The Norwegian Association for Heredity Research played a key role in the rise of genetics as a research field in Norway. The immediate background of its establishment in 1919 was the need for an organization that could clarify scientific issues regarding eugenics and coordinate Norwegian representation in the organized international eugenics movement. The Association never assumed this role. Instead, Norway was represented in the international eugenics movement by the so-called Norwegian Consultative Eugenics Commission, whose leader, Jon Alfred (...) Mjøen, was dismissed as a pseudo-scientist by Norwegian geneticists. The paper explores the Association’s role in defining and delimiting scientific expert knowledge in the field of genetics and eugenics in Norway. It demonstrates how struggles about academic authority on the national arena were intertwined with struggles about representation and impact in the international eugenics movement and how transnational scientific networks where mobilized to legitimize and delegitimize notions about Nordic race supremacy, racial mixing and the politics of eugenic sterilizations. (shrink)

The Norwegian Oil Fund (‘Government Pension Fund – Global’) is worth over NOK 10.6 trillion (USD 1.15 USD trillion)1 making it the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world (Norges Bank Investment...

BackgroundInternationally, clinical ethics support has yet to be implemented systematically in community health and care services. A large-scale Norwegian project attempted to increase ethical competence in community services through facilitating the implementation of ethics support activities in 241 Norwegian municipalities. The article describes the ethics project and the ethics activities that ensued.MethodsThe article first gives an account of the Norwegian ethics project. Then the results of two online questionnaires are reported, characterizing the scope, activities and organization of (...) the ethics activities in the Norwegian municipalities and the ethical topics addressed.ResultsOne hundred and thirty-seven municipal contact persons answered the first survey, whereas 217 ethics facilitators from 48 municipalities responded to the second. The Norwegian ethics project is vast in scope, yet has focused on some institutions and professions whilst seldom reaching others. Patients and next of kin were very seldom involved. Through the ethics project employees discussed many important ethical challenges, in particular related to patient autonomy, competence to consent, and cooperation with next of kin. The “ethics reflection group” was the most common venue for ethics deliberation.ConclusionsThe Norwegian project is the first of its kind and scope, and other countries may learn from the Norwegian experiences. Professionals have discussed central ethical dilemmas, the handling of which arguably makes a difference for patients/users and service quality. The study indicates that large scale implementation of CES structures for the municipal health and care services is complex, yet feasible. (shrink)

The Norwegian state-owned Petroleum Fund's market value is more than one trillion US dollars, and the Norwegian state has become one of the world's largest stockowners. The Fund was established in 1990 and in 2006 and renamed the 'Government Pension Fund Global', as savings for future generations. What kind of values form the basis for describing the Petroleum Fund in this way? This article shows that the idea that present generations should not empty the North Sea of oil (...) and gas without saving something for future generations has been stable since the 1970s. However, over time, the understanding of how to save has changed. More specifically experts, bureaucrats and politicians have shifted their arguments during four phases: moderation in oil extraction (1974-1983); introduction of the national wealth model (1984-1990); a financial fund for the present and the future (1991-2006); and increased income and new protests (2007-2019). These four periods show that over time the idea of weak sustainability and value commensurability have increasingly come to dominate the argumentation in public documents about the Petroleum Fund. (shrink)

This study explores the perceptions of Norwegian nurses who have received assisted dying requests from terminally ill patients. Assisted dying is illegal in Norway, while in some countries, it is an option. Nurses caring for terminally ill patients may experience ethical challenges by receiving requests for euthanasia and assisted suicide. We applied a qualitative research design with a phenomenological hermeneutic approach using open individual interviews. A total of 15 registered nurses employed in pulmonary and oncology wards of three university (...) hospitals and home care in one municipality were recruited. Four themes emerged from the analysis: (1) unprepared for the request; (2) meeting direct, indirect, and nonverbal requests; (3) working in a gray zone, and (4) feeling alone and powerless. The study found that nurses were unsure how to handle such requests due to professional uncertainty about assisted dying. Working in an environment where the topic is taboo made nurses morally uncertain, and some perceived this as moral distress. The hospital chaplain played a significant role in providing support to these nurses. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:_Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2602\REVIEWS.262 : 2007-01-24 01:12 Reviews 185 A NORWEGIAN ANTHOLOGY OF RUSSELL ON WAR, PEACE AND PACIFISM Stefan Andersson Theology and Religious Studies / U. of Lund s223 62 Lund, Sweden [email protected] Øystein Hide, ed. Bertrand Russell om krig, fred og pasifisme [Bertrand Russell on war, peace and pacifism]. Oslo: Humanist Forlag, 2006. Pp. 261. isbn 8292622101. 268 Kroner. Paperbound. his is a selected anthology (...) of Russell’s writings and interviews on war, Tpeace and pacifism edited by the Norwegian Øystein Hide, who was born in 1975 and has the equivalent of a ma in philosophy from a Norwegian university. He did graduate work at the University of Southampton in 2001–04. He has worked at the Wittgenstein Archives in Bergen and at the University of Bergen. He has done research at the Bertrand Russell Archives1 and is a member of the Mind Association. He has translated Wittgenstein’s Zettel and Über Gewissheit into Norwegian and has done other philosophically relevant work in both Norwegian and English. Øystein Hide has supplied his anthology with an introduction that contains a number of minor factual mistakes that are a bit disturbing, but they do not overshadow his main message that Russell’s writings on war, peace and pacifism are still worth reading. He starts out by distinguishing between “the two Bertrand Russells”: the philosopher and what he calls “the political humanist”. Although Hide does not spend much energy on explaining exactly what he means by it, I find this a thought-provoking expression that to me suggests a secular humanist who is prepared to act on his convictions. He compares Russell to the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss, who also was a political activist and acted according to his deepest beliefs. Hide says about Russell: “For many people Russell has become the great philosopher who also actively contributed to the general political debate and who, in the capacity of being a philosopher, gave the lovers of peace a philosophical and intellectual alibi with which they could decorate their struggles” (p. 11). 1 Notably resulting in his article, “Wittgenstein’s Books at the Bertrand Russell Archives and the Influence of Scientific Literature on Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy”, Philosophical Investigations, 27 (Jan. 2004): 68–91. _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2602\REVIEWS.262 : 2007-01-24 01:12 186 Reviews Russell’s position as a philosopher and political activist in Norway is more or less the same as in the other Nordic countries, and although Hide’s book is Norwegian a lot of Swedes, Danes, Finns and Icelanders will be able to benefit from the collection. There is no mention, however, of Russell’s only trip to Norway (in 1948), which had a political purpose. Hide has divided his collection into two parts. The first part contains ten texts written between 1916 and 1920, and the second part contains five between 1950 and 1960. He does not say a lot about why he has included these texts and excluded others. These are the selections he offers: Part 1: “War as an Institution”, Chapter 3 from Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916) “Why the War Continues”, The UDC, 2 (10 Feb. 1917); in Papers 14 “National Service”, The Tribunal, 47 (15 Feb. 1917); Papers 14 “War and Individual Liberty”, The Tribunal, 50 (8 March 1917); Papers 14 “Pacifism and Revolution”, The Tribunal, 67 (19 July 1917); Papers 14 “The International Outlook”, The Pioneer, 347 (10 Nov. 1917); Papers 14 “Draft of Defence” (for Russell’s 1918 trial); Papers 14 “Government and Law”, Chapter 5 from Roads to Freedom (1918) “The World as It Could be Made”, Chapter 8 from Roads to Freedom (1918) “Bolshevik Criticism of Democracy”, Chapter 3 of Part 2 of The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920) Part 2: “Politically Important Desires”, Chapter 2 of Part 2 of Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954); Nobel Prize speech, 1950 How Near Is War? (London: Fleet Street Forum, 1952); interview “Man’s Peril”, The Listener, 52 (30 Dec. 1954); Papers 28 “The Road to Peace”, The Bomb: Challenge and Answer (London: Batsford, 1955); Papers 28 “War and Pacifism”, Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind (1960... (shrink)

Two studies were conducted to assess the psychometric properties of scores from the Norwegian adaptation of the Big Five Inventory-2. In Study 1, the BFI-2 was translated to Norwegian and the scores from a convenience sample demonstrated good psychometric properties. BFI-2 scores from subsamples correlated in expected ways with self- and other ratings of the Big Five, and with self-ratings of empathic concern and perspective taking. In Study 2, after some minor improvements in translation, the psychometric properties of (...) BFI-2 scores were assessed in a new sample. Results from random intercept EFA of scores supported the proposed model. The psychometric properties of two shorter versions of the inventory, the BFI-2-S and BFI-2-XS, were also examined. Overall, the results suggest that the Norwegian adaptation of the BFI-2 provide reliable and valid scores. (shrink)

This article attempts to reconstruct an early history of the Norwegian Pentecostal Mission’s work in Kenya. The Free Pentecostal Church, known as the Free Pentecostal Fellowship in Kenya until April 2018, was born out of a 1984 merger between the Swedish Free Mission and the NPM. The Norwegians came earlier in 1955, whereas their Scandinavian counterparts arrived in 1960. The article contests that during the period under review, the first 29 years of NPM’s presence in Kenya, the NPM was (...) characterised by a fast-growing enthusiasm in establishing mission stations and local churches through evangelism and social work activities in education, medical care, orphanages, midwifery and compassionate handouts of commodities to villagers. These would be overtaken by the efforts to merge Swedish and Norwegian interests and establishments into one denomination in 1976 and the move towards nationalising the FPFK by handing over church leadership to the Kenyans by 1997. The article contests that the zeal and successes of the missionaries and local church workers in sowing the seeds of the gospel were checked by cultural and socio-economic setbacks in Kenya’s colonial context as well as the nationalisation process. The increased presence of Norwegian missionaries in Kenya during the 1960s were largely motivated by, among other factors, the channelling of Norwegian government aid monies to foreign development regions through missionary agencies and the imminent independence of the East African state. (shrink)

This paper presents the Norwegian national health care system and the manner in which the problems of rationing and pluralism of values create new ethical and political challenges. The paper concludes with some doubts about the feasibility of the transformation taking place within this kind of health care system, with special reference to governmental control and consumer preference. Keywords: national health care, pluralism, rationing, two-tier system CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

Background: Medicine is full of value conflicts. Limited resources and legal regulations may place doctors in difficult ethical dilemmas and cause moral distress. Research on moral distress has so far been mainly studied in nurses. Objective: To describe whether Norwegian doctors experience stress related to ethical dilemmas and lack of resources, and to explore whether the doctors feel that they have good strategies for the resolution of ethical dilemmas. Design: Postal survey of a representative sample of 1497 Norwegian (...) doctors in 2004, presenting statements about different ethical dilemmas, values and goals at their workplace. Results: The response rate was 67%. 57% admitted that it is difficult to criticise a colleague for professional misconduct and 51% for ethical misconduct. 51% described sometimes having to act against own conscience as distressing. 66% of the doctors experienced distress related to long waiting lists for treatment and to impaired patient care due to time constraints. 55% reported that time spent on administration and documentation is distressing. Female doctors experienced more stress that their male colleagues. 44% reported that their workplace lacked strategies for dealing with ethical dilemmas. Conclusion: Lack of resources creates moral dilemmas for physicians. Moral distress varies with specialty and gender. Lack of strategies to solve ethical dilemmas and low tolerance for conflict and critique from colleagues may obstruct important and necessary ethical dialogues and lead to suboptimal solutions of difficult ethical problems. (shrink)

Corporations are spending a substantial and increasing amount of money on corporate social responsibility. However, little is known about the effects on key stakeholders of these activities. This study investigates if CSR activities have an effect on employees’ affective commitment. Two models test to what extent employees’ CSR perception, involvement in decision processes, and demographic variables are related to their AC relative to their perception of positive organizational support. The analysis is based on a sample of 512 employees from 4 (...) Scandinavian companies; 3 Norwegian and 1 Swedish, randomly selected from a population of 6,710 mostly Norwegian and Swedish employees in those 2 countries. The results indicate that CSR perception is a significant predictor of AC, although how employees feel that the company cares about them has stronger explanatory power on AC. Contrary to the few other studies addressing AC and CSR, gender was not found to be a significant variable in the model. (shrink)

On 12 March 2020, the Norwegian government instigated measures to limit the spread of COVID-19, the most drastic policies of any Norwegian government in peacetime. A particularly Norwegian metaphor used when introducing those measures concerned the “dugnad” tradition, a cultural practice of voluntary work carried out as a community. This article traces the trajectory of dugnad metaphors related to COVID-19 in Norwegian public discourse, to shed light on the aptness of their use. Aptness is measured in (...) terms of “resonance,” the public reception to the metaphor. It follows a threefold categorization: imposition, endorsement, or resistance, all of which are divided into inductively developed subcategories. The data consists of all relevant concordances of the lexeme DUGNAD appearing from March 2020-June 2021 in one of the three largest Norwegian national online newspapers. Findings indicate that the imposition of the dugnad struck a chord with the Norwegian people; supportive statements far outweighed those of opposition and continued throughout the investigated period, even though national government officials mostly stopped using the dugnad metaphor after May 2020. Resistance was nevertheless also present from the outset, reaching a renewed peak around March 2021. Aptness thus varies over time, a finding with implications for future pandemic communication. (shrink)

Public participation is a prominent issue in the nanoethics literature. This paper analyses the emerging awareness of nanoscience and nanotechnology (nano S&T) in the Norwegian public sphere, as evidenced by newspaper coverage. In particular, attention is on representations of nano S&T and their relation to public participation. Three dominant representations are found; nano S&T as positive, nano S&T as important for the future and nano S&T as under control. It is argued that the prominence of these representations is unfortunate (...) because they can discourage public participation. The paper concludes by pointing to some broader questions about public participation as an instrument for governance of nano S&T. (shrink)

This article examines how immigrant careworkers relate dynamically with the Norwegian gender regime. While the importation of careworkers contributes both to the practical maintenance and to the undermining on a more ideological level of the Norwegian gender regime, it also brings in new constellations and possibilities. In this article examples from two studies are discussed in the light of institutional and intersectional perspectives. It describes features of the Norwegian gender regime that are especially relevant to carework, and (...) the highly gendered distribution and sharing of carework across the public and private domains. One central Norwegian form of care institution, the nursing home, then comes into focus. Making use of empirical examples from fieldwork and interviews, the article discusses how, as immigrant careworkers increasingly staff these institutions, new light is thrown on existing power structures, while at the same time these structures may be challenged through the fluidity of situational and relational gendering processes. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 51 Heft: 1 Seiten: 449-460.

In March 1980, the oil-platform Alexander L. Kielland capsized in the North Sea resulting in the death of 123 workers. The Norwegian inquiry into the disaster was closed to the public and the survi...

In January 2006, one of the major cases of scientific fraud in recent years broke in the media. It was discovered that the Norwegian researcher John Sudbø had falsified the complete set of data on which an article published in the Lancet in 2005 had been based.1 The article had 14 authors, and Professor Jan Helge Solbakk, Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of Oslo, was quoted in Norwegian media as saying that “… also the 13 other (...) co-authors in the research scandal have muck on their hands…” and: “That none of the 13 has discovered what took place shows clearly that they have not been close to fulfilling the criteria for being co-authors.”2One of the co-authors complained to the Norwegian Medical Association’s Council for Professional Ethics about these comments, …. (shrink)

The main purpose of The NorwegianGene Technology Act (1993) is to enforcecontainment of genetically modified organisms(GMOs) and control of GMO releases.Furthermore, the Act intends to ensure that``production and use of GMOs should take placein an ethically and socially justifiable way,in accordance with the principle of sustainabledevelopment and without detrimental effects tohealth and the environment.'' Hence it isobvious that, for the Norwegian authorities,sustainable development is a normativeguideline when evaluating acceptableconsequences of GMO use and production. Inaccordance with this, we have investigated (...) theextent to which the sustainability criteriawere decisive for the destiny of one approvedand one declined application of geneticallymodified plant release. The presentunderstanding of the ecological,socio-economical, and cultural consequences ofGMO use and release is fragmentary anduncertain. We consider the PrecautionaryPrinciple and the notion of equitabledistribution as key issues within thesustainable development framework, henceconstituting important foundations for ouranalyses. The Act is legitimizingsustainability criteria, but does not seem tosecure their conversion into concrete action.We envisage a more conscious implementation ofthe Norwegian Gene Technology Act.Sustainability concerns ecological, economical,and social values, and these can only beensured through long-term thinking, initiationof independent risk-associated research, andbroad involvement of all stakeholders in theevaluation of GMO issues and concerns. (shrink)

The article explores digital literacy practices in children’s everyday lives at Norwegian preschools and some of the ways in which young children appropriate basic digital literacy skills through guided participation in situated activities. Building on an ethnomethodological perspective, the analyses are based on 70 hours of video recordings documenting the activities in which 45 children, aged 5-6, and eight preschool teachers participated. Through the detailed analysis of two categorization activities – identifying geometrical shapes and identifying feelings/thoughts –the use of (...) digital tools in the social organization of the activities are examined. The article finds that children’s digital literacy activities encompass visual, verbal, audio and embodied competencies that are made relevant, and thus accessible for learning, in interaction between the children and between the adults and children in the form of norms and guidelines for what constitutes correct categorizations (geometrical shapes and green and red feelings) in the situated activities, and that are appropriated and actualized by the children in interaction with their peers. The findings also show how the categorization practices in preschools deal with symbols and labels in ways that create and sustain socially organized ways of knowing, seeing and acting upon the world. Digital media are embedded in routines, procedures and socialites that are part of these categorization practices; they are part of how children are instructed to experience, interpret, understand and act in the world. Moreover, the different technologies created different conditions for the children’s participation. It was found that peer interaction was part of the digital literacy activities that involved such mobile technologies as smartphones and tablets, while when using non-mobile technologies, e.g. smartboards, the activities were structured more as ‘classic’ classroom activities, primarily guided by the teacher and the didactic material presented through the smartboard. (shrink)

Although natural philosophers of Enlightenment Europe shared common ideals, like reliance on reason and natural philosophy, to promote what they deemed to be progress; there were national differences in attitude and disciplinary focus. This paper takes various eligibility criteria as a starting point from which to define a Nordic Enlightenment science; and situates endeavours in climate science within visions of useful science and international conventions for scientific practice. Two perspectives are explored: the make-up of the Nordic Enlightenment science; and the (...) Nordic natural philosopher’s various platforms for work and knowledge transfer. While historians differ as to what constitutes Enlightenment thought and spirit, I establish the existence of a Nordic Enlightenment science by identifying and examining several of its indicators. The paper concludes with a more specific discussion of climate science in Norway in which I show how climate observations performed during the eighteenth century by a sample of Norway’s clergymen and civil servants bear testimony to an internationally-oriented science, through articles produced for science journals and conventions followed for data presentation and instrumentation. The findings corroborate existing knowledge of a progress-driven, Enlightenment science in Nordic countries; reveal differences between countries, and present Norway’s early-modern climate science in an international light. (shrink)

How can a confederation of business and industry influence companies and make them more aware of ethical issues? This article examines the work of Norwegian Business and Industry, and the results it has achieved. The author is Assistant Director of NHO, P.b. 5250, Majorstua, 0303 Oslo, and she has been responsible for its business ethics programme for the past three years. This article comes to us through the agency of our Associate Editor for Norway, Dr Heidi von Weltzien Høivik, (...) of the Norwegian School of Management, who has recently been instrumental in founding a Norwegian Centre for Business Ethics. (shrink)

As the suspect interview is one of the key elements of a police investigation, it has received a great deal of merited attention from the scientific community. However, suspect interviews in child sexual abuse investigations is an understudied research area. In the present mixed-methods study, we examine Swedish and Norwegian police interviewers' self-reported goals, tactics, and emotional experiences when conducting interviews with suspected CSA offenders. The quantitative analyses found associations between the interviewers' self-reported goals, tactics, and emotions during these (...) types of suspect interviews. Interviewers who reported experiencing more negative emotions were more likely to employ confrontational tactics. Specifically, anger was positively associated with the goal of obtaining a confession and with aggressive tactics like raising one's voice and emphasizing the seriousness of the crime. Frustration and disgust displayed similar patterns. Somewhat contrasting these quantitative results, the thematic analysis identified a strong consensus that emotions should not and do not affect the police interviewers' work. Furthermore, the police interviewers described a range of strategies for managing emotions during the interview and for processing their emotional reactions afterwards. The present findings highlight the relevance of emotional processes in CSA suspect interviews and provide an initial exploration of the potentially complex relationship between the goals, tactics, and emotional experiences of police interviewers who question CSA suspects. (shrink)

This article raises the issue of the extent to which a single nation can develop a “national agricultural policy,” pursuing internal goals in agrarian development, goals that vary significantly from those of other industrialized countries. What are the conflicts arising from such a policy and how do these conflicts interfere with the general agricultural crisis of these countries? The Norwegian case is explored as an example of a blend of social-democratic and center-populist agricultural policies. The decision in 1975 by (...) the Norwegian Parliament to establish the income level of farmers at the same level as workers is seen as an experiment. As agricultural policy, this new departure represented a deviation from the earlier policies of rationalization. The Social Democrats developed their new position as a result of internal and external pressure. A series of reforms financed by the new state incomes from oil production were undertaken, of which income equalization and a farm relief service were the most important. Most Norwegian farmers speak of the reform years as “the good years of escalation.” Equity was reached in 1982, but nevertheless several problems emerged: 1) the escalation of subsidized incomes led to overproduction and decreasing incomes from the market (after 1982), 2) the large budgetary transfers to agriculture caused a legitimation crisis, fueling the constituency of the right-wing Progress Party, 3) the large subsidies to agriculture contributed to the fiscal crisis of the state, 4) the problems mentioned above, contributed to the general crisis of the Norwegian Social Democracy which finds itself with dwindling support. The likely outcome of the present Norwegian farm crisis is the implementation of an agricultural policy that will protect the most vulnerable sector and open the more competitive sector to market forces. (shrink)

ArgumentThe paper focuses on a research project launched by Norwegian psychiatrists immediately following World War II. The project sought to investigate the roots of quislingism through psychiatric research on the collaborators. Considered with hindsight, however, the methodology of the project seems puzzlingly shallow. The paper discusses whether this was due to a general lack of adequate methodology in the contemporaneous sciences, or whether the explanation must be sought in the project's social and historical context. Ultimately, I conclude that considerable (...) weight must be placed on the latter explanation, and that the general political ostracism of the collaborators in the postwar years played a major role in the psychiatrists' attitude. (shrink)

Background: No studies have examined the underlying structure or predictive validity of the Cognitive Therapy Adherence and Competence Scale. Examining the structure of the CTACS is of great relevance because it could provide information on what constitutes competence in CBT, and whether some underlying factors are more important for predicting treatment outcomes than others. This study investigates the psychometric properties of the Norwegian version of CTACS and its associations with treatment outcomes in a sample of primary care clients who (...) received CBT for anxiety and/or depression.Method: Independent assessors rated audiotaped therapy sessions in a sample of 132 primary care clients, participating in the Prompt Mental Health Care trial. Outcomes were symptoms of anxiety and depression assessed by patient self-report questionnaires. Structural validity was examined by means of confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses, whereas longitudinal associations with treatment outcome were explored by adopting multilevel modeling.Results: No evidence was found for the divergent validity of the constructs competence and adherence as indicated by a very high correlation between these two subscales in CTACS. Regarding reliability, ICCs for the mean score of the full competence scale and its associated subscales were generally good to excellent, although the subscale measuring the quality of the therapeutic relationship was relatively low. Internal consistency was overall acceptable, but our CFA models did not provide an acceptable fit for the pre-specified one-factor and four-factor solutions. EFA results were difficult to interpret, with a sub-optimal three-factor solution providing best model fit and only two meaningful factors [CBT specific skills and session structure ]. Overall, the results indicated no evidence for the scales' predictive validity.Conclusion: Our findings point to several psychometric problems of the CTACS that may limit both its research and clinical utility. The importance of providing empirical evidence for both reliability and validity aspects of scales are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to explore people’s attitudes toward responsibility in the allocation of public health care resources. Special attention is paid to conceptualizations of responsibility involving blame and sanctions. A representative sample of the Norwegian population was asked about various responsibility mechanisms that have been proposed in the theoretical literature on health care and personal responsibility, from denial of treatment to a tax on unhealthy consumer goods. Survey experiments were employed to study treatment effects, such as (...) whether fairness considerations affect attitudes about responsibility. We find that, overall, a substantial minority of the respondents find it fair to let the health care system sanction people—in one way or another—for voluntary behaviors that increase the risk of becoming ill. Quite surprisingly, we find that people are more prone to report that they should themselves be held responsible for unhealthy lifestyles than others. (shrink)

How can a confederation of business and industry influence companies and make them more aware of ethical issues? This article examines the work of Norwegian Business and Industry , and the results it has achieved. The author is Assistant Director of NHO, P.b. 5250, Majorstua, 0303 Oslo, and she has been responsible for its business ethics programme for the past three years. This article comes to us through the agency of our Associate Editor for Norway, Dr Heidi von Weltzien (...) Høivik, of the Norwegian School of Management, who has recently been instrumental in founding a Norwegian Centre for Business Ethics. (shrink)

Nazi ideology was premised on a belief in the superiority of the Germanic race. However, the idea of a superior Germanic race was not invented by the Nazis. By the beginning of the 20th century this idea had already gained not only popular but also mainstream scientific support in England, Germany, the U.S., Scandinavia, and other parts of the world in which people claimed Germanic origins (p. xiii). Yet how could this idea, which is now recognised as ideology of the (...) most dangerous kind, be given the appearance of scientific legitimacy by some of the leading physical anthropologists of the day? (shrink)

Norwegian health professionals, elderly people and family members experience ethical problems involving end-of-life decision making for elders in the context of the values of Norwegian society. This study used ethical inquiry and qualitative methodology to conduct and analyze interviews carried out with 25 health professionals, six elderly people and five family members about the ethical problems they encountered in end-of-life decision making in Norway. All three participant groups experienced ethical problems involving the adequacy of health care for elderly (...) Norwegians. Older people were concerned about being a burden to their families at the end of their life. However, health professionals wished to protect families from the burden of difficult decisions regarding health care for elderly parents at the end of life. Strategies are suggested for dialogue about end-of-life decisions and the integration of palliative care approaches into health care services for frail elderly people. (shrink)

This article examines the impact that the interplay between workplace, the welfare state and global working life has on female workers when they become pregnant. By focusing on two highly educated Norwegian female workers, it explores how this change process takes place in two companies operating in the global market located in different countries: Norway and the US. Pregnancy contributes to transforming the neutralized bodiless female worker into an embodied worker with gender. The female workers' experiences and negotiations represent (...) forms of global action on local stages. This is illustrated by four processes: `married to work', `pregnant and still married to work', `negotiating separation from work' and `excluding mothering'. The findings indicate the significance of taking welfare state and workplace policy approaches into consideration in studies of global effects on employees. (shrink)

Despite the growing body of work exploring the weaknesses of police performance systems and the displacement of their goals, less attention has been given to why police officers resist and circumvent by false reporting. Whether police report honestly on their activities is a matter of considerable significance given the role that police have in a broadly democratic society, and the overall question is whether the false reporting undermines the integrity of the police or if it is a collective coping strategy (...) that safeguards the police ethos? This survey reveals that 25% of respondents (n = 2248) had manipulated the numbers at least once in the previous year. To identify why they did so, the variables selected for analysis are those determining their view of the Management by Objective (MBO) system, how far they have participated in the MBO process and how often they are unable to assist a member of the public. Our results show that men are more likely to manipulate the numbers than women and non-leaders are more likely to do so than leaders. Respondents were more likely to submit false reports if they had not participated in the MBO process, were not motivated by MBO goals, believed the MBO indicators misdirected their focus and frequently felt that they were forced to reject members of the public they would like to help. Our findings further show that public servants can be corrupted, though they do not “bring” vices to work with them, but rather acquire vices through what is required of them. (shrink)

This paper investigates the acquisition of residual verb second (V2) in three corpora consisting of data from Norwegian-English bilinguals (Emma, Emily, and Sunniva) in order to determine to what extent these structures are affected by cross-linguistic influence (CLI) from Norwegian V2. The three girls exhibit three different patterns with regard to the relevant constructions. They are very target-like in their use of auxiliaries in the relevant structures. However, when it comes to do-support, Emily and Sunniva are equally target-like, (...) while Emma mainly produces non-target-like structures. These either involve the omission of do, or non-target-like movement of a lexical verb. Furthermore, Emma also allows verb movement across the subject with both lexical verbs and auxiliaries in topicalized structures, suggesting that she has overgeneralized residual V2 across verb types and clause types. Emily, on the other hand, is very target-like in structures involving residual V2 in English, but also allows auxiliaries and dummy-do to move across the subject in topicalized structures, overgeneralizing residual V2 to apply to non-subject-initial declaratives. Finally, Sunniva, is very precocious and very target-like in all the relevant structures, which may be an indication of acceleration due to CLI from Norwegian V2. We discuss these results with reference to language balance, finding that the measures available to us suggest that the differences between the children cannot straightforwardly be explained by language dominance. Instead, we suggest that these results can be accounted for by ambiguity in the English system, leaving the data open to several possible interpretations when acquired in contact with the consistent V2 system in Norwegian. This has several consequences: (i) the three girls’ parsers interpret the input differently, (ii) differences between the three children are qualitative rather than quantitative, and (iii) there has to be some mechanism that ensures that the children can ‘recover’ from these non-target-like grammars. In this paper, we will focus on the first two issues. (shrink)

Establishing and maintaining mutual understanding in everyday conversations is crucial. To do so, people employ a variety of conversational devices, such as backchannels, repair, and linguistic entrainment. Here, we explore whether the use of conversational devices might be influenced by cross‐linguistic differences in the speakers’ native language, comparing two matched languages—Danish and Norwegian—differing primarily in their sound structure, with Danish being more opaque, that is, less acoustically distinguished. Across systematically manipulated conversational contexts, we find that processes supporting mutual understanding (...) in conversations vary with external constraints: across different contexts and, crucially, across languages. In accord with our predictions, linguistic entrainment was overall higher in Danish than in Norwegian, while backchannels and repairs presented a more nuanced pattern. These findings are compatible with the hypothesis that native speakers of Danish may compensate for its opaque sound structure by adopting a top‐down strategy of building more conversational redundancy through entrainment, which also might reduce the need for repairs. These results suggest that linguistic differences might be met by systematic changes in language processing and use. This paves the way for further cross‐linguistic investigations and critical assessment of the interplay between cultural and linguistic factors on the one hand and conversational dynamics on the other. (shrink)

With disagreement, doubts, or ambiguous grounds in end–of-life decisions, doctors are advised to involve a clinical ethics committee. However, little has been published on doctors’ experiences with discussing an end-of-life decision in a CEC. As part of the quality assurance of this work, we wanted to find out if clinicians have benefited from discussing end-of-life decisions in CECs and why. We will disseminate some Norwegian doctors’ experiences when discussing end-of-life decisions in CECs, based on semi-structured interviews with fifteen (...) class='Hi'>Norwegian physicians who had brought an end-of-life decision case to a CEC. Almost half of the cases involved conflicts with the patients’ relatives. In a majority of the cases, there was uncertainty about what would be the ethically preferable solution. Reasons for referring the case to the CEC were to get broader illumination of the case, to get perspective from people outside the team, to get advice, or to get moral backing on a decision already made. A great majority of the clinicians reported an overall positive experience with the CECs’ discussions. In cases where there was conflict, the clinicians reported less satisfaction with the CECs’ discussions. The study shows that most doctors who have used a CEC in an end-of-life decision find it useful to have ethical and/or legal aspects illuminated, and to have the dilemma scrutinized from a new perspective. A systematic discussion seems to be significant to the clinicians. (shrink)

To date, few Norwegian clinical ethics committees (CECs) have included patients or next of kin in case discussions. In 2008, Rikshospitalet's (The National Hospital's) CEC began to routinely invite patients and relatives into case discussions. In this paper, we describe seven cases discussed by this committee in 2008. Six involved life and death decision-making in collaboration with the next of kin, while one related case did not include relatives. In our opinion, representing the patient's perspective was advantageous to the (...) discussion itself, to the conclusion made and to the next of kin's acceptance of the resolution. We believe that if the patient had been represented in the last case, the outcome might have been different. We conclude that successful patient involvement will rely on well-structured case discussions, an open atmosphere and good preparation and follow-up. (shrink)

The paper examines the media attention given to the Norwegian Progress Party (FrP) during the parliamentary elections in which it participated between 1973 and 2017. Particular attention is paid to the ideas of media populism and the so-called life-cycle model that outlines the relationship between the different media types and a populist movement regarding its life span. Our data consist of media coverage of the parliamentary election campaigns in Norway in Verdens Gang’s (tabloid) and Aftenposten’s (legacy) newspapers between 1973 (...) and 2017 in general (n=16,536) and the FrP’s media attention in these two major newspapers in particular (n=1,671). The research method employed was a quantitative content analysis. The media coverage of the FrP follows somewhat the life-cycle model, but the party’s internal development and status in the political field, immigration as an individual issue, and changes in political and the media environments seem more important factors for the media attention. (shrink)

The Norwegian Arbeidernes leksikon, “Workers’ Encyclopedia,” was published in six volumes from 1931–1936. It was inspired by The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, explicitly aimed at working-class readers, and establishing an alternative to the hegemonic bourgeoise discourse. The editors and many of the contributors belonged to the Communist Party of Norway (NKP) and the independent communist intellectual organization Mot Dag (“Towards Dawn”). This article investigates the reception and representation of the ancient world in Arbeidernes leksikon based on selected articles through the (...) lens of narrative theory. Classical education was traditionally the domain of the upper classes. It is argued that the Workers’ Encyclopedia demonstrates that reorienting the reception of ancient history was considered essential both to rewrite history according to Marxist doctrine and to establish workers’ culture as a full-fledged alternative to its bourgeoise counterpart. In the Workers’ Encyclopedia, the classical past is celebrated not for its empires and rulers but for the effort of the masses and their struggle for freedom. (shrink)

The Breivik case in Norway has motivated a reassessment of Norwegian insanity law by the Norwegian government. Because Norway since 2002 has utilized a “medical model” for legal insanity—a model according to which the legal excuse of insanity is identified with some medical concept such as psychosis—the Norwegian reexamination of its law is not without interest throughout the world. In this paper, I utilize the Anglo-American experience with different medical models for insanity to assess the current (...) class='Hi'>Norwegian law on insanity. I defend a strong version of the medical model against standard criticisms advanced against it in the Anglo-American literature, and venture some suggested improvements in how that model was applied in the Breivik case. (shrink)