-group interviews with a total of 19 participant representatives of accredited organizations at the 2019 AAHRPP annual meeting. Participants were eligible if they had familiarity with their organization’s approach to satisfying the relevant QEE standard.Results Participants reported lacking clear definitions for HRPP quality or effectiveness but described various approaches to assessing QEE, typically focused on turnaround time, compliance, and researcher satisfaction. Evaluation of IRB members was described as relatively superficial and information regarding research subject experience was not reported as central to QEE assessment, although participants described several efforts to improve consideration of patient, subject, and community perspectives in IRB review. Participants also described efforts to educate and build relationships with key stakeholders as important features of a high-quality HRPP. While generally satisfied with their approaches, participants expressed concern about resource and time constraints that pushed them to be reactive and automatic about QEE, rather than proactive and critical.Conclusions The relevant AAHRPP accreditation standard may obscure critical gaps in defining and measuring QEE elements. We recommend that AAHRPP: (1) offer a definition of QEE or require accredited organizations to provide their own, to help clarify the rationale and goals behind assessment and improvement efforts, and (2) require accredited organizations to establish QEE objectives and measures focused on participant outcomes and deliberative quality during protocol review. (shrink)

There are an increasing number of cell therapy approaches being studied and employed world‐wide. An emerging area in this field is the use of human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) products for the treatment of injuries/diseases that cannot be effectively managed through current approaches. However, as with any cell therapy, vast numbers of functional and safe cells are required. Bioreactors provide an attractive avenue to generate clinically relevant cell numbers with decreased labour and decreased batch to batch variation. Yet, current (...) methods of performing quality control are not readily scalable to the cell densities produced during bioreactor scale‐up. One potential solution is the application of inducible/controllable suicide genes that can trigger cell death in unwanted cell types. These types of approaches have been demonstrated to increase the quality and safety of the resultant cell products. In this review, we will provide background on these approaches and how they could be used together with bioreactor technology to create effective bioprocesses for the generation of high quality and safe hPSCs for use in regenerative medicine approaches. (shrink)

Information, knowledge and understanding, history/tradition and novelty, fashion and science, show business and intellectual product are the contexts to review in order to answer the question why humanities have been losing credibility and have come under the hammer. The present article, informed by philosophers like Bertrand Russell and Mary Midgley, authors like Charles K. Ogden and Ivor A. Richards, semioticians like Algirdas Greimas and Roland Barthes and classical English literature, argue that the problem originates between the continuity of thought and (...) indoctrination, between the stance of Rectors of universities and henchmen in the politics of market economy, and it is best exemplified by the caricature of humanities in some universities resulting from the implementation of the courses of technical skills. Knowing that humanities have been prized for intellectual attainment (Lincoln Barnett, Paul Goodman), their precarious state seems to depend on unbalanced philosophical, ethical, educational and economic principles. With economy being the factor which is hard to dispute, political and ethical principles tend to invite a revision because of a traceable tendency to promote the production of the manageable rather than the enlightened. (shrink)

A robust measure of whether local oversight of human subjects research is achieving the ethical goals of research oversight has never been developed. Assessing whether the local review process is achieving the ethical goals of research oversight will allow institutions to monitor their own human subjects protection programs and guide the investment of funds to improve performance. Without a measure of ethical quality, institutions, institutional review boards, regulators, and the public have no way of knowing if the (...) intent of regulations is being realized. (shrink)

Richard Kraut presents a new theory of human well-being. Kraut's principal idea, Aristotelian in spirit, is that 'external goods' have at most an indirect bearing on the quality of our lives. A good internal life - one with quality emotional, intellectual, social, and perceptual experiences - is what well-being consists in.

The term “value of life” can refer to life’s intrinsic dignity: something nonincremental and time-unaffected in contrast to the fluctuating, incremental “value” of our lives, as they are longer or shorter and more or less flourishing. Human beings are equal in their basic moral importance: the moral indignities we condemn in the treatment of e.g. those with dementia reflect the ongoing human dignity that is being violated. Indignities licensed by the person in advance remain indignities, as when people (...) might volunteer their living, unconscious bodies for surrogacy or training in amputation techniques. Respect for someone’s dignity is significantly impacted by a failure to value that person’s very existence, whatever genuine respect and good will is shown by wanting the person’s life to go well. Valuing and respecting life is not, however, vitalism: there can be good and compelling reasons for eschewing some means of prolonging life. (shrink)

This study extended the scope of previous findings in human–computer interaction research within the computers are social actors paradigm by showing that online users attribute perceptions of moral qualities to Websites and, further, that differential perceptions of morality affected the extent of persuasion. In an experiment (N = 138) that manipulated four morality conditions (universalist, relativist, egotistic, control) across worldview, a measured independent variable, users were asked to evaluate a Web site designed to aid them in making ethical decisions. (...) Web sites offered four different types of ethical advice as participants contemplated cases involving ethical quandaries. Perceptions of the Web sites’ moral qualities varied depending on the type of advice given. Further, the Web sites’ perceived morality and participants’ worldview predicted credibility, persuasiveness, and attitudes toward the Web sites. (shrink)

Human need and related concepts such as basic needs have long been part of the implicit conceptual foundation for social work theory, practice, and research. However, while the published literature in social work has long stressed social justice, and has incorporated discussion of human rights, human need has long been both a neglected and contested concept. In recent years, the explicit use of human needs theory has begun to have a significant influence on the literature in (...) social work. (shrink)

This article examines the extent to which the concept of social quality could contribute to a transformation in the debates about the welfare sustainability in Asia and Europe. The article starts by outlining the concept of social quality: its constitutional, conditional and normative components and the origins of its development as a European conceptual framework. Then a bridge is created between Europe and Asia by looking briefly at the similarities and differences between social quality and human (...) security, a concept that is more familiar in the latter region than the former one. is is followed by a critique of the global discourses on 'sustainability' and, in particular, their dominance by economism. The final part of the article utilizes the concept of social quality to propose a more open and balanced approach to sustainability that brings in social and ecological considerations alongside economic ones. Some tentative suggestions are made concerning the operationalisation of a social quality approach to welfare system sustainability. (shrink)