This study investigates the performance measurement systems adopted by companies to manage their social responsibility activities, a theme that remains under-researched despite the important role that these mechanisms may play in helping firms control and improve their social performance. An integrative model is developed to examine how the three fundamental drivers of corporate social strategies, i.e., business motivations, perceived stakeholder pressures, and top management’s social commitment, influence the use of social performance indicators for internal decision-making and control and how such (...) use impacts companies’ social and economic performance. The results from a survey of 97 Italian companies suggest that economic motivations and top management’s commitment are associated with a more intensive use of social performance indicators for decision-making and control, whereas perceived pressures from stakeholders do not represent a significant determinant of such use. The use of social performance indicators, in turn, is found to directly influence a firm’s social performance and, indirectly, its bottom line. (shrink)

Platons Nomoi standen lange zu Unrecht im Schatten seiner Politeia. Dennoch prasentiert der umfangreiche und schwer zu interpretierende Dialog die Einsichten und Innovationen seines reifen Staatsdenkens. Sie werden in dem Band von internationalen Platon-Experten erschlossen. Zu diesen Einsichten und Innovationen zahlt der Gedanke, dass Machtmissbrauch durch politische Institutionen verhindert werden kann, und dass den Gesetzen Vorreden bzw. Praambeln vorangestellt werden sollen, die zu ihrer Befolgung uberreden. Die versammelten Original-Beitrage behandeln die zentralen Themen des Dialogs wie die neue Mischverfassung, die politische (...) Theologie, den Gesetzesbegriff, das Verhaltnis von Tugend- und Gesetzeslehre, die Erziehung und Bildung sowie den Einfluss und die Wirkung des Dialogs in der Antike, der Neuzeit und der Gegenwart. Eine ausfuhrliche Einleitung fuhrt in das Werk und seine Wirkungsgeschichte ein und informiert den Leser uber die Themen und Thesen der versammelten Beitrage. (shrink)

This study focuses on investigating habits in perioperative nursing culture, which are often simply accepted and not normally considered or discussed. A hermeneutical approach was chosen as the means of understanding perioperative nurses' experiences of and reflections on operating theatre culture. Focus group discussions were used to collect data, which was analysed using hermeneutical text analysis. The results revealed three main categories of habits present in perioperative nursing culture: habits that promote ethical values (by temporary friendship with patients, showing respect (...) for each other, and spending time on reflection on ethics and caring); habits that hinder progress (by seeing the patient as a surgical case, not acknowledging colleagues, and not talking about ethics); and habits that set the cultural tone (the hidden power structure and achieving more in less time). (shrink)

Euthanasia and assisted suicide have been legally possible in the Netherlands since 2001, provided that statutory due care criteria are met, including: voluntary and well-considered request; unbearable suffering without prospect of improvement; informing the patient; lack of a reasonable alternative; independent second physician’s opinion. ‘Unbearable suffering’ must have a medical basis, either somatic or psychiatric, but there is no requirement of limited life expectancy. All EAS cases must be reported and are scrutinised by regional review committees. The purpose of this (...) study was to investigate whether any particular difficulties arise when the EAS due care criteria are applied to patients with an intellectual disability and/or autism spectrum disorder. The 416 case summaries available on the RTE website were searched for intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder. Direct content analysis was used on these nine cases. Assessment of decisional capacity was mentioned in eight cases, but few details given; in two cases, there had been uncertainty or disagreement about capacity. Two patients had progressive somatic conditions. For most, suffering was due to an inability to cope with changing circumstances or increasing dependency; in several cases, suffering was described in terms of characteristics of living with an autism spectrum disorder, rather than an acquired medical condition. Some physicians struggled to understand the patient’s perspective. Treatment refusal was a common theme, leading physicians to conclude that EAS was the only remaining option. There was a lack of detail on social circumstances and how patients were informed about their prognosis. Autonomy and decisional capacity are highly complex for patients with intellectual disabilities and difficult to assess; capacity tests in these cases did not appear sufficiently stringent. Assessment of suffering is particularly difficult for patients who have experienced life-long disability. The sometimes brief time frames and limited number of physician-patient meetings may not be sufficient to make a decision as serious as EAS. The Dutch EAS due care criteria are not easily applied to people with intellectual disabilities and/or autism spectrum disorder, and do not appear to act as adequate safeguards. (shrink)

Corporate, Social, Ethical and Environmental Reporting should ideally discharge the accountability of an organisation to its stakeholders. Voluntary reporting has been characterised by a dearth of neutral and objective information such that the advocates of SEER recommend that it be made compulsory. Their underlying rationale is that legally specified disclosure requirements and enforcement mechanisms will enhance the quality of such reporting. This paper sets out to explore how realistic this scenario actually is, in view of the conflicting interpretations in the (...) literature on this subject. To that end, a survey of the reporting patterns of 78 of the largest Spanish companies between 2001 and 2003 examines the extent of their compliance with the ICAC-2002 standard, which obliged them to make environmental disclosures in their financial statements. The results suggest that progressive and improved regulation could increase the volume and quality of SEER disclosures. They also suggest, however, that persistent non-compliance means that the problems associated with voluntary disclosure still exist. Finally, through an impression management perspective, the study reveals, the diverse strategies, ranging from dismissal to concealment, that are employed by companies to avoid transparency. As regulation improves and enforcement expectations rise, it becomes more difficult to dismiss compulsory reporting norms. As a result, some firms engage in more complex concealment strategies to attain corporate legitimacy, depriving stakeholders of regulatory information. The latter point serves to reconcile apparently contradictory explanations in the literature as to whether legitimacy theory might explain partial compliance with SEER regulation. (shrink)

Restoration involves individuals’ physical, psychological and social resources, diminished by meeting demands of everyday life. Psychological restoration can be provided by specific environments, in particular by natural environments. Research reports a restorative effect of nature on human beings, specifically in terms of the psychological recovery from attention fatigue and restored mental resources previously spent in activities that require attention. Two field studies in two Italian primary schools tested the hypothesized positive effect of recess-time spent in a natural (vs. built) environment (...) on pupils’ cognitive performance and their perceived restorativeness, using standardized tests. In Study 1, children’s psychological restoration was assessed measuring sustained and selective attention, working memory, and impulse’ control, before and after morning recess-time. Team standardized play-time was conducted in a natural (vs. built) environment, measuring perceived restorativeness after each recess-time. Results showed a greater increase in sustained and selective attention, concentration, and perceived restorativeness from pre-test to post-test after the Natural Environment condition. In Study 2 the positive effect of free-play recess-time in a natural (vs. built) environment was assessed during the afternoon school-time on sustained and selective attention and perceived restorativeness. Results showed an increase of sustained and selective attention after the Natural Environment condition (vs. Built) and a decrease after the built environment break. Higher scores in perceived restorativeness were registered after the Natural (vs. Built) Environment condition. Team standardized and individual free-play recess in a natural environment (vs. built) support pupils’ attention restoration during both morning and afternoon school-time, as well as their perceived restorativeness of recess environment. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in terms of nature’s role both for school ground design or re-design, and for school’s activities organization. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the lives of people all over the world. In particular, an unprecedented educational crisis has occurred due to the circumstances of physical distancing and remote learning. This article focuses specifically on the meaningful learning experiences in the everyday lives of adolescents during the pandemic. 72 meaningful learning experiences were identified from 11 participants who recorded their specific learning experiences for a week by a means of a journal recorded by themselves. A content analysis was (...) undertaken in order to identify the ecology of the different learning experiences. The results show a prevalence of personal and conceptual learning, a presence of both formal and specifically informal, everyday activities among the meaningful learning experiences detected, the importance of peers, teacher and “learning experiences while alone,” and the use of digital technologies as learning resources; they also reveal the assistance of others in the learning process. The main contribution of this study illustrates how students in everyday life during pandemics are involved in a whole range of different activities both at school and at home. (shrink)

BackgroundMinorities are an underrepresented population in clinical trials. A potential explanation for this underrepresentation could be lack of willingness to participate. The aim of our study was to evaluate willingness to participate in different hypothetical clinical research scenarios and to evaluate the role that predictors could have on the willingness of minorities to participate in clinical research studies.MethodsWe conducted a mixed-methods study at the Miami VA Healthcare system and included primary care patients with hypertension. We measured willingness to participate as (...) a survey of four clinical research scenarios that evaluated common study designs encountered in clinical research and that differed in degree of complexity. Our qualitative portion included comments about the scenarios.ResultsWe included 123 patients with hypertension in our study. Of the entire sample, ninety-three patients were minorities. Seventy per cent of the minorities were willing to participate, compared to 60 per cent of the non-minorities. The odds ratio of willingness to participate in simple studies was 0.58; 95 per cent CI 0.18–1.88 p=0.37 and the OR of willingness to participate in complex studies was 5.8; 95 per cent CI 1.10–1.31 p=0.03. In complex studies, minorities with low health literacy cited obtaining benefits as the most common reason to be willing to participate. Minorities who were not willing to participate, cited fear of unintended outcomes as the main reason.ConclusionsMinorities were more likely to be willing to participate in complex studies compared to non-minorities. Low health literacy and therapeutic misconception are important mediators when considering willingness to participate in clinical research. (shrink)

Como consecuencia de la crisis económica, inmobiliaria y financiera experimentada en España en los últimos años, muchos deudores hipotecarios no pueden hacer frente a sus cuotas y corren el riesgo de perder sus viviendas, en ocasiones conservando una deuda imposible de afrontar. El sobrendeudamiento y la morosidad hipotecaria abocan así a ciertas economías domésticas a situaciones insostenibles que pueden llevar a una reordenación de los gastos y necesidades, entre los que las cuotas hipotecarias dejan de tener prioridad. La legitimación de (...) la condición de moroso que puede observarse en esos casos es un fenómeno con importantes implicaciones antropológicas, en la medida en que constituye un cuestionamiento de la obligación de devolver el préstamo. Desde el punto de vista de los deudores y de quienes les brindan apoyo, caer en el impago, lejos de constituir una transgresión moralmente reprobable, puede entenderse como un acto de responsabilidad que tiende al sostenimiento de la vida. (shrink)

We disagree with two of Rendell and Whitehead's assertions. Culture may be an ancestral characteristic of terrestrial cetacean ancestors; not derived via marine variability, modern cetacean mobility, or any living cetacean social structure. Furthermore, evidence for vocal behavior as culture, social stability, and cognitive ability, is richer in birds than Rendell and Whitehead portray and comparable to that of cetaceans and primates.

The political discourse of Rafael Caldera and Carlos Andrés Pérez is here analyzed. Thess leaders share features in exercising power as presidents of Venezuela, and in their being members of the traditional political parties that ruled the country in the second half of the XXth century. A crit..

As part of a wider program that studies the legislative creation process regarding work conditions in the Argentine Republic, the purpose of this research is to examine the different ways in which the written press represents, on one hand, the formulation and approval process of the Labor Risk Law reform, which concluded on 25 October 2012 with the passing of Law 26,773, and, on the other hand, the scope, content, and sense of said regulation. The perspective of the research is (...) interdisciplinary, its methodology is qualitative, and the process guiding the textual analysis is inductive and hermeneutic. The corpus is made up of the news related to the studied legislative process. The news analysis was carried out according to the proposal of a Sociological and Linguistic Discourse Analysis. Thus, the argumentative strategies and the linguistic resources deployed were associated with the interpretive models of reality underlying those texts, and moreover, the similarities and differences among the various news articles were examined as regards the representation of working conditions; workers and employers and their respective rights and obligations; the legitimacy, need, and legality of the regulation passed; the scope of the protection granted to workers; and the effect of this regulation on workers’ constitutional rights and guarantees. (shrink)

The native language changes as a result of contact with a second language, and the pattern and degree of such change depend on a variety of factors like the bilingual experience or the linguistic level. Here, we present a systematic review and meta-analysis of works that explore variations in native sentence comprehension and production by comparing monolinguals and bilinguals. Fourteen studies in the meta-analysis provided information regarding the bilingual experience and differences at the morphosyntactic level using behavioral methods. Overall, we (...) observed that first language processing is subject to small transformations in bilinguals that occur in sentence comprehension and production. The magnitude of the changes depended on bilingual experiences, but only length of residence in an L2 setting predicted the degree of change, where shorter length of residence was associated with larger changes. Results are discussed and related to the cognitive processes that potentially cause the transformations in the first language. The present work reveals some limitations in the field that should be addressed in future studies to better understand the mechanisms behind language attrition. (shrink)

La méthode adoptée dans le Vocabulaire européen des philosophies peut-elle être taxée de « relativiste » comme l’écrit Carlo Ginzburg, et plus précisément de mener au « relativisme sceptique »? L’on vise ici à répondre par la négative en montrant les proximités entre la démarche du VEP et certains travaux de l’auteur lui-même. Si le VEP n’est pas un dictionnaire d’« ethnophilologie », et se centre sur les traductions du vocabulaire philosophique, les enjeux politiques sont essentiels. Il s’agit, en prenant (...) de la distance par rapport à sa propre langue, de construire des comparables, en étant aussi bien contre l’universalisme abstrait que contre le culturalisme relativiste qui conduit à l’incommensurabilité. (shrink)

Priscian's _Institutiones Grammaticae_, which rely on Stoic and Neoplatonic sources, constituted an important, although quite neglected, link in the chain of transmission of ancient philosophy in the Middle Ages. There is, in particular, a passage where Priscian discusses the vexed claim that common names can be proper names of the universal species and where he talks about the ideas existing in the divine mind. At the beginning of the 12th century, the anonymous _Glosulae super Priscianum_ and the _Notae Dunelmenses_, which (...) heavily quote William of Champeaux, interpret the passage in the context of a growing interest in the problem of universals, raising semantic as well as ontological questions, and introducing a Platonic view on universals in the discussions on the signification of the noun. Moreover, this same passage will be used by Abelard to elaborate one of his opinions about the signification of universal or common names—that they signify "mental conceptions". (shrink)

This collection of original essays explores the connections between the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and the classical American pragmatists.

La nature catégorielle de la « voix », substance, quantité ou qualité, fait débat chez les grammairiens et logiciens du début du xii e siècle. Les discussions grammaticales se lisent dans les commentaires sur Priscien, aux chapitres initiaux du De uoce et du De littera, dont on édite ici plusieurs témoins majeurs, trois versions des Glosulae super Priscianum et les Notae Dunelmenses qui en dérivent, témoins anonymes où se lit l’influence de Guillaume de Champeaux. Les arguments tirés de ces textes (...) sont repris dans les commentaires sur les Catégories, faisant apparaître les enjeux physique, logique, ontologique et sémantique des débats sur la voix. (shrink)

We review two subjective (mis)perceptions that influence revenge and forgiveness systems. Individual differences predict more (e.g., narcissism) or less (e.g., empathy) revenge, with the opposite pattern for forgiveness. Moreover, differences in victim versus perpetrator perceptions can influence revenge and forgiveness systems, perpetuating never-ending cycles of revenge. These two examples point to the need for theories of revenge and forgiveness to address the role of cognitive and motivational biases in the functionality of such behavioral responses.

This article considers what happened to American anthropology, which was initiated by the scientist Franz Boas, who commanded all fields of anthropology,physical, biological, and cultural. Boas was a brave field worker who explored Eskimo land, and inspired two famous students, Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, to cross borders in new kinds of studies. After this florescence, there was a general return to linear descriptive positivism, superficial comparisons of quantitative cultural traits, and false evolutionary schemes, which did not introduce us to (...) the personalities and inner worlds of the tribal peoples studied. The 1953 study by the philosopher David Bidney was a revelation. Bidney enunciated and clarified all my doubts about the paths of anthropology and his work became to some extent a model for a narration of the story of American anthropology. In many ways he envisaged a semiotics of culture formulated by Lotman. I try to illustrate the fallacies listed by Bidney and how they have been partially overcome in some later anthropological studies which have focused on symbolism, artistry, and subjective qualities of the people studied. I then try to give an overview of the school started by Lotman that spans all human behavior, that demonstrates the complexity of meaning and communication, in vast areas of knowledge, from art, literature, science, and philosophy, that abjured strict relativism and closed systems and has become an inspiration for those who want anthropology to encompass the self and the other, and Bahtin’s double meaning. This paper was inspired by Bidney as a call to explore widely all possible worlds, not to abandon science and reality but to explore deeper inner interrelations and how the aesthetic may be indeed be paramount in the complexities of communication. (shrink)

Se efectuó un estudio en dos fases: una observacional descriptiva y otra correlacional, para caracterizar psicológicamente al niño y adolescente con Retinosis Pigmentaria y su familia, en el Centro Provincial que atiende a este paciente en la ciudad de Camagüey. El estudio se hizo aplicando una encuesta elaborada a los efectos del trabajo y una batería de pruebas psicológicas para niños y otra para adolescentes. Se realizó un muestreo intencional puro, no probabilístico de 41 pacientes. Las Pruebas Psicológicas aplicadas fueron: (...) Encuesta, Dibujo Libre, Rotter, Wechller Bellevue, Test Gráfico de la Familia para ambos grupos e Historietas de Madelaine Thomas, 3 Alegrías, 3 Roñas y 3 Miedos para niños y Técnica de los 10 Deseos, Inventario de Problemas Juveniles, Escala de Autovaloración de Dembo Rubinstein, para los adolescentes. A todas las madres de los pacientes se les aplicó el Cuestionario FFSIL para determinar su funcionamiento familiar. En lo metodológico, se realizaron modificaciones a las pruebas psicológicas, adaptándolas al entorno sociocultural cubano. Se reportaron hallazgos típicos explicables por el tipo de enfermedad. Como resultado de este estudio, se confirmó lo expuesto por otros autores que más que la enfermedad misma, lo que influye en su formación personológica es el proceso de socialización que se efectúe An study was made to characterize psychologically the childs and adolescent suffering from pigmentary retinosis and their family, in the Provincial Center that assists those patients in Camagüey. The study was carried out applying a battery of psychological tests for children and another for adolescents. The applied Psychological Tests were: interviews, Free Drawing, Rotter, Graphic Test of the Family for both groups and Comics of Madelaine Thomas, 3 Happiness, 3 Dirts and 3 Fears for children and Technique of the 10 Desires, Inventory of Juvenile Problems and the Scale of Dembo Rubinstein, for the adolescents. Methodological modifications to the psychological tests were carried out, adapting them to the Cuban sociocultural environment. Accountable typical discoveries were reported by the illness type. As results of this study, the most important fact for the patients' personalities is the socialization process. (shrink)

This article is currently available as a free download on ingentaconnect.

La méthode adoptée dans le Vocabulaire européen des philosophies peut-elle être taxée de « relativiste » comme l’écrit Carlo Ginzburg, et plus précisément de mener au « relativisme sceptique »? L’on vise ici à répondre par la négative en montrant les proximités entre la démarche du VEP et certains travaux de l’auteur lui-même. Si le VEP n’est pas un dictionnaire d’« ethnophilologie », et se centre sur les traductions du vocabulaire philosophique, les enjeux politiques sont essentiels. Il s’agit, en prenant (...) de la distance par rapport à sa propre langue, de construire des comparables, en étant aussi bien contre l’universalisme abstrait que contre le culturalisme relativiste qui conduit à l’incommensurabilité. (shrink)

El trabajo analiza el tema de los derechos humanos bajo la perspectiva de la política multilateral. En esta línea, se concentra en las innovaciones que ha implicado el establecimiento del Consejo de Derechos Humanos, en lugar de la antigua Comisión de Derechos Humanos. Para tal efecto, se pone un énfasis especial en el estudio de las discusiones políticas que se dieron en el seno de la Comunidad Internacional, durante el proceso de constitución del nuevo Consejo, así como en los nuevos (...) mecanismos de revisión que éste contempla. (shrink)

Numerosity perception is a key ability for human and non-human species, probably mediated by dedicated brain mechanisms. Electrophysiological studies revealed the existence of both early and mid-latency components of the Electrophysiological (EEG) signal sensitive to numerosity changes. However, it is still unknown whether these components respond to physical or perceived variation in numerical attributes. We here tackled this point by recording electrophysiological signal while participants performed a numerosity adaptation task, a robust psychophysical method yielding changes in perceived numerosity judgments despite (...) physical numerosity invariance. Behavioral measures confirmed that the test stimulus was consistently underestimated when presented after a high numerous adaptor while perceived as veridical when presented after a neutral adaptor. Congruently, EEG results revealed a potential at around 200 ms (P2p) which was reduced when the test stimulus was presented after the high numerous adaptor. This result was much prominent over the left posterior cluster of electrodes and correlated significantly with the amount of adaptation. No earlier modulations were retrievable when changes in numerosity were illusory while both early and mid-latency modulations occurred for physical changes. Taken together, our results reveal that mid-latency P2p mainly reflects perceived changes in numerical attributes, while earlier components are likely to be bounded to the physical characteristics of the stimuli. These results suggest that short-term plastic mechanisms induced by numerosity adaptation may involve a relatively late processing stage of the visual hierarchy likely engaging cortical areas beyond the primary visual cortex. Furthermore, these results also indicate mid-latency electrophysiological correlates as a signature of the internal representation of numerical information. (shrink)