This book compares and contrasts publicly espoused security concepts in the Nordic region, and explores the notion of societal security. Outside observers often assume that Nordic countries take similar approaches to the security and safety of their citizens. This book challenges that assumption and traces the evolution of 'societal security', and its broadly equivalent concepts, in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. The notion of societal security is deconstructed and analysed in terms of its different meanings and implications for each country, (...) through both country- and issue-focused studies. Each chapter traces the evolution of key security concepts and related practices, allowing for a comparison of similarities and differences between these four countries. Using discourses and practices as evidence, this is the first book to explore how different Nordic nations have conceptualised domestic security over time. The findings will be valuable to scholars from across the geographical and theoretical spectrum, while highlighting how Nordic security discourses and practices may deviate from traditional assumptions about Nordic values. This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, Nordic politics and International Relations. (shrink)

Self-discipline, ethics, character, and philosophy in Hindu poetry; criticism to Bhagavad Gita, Nītīśāstra, Sāra-samuccaya, etc.

This study aims to investigate the role of self-construal in sharpening reputation judgment on earnings management cases. This study involves a personality variable that can provide sharper insights into individual assessments, namely self-construal. The study uses an experimental case with involved participants to judge the ethics of earnings management done by other managers (the target managers). Participants of this study consist of 109 master’s degree students majoring in accounting and management who acts as fellow managers. Participants provide ethical judgment and (...) reputation judgment of the target managers. This study indicates that ethical judgment on earnings management behavior differs depending on the target managers’ self-construal. In addition, ethical judgment has a positive and significant effect on reputation judgment. The following analysis showed that ethical judgment mediates the effect of earnings management behavior that self-construal moderates on reputation judgment. Studies that highlight the impact of managers’ reputation engaging in earnings management are still limited. This study used a behavioral approach, especially involving self-construal, to scrutinize the behavior of individuals within the organization, which is previous studies have not yet involved that personality factor. This research’s results imply that a manager’s response to peer’s behavior is helpful to design an appropriate management control system for organizations. This study only used earnings management scenarios in order to increase earnings. Earnings management can be in the form of actions to increase or decrease earnings. (shrink)

Mind attribution may be divided into the subcategories of attribution of agency, associated with moral agency, and attribution of experience and emotion, associated with moral concern and moral patiency (Gray et al. Science 315(5812):619, 2007; Gray et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108(2):477–479, 2011b; Robbins and Jack Philosophical Studies 127(1):59–85, 2006). In this paper I attend to social context and the different psychological needs influencing the different types of mind attribution. A (...) need for social connection drives the attribution of experiences and emotions. The individual’s capacity to regulate emotional reactions is crucial for empathic concern. I further relate differences of mind attribution, attention, and emotional processing, to two different modes of functioning: In an interactive state of mind (comparable to the “second-person perspective” described by Schilbach et al. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, in press), social and emotional cues are attended to; In a detached task-oriented state of mind it may be beneficial to predict the behaviors of others but emotional information may not be attended to. The complexity and plasticity of mind attribution, including the possibility to train attentional mechanisms and regulation of emotions, is promising for the field of moral enhancement. (shrink)

The paper describes a methodology to be used for analysis and design of human activity systems. The methodology is based on an analysis of the decision settings whereas most other decision analysis methodologies are analysing the process. The decision concept is analysed and discussed. A distinction between programmed and programmable as well as non-programmed and non-programmable decisions is proposed. A classification of different information types for decision making is presented. A methodology based on a systemic and systematic analysis of the (...) information requirements of an organization is proposed. This methodology also indicates organizational discrepancies and information imbalances. The methodology focuses the settings of the decisions on all levels of organizations. The methodology can be regarded as a dynamic, learning system. The author proposes further research on the individuals decision making abilities. (shrink)

BackgroundVast sums are distributed based on grant peer review, but studies show that interrater reliability is often low. In this study, we tested the effect of receiving two short individual feedback reports compared to one short general feedback report on the agreement between reviewers.MethodsA total of 42 reviewers at the Norwegian Foundation Dam were randomly assigned to receive either a general feedback report or an individual feedback report. The general feedback group received one report before the start of the reviews (...) that contained general information about the previous call in which the reviewers participated. In the individual feedback group, the reviewers received two reports, one before the review period and one during the period. In the individual feedback group, the reviewers were presented with detailed information on their scoring compared with the review committee as a whole, both before and during the review period. The main outcomes were the proportion of agreement in the eligibility assessment and the average difference in scores between pairs of reviewers assessing the same proposal. The outcomes were measured in 2017 and after the feedback was provided in 2018.ResultsA total of 2398 paired reviews were included in the analysis. There was a significant difference between the two groups in the proportion of absolute agreement on whether the proposal was eligible for the funding programme, with the general feedback group demonstrating a higher rate of agreement. There was no difference between the two groups in terms of the average score difference. However, the agreement regarding the proposal score remained critically low for both groups.ConclusionsWe did not observe changes in proposal score agreement between 2017 and 2018 in reviewers receiving different feedback. The low levels of agreement remain a major concern in grant peer review, and research to identify contributing factors as well as the development and testing of interventions to increase agreement rates are still needed.Trial registrationThe study was preregistered at OSF.io/n4fq3. (shrink)

Advancing women’s empowerment and gender equality in agriculture is a recognised development goal, also within crop breeding. Increasingly, breeding teams are expected to use ‘market-based’ approaches to design more ‘demand-led’ and ‘gender-responsive’ crop varieties. Based on an institutional ethnography that includes high-profile development-oriented breeding initiatives, we unpack these terms using perspectives from political agronomy and feminist science and technology studies. By conceptualising the market as an ongoing, relational performance made up of discourses, practices and human and nonhuman actors, we trace (...) how the market is understood as an effective socioeconomic institution for soliciting demand, but also becomes a normative agenda. Construed as a demand variable, the relational and structural dimensions of gender are rendered less visible, which might strengthen rather than transform power relations’ status quo. On the other hand, a feminist science and technology perspective broadens the field of vision not only to the gendered dimensions of crop breeding, but also to the nonhuman actors, such as the crops and traits falling outside the market sphere of interest. By putting political agronomy and feminist science and technology studies into conversation, the article contributes to the development of a feminist political agronomy. (shrink)

Play and games are among the basic means of expression in intelligent communication, influenced by the relevant cultural environment. Games have found a natural expression in the contemporary computer era in which communications are increasingly mediated by computing technology. The widespread use of e-games results in conceptual and policy vacuums that must be examined and understood. Humans involved in design-ing, administering, selling, playing etc. computer games encounter new situations in which good and bad, right and wrong, are not defined by (...) the experience of previous generations. This article gives an account of the historical necessity of games, the development of e-games, their pros- and cons, threats and promises, focusing on the ethical awareness and attitudes of game developers. (shrink)

SummaryThis article addresses how and why the Dutch translation of Forbonnais's Elémens de commerce came about and the reasons for its lack of success. It explores the context in which the Utrecht printers and booksellers Spruit and Haanebrink in 1771 published a Dutch version of the first edition of the Elémens. In the preceding decades the deteriorating wealth and power of the Dutch Republic had become a major theme in the transnational debates on political economy. Recent research has established that (...) Dutch authors contributed to this debate as well, initially by propagating neutrality of trade in combination with an attempt reform the staple market system, but increasingly by arguing the necessity of another type of economy. Inspired by foreign examples, a movement of reformative patriotism emerged, advocating a more balanced economy in which international commerce stimulated mature agricultural and industrial sectors. This type of political economy could be found in Forbonnais's Elémens and may have triggered its rendering into Dutch. It was the first in a series of translations instigated by Hendrik van den Heuvel, the organiser of economic patriotism in the Dutch Republic. Spruit and Haanebrink dedicated the Dutch version of the Elémens to him and mentioned Van den Heuvel's recommendation of the French original. The fact that the intended buyers, economic patriots, were able to read the Elémens in French, may have precluded a big sale of the title, but the poor quality of the translation did not help either. However, one should not conclude that the Dutch reading public was not interested in the Elémens. In 1780 Van den Heuvel still recommended another edition in a better translation. Other sources, such as Dirk Hoola van Nooten's Dutch version of Condillac's Le commerce et le gouvernement considérés relativement l'un à l'autre, suggest that Forbonnais's ideas were acknowledged. (shrink)

An increasing number of people worldwide are living with chronic conditions that have an aspect of bodily fragility as part of the condition or as an effect of treatment. In this article, I explore the temporal experience of bodily fragility and the particularities of consciousness states among people with the chronic condition osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) in Denmark. My aim is threefold. First, my goal is to give an insight into life with OI, a rare and rarely studied condition. Second, I (...) shed light on bodily fragility, a theme that lives in the shadows of other analytical foci in anthropology. Third, I will contribute to the anthropological understanding of the connection among body, physical environment, and consciousness. I argue that the lifeworlds of people with OI are haunted by mental and bodily memories and fearful future scenarios, which makes the past and the future collapse into the present. (shrink)