In this entry, we provide an overview of some of the methodological debates surrounding contextualism and consider whether they are, in effect, based on an underlying methodological dispute. We consider three modes of motivation of epistemic contextualism including i) the method of cases, ii) the appeal to linguistic analogies and iii) the appeal to conceptual analogies and functional roles. We also consider the methodological debates about contextualism arising from experimental philosophy. We conclude that i) there is no distinctive methodological doctrine (...) or set of methodological doctrines that is centrally invoked by all epistemic contextualists and ii) the substantive dispute about the truth of contextualism very frequently, although not invariably, reflects an underlying methodological dispute. (shrink)

This article examines selected behavioral aspects of ethical decision making within a business context. Three categories of antecedents to ethical decision behaviors (individual differences, interpersonal variables, and organizational variables) are examined and propositions are offered. Moral development theory and expectancy theory are then explored as possible bases for a theory of ethical decision making. Finally, means of improving ethical decision making in firms are explored.

As Post observes, accounting firms are unique among multinationals. They are more likely than firms in almost any other category to go abroad. They also have less choice in location as their expansion is determined largely by the desired locations of their clients. Given the widespread global presence of such firms, it can be argued that the global audit firm is uniquely at risk from variations in ethical perceptions across nations. This study extends the U.S. accounting literature on determinants of (...) cheating among accounting students to the U.K. Based on the work of Cohen et al. it develops a model that suggests that students in lower "uncertainty avoidance" countries will be both less likely to cheat, and when they do cheat, will be driven by internal rather than external mode. Our results supported the model as proposed as our results indicated that U.S. students were more likely to cheat and were more responsive to external stimuli than were the U.K. students. (shrink)

Philosopher Martin Heidegger and German poets who evoke nature offer excellent introductions to elemental earth. Those poets privilege earth among the elements using their earthy language. Heidegger views earth as the hidden ground of things. The article approaches elemental earth through Heidegger’s analysis of what he views as Georg Trakl’s crucial line of poetry about earth: “something strange is the soul on earth.” Heidegger stresses the soul as the stranger. In contrast, this article argues that on the basis of a (...) contextual analysis of Trakl’s poetry and some other German poetry, it is the earth that is strange. Forgotten earth is the background out of which and the foundation upon which things manifest themselves. Elemental earth makes possible human experience of space and place. (shrink)

Peirce was greatly influenced by Aristotle, particularly on the topic of final cause. Commentators are therefore right to draw on Aristotle in the interpretation of Peirce's teleology. But these commentators sometimes fail to distinguish clearly between formal cause and final cause in Aristotle's philosophy. Unless form and end are clearly distinguished, no sense can be made of Peirce's important claim that 'desires create classes.' Understood in the context of his teleology, this claim may be considered Peirce's answer to nominalists and (...) sceptics on the possibility and status of scientific knowledge. On the basis of an improved view of Peirce's teleology, the objection that inorganic physical events do not admit of teleological explanation can be answered. I argue that the non-teleological alternative leaves the laws of nature and the actions of inorganic matter unexplained. (shrink)

A comparison of the engineering schools at UC Berkeley and Stanford during the 1940s and 1950s shows that having an excellent academic program is necessary but not sufficient to make a university entrepreneurial. Key factors that made Stanford more entrepreneurial than Cal during this period were superior leadership and a focused strategy. The broader institutional context mattered as well. Stanford did not have the same access to state funding as public universities and some private universities. Therefore, in order to gather (...) resources, Stanford was forced to become entrepreneurial first, developing business skills at the same time Cal was developing political skills. Stanford ’s early development of entrepreneurial business skills played a crucial role in the development of Silicon Valley. (shrink)

Experts from around the world examine an innovative proposal to promote both cultural survival and biological conservation: treating cultural and indigenous knowledge as a form of intellectual property. Currently the focus of a heated debate among indigenous peoples, human rights advocates, crop breeders, pharmaceutical companies, conservationists, social scientists, and lawyers, the proposal would allow impoverished people in biologically rich areas to realize an economic return from resources under their care. Monetary compensation could both validate their knowledge and provide them with (...) an equitable reward for sharing it, thereby compensating biological stewardship and encouraging conservation.Valuing Local Knowledge presents case studies of programs that recognize indigenous rights, and brings direct experience to bear on the international debate over intellectual property, conservation, and indigenous rights. (shrink)

The role that personality plays in the justification of organizational sabotage behavior was examined. In a two phase study, 120 business students were first surveyed to create a list of 51 methods of sabotage. In the second phase, 274 other business students rated justifiability of the 51 methods and completed Machiavellian and hostility scales. A factor analysis of the justification ratings yielded four factors: (1) methods of sabotaging company profits and production, (2) informational sabotage, (3) violent and illegal methods, and (...) (4) traditional labor methods of sabotage. A 2 (high versus low Machiavellianism) ×2 (high versus low hostility) ANOVA upon factor scores for justifiability revealed significant main effects for hostility and significant interactive effects on Factors 1 and 2. Results were discussed in terms of differences in management and blue collar methods of sabotage and in terms of a self-presentational approach to justification of sabotage. (shrink)

BackgroundHuman infection studies are valuable in vaccine development. Deliberate infection, however, creates challenging questions, particularly in low and middle-income countries where HIS are new and ethical challenges may be heightened. Consultation with stakeholders is needed to support contextually appropriate and acceptable study design. We examined stakeholder perceptions about the acceptability and ethics of HIS in Malawi, to inform decisions about planned pneumococcal challenge research and wider understanding of HIS ethics in LMICs.MethodsWe conducted 6 deliberative focus groups and 15 follow-up interviews (...) with research staff, medical students, and community representatives from rural and urban Blantyre. We also conducted 5 key informant interviews with clinicians, ethics committee members, and district health government officials.ResultsStakeholders perceived HIS research to have potential population health benefits, but they also had concerns, particularly related to the safety of volunteers and negative community reactions. Acceptability depended on a range of conditions related to procedures for voluntary and informed consent, inclusion criteria, medical care or support, compensation, regulation, and robust community engagement. These conditions largely mirror those in existing guidelines for HIS and biomedical research in LMICs. Stakeholder perceptions pointed to potential tensions, for example, balancing equity, safety, and relevance in inclusion criteria.ConclusionsOur findings suggest HIS research could be acceptable in Malawi, provided certain conditions are in place. Ongoing assessment of participant experiences and stakeholder perceptions will be required to strengthen HIS research during development and roll-out. (shrink)

Management practitioners and scholars have worked diligently to identify methods for ethical decision making in international contexts. Theoretical frameworks such as Integrative Social Contracts Theory (Donaldson and Dunfee, 1994, Academy of Management Review 19, 252–284) and more recently the Global Business Citizenship Approach [Wood et al., 2006, Global Business Citizenship: A Transformative Framework for Ethics and Sustainable Capitalism. (M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY)] have produced innovations in practice. Despite these advances, many managers have difficulty implementing these theoretical concepts in daily (...) practice. Using the example of recent decisions by internet service providers Google, Yahoo, and MSN regarding censorship requirements in China, we offer six heuristic questions to help managers to resolve cross-cultural ethical conflicts in which the firm’s way of doing business differs from the practice in the host country. Recognizing that companies can take different approaches to law and ethics (Paine, 1994, Harvard Business Review 72(2), 107–117), our aim is to provide a management decision process to deal with demands or opportunities for engaging in questionable business practices in a host country. (shrink)

Cross cultural ethical conflicts are a major challenge for managers of multinational corporations (MNEs) when an MNE''s business practices and a host country''s practices differ. We develop a set of decision principles to help MNE managers deal with these conflicts and illustrate with examples of ethical conflicts faced by MNEs doing business in contemporary Russia (DeGeorge, 1994). We discuss the generalizability of the principles by comparing them to the Donaldson (1989) and Buller and Kohls (1997) decision models. Finally we discuss (...) changes in the cross cultural ethical problems facing MNE managers and offer suggestions for future corporate and academic work on these problems. (shrink)

Social scientists have investigated many facets of popular music over the last 25 years. The vast majority of their efforts have focused on men and their contributions to the creation and performance of popular music. As a result, we know little about women and their experiences as musicians in a traditionally male-centered and male-dominated activity. In this study, the authors used in-depth interviews with 15 local-level female rock and roll musicians in two U.S. cities to explore audiences' reactions and responses (...) to them as performers and their interactions with other band members. (shrink)

Gold Stripe on a Jackass is a conceptually rich description of one naval officer's career journey. Author Stephen B. Sloane began his career in Annapolis, where the commandment of obedience holds sway, and finished in Berkeley, a place where questioning authority is woven deeply into the cultural fabric.

There are some conspicuous differences between the sensibilities of cutaneous and visceral tissues: (1) Direct trauma, which readily produces pain when applied to the skin, is mostly without effect in healthy visceral tissue. (2) Pain that arises from visceral tissues is initially often poorly localised and diffuse. (3) With time, visceral pains are often referred to more superficial structures. (4) The site of referred pain may also show hyperalgesia. (5) In disease states, the afflicted viscera may also become hyperalgesic. In (...) this target article, I consider to what extent differences in the physiology, anatomy, and chemistry of peripheral processing systems explain these different sensibilities. In almost every aspect, there are subtle differences in the properties of the processing mechanisms for cutaneous and visceral information. These may arise because of distinct developmental cues operating in the two domains. Many of the differences between visceral and cutaneous afferents are quantitative rather than qualitative. The quantitative differences, for example in the density of afferent innervation, can be large. The quantitative differences in the numbers of afferents alone may be a sufficient explanation for some aspects of the differential sensibility, for example, the poor localisation of sensation and the apparent insensitivity to focal yet tissue- damaging stimuli. In addition, the few clear qualitative differences apparent in the innervations of the two tissue types may be of special importance. That the encoding of visceral nociceptive events may occur by an intensity mechanism rather than a specificity mechanism could be the key difference in viscerosensory and somatosensory processing. (shrink)

Socially and politically significant Muslim communities are posing a challenge to the public spheres of Western Europe: can public reason in a liberal democracy be so conceived as to accommodate the religious reasons of Muslims and other religiously motivated citizens? This question, often discussed from the perspective either of political philosophy or of particular religious traditions, is addressed here instead by drawing on the theory and practice of inter-religious dialogue. The dialogue movement known as ‘scriptural reasoning’ is analysed for its (...) potential to provide a way of conceptualising the nature of reasoning in the public sphere. ‘Reasoning with texts’, it is argued, is a way of describing much of the reasoning that takes place within the public sphere and not just religious reasoning. This approach to understanding public reasoning is established through a combination of example and theory. A model of communicative hermeneutics as public reason based on an textual rationality is proposed. As well as providing space for textually based religious arguments, this textual imagination can be situated alongside and complement postmodern developments of Jürgen Habermas’s conception of the public sphere. Whilst this approach to reasoning in the public sphere initially appears very different from the classic statement of the idea of public reason in John Rawls’s political liberalism, it is shown to have significant continuity with Rawls’s theory when this is viewed through the lens of the Supreme Court as exemplar of public reason. This highest level of public reason involving legislation is also a form of reasoning with texts. But in order for religious and more popular levels of public discourse and deliberation to impact on the political and legislative processes, these too must be conceived as modes of reasoning having some continuity with higher levels of public reasoning. It is such continuity that this thesis seeks to theorise. (shrink)

Cholinergic-rich grafts have been shown to be effective in restoring maze-learning deficits in rats with lesions of the forebrain cholinergic projection system. However, the relevance of those studies to developing novel therapies for Alzheimer's disease is questioned.

It is well established that neural grafts can exert functional effects on the host animal by a multiplicity of different mechanisms – by diffuse release of trophic molecules, neurohormones, and deficient neurotransmitters, as well as by growth and reformation of neural circuits. Our challenge is to understand how these different mechanisms complement each other.

If students are to understand ethical problems at work, practical applications are essential in translating classroom learning into real world knowledge. This article describes the ethical complaint letter as one pedagogical approach for MBA students to understanding real world ethical situations. Students write an objective, fact-filled complaint letter to an organization that has behaved in an unethical manner toward them. A specific assignment protocol is presented for the students and for discussing organizational responses in class. Finally, an examination of expected (...) outcomes, cautions, and learning opportunities is detailed. (shrink)

This true account provides a summary of a firm and its CEO caught up in the housing market frenzy that occurred in the mid to late 2000s. Although confronted with a number of economic, strategic management, human resource, ethical, and legal challenges, the owners make decisions that cause the firm to grow at an exponential rate. The case documents the eventual results of many of those decisions. Readers are challenged to identify ethics issues involved and the business decisions that precipitated (...) those ethical issues. Some issues include working with business partners who have different ethical stances from your own, whistle blowing for illegal actions, the impact of problem employees on ethical and legal issues, and being transparent and honest when informing the board of directors about business conditions. Teaching notes include lessons learned by the CEO. Ways to avoid similar mistakes in the future are provided. (shrink)