Corporate social responsibility, sustainability and acting ethically are all accepted business aims, but their meaning and implementation in a global context is far less clear-cut. Global Business Ethics cuts through the confusion to provide a coherent basis for ethical decision-making within the complications of the international business landscape. Underpinned by theory and including worked-through examples of ethical dilemmas and their solutions, this textbook will guide the reader beyond theory to real-world business decisions. Practical tools such as decision trees and suggested (...) principles to apply in dilemma situations give readers the skills and confidence to tackle the ethical challenges they face. A unique working code of ethics is provided as a model with guidance to readers for adaptation and implementation. Case studies include: Walmart, Hershey's, Citibank, Ford, Nike, Johnson & Johnson, Harley- Davidson, The Body Shop and Procter and Gamble. A chapter on the legal aspects of ethics provides clear guidance on the complex relationship between law and ethics in international business. The final part takes an in-depth look at the practical application of ethics in business life. Covering all the major theories of ethics, including an examination of the role of quantification of ethics, Global Business Ethics demonstrates how their principles can be applied to inform better business decisions. (shrink)

Distils the principles of ethics for busy people and students, and shows how they can be applied without oversimplifying nor becoming overly theoretical. The book focuses on the need for a strong adherence to codes of corporate governance in a rapidly deregulating and globalizing world.

For teaching purposes this work is divided into sections to which instructors can readily refer: this is supplemented with a comprehensive list of references, ...

This article addresses the connection of ethics to risk management, and argues that there are compelling reasons to consider good ethical practice to be an essential part of such risk management. That connection has significant commercial outcomes, which include identifying potential problems, preventing fraud, the preservation of corporate reputation, and the mitigation of court penalties should any transgression arise. Information about the legal position, examples of cases, and arguments about the potential benefits of ethics are canvassed. The orientation of this (...) article is essentially Australian. It is hoped that it may provide some insights of value to other countries. (shrink)

Moral leadership matters. As world politics enters a new and dangerous era, judgment, constancy, moral purpose, and a willingness to overcome partisan politicking are essential for America's leaders. Tempered Strength finds the alternative standard of leadership that Americans are seeking in the classical philosophy of prudence. Ethan Fishman's new work brings together leading American political scientists—including Ronald Beiner, Kenneth L. Deutsch, and George Anastaplo—to discuss the evolution of a standard of prudential leadership both reasonable in nature and practical in (...) scope. Section One studies the meaning of prudence and its evolution in the history of political science from Aristotelian phronesis to Xenophon, Thomas Aquinas, Edmund Burke, and Michael Oakeshott. Section Two demonstrates how the theory of prudential leadership can be applied to practical political issues. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Originally published in 1995, Creation-Evolution Debates is the second volume in the series, Creationism in Twentieth Century America, reissued in 2021. The volume comprises eight debates from the early 1920s and 1930s between prominent evolutionists and creationists of the time. The original sources detail debates that took place either orally or in print, as well as active debates between creationists over the true meaning of Genesis I. The essays in this volume feature prominent discussions between the likes of Edwin Grant (...) Conklin, Henry Fairfield Osbourne and William Jennings Bryan, John Roach Francis and Charles Francis Potter, George McCready Price and Joseph McCabe and William Bell Riley versus Charles Smith, amongst many others. The collection will be of especial interest to natural historians, and theologians as well as academics of philosophy, and history. (shrink)

This article critically assesses an account of religious liberty often associated with several legal and political philosophers: Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, and Christopher Eisgruber and Lawrence Sager. Calling it the Religion as Comprehensive Doctrine approach, the author contrasts it with an account often attributed to John Locke and the American Founders Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the Two Sovereigns approach. He argues that the latter provides an important corrective to RCD’s chief weakness: RCD eliminates from our vision those aspects (...) of religious belief and practice that most conventional religious believers would consider essential to their faith. (shrink)

Condorcet's classical Enlightenment statement of human progress became an essential element of nineteenth- and twentieth-century consciousness, but by the millennium grand narratives had fallen victim to a disillusioned cultural climate. Now Steven Pinker, like Condorcet drawing on a wide range of contemporary “knowledges,” has reasserted a sweeping narrative of human progress in The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Mapping a spectacular long-term decline in person-on-person violence and reduction in deaths due to war, Pinker celebrates the spread (...) of a cultural pattern of self-restraint, sensitivity to human suffering, and recent regard for human rights, due to the modern state and gentle commerce capitalism.For Pinker the human condition has gotten steadily better, the decline of violence is an accomplishment we can savor and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible. Why then are so many so negative about modernity? Citing the psychology of temporal proximity to horrific events and the bad-news predilection of the media, Pinker ignores the specifically modern and less directly brutal institutionalized forms of violence as well as the profound ambivalence of progress. He decisively demonstrates the drop in certain kinds of violence, but his account becomes strangely ideological, recapitulating key Cold-War themes—the individual against totalitarianism, the Enlightenment against the counter-Enlightenment, rationalism and freedom against murderous utopianism—distorting his study in the name of gentle commerce, Marxism, and anti-Communism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bioethics Inside the BeltwayNHGRI’s Intramural Ethics ExperimentRonald M. Green (bio)Early in 1995, the National Human Genome Research Institute (then known as the National Center for Human Genome Research) began a novel experiment. It established the Office of Genome Ethics in its Division of Intramural Research (DIR). An extramural “ELSI” funding program for research on the ethical, legal, and social implications of the Human Genome Project had been in existence (...) since 1990, and a joint Department of Energy, NIH Working Group to consider larger policy issues raised by the genome project had also been in existence since that date. But the establishment of the Office of Genome Ethics was the first effort to provide an in-house ethics service for the several hundred NHGRI genetic researchers working on the NIH campus.The experiment was also novel by NIH standards. The Clinical Center, which serves all NIH research institutes as a patient-care facility, has long had a bioethics program, but, to my knowledge, none of the 23 other institutes, centers, or divisions of the NIH had ever developed an ethics program to assist its on-campus researchers in identifying and addressing the ethical issues arising from their research. Behind this initiative lay the commitment to ethics in genetic research shared by Francis Collins, Director of NHGRI, Jeff Trent, Scientific Director of the Division of Intramural Research, and other senior scientists and administrators of the Institute.I was fortunate to be asked to serve as Director of this office. My previous experience in the federal context was limited. I had served on many NIH study sections and for a nine-month period had been a member of the Human Embryo Research Panel, but none of this amounted to an “insider’s view” of government bioethics. The preponderance of my bioethics career had transpired in the university and medical school/medical center environment.Because I had to continue to fulfill many Dartmouth commitments, I agreed to serve on an interim and half-time basis (one week in Bethesda; one week at home) for an 18-month period. I was assisted in maintaining this schedule by the appointment of a deputy, Mathew Thomas, a recent bioethics graduate of Duke University, who would serve on a full-time basis and provide continuity for our [End Page 181] work. Our objectives, established in consultation with NHGRI personnel, were to learn which functions would be most useful, to set up a program to provide them, and, eventually, to aid in the process of determining how an office like this might fit into NHGRI’s future.As this 18-month stint draws to a close, I can report that it has been an exhilarating experience. I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked with outstanding scientists in an area of growing importance and interest. I believe we have pioneered in the provision of bioethics education and counsel to a diverse group of genetic researchers. We have helped to “open the doors and windows” of the Genome Institute, facilitating two-way communication between NHGRI researchers and others interested in genetic and ethics. We have assisted with some knotty problems in genetic research while building a base of knowledge about highly specialized issues that is useful to researchers inside and outside NHGRI. What follows is an abbreviated overview and evaluation of our activities during this period.Main ActivitiesWorking with a core of interested supporters from every branch of the DIR, our office quickly established a roster of activities aimed at meeting identified needs. These included: (1) a consult service able to help investigators address urgent problems arising in their research or in the IRB review process; (2) a program of workshops and discussion groups dealing with challenging ethical issues raised by genetic research; (3) a program of public seminars bringing together NHGRI researchers and other clinicians, scientists, and scholars in the greater Washington area who are interested in genetic ethics; (4) a course on science research ethics to be offered to all NHGRI personnel; and (5) an ongoing program of research activities in genetics and ethics designed to provide depth and substance to the office’s work.ConsultationsIn an institute with scores of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.1 (2004) 105-112 [Access article in PDF] Philosophy of Art Today:Calling Frameworks into QuestionBeyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays, by Noël Carroll. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 450 pp., $29.00. Merit: Aesthetic And Ethical, by Marcia Eaton. Oxford University Press, 2001, 252 pp., $52.00. But Is It Art? by Cynthia Freeland. Oxford University Press, 2001, 231 pp., $11.95. In his magisterial study of modern aesthetics, The (...) Theory of the Arts, Francis Sparshott observed that while "normal science" is what T.S. Kuhn called "hackwork" because it is carried out within a framework it never calls into question, there is — in that same sense — no such thing as "normal art" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). The twenty years since thepublication of Sparshott's book have done nothing but underscore this point. No theme in the arts has been more prominent than the challenging of existing frameworks. Equally, no project in the philosophy of art has proven more important than the remapping and expanding of prior conceptual boundaries. In both the arts and the philosophy of art, the new norm is the foreswearing of the normal. And just as contemporary art challenges the concept we have of art itself, contemporary aesthetics challenges the traditional notion we have of aesthetics. Of late, this challenge has been vigorous, persistent, heated. Yet, although it has produced some affronts to establishedsensibilities, it has not led to the wholesale undoing of prior advances in aesthetic theory, as many had feared.It is this development, rather than any particular movement or advance within the field, that stands out as the distinguishing characteristic of aesthetics today. Similar assaults on basic assumptions, disciplinary borders, and theoretical frameworks have raged in neighboring academic domains where they have inspired debilitating internecine conflict and conceptual disarray. Postmodernist attacks on the very possibility of theoretical coherence have been the most notorious, but far from the exclusive, examples of effects of this sort. Similar skeptical developments have proven corrosive in disciplines from anthropology to theology. Yet the field of aesthetics has generally welcomed framework challenge. It has not been driven by it into warring camps, and has taken this challenge as a positive contribution to the field's strength and importance.Three excellent recent works illustrate different ways in which the a-normality of contemporary aesthetics is being played out, and demonstrate [End Page 105] why it is both constructive and worthwhile. Cynthia Freeland's But Is It Art? is presented as an introduction to art theory, but it is really a provocative analysis of ways in which the visual arts have blown out their parameters and the demands this development places on intelligent response. Noël Carroll's Beyond Aesthetics takes as its theme the idea that, to make proper sense of the present world of aesthetic phenomena, we must "reach beyond aesthetic theories of art and their various prohibitions." And Marcia Eaton's Merit, Aesthetic and Ethical argues that the truly important issues we encounter in making sense of aesthetic experience require an integration of normative considerations formerly thought of as discretely ethical or aesthetic. Each of these works looks at the ways art and aesthetics have forced us to think differently about both of them, due to the way each has recently evolved. Yet none of them takes the radical view that all of what happened before is rendered insignificant by the revolutionary novelty of current work. Instead, these works are syncretic in just the way that contemporary philosophy of art is syncretic; they show how apparent discontinuities can be squared with the general thrust of the best historical work.The picture that emerges from these (as well as many other recent works) is this: Aesthetics today is a discipline pleased both to rethink its own basic concepts and to examine its connections to a variety of regions of concern not traditionally regarded as its province. A century ago, aestheticians were content to think of themselves as custodians of grand and noble values — principally the values of beauty and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Liberalism, Art, and FundingDale Francis MurrayLiberalism, Art, and FundingSince Ronald Dworkin published A Matter of Principle, a host of critics have attempted to systematically dismantle his arguments advocating state support for the arts that appear in a chapter entitled, "Can a Liberal State Support Art?"1 The combined critical force of Noël Carroll, Samuel Black, and most recently, Harry Brighouse, has dislodged the main supports of Dworkin's position (...) on this subject.2 However, while I am skeptical that the arguments of liberals who endorse state support for the arts can be fully resurrected, I reckon that a few remarks can be presented to try to deflect at least a fraction of the contentions cast on Dworkin's argument by the critics listed above. In order to refine our understanding of precisely why state support for cultural expression should or should not be permitted, it is imperative that some sort of response to the critics of state support for the arts is offered.In this essay, I focus primarily on Brighouse's objections that Dworkin's arguments supporting arts funding fail primarily because they are not sensitive enough to the ways in which such support violates two demands of justice in a liberal state — state neutrality and publicity. I examine these two objections since they seem to be the most interesting, compelling, and damaging to Dworkin's case if substantiated. If Brighouse is correct, these violations act as heavy bulwarks against state support for arts funding, especially since public distrust of the state's intent (and the state's perceived advocacy of notions of the good with which the public disagrees) is high. I will employ Brighouse's neutrality of intent constraint, because it best represents the alleged specific violations of state neutrality that may undermine Dworkin's case. Additionally, neutrality of intent is the most plausible form of neutrality for advocates of public arts funding to build a case for in the space of a short essay.I also wish to make a distinction, which for the most part, is ignored by Dworkin's critics — that there is a degree to which moral value and aesthetic value are different and that this effects a possible alternative reading of the term "ways of life" as most liberals understand it. As a final note of preface, I will assume that the background conditions of income and wealth are just.3 This proviso will become important when we examine the role of the market in funding arts projects in lieu of the government. Now let us reiterate the two requirements of any just liberal state that are at issue when considering the legitimacy of state support for the arts. [End Page 116]Brighouse sets the pair of constraints on any just liberal state (neutrality and publicity) as the centerpieces of his essay. Neutrality of intent, that he appeals to more specifically, can be understood to mean, as Brighouse himself explains, "[T]hat while it is unobjectionable that state actions will have differential effects on conceptions of the good, the government should not intend to favor some conceptions over others" (NPS, 38, emphasis mine). The publicity constraint can be characterized by saying that in any just, liberal regime, justice must not only be done, but it must also be seen as being done. While this serves as the motto of the publicity constraint, it is significant to acknowledge that it stipulates that the real reasons for governmental action must be comprehensible to, and available for inspection by, reasonable citizens. In addition, it must be readily apparent to citizens that the demands of justice are being met. I will return to this constraint on the state later in this essay.Neutrality is of chief interest, since recent liberal political philosophers have emphasized the primacy of the right over the good (RLD, 245). Presumably, individuals, via their rational autonomy, shall define the good for themselves beyond the dictates of government. Our morality is our own personal affair, just so long as we remain within the confines of the harm principle and do not violate the equal liberty of others.On the surface, it is not apparent that state funding for the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Liberalism, Art, and FundingDale Francis MurrayLiberalism, Art, and FundingSince Ronald Dworkin published A Matter of Principle, a host of critics have attempted to systematically dismantle his arguments advocating state support for the arts that appear in a chapter entitled, "Can a Liberal State Support Art?"1 The combined critical force of Noël Carroll, Samuel Black, and most recently, Harry Brighouse, has dislodged the main supports of Dworkin's position (...) on this subject.2 However, while I am skeptical that the arguments of liberals who endorse state support for the arts can be fully resurrected, I reckon that a few remarks can be presented to try to deflect at least a fraction of the contentions cast on Dworkin's argument by the critics listed above. In order to refine our understanding of precisely why state support for cultural expression should or should not be permitted, it is imperative that some sort of response to the critics of state support for the arts is offered.In this essay, I focus primarily on Brighouse's objections that Dworkin's arguments supporting arts funding fail primarily because they are not sensitive enough to the ways in which such support violates two demands of justice in a liberal state — state neutrality and publicity. I examine these two objections since they seem to be the most interesting, compelling, and damaging to Dworkin's case if substantiated. If Brighouse is correct, these violations act as heavy bulwarks against state support for arts funding, especially since public distrust of the state's intent (and the state's perceived advocacy of notions of the good with which the public disagrees) is high. I will employ Brighouse's neutrality of intent constraint, because it best represents the alleged specific violations of state neutrality that may undermine Dworkin's case. Additionally, neutrality of intent is the most plausible form of neutrality for advocates of public arts funding to build a case for in the space of a short essay.I also wish to make a distinction, which for the most part, is ignored by Dworkin's critics — that there is a degree to which moral value and aesthetic value are different and that this effects a possible alternative reading of the term "ways of life" as most liberals understand it. As a final note of preface, I will assume that the background conditions of income and wealth are just.3 This proviso will become important when we examine the role of the market in funding arts projects in lieu of the government. Now let us reiterate the two requirements of any just liberal state that are at issue when considering the legitimacy of state support for the arts. [End Page 116]Brighouse sets the pair of constraints on any just liberal state (neutrality and publicity) as the centerpieces of his essay. Neutrality of intent, that he appeals to more specifically, can be understood to mean, as Brighouse himself explains, "[T]hat while it is unobjectionable that state actions will have differential effects on conceptions of the good, the government should not intend to favor some conceptions over others" (NPS, 38, emphasis mine). The publicity constraint can be characterized by saying that in any just, liberal regime, justice must not only be done, but it must also be seen as being done. While this serves as the motto of the publicity constraint, it is significant to acknowledge that it stipulates that the real reasons for governmental action must be comprehensible to, and available for inspection by, reasonable citizens. In addition, it must be readily apparent to citizens that the demands of justice are being met. I will return to this constraint on the state later in this essay.Neutrality is of chief interest, since recent liberal political philosophers have emphasized the primacy of the right over the good (RLD, 245). Presumably, individuals, via their rational autonomy, shall define the good for themselves beyond the dictates of government. Our morality is our own personal affair, just so long as we remain within the confines of the harm principle and do not violate the equal liberty of others.On the surface, it is not apparent that state funding for the... (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article claims that today’s reading of Francis Bacon’s Essayes as a solely literary text turns upon philosophers’ having largely lost access to the renaissance culture which Bacon inherited, and the renaissance debates about the role of rhetoric in philosophy in which Bacon participated. The article has two parts. Building upon Ronald Cranes’ seminal contribution on the place of the Essayes in Bacon’s ‘great instauration’, Part 1 examines how the subjects of Bacon’s Essayes need to be understood as (...) Baconian contributions to ‘morrall philosophye’ and ‘civile knowledge’, rather than rhetorical or poetic exercises. In Part 2, contesting the interpretations of Crane, Fish, Ferrari and others, I will argue that the Essayes’ striking rhetorical form needs to be conceptualized in light of Bacon’s renaissance account of the ‘duty and office’ of rhetoric in any moral and civil philosophy that would look to actively cure mental afflictions and cultivate the virtuous or canny conduct it extols. Bacon’s Essayes, in this light, are best understood as a legatee and transformation of the popular early modern genre of books of apothegms and maxims designed to guide conduct. (shrink)

In 1993, Professor of Jurisprudence, Ronald Dworkin of Oxford University and Professor of Law at New York University, delivered the Georgetown Law Center’s thirteenth Annual Philip A. Hart Memorial Lecture: "Life’s Dominion: An Argument About Abortion and Euthanasia." Dworkin is Professor of Philosophy and Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law at New York University. He received B.A. degrees from both Harvard College and Oxford University, and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School and clerked for Judge Learned Hand. He was (...) associated with a law firm in New York (Sullivan and Cromwell) and was a professor of law at Yale University Law School from 1962-1969. He has been Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford and Fellow of University College since 1969. He has a joint appointment at Oxford and at NYU where he is a professor both in the Law School and the Philosophy Department. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Dworkin is the author of many articles in philosophical and legal journals as well as articles on legal and political topics in the New York Review of Books. He has written Taking Rights Seriously (1977), A Matter of Principle (1985), Law’s Empire (1986), Philosophical Issues in Senile Dementia (1987), A Bill of Rights for Britain (1990), Life’s Dominion (1993), and Freedom’s Law (1996). (shrink)

Politics in America are polarized and trivialized, perhaps as never before. In Congress, the media, and academic debate, opponents from right and left, the Red and the Blue, struggle against one another as if politics were contact sports played to the shouts of cheerleaders. The result, Ronald Dworkin writes, is a deeply depressing political culture, as ill equipped for the perennial challenge of achieving social justice as for the emerging threats of terrorism. Can the hope for change be realized? (...) Dworkin, one the world's leading legal and political philosophers, identifies and defends core principles of personal and political morality that all citizens can share. He shows that recognizing such shared principles can make substantial political argument possible and help replace contempt with mutual respect. Only then can the full promise of democracy be realized in America and elsewhere. Dworkin lays out two core principles that citizens should share: first, that each human life is intrinsically and equally valuable and, second, that each person has an inalienable personal responsibility for identifying and realizing value in his or her own life. He then shows what fidelity to these principles would mean for human rights, the place of religion in public life, economic justice, and the character and value of democracy. Dworkin argues that liberal conclusions flow most naturally from these principles. Properly understood, they collide with the ambitions of religious conservatives, contemporary American tax and social policy, and much of the War on Terror. But his more basic aim is to convince Americans of all political stripes--as well as citizens of other nations with similar cultures--that they can and must defend their own convictions through their own interpretations of these shared values. (shrink)

Humans are complex social beings. To understand human behaviour, an integrated perspective is required - one which considers both what we regularly do and what motivates us. Personality, Values, Culture uses an evolutionary perspective to look at the similarities and differences in personality and values across modern societies. Integrating research on personality and human values into a functional framework that highlights their underlying compatibilities, Fischer describes how personality is shaped by the complex interplay between genes and the environment, both over (...) the course of human evolution and within the lifespan of individuals. He proposes a gene-culture coevolution model of personality and values to explain how and why people differ around the world and how genes, economics, social conditions, and climate jointly shape personality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The notion of stakeholder salience based on attributes (e.g., power, legitimacy, urgency) is applied in the family business setting. We argue that where principal institutions intersect (i.e., family and business); managerial perceptions of stakeholder salience will be different and more complex than where institutions are based on a single dominant logic. We propose that (1) whereas utilitarian power is more likely in the general business case, normative power is more typical in family business stakeholder salience; (2) whereas in a general (...) business context legitimacy is socially constructed; for family stakeholders, legitimacy is based on heredity; and (3) whereas temporality and criticality are somewhat independent in general-business urgency, they are linked in the family business case because of family ties and family-centered non-economic goals. We apply this theoretical framework to position and integrate the contributions to this special section ofBusiness Ethics Quarterlyon “Stakeholder Theory, Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Family Enterprise.”. (shrink)

This research examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and company stock valuation across three regions of the world. After a brief introduction, the article gives an overview of the evolving definition of CSR as well as a discussion of the ways in which this construct has been operationalized. Presentation of the potential impact of corporate social performance on firm financial performance follows, including investor characteristics, the rationale behind their choices, and their influence on the marketplace for securities worldwide. (...) The unique method used to select socially responsible investments is then provided that also includes a description of the quantitative techniques employed in the analyses. Results are offered subsequently, and the close describes implications for global enterprises as socially responsible investments. (shrink)

The present research was guided by the important need for a diversion from an economistic to a humanistic management perspective of sustainability. It concentrates on the current importance of digital strategic communication, particularly regarding the concept of corporate sustainability in the context of the conflict arena of the oil industry. The focus is on the comparison of the persuasive effectiveness of the framings of corporate versus activist NGO website communications and their impacts on the perception of the triple pillars of (...) sustainability and, corporate greenwashing with respect to a proposed bituminous oil pipeline in Canada. The results of these pro and con messages were analyzed within the Elaboration Likelihood Model demonstrating a “non expert” peripheral route to a positive persuasion from exposure to the corporate communication versus an “expert” central route to a negative persuasion from the activist NGO communication. Subsequent exposure to the opposite website communication further emphasized the predominance of a negative persuasion based on both groups now being motivated as “expert” viewers of these strategic communications, leading to an important perception of greenwashing by participants resulting from vague claims, visual and linguistic contents of the corporate communication versus the mainly verifiable factual ones in that of the activist NGO. (shrink)

The puzzle arises because propositions of law seem to be descriptive—they are about how things are in the law, not about how they should be—and yet it has proved extremely difficult to say exactly what it is that they describe. Legal positivists believe that propositions of law are indeed wholly descriptive: they are in fact pieces of history. A proposition of law in their view, is true just in case some event of a designated law-making kind has taken place, and (...) other wise not. This seems to work reasonably well in very simple cases. If the Illinois legislature enacts the words "No will shall be valid without three witnesses, "then the proposition of law, that in Illinois will needs three witnesses, seems to be true only in virtue of that historical event.But in more difficult cases the analysis fails. Consider the proposition that a particular affirmative action scheme is constitutionally valid. If that is true, it cannot be so just in virtue of the text of the Constitution and the fact of prior court decisions, because reasonable lawyers who know exactly what the constitution says and what the courts have done may yet disagree whether it is true. What are the other possibilities? One is to suppose that controversial propositions f law, like the affirmative action statement, are not descriptive at all but are rather expressions of what the speaker wants the law to be.Another is more ambitious: controversial statements are attempts to describe some pure objective or natural law, which exits in virtue of objective moral truth rather than historical decision. Both these projects take some legal statements, at least, to be purely evaluative as distinct from descriptive: they express either what the speaker prefers—his personal politics—or what he believes is objectively required b the principles of an ideal political morality. Neither of these projects is plausible because someone who says that a particular untested affirmative action plan is constitution does mean to describe the law as it is rather than as he wants it to be or thinks that, by the best moral theory, it should be. He might, indeed, say that the regrets that the plan is constitutional and thinks that, according to the best moral theory, it ought not to be.There is a better alternative: propositions of law are not simply descriptive of legal history, in a straightforward way, nor are they simply evaluative in some way divorced from legal history. They are interpretive of legal history, which combines elements of both description and evaluation but is different from both. This suggestion will be congenial, at least at first blush, to many lawyers and legal philosophers. They are used to saying that law is a matter of interpretation; but only, perhaps because they understand interpretation in a certain way. When a statute is unclear on some point, because some crucial term is vague or because a sentence is ambiguous, lawyers say that the statute must be interpreted, and they apply what they call "techniques of statutory construction." Most of the literature assumes that interpretation of a particular document is a matter of discovering what its authors meant to say in using the words they did. But lawyers recognize that on many issues the author had no intention either way and that on others his intention cannot be discovered. Some lawyers take a more skeptical position. They say that whenever judges pretend they are discovering the intention behind some piece of legislation, this is simply a smoke screen behind which the judges impose their own view of what the statute should have been.Ronald Dworkin, professor of jurisprudence at Oxford University, is the author of Taking Rights Seriously and editor of The Philosophy of Law. (shrink)

This paper aims to offer an ethical defence of the modern practice of corrida. First, the study introduces a criticism of contemporary “animal liberation” ethics. Secondly, it draws a new set of principles and guidelines regarding our moral behaviour towards animals. Eventually, the study demonstrates that the ethics of corrida are based on the respect for the bull’s nature which is defined by the concept of “bravura”.

ABSTRACT:The notion of stakeholder salience based on attributes (e.g., power, legitimacy, urgency) is applied in the family business setting. We argue that where principal institutions intersect (i.e., family and business); managerial perceptions of stakeholder salience will be different and more complex than where institutions are based on a single dominant logic. We propose that (1) whereas utilitarian power is more likely in the general business case, normative power is more typical in family business stakeholder salience; (2) whereas in a general (...) business context legitimacy is socially constructed; for family stakeholders, legitimacy is based on heredity; and (3) whereas temporality and criticality are somewhat independent in general-business urgency, they are linked in the family business case because of family ties and family-centered non-economic goals. We apply this theoretical framework to position and integrate the contributions to this special section ofBusiness Ethics Quarterlyon “Stakeholder Theory, Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Family Enterprise.”. (shrink)

Over the centuries, magicians have developed extensive knowledge about the manipulation of the human mind—knowledge that has been largely ignored by psychology. It has recently been argued that this knowledge could help improve our understanding of human cognition and consciousness. But how might this be done? And how much could it ultimately contribute to the exploration of the human mind? We propose here a framework outlining how knowledge about magic can be used to help us understand the human mind. Various (...) approaches—both old and new—are surveyed, in terms of four different levels. The first focuses on the methods in magic, using these to suggest new approaches to existing issues in psychology. The second focuses on the effects that magic can produce, such as the sense of wonder induced by seeing an apparently impossible event. Third is the consideration of magic tricks—methods and effects together—as phenomena of scientific interest in their own right. Finally, there is the organization of knowledge about magic into an informative whole, including the possibility of a science centered around the experience of wonder. (shrink)