Background Policy instruments based on the working of markets have been introduced to empower consumers of healthcare. However, it is still not easy to become a critical consumer of healthcare. Objectives The aim of this study is to analyse the possibilities of the state to strengthen the position of patients with the aid of a new financial regime, such as personal health budgets. Methods Data were collected through in-depth interviews with executives, managers, professionals and client representatives of six long-term care (...) institutions. Results With the introduction of individual budgets the responsibility for budgetary control has shifted from the organisational level to the individual level in the caregiver-client relationship. Having more luxurious care on offer necessitates a stronger demarcation of regular care because organisations cannot simultaneously offer extra care as part of the standard care package. New financial instruments have an impact on the culture of receiving and giving care. Distributive justice takes on new meaning with the introduction of financial market mechanisms in healthcare; the distributing principle of ‘need’ is transformed into the principle of ‘economic demand’. Conclusion Financial instruments not only act as a countervailing power against providers insufficiently client-oriented, but are also used by providers to reinforce their own positions vis-à-vis demanding clients. Tailor-made finance is not the same as tailor-made care. (shrink)

Uncivil behavior by leaders may be viewed as an effective way to motivate employees. However, supervisor incivility, as a form of unethical supervision, may be undercutting employees’ ability to do their jobs. We investigate linkages between workplace incivility and perceived work ability, a variable that captures employees’ appraisals of their ability to continue working in their jobs. We draw upon the appraisal theory of stress and social identity theory to examine incivility from supervisors as an antecedent to PWA, and to (...) investigate job involvement and grit as joint moderators of this association. Results from data collected in two samples of working adults provided evidence for three-way interactions in relation to PWA. Among employees with high levels of grit, there was no significant relation between supervisor incivility and PWA, regardless of employee job involvement. However, we found some evidence that for those low in grit, having high job involvement was associated with a stronger relationship between supervisor incivility and PWA. Findings attest to the importance of unethical supervisor behavior, showing the potential for supervisor incivility to erode PWA, as well as the importance of grit as a potential buffer. (shrink)

Suppose some person 'A' sets out to accomplish a difficult, long-term goal such as writing a passable Ph.D. thesis. What should you believe about whether A will succeed? The default answer is that you should believe whatever the total accessible evidence concerning A's abilities, circumstances, capacity for self-discipline, and so forth supports. But could it be that what you should believe depends in part on the relationship you have with A? We argue that it does, in the case where A (...) is yourself. The capacity for "grit" involves a kind of epistemic resilience in the face of evidence suggesting that one might fail, and this makes it rational to respond to the relevant evidence differently when you are the agent in question. We then explore whether similar arguments extend to the case of "believing in" our significant others -- our friends, lovers, family members, colleagues, patients, and students. (shrink)

Many of our most important goals require months or even years of effort to achieve, and some never get achieved at all. As social psychologists have lately emphasized, success in pursuing such goals requires the capacity for perseverance, or "grit." Philosophers have had little to say about grit, however, insofar as it differs from more familiar notions of willpower or continence. This leaves us ill-equipped to assess the social and moral implications of promoting grit. We propose that (...) grit has an important epistemic component, in that failures of perseverance are often caused by a significant loss of confidence that one will succeed if one continues to try. Correspondingly, successful exercises of grit often involve a kind of epistemic resilience in the face of failure, injury, rejection, and other setbacks that constitute genuine evidence that success is not forthcoming. Given this, we discuss whether and to what extent displays of grit can be epistemically as well as practically rational. We conclude that they can be (although many are not), and that the rationality of grit will depend partly on features of the context the agent normally finds herself in. In particular, grit-friendly norms of deliberation might be irrational to use in contexts of severe material scarcity or oppression. (shrink)

Most contemporary accounts of the nature of faith explicitly defend what we call ‘the positivity theory of faith’ – the theory that faith must be accompanied by a favourable evaluative belief, or a desire towards the object of faith. This paper examines the different varieties of the positivity theory and the arguments used to support it. Whilst initially plausible, we find that the theory faces numerous problematic counterexamples, and show that weaker versions of the positivity theory are ultimately implausible. We (...) discuss a distinct property of faith that we call ‘true grit’, such that faith requires one to be resilient toward the evidential, practical, and psychological challenges that it faces. We show how true grit is necessary for faith, and provides a simpler and less problematic explanation of the evidence used to support the positivity theory. (shrink)

This paper concerns the structure of any spatially extended things, including regions of space or spacetime. I shall use intuitions about the quantity of extended things to argue for a dichotomy: either a given finite extended thing is point-free gunk, that is, it has no points as parts, or it is made of grit, that is there are only finitely many points.

Corporate citizenship challenges the foundations and working of the basic institutions market, state and civil society. These institutional changes complicate the work of the manager, because the responsibilities of management are not only increasing, they are also becoming vaguer and more elusive. In this paper, I will analyze the new, complex responsibilities of management in terms of the scope and the legitimizationof corporate citizenship. What may we expect of individual organizations? Which wishes of which stakeholders should be honored? How can (...) we legitimize the new societal and public role of business firms? The outcome of this analysis will be translated to the practice of management; how can we strengthen the social responsibility of managers? Four options will be discussed. (1) Market regulation, which binds the actions of managers. (2) Professionalization of management, which seeks for better information. (3) Moral management, which incorporates norms and values from outside the market. (4) Stakeholder management, which leaves room for the participation of stakeholders. These options can be schematized according to an internal-external axis and an objective-subjective axis. I will show that stakeholder management fits the best with the idea of corporate citizenship, but has serious risks of failing. (shrink)

Early career researchers are faced with the expectation of their scientific communities to conduct independent research, which is reflected in the development of independent new research lines. This change must take place under conditions that vary between national career systems. Case studies for a chair system and two tenure systems, one with strong hierarchies and one with flat hierarchies were conducted. The career conditions created by universities and funding agencies during this transition phase towards independence are systematically compared for two (...) fields, molecular biology and history. Despite their different structures functional equivalents lead to similar outcomes: Only a small group of the potential elite had sufficient ‘protected space’ to start new research lines without delay. The majority of early career researchers encountered limitations of their ‘protected space.’ Differences between the systems occurred due to the increasing importance of the external funding system for the creation of ‘protected space’: researchers were better off in a rich funding landscape with higher grant success rates. (shrink)

Psychologists and philosophers have argued that the capacity for perseverance or “grit” depends both on willpower and on a kind of epistemic resilience. But can a form of hopefulness in one’s future success also constitute a source of grit? I argue that substantial practical hopefulness, as a hope to bring about a desired outcome through exercises of one’s agency, can serve as a distinctive ground for the capacity for perseverance. Gritty agents’ “practical hope” centrally involves an attention-fuelled, risk-inclined (...) weighting of two competing concerns over action: when facing the decision of whether to persevere, hopeful gritty agents prioritize the aim of choosing a course of action which might go very well over that of choosing a course of action which is very likely to go fairly well. By relying on the notion of a “risk-inclined attentional pattern” as a dimension of gritty agents’ practical hope, we can explain that form of hope’s contribution to their motivation and practical rationality, especially on a risk-weighted expected utility framework. The upshot is a more pluralistic view of the sources of grit. (shrink)

Recently, due in part to the research of Angela Duckworth, the cultivation of dispositions in education, grit in particular, has gained the attention of educational policymakers and the educational research community. While much of the research has focused on how to detect grit, there has been little discussion regarding how grit came to be valued as a noncognitive disposition and what its recent prominence might tell us about current social conditions. In this essay, Ariana Gonzalez Stokas attempts (...) to illuminate grit as a concept that has undergone a number of conceptual transformations in American culture. She seeks to show how grit developed as a way to justify social and economic inequality and how this history is bound up in its conceptual structure. Through conducting a genealogical excavation, Stokas reveals the relationship of grit to a cluster of cultural events that occurred at the turn of the twentieth century in the confluence of boxing, cowboys, and Theodore Roosevelt, and aims to illuminate how grit has served as a tool for convincing society that achievement occurs through heroic individual effort despite inadequate social supports. This historical understanding of grit, Stokas concludes, may help us to recognize that the energy and resources currently spent on cultivating grit in children would be better spent on ameliorating the problems of social and economic inequality. (shrink)

Ingredients for success -- What is grit? -- Keep going! -- Setting goals -- Grit on the baseball field -- Finding solutions -- Finding grit in others -- Showing your grit -- Finding a balance -- My report card: grit.

This study aimed to verify the psychometric properties of the Polish version of the Grit-S questionnaire. Grit is understood here as the perseverance and passion for long-term goals, and it encompasses two dimensions: Consistency of Interest and Perseverance of Effort. The sample comprised N = 270 participants aged 18-34. We performed confirmatory factor analyses to verify the dimensional structure of grit, multi-group confirmatory factor analysis to compare the structure across gender, and correlation analysis to examine external validity. (...) Findings showed satisfactory parameters for Grit-S including: reliability, structural and external validity, and measurement invariance across gender groups. The results support the possibility of using the Grit-S questionnaire in research exploring the predictors of success. (shrink)

In this study, we tested a possible mechanism of the association between math anxiety and math achievement: the mediating role of math-specific grit. In Study 1, a sample of 10th grade students completed a battery of personality and attitude questionnaires, and math achievement was indexed by curriculum-based examination scores. Mediation analyses indicated that math-specific grit, but not domain-general grit, mediated the relationship between math anxiety and math achievement. In Study 2, we replicated and extended the above findings (...) with another sample of 11th grade students. Mediation analyses indicated that math-specific grit and math-specific procrastination played sequential mediating roles in the relationship between math anxiety and math achievement. That is, individuals with higher math anxiety were less gritty in math learning, possibly further leading them to be more procrastinated in performing math work, which may finally result in worse math achievement. In summary, the current study provides the first evidence that math-specific grit may mediate the relationship between math anxiety and math achievement. Furthermore, it also demonstrated the value of math-specific grit over domain-general grit in predicting math success, which invites a broader investigation on subject-specific grit. (shrink)

Ex-gay ministries, like many evangelical groups, advocate traditional gender ideologies. But their discourses and practices generate masculine ideals that are quite distinct from hegemonic ones. I argue that rather than simply reproducing hegemonic masculinity, ex-gay ministries attempt to realize godly masculinity, an ideal that differs significantly from hegemonic masculinity and is explicitly critical of it. I discuss three aspects of the godly masculine ideal—de-emphasizing heterosexual conquest, inclusive masculinity, and homo-intimacy—that work to subvert hegemonic masculinity and allow ministry members to critique (...) it while still advocating for innate gender distinction and hierarchy. I conclude by arguing that gender theorists need to be more precise in distinguishing conservative religious masculinities from hegemonic ones. (shrink)

Many Western countries have introduced market principles in healthcare. The newly introduced financial instrument of “care-intensity packages” in the Dutch long-term care sector fit this development since they have some characteristics of a market device. However, policy makers and care providers positioned these instruments as explicitly not belonging to the general trend of marketisation in healthcare. Using a qualitative case study approach, we study the work that the two providers have done to fit these instruments to their organisations and how (...) that enables and legitimatises market development. Both providers have done various types of work that could be classified as market development, including creating accounting systems suitable for markets, redefining public values in the context of markets, and starting commercial initiatives. Paradoxically, denying the existence of markets for long-term care and thus avoiding ideological debates on the marketisation of healthcare has made the use of market devices all the more likely. Making the market invisible seems to be an operative element in making the market work. Our findings suggest that Dutch long-term care reform points to the need to study the ‘making’ rather than the ‘liberalising’ of markets and that the study of healthcare markets should not be confined to those practices that explicitly label themselves as such. (shrink)

The past three decades have witnessed a sharp reduction in the rate of growth of public research funding, and sometimes an actual decline in its level. In many countries, this decline has been accompanied by substantial changes in the ways that such funding has been allocated and monitored. In addition, the institutions governing how research is directed and conducted underwent significant reforms. In this paper we examine how these changes have affected scientists’ research goals and practices by comparing the development (...) of three scientific innovations in four European countries, namely Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Sweden. We find that the increased number of actors exercising authority over research goals does not necessarily lead to a greater diversity of interests funding research. A narrowing of goals and frameworks is especially probable when the increasing importance of external project funding is combined with reductions in state financing of universities and public research institutes. Finally, the growing standardisation of project cycle times and resource packages across funding agencies and scientific communities make it more difficult for researchers to pursue projects that deviate from these norms, especially, if they challenge mainstream beliefs and assessment criteria. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 2 Seiten: 247-269.

This paper defends what the philosopher Merleau Ponty coins ‘the imaginary texture of the real’. It is suggested that the imagination is at work in the everyday world which we perceive, the world as it is for us. In defending this view a concept of the imagination is invoked which has both similarities with and differences from, our everyday notion. The everyday notion contrasts the imaginary and the real. The imaginary is tied to the fictional or the illusory. Here it (...) will be suggested, following both Kant and Strawson, that there is a more fundamental working of the imagination, present in both perception and the constructions of fictions. What Kant and Strawson failed to make clear, however, was that the workings of the imagination within the perceived world, gives that world, an affective logic. The domain of affect is that of emotions, feelings and desire, and to claim such an affective logic in the world we experience, is to point out that it has salience and significance for us. Such salience suggests and demands the desiring and sometimes fearful responses we make to it; the shape of the perceived world echoed in the shapes our bodies take within it. (shrink)

Using the Self-Determination Theory as a framework, this study tests the predictive capacity of the teacher’s interpersonal style of autonomy support at a higher education institution, and the grit on the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, intrinsic motivation, group cohesion, and life satisfaction in university students. A sample composed of 489 Colombian university students, aged between 18 and 41 years, was used; they filled in the questionnaires that measured the variables of interest. After the analysis of structural equations, the (...) results showed that the perception of teaching style of autonomy support and the grit positively predicted the basic psychological needs and these predicted the intrinsic motivation, which in turn predicted group cohesion and satisfaction with life. The model describes the possible importance of promoting the teacher’s interpersonal style of autonomy support within the university setting in the search for satisfaction with life along with the active role of the student through the mediation of the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, increased quality motivation, and high group cohesion. (shrink)

Non-cognitive dispositions have recently become psychological constructs of interest in the education, economics, philosophy, sociology, and psychology literature. In this article, I draw the distinction between property-first and measurement-first approaches to understanding the meaning of a particular non-cognitive disposition theoretical term, ‘grit’, as well as the relationship between this term and its corresponding measurement procedure. I argue that, depending on which approach one takes, one is confronted with different norms for judging the success of any disposition-measurement procedure pair, meaning (...) that the difference in philosophical approaches may have practical import. I argue that the measurement-first approach is the one educators and educational policy-makers ought to adopt towards grit as it is less likely to lead to over-valuing grit in situations where a gritty disposition may be harmful, better respects scientific virtues and values, and provides a clearer understanding of grit than the property-first approach. (shrink)

Quentin Skinner's The Foundations of Modern Political Thought is primarily of interest to philosophers not for its excellent account of European thought about the state but for the self–conscious philosophy which has gone into it. It is a rare historian who pauses to get his philosophy in order before he embarks on a major enterprise, though such a policy is possibly less unusual in intellectual history than in other fields. In Skinner's case, however, this order of doing things has been (...) pushed so far that he counts as a philosopher in his own right, rather than as merely someone who is unusually careful to think about what he is doing. The publication of this major work thus provides a convenient opportunity to make a few remarks about the relation between historical theory and practice. (shrink)

Using an economic bargaining game, we tested for the existence of two phenomena related to social norms, namely norm manipulation – the selection of an interpretation of the norm that best suits an individual – and norm evasion – the deliberate, private violation of a social norm. We found that the manipulation of a norm of fairness was characterized by a self-serving bias in beliefs about what constituted normatively acceptable behaviour, so that an individual who made an uneven bargaining offer (...) not only genuinely believed it was fair, but also believed that recipients found it fair, even though recipients of the offer considered it to be unfair. In contrast, norm evasion operated as a highly explicit process. When they could do so without the recipient's knowledge, individuals made uneven offers despite knowing that their behaviour was unfair. (shrink)