This study tests the effects of top management team member collectivistic values and TMT dissatisfaction with the financial situation on the environmental ethics of TMT members. We also examine the moderating effect of collectivistic values on the relationship between financial dissatisfaction and environmental ethics. Analyses of multi-level and source data show that financial dissatisfaction of the TMT negatively affects TMT members’ environmental ethics. However, TMT members’ individual collectivism can increase TMT members’ environmental ethics. Analyses (...) also show that TMT members’ collectivism moderates the relationship between financial dissatisfaction and environmental ethics across individual and team levels. (shrink)

The importance of financial advice for individuals is difficult to refute, however the degree to which the financial planning industry has been able to provide this to date is in debate. As a result, the industry, which is still in its infancy, has been subject to rapid growth, various controversies and regulatory intervention. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) has contributed to the pace of this change with increased client, regulatory and self scrutiny as a result of the (...) heightened dissatisfaction with advice outcomes. The coalescence of these factors has led to significant internal and external changes within the industry, resulting in the apparent commitment to becoming a profession. This paper will examine the implication of this agenda for tertiary education in relation to the role it could play to support the development of the financial planning profession. The paper achieves this by (1) reviewing the background to the financial planning industry and the move towards professionalism; (2) discussing current developments in the industry; (3) establishing the role of tertiary education and (4) assessing the role that tertiary education has played in supporting the financial planning sector. We argue that tertiary education has a critical role to play, however it is yet to achieve this. This study will be useful for those in both the managerial and operational/ academic elements of tertiary education in terms of providing considered avenues for engagement in this discipline. Indeed, if the paper provokes debate and discussion in tertiary education around the nation then we would consider our task complete. (shrink)

The financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic have caused many enterprises to suffer great losses. Thus, companies have to take measures such as pays cut, furloughs, or layoffs, which caused dissatisfaction among employees and triggered labor disputes. Therefore, this study explores the service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior based on the decomposed theory of planned behavior in order to understand the behavioral intentions of employees through their mental states, job attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. This study (...) conducted questionnaire surveys for employees in different industries, collected 281 valid questionnaires, and applied Structural Equation Model for the analysis. The results show: employees believe organizational justice in the organization is important, and when they feel treated fairly, their job attitudes and beliefs are enhanced. Employees’ job attitudes and beliefs support service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior, in other words, they have positive job attitudes and beliefs and will actively provide better service to customers. When employees are treated reasonably and fairly by the organization and have positive job attitudes and perceived behavior control, their spontaneous service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior is stimulated, thus increasing organizational development. (shrink)

Background Encounters of moral distress have long-term consequences on healthcare workers’ physical and mental health, leading to job dissatisfaction, reduced patient care, and high levels of burnout, exhaustion, and intentions to quit. Yet, research on approaches to ameliorate moral distress across the health workforce is limited. Research Objective The aim of our study was to qualitatively explore multi-professional perspectives of healthcare social workers, chaplains, and patient liaisons on ways to reduce moral distress and heighten well-being at a southern U.S. (...) academic medical center. Participants & Research Context Purposive sampling and chain-referral methods assisted with recruitment through hospital listservs, staff meetings, and newsletters. Interested participants contacted the principal investigator and all interviews were conducted in-person. Consent was attained prior to interviews. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Research Design Directed content analysis was used to deductively organize codes and to develop themes in conjunction with the National Academy of Medicine’s National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being. Rigor was attained through peer-debriefing, data triangulation methods, and frequent research team meetings. Ethical Considerations Ethics approval was obtained from the university and medical center institutional review boards. Findings Themes demonstrate that rather than offering interventions in the aftermath of moral distress, multilevel daily practices ought to be considered that pre-emptively identify and reduce morally distressing encounters through (1) the care team, (2) management and leadership, and (3) the health care industry. Strategies include interdisciplinary decision-making, trusting managerial relationships, and organizational policies and practices that explicitly invest in mental health promotion and diverse leadership opportunities. Conclusion Moral distress interventions ought to target short-term stress reactions while also addressing the long-term impacts of moral residue. Health systems must financially commit to an ethical workplace culture that explicitly values mental health and well-being. (shrink)

Dominant agri-food systems are increasingly seen as unsustainable in terms of environmental degradation, mass production or high food waste. In an attempt to counteract these developments and foster sustainability transitions in agri-food systems, a variety of actors are engaging in socially innovative models of food production and consumption. Using a multiple case study approach, our study examines three contrasting alternative economic models in the city of Berlin: community gardens, the app Too Good To Go (TGTG), and a cooperative supermarket. Based (...) on 15 qualitative interviews, we provide insights into their transformative potential by exploring participants' underlying motivations, the changes they have experienced, and the challenges and potential for future development of these models. We find that participation in community gardens and the cooperative supermarket is similarly motivated by social aspects and dissatisfaction with existing food access options, while TGTG users are more motivated by financial reasons. Our study shows that change is experienced mainly at the individual level, e.g. by building new relationships, changing cognitive framings, and learning (new) practices, especially in community-oriented settings. The individualization of change shows that these models have a rather low potential to lead to more systemic accounts of changes. Yet, they can prefigure regime change, describe resistance, and foster cumulative incremental change that may spill over into society. We conclude that in order to sustain this role and drive transitions, it is important to up- and outscale these models; and we provide recommendations on how these models can mutually support their development, establishment, and protection. (shrink)

Role distribution is a central issue for parents in the transition to parenthood, but little is known about the motivations in fathers to assume a specific role. Differences in work-family balance in each parent may be motivated by an individual choice mutually shared by both partners; however, in many couples, the parents may feel forced to adopt a traditional role distribution, either for financial reasons, or to comply with social expectations about what men and women should do when they (...) are parents. This feeling of being socially constrained to adopt a role distribution that is not congruent with intrinsic motivations can generate dissatisfaction and may jeopardize the development of the interparental relationship. Coparenting refers to the emotional and instrumental support parents bring to each other in their parental tasks. It has been shown to be central in family functioning and a powerful predictor of children’s emotional and cognitive development. In this study, we aimed to assess the extent to which different motivations for role distribution in fathers are predictive of the quality of the coparental relationship. A convenience sample of 144 fathers from the French-speaking part of Switzerland completed online questionnaires about their motivations, coparental relationship, and sociodemographic characteristics. Results showed that the reasons for role distribution were mainly economical, practical, and in order to meet personal expectations. Multivariate general linear modeling showed that role distribution that is constrained to meet social expectations and age were predictive of a less cohesive coparental relationship, whereas a deliberate choice in role distribution was linked to a more cohesive coparental relationship. (shrink)

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has raised deserved concern regarding adverse impacts on parents’ and children’s mental health, regulations like “sheltering-in-place” may have afforded parents novel opportunities to foster positive family connections, thereby bolstering well-being. Using latent profile analysis, we distinguished family thriving during shelter-in-place from other patterns of family functioning, tested potential predictors of family functioning profiles, and examined if family thriving predicted subsequent child adjustment. 449 parents in two-parent U.S. families with children aged 2–18 years completed online surveys assessing (...) parent–child relationship quality, parents’ positive psychological adjustment, children’s emotional well-being, and parenting efficacy and satisfaction as family functioning indicators, financial, marital, parental psychosocial assets, and child predictors of family functioning, and child adjustment. LPA identified four family functioning profiles: Thriving, Managing, Struggling, and Distressed. Thriving families evinced higher scores on all functioning indicators. Logistic regressions revealed that parents in Thriving families reported significantly lower financial anxiety, less dissatisfaction with partner’s help, less child emotionality, and greater use of cognitive reappraisal, as well as more positive child adjustment in Fall 2020. These findings underscore the multidimensional nature of coping and well-being during COVID-19. Utilizing these levers to promote mental health in families languishing during comparable future crises could promote resilience, thereby protecting children’s well-being. (shrink)

Arising restrictions of global economic growth due to limited natural resources and capacity of the biosphere adversely affect on people level of life and future expectation. That leads to mass depression and social instability. To consider this problem, psycho-physiological model of onward hedonist in consumer society is developed and investigated. This model is based on the fact that human nature generates a growing desire, needs to progress. After reaching the limits of growth, member of consumer society feel persistent negative emotions (...) and dissatisfaction. It results to socio-economic stagnation, social and international instability. The first type of possible solutions to this problem is based on the global expansion of the limits of growth (e.g., increasing of macroeconomic demand as a result of new Kondratieff technological cycle). The second type of solutions refers to local limits extension of growth within one or more countries, by means of their economic, political or military expansion in the world. But such solutions lead to international instability. The third type of solutions corresponds to periodical decreasing of the macroeconomic consumption followed by its growth (e.g., global financial crisis, decay of states and their unions, national and military conflicts, wars and so on). Such solution also leads to social and international instability. Humanistic solution consists in creativity development of people (especially middle class of developed countries) to focus on spiritual development. So rising desires of these people in spiritual realm can be satisfied under limits of global economic growth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 12.4 (2002) 389-390 [Access article in PDF] IOM Report on the System for Protecting Human Research Participants Tom L. Beauchamp* In response to society's concerns about the use of human subjects in research, the Department of Health and Human Services commissioned the Institute of Medicine to perform a comprehensive assessment of current systems of research participant protection in the U.S., including recommendations for reform (...) (Committee 2002). Although the committee declared its frustration over the lack of data, it found ample evidence to indicate that there are pivotal weaknesses in the current system. First, it discovered dissatisfaction with the current system from virtually every quarter and at virtually every level. Second, it found evidence that IRBs are under severe strain and performing inadequately. Third, it found that the existing regulatory framework—the IRB system and the Common Rule—has not and probably now cannot react adequately to the constantly evolving research environment. Some of these problems might be handled through federal agencies, but the committee holds that the problems are more extensive and will require additional institutional support and professional attention.The committee found that federal protection requirements should be extended to every research project—private, public, or otherwise. Subjects should be, in this respect, equally protected in privately sponsored research.The committee found that the IRB system is in important respects a failure, especially when it alone is relied upon for ethics reviews in institutions. One set of problems concerns the proper education of IRB members. The committee recommends that all members henceforth be given a specialized knowledge of human research ethics. It finds that IRB deliberations commonly have been dominated by scientists, who often marginalize the perspectives of nonscientist members. It therefore recommends that unaffiliated members, nonscientists, local community representatives, and those representing the participant-perspective comprise at least 25 percent of the membership. It also recommends that no protocol be approved without three-quarters of the voting members concurring. [End Page 389]The committee recommends that institutions distinguish review aimed at (1) scientific merit, (2) conflict of interest, and (3) general Ethics Review. The distinction should more evenly distribute the work of institutional ethics review. The IRB should not conduct the initial scientific review nor should it be spending the bulk of its time purely in examining either scientific merit—as many IRBs now do—or conflict of interest. Instead, the conclusions of the scientific review should be submitted to the IRB for ethics-focused deliberations. Problems of both financial and nonfinancial conflicts of interest should be handled similarly, preferably by a committee properly distanced from the institution's interests.The committee underscores that consent must be understood on the model of an interactive dialogue between research staff and participants and not merely as a signed form or single-disclosure event. Conversations between the participant and the research staff should begin even prior to the point of enrollment and should be reinforced during each stage of the research. The committee finds that informed consent conversations and documents too often are being conceived as risk management tasks gauged to protect the institution from liability.The committee also believes that the system of protections established by a research program should be open to the public in order to foster and maintain the community's trust. Open communication should occur among all relevant stakeholders. The committee notes that currently no centralized system exists for the dissemination of information about clinical trials and other research activities.It urges reconsideration of present policies regarding compensation, finding that many research organizations provide at least short-term medical care for those who are injured, but that few organizations cover all potential risks and that many organizations have no effective policy of compensation. The report holds that providing reasonable compensation for bona fide instances of research harm is the only just system and is necessary to avoid diminished public trust.The committee holds that establishing the appropriate culture in research institutions will require sustained efforts to educate researchers, research administrators, IRB members, and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 296-311 [Access article in PDF] Byron As Cad Ian Jobling I AS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT and intriguing poets of the romantic period, Byron has been the subject of much recent critical commentary. However, no matter how excellent some of this scholarship is, the reader who is familiar with evolutionary psychology, the science that has tried to explain the biological underpinnings of human (...) nature, inevitably comes away from it with a feeling of dissatisfaction. In spite of the obvious relevance of biological theories of human behavior to the most basic issues of literary interpretation, only a handful of literary critics, and no Byron critics, have attempted to use these theories to understand the creation and reception of literary texts. All literary criticism relies on assumptions about human nature; because most critics are unfamiliar with evolutionary psychology, these assumptions are almost never clarified and justified. By familiarizing themselves with evolutionary psychology, literary critics can replace their vague, commonsensical, and often empirically unsupported assumptions about human nature with more precise and empirically valid theories.Much recent research on the evolution of sexuality has focused on "cad" and "dad" mating strategies in men. Cads seek to maximize their reproductive success by maximizing the number of their sexual partners and by avoiding parental investment; dads are committed to long-term, monogamous relationships with women and make substantial parental investment in their children. The personality traits of cads—aggressiveness, rebelliousness, criminality, and sexual promiscuity—bear a close resemblance both to Byron's own personality traits and to those of the Byronic hero. Understanding the cad mating strategy [End Page 296] enables us to better understand Byron's personality as well as the conflicts between his personality and the culture of his time that shaped his literary production and reception. II Evolutionary psychology uses the principles of evolutionary biology as a guide to the study of human cognition and behavior. The types of psychological traits that will succeed evolutionarily are those that maximize an organism's ability to transmit its genes to the next generation, or what evolutionary psychologists call its "fitness," by successfully reproducing and by helping kin who share its genes to reproduce. Our psychological design did not evolve in the environment that we now inhabit but on the African savannah of the Pleistocene era; therefore, evolved human psychology is best understood not in relation to the lifestyle of the citizens of modern nation-states, but to that of hunter-gatherers. 1Recent research on human sexuality has suggested that humans have evolved to pursue two different types of mating strategies: short-term and long-term. On the one hand, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that, unlike most mammals, humans are designed for long-term sexual relationships with substantial male parental investment in children. Human infants require a great deal of parental care, and children reared in father-absent households suffer much higher mortality rates than those who are reared in father-present households, especially in preindustrial societies. 2 The sexual psychology of women also indicates that human sexuality has been shaped by long-term sexual relationships. A number of studies both in the United States and across cultures have shown that women regularly report being attracted to men who are socially respected, financially well-off, ambitious, industrious, dependable, emotionally stable, and romantic, 3 all qualities that indicate the ability and willingness to sustain long-term, parentally investing relationships with women.However, there are also aspects of both men's and women's sexuality that show that we did not evolve exclusively to pursue long-term mating. The evidence for the importance of short-term mating in human evolution is most obvious in men, who consistently show a marked desire for sexual variety. For example, in a survey, male college students said that they would, on average, like to have six partners in the coming year, and men fantasize about having sex with multiple partners (Buss, [End Page 297] ED, pp. 76-83). The fitness advantage of short-term sexual relationships to men is obvious: men can have more offspring the... (shrink)

According to Ibn Khaldūn, man is a social entity deeply influenced by the geo-economics-politics of the environment in which he lives. The effect is seen as so strong that nearly all of these structures in their relationship to human beings are dominated by it. In this system, we see human beings as a creature who is both able to adapt himself to the environment and able to evolve in this harmony. From the perspective of Ibn Khaldūn, man cannot be evaluated (...) or defined separately from the environmental conditions, the technique and architecture he has developed. Ibn Khaldūn sees the primary source of this change to be the desire to make life both more prosperous and bearable. Therefore, the most natural motivations that affect man’s desire to alter the natural world are the environmental challenges that he encounters. The challenges that are imposed upon man in the natural world are those that have led to human progress. From badāwa (nomadic society) to ḥaḍāra (sedentary society) and so to the ceaseless drive of human progress that has served to make life more endurable, every effort in this sense leads to a physical and moral loosening as the incessant struggle to survive that defines human existence is made more bearable. Physical slack by breaking the resistance of man to resist the environmental conditions; and moral looseness by making man more vulnerable to the temptation of desires, pleasures and welfare that are the cause of moral dilemmas. Ibn Khaldūn’s moral thought with its social, political, and other fields of application are all contexts that enable an understanding of the devaluation of money-hedonist morality in all ways. This article aims to analyze the social, political and economic dilemmas and challenges that the capitalist, consumption-based money-hedonist morality (obesity, social media addiction, consumption, and moral devaluation in the face of financial, virtual and imagined valuations, etc.) from the perspective of Ibn Khaldūn. Summary: Man is endowed with both good and evil. Ibn Khaldūn notes that man tends to misuse these two orientations with a higher inclination towards evil, and that social conditions have an effect on this. He sees another characteristic of man, that they develop habits; accordingly, man is the child of his habits. Habits are second nature to man and affects all of his perceptions, particularly notions concerning truth. At the same time, human beings are under the constant influence of both habits, culture, and climate and geography; and all of these together affect our ethics, psychology and characteristics. Thus, man is a historical, social being that is changed, transformed and determined by adapting to these cultural, social, political and ecological conditions. The concept of Money-Hedonism is one that we have created by combining the terms monetarism, an economic concept, and hedonism, a concept in moral philosophy; the resulting term we seek to produce essentially translates as the adoration of Money. As is well known, hedonism refers to a philosophy of life that has its origins in the ancient Greek world which sees the purpose of life as one in which the pursuit of pleasure is the highest good. Whereas, Monetarism is an American-based economic view developed by Milton Friedman in 1970, linking all the balance in the economy to the supply and demand of money. According to this, the demand for money is operation, precaution and motives of speculation of individuals the amount of money they want to keep in cash on them. The power of an exchange tool increases with the amount and quality of what it is achievable in its utilization. In this respect, money has been an unprecedented source of power in modern society as a means by which change can be achieved. The increase in the power of money as an effective means as manifesting power has led to a socio-cultural and socio-economic superstructure around this power. In the life of an individual that is part of such a culture and is unable to isolate himself from the economy in which he lives, the values that can be expressed with money are consequently formed. In this structure, since the measure of life is money, money determines the quality of human life and human pleasure to a far greater degree than at any time in history. Thus, those living in this age have developed a new moral philosophy of value formed by the combination of these two concepts (monetarism and hedonism), which we have defined as Money-Hedonism. The money-hedonist individual is one that is in love with money, the joy of having it, the pleasure of using it, who desires it with immeasurable passion and ambition and is willing to use all legitimate and illegitimate methods of obtaining it. The most prominent characteristics of this type of individual is egoism, a desire to possess, hatred and mistrust. Ibn Khaldūn argues that the inhabitants of a city that live a settled life and who are living in the city have become economically prosperous and absorbed by consumption and pleasure, and, consequently morally degenerate as a result of the abuse of their evil nature. As can be understood from Ibn Khaldūn’s explanations, the basic element that determines the transition of people from the badāwi way of life to ḥaḍāri (settled) is the change in the livelihoods and related needs. He perceives this change as progressing from necessity to luxury, and, with this change, ethical concern in the nature of people being replaced by aesthetic care. In this way, since aesthetic concern reveals the dissatisfaction of the human self, man always pursues what is perceived to be better and more beautiful, and therefore he easily tends to any malignancy that may disrupt his religious and worldly peace. The ḥaḍāra community of Ibn Khaldūn versus the badāwa represent a modern society with a much more heterogeneous population, with a significant increase in lifestyle diversity along with urbanization. However, the determinative effect of the relationship with nature or the way in which society engage in economic activities have not changed. While modern people are urbanized, they are also heterogeneously shaped by psycho-social necessities demanded by urbanization. Man has created a new socio-psychological condition that not only affects the socio-economic but the way of forming a relationship through the accelerated development of new communication methods, facilitating access to information, and the opening of new methods of communication field between institutions. While man’s connection to nature has become disconnected, he no longer perceives himself as human being in nature but as a human within the city, the individual urban life and the law define this perception. The rupture from nature has created an inevitable result of alienation to nature as well as the estrangement of man with his own nature. The liberal policies adopted with capitalism have encouraged competition and free entrepreneurship. In the time that Ibn Khaldūn lived, man who created himself with his struggle in the nature brings himself / herself into the economic structure of competition in the modern period. Unlike in more traditional societies of the past, the modern way of life not only expresses itself in our new way of life and moral values, but also by statistical values. The exploitative and mathematical world, which forms the current economic science, shapes the socio-economic and socio-psychological structure of modern man. It is understood that the life brought by luxury renders the dynamic, subjective, disciplined sense of morality dysfunctional by destroying the moral values of man, particularly by reducing their feeling of shame. As a result, while the world of value of money-hedonism is solid, materialistic and cold; man in trying to exist in this world of value carries a flexible, spiritual and emotional nature. As such, human beings are pushed into social anomaly situations such as a constant conflict, dilemma, suicide, insecurity and solitude in this world of value. (shrink)

The Affordable Care Act is an essential first step toward making health insurance more affordable for lower and moderate income Americans. It has accomplished historic reductions in the proportion of Americans who are uninsured. The number of Americans reporting delaying medical care for financial reasons has declined by approximately one-third since 2010. Medicaid expansions, in particular, have significantly reduced financial burdens and accompanying anxieties experienced by low-income Americans in states that have embraced this opportunity. Consistent with these finding, (...) one recent analysis of credit report data finds that Medicaid expansion was associated with between a $600 and $1000 decline in collection balances among individuals who gained coverage. Notwithstanding these gains, premiums and cost-sharing are still too high for many Americans. And cost-sharing has continued to edge higher for the majority of Americans who have coverage through employer-based plans. Measures to address these challenges must build on the ACA to provide greater protection to millions of Americans and to address continued dissatisfaction with our health care financing system among middle-income Americans. (shrink)

Using NORC annual survey data, the authors selected 21 questions describing respondent attitudes toward job, life in general, and financial status. Respondents were catigorized as management, white collar, blue collar, and those not affiliated with business organizations. Attitudes were compared across the four occupational groups. Little dissatisfaction was found in any but the blue collar group. Management as a group, and men as well as women managers showed high levels of satisfaction, with few significant differences found in responses (...) by men and women. This study does not support the earlier finding of widespread alienation in business firms. (shrink)

In the aftermath of the 1930s Great Depression, and as the Second World War was drawing to a close, Karl Polanyi concluded a critical analysis of market capitalism on an optimistic — and with the benefit of hindsight we can add premature — note, remarking that the ‘primacy of society’ over the economic system had been ‘secured’. Eighty years later, amidst the unresolved turmoil of another comparable global capitalist economic crisis and accumulating signs of a growing environmental crisis, both a (...) direct legacy of the operation of the ‘market economy’, the remedy advocated by governments and policy-makers is effectively a return to ‘business as usual’. Notwithstanding various manifestations of public expression of dissatisfaction with the consequences of global ‘free-market’ capitalism, which include increasing inequality, poverty, unemployment, depletion of scarce natural resources, environmental destruction, pollution and waste, the default policy setting remains to restore global economic growth, to generate further increases in production and cultivate ever-rising rates of consumption, even if the risk is ‘common ruin’. However, there are a number of realistic, progressive and radical alternatives proposed by critical analysts, including a political program for ‘de-growth’, a reinvention of communism and detailed policy proposals outlining the measures necessary to promote a transition to a ‘post-capitalist’ society with a sustainable economy. (shrink)

Islamic finance is gaining greater attention in the finance industry, and this paper analyses how Islamic financial institutions are responding to the welfare needs of society. Using interview data with managers and content analysis of the disclosures, this study attempts to understand management perceptions of corporate social responsibility in IFIs. A thorough understanding of CSR by managers, as evident in the interviews, has not been translated fully into practice. The partial use of IFIs’ potential role in social welfare would (...) add further challenges in the era of financialisation. (shrink)

Sarbanes–Oxley Section 406 requires a code of ethics for top financial and accounting officers in public companies. The objective of this research is to discover the impact of a financial code of ethics on firm behavior. We performed a longitudinal tracking of firm adoption of a financial code of ethics starting in 2005. We checked these companies’ codes again in 2011 to confirm their continued implementation. Financial restatements were used as a dependent variable to measure improved (...) financial reporting after the adoption of the financial codes. The results confirm that the adoption of a financial code of ethics improves the integrity of financial reporting. (shrink)

Conflicts of interest in health and medicine have been the source of considerable public and professional debate. Much of this debate has focused on financial, rather than non-financial COI, which is a significant lacuna because non-financial COI can be just as influential as financial COI. In an effort to explore the nature and effects of non-financial, as well as financial COI, we conducted semi-structured interviews with eleven Australian medical professionals regarding their experiences of, and (...) attitudes towards, COI. We found that this group of medical professionals saw non-financial interests—most notably the pursuit of status and respect and the avoidance of stigma—as potentially conflicting with other important interests. (shrink)

The monitoring role performed by the board of directors is an important corporate governance control mechanism, especially in countries where external mechanisms are less well developed. The gender composition of the board can affect the quality of this monitoring role and thus the financial performance of the firm. This is part of the “business case” for female participation on boards, though arguments may also be framed in terms of ethical considerations. While the issue of board gender diversity has attracted (...) growing research interest in recent years, most empirical results are based on U.S. data. This article adds to a growing number of non-U.S. studies by investigating the link between the gender diversity of the board and firm financial performance in Spain, a country which historically has had minimal female participation in the workforce, but which has now introduced legislation to improve equality of opportunities. We investigate the topic using panel data analysis and find that gender diversity – as measured by the percentage of women on the board and by the Blau and Shannon indices – has a positive effect on firm value and that the opposite causal relationship is not significant. Our study suggests that investors in Spain do not penalise firms which increase their female board membership and that greater gender diversity may generate economic gains. (shrink)

This paper examines the impact of the recent financial crisis on the relation between a firm’s risk and social performance using a sample of non-financial U.S. firms covering the period 1991–2012. We find that the relation between SP and risk is significantly different in the crisis period compared to the pre-crisis period. SP reduces volatility during the financial crisis. The risk reduction potential of SP is mainly due to the strengths component of SP. Since the relation of (...) risk is stronger with SP strengths than SP concerns, this implies an asymmetric relation between these SP components and a firm’s risk. Specifically, strengths act as a risk reduction tool during an adverse economic environment. (shrink)

In his important recent book, Ethics and the Global Financial Crisis: Why Incompetence is Worse than Greed, Boudewijn de Bruin argues that a key element of the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 was a failure of epistemic virtue. To improve matters, then, de Bruin argues we need to focus on the acquisition and exercise of epistemic virtues, rather than to focus on a more ethical culture for banking per se. Whilst this is an interesting suggestion and it is (...) indeed very plausible that an increased focus on proper knowledge-related behaviour will be part of a solution, we are sceptical both about de Bruin’s overarching theoretical claims and about his practical suggestions for change. Instead we argue that change in this sector is best promoted by reconceiving of the relationship between financial institutions and the societies they serve, and that this is fundamentally not an epistemic but a moral issue. (shrink)

This study examines the impact of board gender diversity on financial misconduct. The findings suggest firms with gender-diverse boards commit fewer financial reporting mistakes and engage in less fraud. The findings hold after accounting for the potentially endogenous nature of board demographic characteristics via instrumental variable approach. Furthermore, the findings are consistent in pre- and post-regulation periods and hold for firms with good and bad governance. The findings do not seem driven by differences in effort or quality, in (...) terms of independence and expertise, of female and male directors. The benefit derived from increasing the number of female directors on corporate boards seems to diminish at higher levels of gender diversity, indicating that impact of gender diversity on decreasing the likelihood of financial misconduct may be a result of a change to board group dynamics. (shrink)

This study documents how people who inject drugs in rural Puerto Rico perceive payments for participating in HIV epidemiological studies. In-depth interviews were conducted among a subset of active PWID older than 18 years of age who had been previously enrolled in a much larger study. Findings suggest that financial compensation was the main motivation for initially enrolling in the parent study. Then, as trust in the researchers developed, participants came to perceive compensation as part of a reciprocal exchange (...) in which they assisted researchers by providing a trustful account of their experiences and researchers reciprocated with financial support. (shrink)

The first part of this article presents an overview of civil resistance theory and practice, including key concepts and the historical record of nonviolent movements ending authoritarian and occupying regimes. It will also present a practical checklist for assessing why people power movements succeed or fail. The second part of this article will demonstrate how civil resistance applies to the global scourge of financial corruption. It will first illustrate two recent successful people power campaigns against financial corruption, then (...) examine their dynamics in terms of new research and analysis of organized, collective nonviolent action targeting graft and abuse. Finally, it will adapt the general civil resistance checklist to the anti-corruption arena, concluding with the specific elements that are most critical to curbing financial corruption. (shrink)

One of the leading explanations for Canadian banking stability through the global financial crisis of 2007–08 is the Concentration-Stability Hypothesis (CSH), according to which the oligopoly of Canadian finance stabilised the credit system by cushioning it with above-average profits. These provided a buffer against fragility and incentives against excessive risk-taking. In this article, I critically examine CSH and show that classical Marxian analysis more effectively illuminates Canadian banking stability. I demonstrate that robust corporate profitability and capital accumulation before the (...) crisis strengthened the balance sheets of the banks and supported them through those turbulent years. Thus, financial stability is linked explicitly to broader economic stability, and the latter is linked to the profitability of business enterprise. (shrink)

Due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the lockdown engendered has had a vicious impact on the global economy. This analysis’ prime intention is to evaluate the impact of the United States’ economic and health crisis as a result of COVID-19 on its financial stability. Additionally, the investigation analyzed the spillover impact of the worldwide economic slowdown experienced by COVID-19 on the United States’ financial volatility. The study applied an autoregressive distributed lag model and discovered that the economic and (...) health crises that occurred in the United States portentously upset the future expectations of its investors. Conspicuously, the health crisis in Spain and Italy were ominous spillovers of the United States’ financial instability in the short-run. Likewise, an economic crisis ensued in the United Kingdom because of COVID-19 causing spillover for the United States markets’ financial instability. The examination evaluated that Asian and African nations’ economic crises perilously affects the United States’ financial stability. The study determined that financial instability occurred in the United States due to its own economic and health crises persisted for a longer period than financial disequilibrium that occurred in other nations. The analysis suggested some strategies of smart lockdown that the government of the United States and other nations should follow to restart the economic cycle through tighter controls to minimize losses by following the steps of preparing a lockdown checklist, monitoring completion of lockdown tasks, and complete a close-down stock take or count. (shrink)

Individuality and collectivity are central concepts in sociological inquiry. Incorporating cultural history, social theory, urban and economic sociology, Borch proposes an innovative rethinking of these key terms and their interconnections via the concept of the social avalanche. Drawing on classical sociology, he argues that while individuality embodies a tension between the collective and individual autonomy, certain situations, such as crowds and other moments of group behaviour, can subsume the individual entirely within the collective. These events, or social avalanches, produce an (...) experience of being swept away suddenly and losing one's sense of self. Cities are often on the verge of social avalanches, their urban inhabitants torn between de-individualising external pressure and autonomous self-presentation. Similarly, Borch argues that present-day financial markets, dominated by computerised trading, abound with social avalanches and the tensional interplay of mimesis and autonomous decision-making. Borch argues that it is no longer humans but fully automated algorithms that avalanche in these markets. (shrink)

A metaphysical investigation of money and monetary value, exploring money as a social phenomenon, the metaphysics of financial value, materialism and measurement.

This paper describes the results of a field experiment involving 400 employees from ten financial institutions operating within the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone of the People's Republic of China. It was found that, when faced with an agency-based problem, employees indicated they would be less inclined to advise management of the existence of unethical work practices. Younger employees without supervisory experience displayed significant risk aversion. Traditional Chinese values associated with Confucian work dynamism, were shown to be poor predictors of (...) moral choice response. A parsimonious regression model was developed that provides evidence that the universal trait Masculinity/Femininity acted to offset the negative influence of the agency problem. On the other hand, an operative's level of education attainment exerted a negative influence on moral response scores. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 3, Page 823-845, July 2022.

Responsible investment is increasingly prevalent, and both financial and moral concerns can drive such investment. In this article, we investigate how responsible investors of different wealth weigh financial and moral arguments. Prior research on different factors that may codetermine responsible investment behavior yield competing predictions about the influence of personal wealth on investment. We conduct a large-scale natural field experiment on responsible investment, wherein we treat investors with financial, moral, and no arguments. We find that there is (...) a statistically and economically significant difference in responsiveness to financial and moral arguments between investors of different wealth. Specifically, financial arguments are more effective than are moral arguments for high wealth investors but not for low wealth investors, and the effect is particularly high for the wealthiest investors. The findings hold for several different measures of wealth. Our findings contribute to the understanding of the moderating effect of wealth on responsible investment choice. Furthermore, these insights may enable more fine-tuned strategies to stimulate responsible investment among different individual investor segments. (shrink)

There is an extensive body of literature detailing the forces behind and experiences of alienation in a modern capitalist world. However, social scientific interest in alienation had become parochial and balkanized by the 1970s. To reconstruct a unifying theory of alienation that addresses general features of capitalism, such as compulsory growth and commodification, and particular phases like financialized capitalism, we begin with the notion of futurelessness. Futurelessness refers to a deficient relationship to the future in which people’s senses of possibility (...) ossify, narrow, or dissipate. It may result from inclusion in and exclusion from capitalist mechanisms or processes. Moreover, processes of inclusion and exclusion may appear more voluntary or involuntary. With these general terms, we identify four manifestations of futurelessness in financial capitalism: commercial exhaustion, imaginative marginalization, therapeutic nowism, and pragmatic denialism. The conclusion addresses future-sustenance in an alienating world and the prospects of a more systemic and synthetic approach to alienation. (shrink)

This paper has been published in 2015 in Environment and Planning D, 33 : p. 1080–1097. It is freely available from Copenhagen Business School. We thank the authors for the permission to reproduce it here.: This paper explores the relationship between bodily rhythms and market rhythms in two distinctly different financial market configurations, namely the open-outcry pit and present-day high-frequency trading. Drawing on Henri - Management et Business – Nouvel article.

Funding agencies and large public scientific institutions are increasingly using the term “research portfolio” as a means of characterizing their research. While portfolios have long been used as a heuristic for managing corporate R&D, they remain ill-defined in a science policy context where research is aimed at achieving societal outcomes. In this article we analyze the discursive uses of the term “research portfolio” and propose some general considerations for their application in science policy. We explore the use of the term (...) in private R&D and related scholarly literature in existing science policy practices, and seek insight in relevant literature in science policy scholarship. While the financial analogy can in some instances be instructive, a simple transposition from the world of finance or of corporate R&D to public research is problematic. However, we do identify potentially fruitful uses of portfolio analysis in science policy. In particular, our review suggests that the concept of research portfolio can indeed be a useful analytical instrument for tackling complex societal challenges. Specifically, the strands of scholarship identified suggest that the use of research portfolio should: i) recognize the diversity of research lines relevant for a given societal challenge, given the uncertainty and ambiguity of research outcomes; ii) examine the relationships between research options of a portfolio and the expected societal outcomes; and iii) adopt a systemic perspective to research portfolios – i.e. examine a portfolio as a functional whole, rather than as the sum of its parts. We argue that with these considerations, portfolio-driven approaches may foster social inclusion in science policy decisions, help deliberation between “alternative” portfolios to tackle complex societal challenges, as well as promote cost-effectiveness and transparency. (shrink)

The motivation of the study is to gauge the effects of access to finance, technical know-how, and financial literacy on women’s empowerment through establishing women’s entrepreneurial development. A sample of 950 women-owned SMEs was considered, and structured questionnaires were sent from getting target responses. After careful assessment through the data cleansing procedure, it was found that only 795 responses are suitable for further investigation, implying the sample response rate for the study is 74.71%. The study implemented structural equation modeling (...) and multivariate regression analysis for gauging the causal association that is direct and indirect effects of target variables. According to findings, a positive statistically significant linkage was revealed with women’s entrepreneurship sustainability and women empowerment. Furthermore, the mediating effects were also established for women’s empowerment. According to the study findings, it is suggested that for women entrepreneurship sustainability, effective policies surrounding financing accessibility, technical knowledge expansion, and financial understating have to be promulgated in the economy, which allows bringing women empowerment at large. (shrink)

The motivation of the study is to explore the nexus tourism-led sustainable human capital development in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa for the period 1984–2019. The study applied several econometrical techniques for exposing the empirical association between tourism and HCD, such as the conventional and structural break unit root test, the combined cointegration test, long-run and short-run coefficients detected through implementing the Augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lagged, and directional causality by following Toda-Yamamoto with Fourier function. The unit-roots test established (...) variables are integrated in mixed order, wherein variables are stationary at a level or after the first difference. The estimated test statistics from the combined cointegration test and AARDL confirmed the long-run association between tourism, gross capital formation, financial development, and HCD. Tourism revealed a positive and statistically significant tie with HCD in the long run. Moreover, the joint effects of interactive terms TOR*GCF and TOR*FD established a positive and statistically significant relationship with HCD. In addition, the causality test revealed the feedback hypothesis available between tourism and HCD in all sample countries except India. In conclusion, the role of tourism development is critically important for sustainable HCD in BRICS. Therefore, in case of a policymaking concern, it is inevitable to address the tourism issues with care for capitalizing on the benefits for tourism development. (shrink)

IntroductionThe COVID-19 pandemic required more responsibilities from teachers, including implementing prevention strategies, changes in school policies, and managing their own mental health, which yielded higher dissatisfaction in the field.MethodsA cross-sectional web survey was conducted among educators to collect information on their experiences teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic throughout the 2020–2021 academic year. Qualtrics, an online survey platform, fielded the survey from May 6 to June 8, 2021 to a national, convenience sample of 1,807 respondents.ResultsFindings revealed that overall, 43% of (...) K-12 teachers reported a greater intention to leave the profession than previously recalled prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Intention to leave was multi-level, and associated with socio-demographic factors, individual factors, and teachers’ agency. We also found demographic disparities with respect to race and gender around teachers’ ability to provide feedback to schools on opening/closing and overall dissatisfaction with school/district COVID-19 prevention strategies implementation and policies.ConclusionThese findings are consistent with the Job-Demand and Resources Model, which posits that lack of organizational support can exacerbate job stressors, leading to burnout. Specifically, dissatisfaction with the way school policies were implemented took a toll on teachers’ mental health, leading to a desire to leave the profession. These findings are also consistent with research conducted once in-person teaching resumed in 2020–2021, specifically that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated preexisting teacher shortages that led to self-reported issues of stress, burnout, and retention.ImplicationsFurther research is necessary to understand the resources that may be most useful to reduce the demands of teaching in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some teachers are more likely to leave the field, and educational agencies may wish to target their teacher-retention efforts with emphasis on strong employee wellness programs that help educators to manage and reduce their stress. Education agency staff may wish to review policies and practices to provide meaningful opportunities to give input to school/district decisions and enable proactive communication channels. (shrink)

Body dissatisfaction has long been considered an integral component of and driving force behind anorexia nervosa. In this paper, I characterise body dissatisfaction in terms of problematic beliefs about body size and the value of thinness. I suggest two methods for understanding these beliefs. Regarding body size beliefs, I suggest focusing on certain forms of misleading phenomenal evidence that sufferers of anorexia nervosa are exposed to. Regarding beliefs about the value of thinness, I suggest focusing on the benefits (...) of such beliefs. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of auditor-CEO surname sharing on financial misstatement and further investigates whether the above effect depends on hometown relationship and the rarity of surnames, respectively. Using hand-collected data from China, the findings show that ACSS is significantly positively related to financial misstatement, suggesting that the auditor-CEO ancestry membership elicits the collusion and increases the likelihood of financial misstatement. Moreover, ACSS based upon hometown relationship leads to significantly higher likelihood of financial misstatement, compared (...) with ACSS without hometown relationship. Furthermore, the positive relation between ACSS and financial misstatement is more pronounced for rare surnames than for common surnames. The above findings are robust to sensitivity tests on the basis of different measures of ACSS and financial misstatement, and my conclusions are still valid after using the propensity score matching approach to address the endogeneity concerns. (shrink)

We examine the equity valuation effect of press releases of upgrades or downgrades reflected in the Covalence Ethical Quote, an index ranking the ethical performance of multinational firms. The index is updated quarterly and is comprehensive enough to include 45 criteria reflecting working conditions, impact of product, impact of production, and company institutional impact. Thus, it captures many dimensions of firms’ ethical performance that are not accounted for in previous research. Our research encompasses a joint test of the value relevance (...) of the index itself and the impact of ethical reputation on a firm’s value. We find first a significant causal relationship between stock market reactions and changes in the CEQ. Specifically, disclosures of positive changes in firm ethical performance cause increases in firm value. Second, cross-sectional analysis indicates a positive association between changes in firm ethical performance and both its financial performance and its financial reporting quality. Collectively, these results suggest that the CEQ conveys information that is useful to investors. Further, corporate measures taken to increase ethical performance are associated with positive benefits to shareholders. Finally, investors have concluded that good news about their firms’ efforts to be ethical is worth the cost. (shrink)

Transitioning to sustainable agricultural systems is imperative to meet the global Sustainable Development Goals. Achieving more sustainable agricultural production systems will require significant additional capital, however this cannot be covered by the current financial market setup, which dissociates public and private funders. Blended finance, where concessionary development-oriented funding is used to mobilize additional private capital, is essential. To ensure that the limited pool of concessionary funding is used efficiently and effectively, a shared understanding of the roles and limitations of (...) public and private funders is necessary. In this paper, we describe the high-level funding gap for sustainable agriculture, the general landscape of agricultural finance, and the concept and potential roles of blended finance in this context. This paper introduces the conditions under which different financing mechanisms can contribute to addressing barriers related to sustainable agriculture investments. It highlights that multiple funding modalities must be utilized in order to achieve agricultural investment at a meaningful level and encourages greater exploration of the range of blended financing structures to increase SDG-related agriculture investments. (shrink)

We document outcome bias in situations where an agent makes risky financial decisions for a principal. In three experiments, we show that the principal’s evaluations and financial rewards for the agent are strongly affected by the random outcome of the risky investment. This happens despite her exact knowledge of the investment strategy, which can, therefore, be assessed independently of the outcome. The principal thus judges the same decision by the agent differently, depending on factors that the agent has (...) no influence on. The effect of outcomes persists in a setting where principals communicate a preferred investment level. Principals are more satisfied with the agent after a random success when the agent did not follow the requested investment level, than after a failed investment that followed their explicit request. (shrink)

The complex chaotic dynamics and multistability of financial system are some important problems in micro- and macroeconomic fields. In this paper, we study the influence of two-delay feedback on the nonlinear dynamics behavior of financial system, considering the linear stability of equilibrium point under the condition of single delay and two delays. The system undergoes Hopf bifurcation near the equilibrium point. The stability and bifurcation directions of Hopf bifurcation are studied by using the normal form method and central (...) manifold theory. The theoretical results are verified by numerical simulation. Furthermore, one feature of the proposed financial chaotic system is that its multistability depends extremely on the memristor initial condition and the system parameters. It is shown that the nonlinear dynamics of financial chaotic system can be significantly changed by changing the values of time delays. (shrink)

I propose a new theory of semantic presupposition, which I call dissatisfaction theory. I first briefly review a cluster of problems − known collectively as the proviso problem − for most extant theories of presupposition, arguing that the main pragmatic response to them faces a serious challenge. I avoid these problems by adopting two changes in perspective on presupposition. First, I propose a theory of projection according to which presuppositions project unless they are locally entailed. Second, I reject the (...) standard assumption that presuppositions are contents which must be entailed by the input context; instead, I propose that presuppositions are contents which are marked as backgrounded. I show that, together, these commitments allow us to avoid the proviso problem altogether, and generally make plausible predictions about presupposition projection out of connectives and attitude predicates. I close by sketching a two-dimensional implementation of my theory which allows us to make further welcome predictions about attitude predicates and quantifiers. (shrink)

Disclosure has become the preferred way of addressing the threat to researcher objectivity arising from financial conflicts of interest. This article argues that the effectiveness of disclosure at protecting science from the corrupting effects of FCOIs—particularly the kind of disclosure mandated by US federal granting agencies—is more limited than is generally acknowledged. Current NIH and NSF regulations require disclosed FCOIs to be reviewed, evaluated, and managed by officials at researchers’ home institutions. However, these reviewers are likely to have institutional (...) and personal interests of their own that may undermine the integrity of their evaluations. This paper presents experimental findings suggesting that such interests affect third-party assessments of FCOIs. Over 200 participants gauged the ethical significance of various hypothetical yet realistic FCOIs in academic research settings. Some of them were led to believe they had a small personal interest in allowing conflicted research... (shrink)

The occurrence of business cycles is a feature of every economic system, so they were also observed in Poland. The article is an attempt to assess the structure and most important morphological features of the business cycles in Poland’s economy, taking into account how they were influenced by the consequences of the financial crisis 2007+ and COVID-19 pandemic. In the study the authors used the concept of deviation cycles which makes it possible to characterize the components of the business (...) cycle’s structure, i.e. identification of its turning points, particular phases and most important morphological features (i.e. duration of phases and the whole cycle, amplitude of fluctuations). The most significant empirical indicators which characterize the real cyclical processes, i.e. GDP, consumption and investment, were the subject of statistical analyses. (shrink)

This research paper aims to investigate. the impact of inflation. on financial sector performance in Western. Balkan. countries. The topic was chosen considering the financial sector’s fundamental role and its. impact on sustainable economic growth. This impact is measured through the effect that macroeconomic determinants of financial. performance such. as inflation, GDP. growth, general government final consumption expenditure, trade, and the lending interest rate have on credit to private sector as a share of GDP and broad definition (...) of money as a ratio of GDP, which were used to proxy financial sector development. The data are provided by the World Bank as well as the Central. Banks. of the respective countries, for the period 2002–2021. The research methodology consists of different panel regression models such as OLS, OLS robust, Fixed effects, Random effects, and Generalized method of moments (GMM). Findings indicate that domestic credit to the private sector and inflation are positively correlated, whereas broad money and inflation are negatively correlated. (shrink)