This paper reviews the relationship between organisational leadership, corporate governance and business ethics, and considers the implications for management. Business ethics is defined, and the causes and consequences of unethical behavior are discussed. Issues pertaining to leadership, subordinate and organisation responsibility for business ethics are considered. The changing role of business leaders and the new concept of ''corporate governance'' are examined, with an increasing importance being placed on ethical and socially responsible attitudes towards business. Organisational effectiveness and organisational efficiency, formerly (...) central issues for practising managers, with directors thinking in terms of goal achievement for their respective organisations, have now been augmented by an awareness of issues in business ethics, and a requirement for members of the corporate governance to behave in more socially responsible ways. A secondary aim of the paper is to introduce an approach which illustrates how corporate governance and management could deal with some of the moral dilemmas that they may have to face. (shrink)

Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, we conducted a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen (...) different languages. Our results speak against the proposal that there is no puzzle at all and against the proposal that there is a puzzle but one that has no solution. Our results suggest that there are two criteria—“continuity of form” and “continuity of matter”— that constitute our concept of persistence and these two criteria receive different weightings in settling matters concerning persistence. (shrink)

The Indian film’s depiction of rape and sexual violence specifically on women, can provide a glimpse into the wider Indian cultural mores seeping into the thoughts and processes that are in play du...

In this work, our aim is to investigate the impact of a non-Kolmogorov predator-prey-subsidy model incorporating nonlinear prey refuge and the effect of fear with Holling type II functional response. The model arises from the study of a biological system involving arctic foxes, lemmings, and seal carcasses. The positivity and asymptotically uniform boundedness of the solutions of the system have been derived. Analytically, we have studied the criteria for the feasibility and stability of different equilibrium points. In addition, we have (...) derived sufficient conditions for the existence of local bifurcations of codimension 1. It is also observed that there is some time lag between the time of perceiving predator signals through vocal cues and the reduction of prey’s birth rate. So, we have analyzed the dynamical behaviour of the delayed predator-prey-subsidy model. Numerical computations have been performed using MATLAB to validate all the analytical findings. Numerically, it has been observed that the predator, prey, and subsidy can always exist at a nonzero subsidy input rate. But, at a high subsidy input rate, the prey population cannot persist and the predator population has a huge growth due to the availability of food sources. (shrink)

Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended (...) to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions. (shrink)

Volume 39, Issue 2, April-June 2024, Page 140-142.

Volume 39, Issue 2, April-June 2024, Page 140-142.

Compliance is a key concept in health care and affects all areas of health care including diabetes. Non-compliance has previously been a label attached to many patients without much thought having been given to the causes of poor compliance. Over the last few decades there has been a large volume of research focusing on compliance that has exposed the multitude of factors affecting compliance. Even the definition is not clear cut and so comparability between studies is not without difficulties. A (...) better understanding of the factors affecting compliance, including the doctor/patient relationship, has allowed the evolution of “concordance”. Concordance views the patient as being the equal of the healthcare provider and as having a right to make informed decisions. In a condition such as diabetes, which has many potential long term complications, it is vital that concordance is embraced in the healthcare system in order to improve care. (shrink)

How can a manager or an organization refine and enrich its global mindset orientation? A radically different frame of aligning people, strategy and purpose may be through the extension and enrichment of a global mindset rather than strategy or structure. This article explores the concept of global mindset from a new perspective and forwards a number of specific action frames for managers to reflect on. The article contends that the negative effects of contemporary globalization can only be overcome through the (...) enrichment of global vision of managers everywhere. As for applicability, the article argues that mindset development can only contribute to the sustainability of organizations and societies. (shrink)

How can a manager or an organization refine and enrich its global mindset orientation? A radically different frame of aligning people, strategy and purpose may be through the extension and enrichment of a global mindset rather than strategy or structure. This article explores the concept of global mindset from a new perspective and forwards a number of specific action frames for managers to reflect on. The article contends that the negative effects of contemporary globalization can only be overcome through the (...) enrichment of global vision of managers everywhere. As for applicability, the article argues that mindset development can only contribute to the sustainability of organizations and societies. (shrink)

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

This article presents some overlooked evidence on the reception of John Locke’s writings at Christ Church, Oxford. It is intended to supplement a new article in the History of Universities on the surprisingly positive response to Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) at that bastion of late seventeenth-century high churchmanship. This evidence sheds new light on: the reception of Epicureanism at that college in the 1650s; Locke’s personal connections at Christ Church; book-holdings of Locke’s writings at the early eighteenth-century college; (...) some unnoticed uses of Locke’s writings by members of Christ Church; the European and North American reception of one Christ Church Lockean; and, the changing trajectory of the later eighteenth-century reception of Locke at that college. (shrink)

Since at least Hume and Kant, philosophers working on the nature of aesthetic judgment have generally agreed that common sense does not treat aesthetic judgments in the same way as typical expressions of subjective preferences—rather, it endows them with intersubjective validity, the property of being right or wrong regardless of disagreement. Moreover, this apparent intersubjective validity has been taken to constitute one of the main explananda for philosophical accounts of aesthetic judgment. But is it really the case that most people (...) spontaneously treat aesthetic judgments as having intersubjective validity? In this paper, we report the results of a cross‐cultural study with over 2,000 respondents spanning 19 countries. Despite significant geographical variations, these results suggest that most people do not treat their own aesthetic judgments as having intersubjective validity. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for theories of aesthetic judgment and the purpose of aesthetics in general. (shrink)

Is behavioral integration a necessary feature of belief in folk psychology? Our data from over 5,000 people across 26 samples, spanning 22 countries suggests that it is not. Given the surprising cross-cultural robustness of our findings, we argue that the types of evidence for the ascription of a belief are, at least in some circumstances, lexicographically ordered: assertions are first taken into account, and when an agent sincerely asserts that p, nonlinguistic behavioral evidence is disregarded. In light of this, we (...) take ourselves to have discovered a universal principle governing the ascription of beliefs in folk psychology. (shrink)

Advances in cognitive neuroscience make cosmetic neurology in some form inevitable and will give rise to extremely difficult ethical issuesConsider the following hypothetical case study. A well heeled executive walks into my cognitive neurology clinic because he is concerned that he is becoming forgetful. It turns out that he is going through a difficult divorce and my clinical impression is that his memory problems stem from the stress he is experiencing. I place him on a selective seratonin reuptake inhibitor, sertraline, (...) and in a few weeks he feels better. Around this time his 13 year old daughter has difficulty at school and is diagnosed by the school psychologist as having attention deficit disorder. I place her on adderall, a stimulant combination drug, which seems to help with her behaviour in school. My patient then comes to me because he is experiencing the “tip of the tongue” phenomena more frequently. He is concerned that his word finding difficulty interferes with his ability to function in high level meetings. I suggest we try a cholinesterase inhibitor to see if this helps. I am careful to explain that the Food and Drug Administration does not approve such a use for this medication. He wants to try it and is pleased with the results.A few months later, this patient visits me with his 16 year old son, a talented middle distance runner. His father thinks if he were just a bit better, among the elite high school runners in the state, he would be far more competitive as an applicant for selective colleges. We discuss various options. Because of a recent report that sildenafil, which is used conventionally for male impotence, may improve oxygen carrying capacity, I prescribe this medication. The son does not object.Encouraged by these pharmacologic successes, my patient …. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Vague concepts are represented by L-fuzzy sets. It is argued that any vague concept carries with it an approximate identity which is a fuzzy equivalence relation. The relation also fulfills the criterion of ? indiscernibility of Identicals ?, which is called ? saturatedness ? in this context. An application in knowledge representation is indicated.

Religion has in the past, it may be truefully admitted, done more than its share of fostering the spirit of ‘we’ over against ‘they’. Economic and political factors have unfortunately, throughout history, clogged the channels of communication between men of one faith and those of another. The most unhappy aspect of the relation between religion and society has been the way in which the former has fostered the distinction between the insider and the outsider. Typical of this is the fact (...) that most religious communities have a word which describes the religious outsider and the word is never a flattering one. That there should be religious diversity in the first place should occasion no surprise. Diversification is the order of things in the biological realm and we would not expect to find a sudden departure from this, that is, a move towards convergence, in the sphere of religion. But unless diversification is matched with understanding and with communication we face the future at our peril. It is for this reason that the question of inter-religious communication, the ground of its possibility, can be regarded not only as the most pressing of problems for the student of comparative religion but as a matter of pressing urgency for all. (shrink)

This study integrates insights from stakeholder theory and the literature on competitive dynamics and incumbent responses to entry. While research in economics and strategy has examined how market incumbents respond to new entrants, little is known about the heterogeneity in these responses to the entry of a stakeholder-oriented firm; our study addresses this research gap. Findings from a novel, longitudinal dataset of 206 granularly defined pharmaceutical markets in India suggest that stakeholder-oriented firm entry in these markets is associated with an (...) impact on prices and product differentiation with heterogeneous responses from high-end and low-end incumbents. Specifically, entry by a stakeholder-oriented firm results in a reduction in prices and dosage sizes from high-end incumbents, whereas low-end incumbents respond in the opposite direction. (shrink)

The analytic tradition of thought in the West started in the late nineteenth century with what is known as ‘linguistic turn’ in philosophy. But as a methodological movement, it impacted other areas of knowledge as well. Feminist scholars react to the analytic tradition of thought in many various ways. Many of them critique and challenge the tradition. The present paper aims at a review of a feminist take on Sigmund Freud who imported analytical tradition in psychology at the beginning of (...) the twentieth century. Luce Irigaray questions the legitimacy of Freudian analysis and challenges the claim of neutrality of Freudian discourse by accusing that Freud works within a patriarchal-biased ideology. About the logical basis of Freudian discourse, Irigaray alleges that a logic of indifference is at work there. But how far has Irigaray, as a feminist, been successful in showing the biases and loopholes in Freudian discourse? This paper attempts to show that the Irigarayian line of argument and critique of Freud does not offer a stronger and plausible feminist stance. (shrink)

This book provides a detailed analysis of classical and modern Indian views on consciousness along with their related meditative methods. It offers a critical analysis of three distinct trends of Indian thought.

The lesion and transplantation data cited by Sinden et al., when considered in tandem, seem to harbor an internal inconsistency, raising questions of false localization of function. The extrapolation of such data to cognitive impairment and potential treatment strategies in Alzheimer's disease is problematic. Patients with focal basal forebrain lesions (e.g., anterior communicating artery aneurysm rupture) might be a more appropriate target population.

Background: Risks to healthcare workers have escalated during the pandemic and they are likely to experience a greater level of stress. This cross-sectional study investigated mental distress among healthcare workers during the early phase of Coronavirus disease-2019 outbreak in India.Method: 140 healthcare workers of a tertiary care hospital in India were assessed for perceived stress and insomnia. A factor analysis with principal component method reduced these questions to four components which were categorized as insomnia, stress-related anxiety, stress-related irritability, and stress-related (...) hopelessness. Further statistical analyses were done on these factor scores to identify the predictors and investigate the differences between the different categories of healthcare workers.Result: Doctors had the highest level of anxiety among the healthcare workers. Both doctors and nurses perceived a greater level of irritability than the other HCWs. Compared to doctors and nurses, other HCWs were more likely to experience insomnia. Lower age, higher education, female gender, and urban habitat were associated with greater perception of anxiety. Older age, being quarantined, and single marital status were the significant predictors of irritability. Female gender, single marital-status, and higher number of medical ailments contributed to perceived hopelessness. Quarantine significantly predicted insomnia.Conclusion: Different categories of healthcare workers are experiencing varied mental health problems owing to their heterogeneous socio-demographic backgrounds. Tailored and personalized care, as well as policies, might help in alleviating their problems. Further research is warranted to explore the psychological distress and remedies among these frontline workers during and after the ongoing pandemic crisis. (shrink)

The act of killing self contradicts the central purpose of human evolution, that is, survival and propagation of one’s genetic material. Yet, it continues to be one of the leading causes of human death. A handful of theories in the realm of evolutionary psychology have attempted to explain human suicide. The current article analyses the major components of certain prominent viewpoints, namely, Inclusive fitness, Bargaining model, Pain-Brain model, Psychological aposematism, and few other perspectives. The article argues that relatively more weightage (...) has been given to understanding ultimate (the “why”) rather than proximate (the “how”) functionality of suicidal acts. Evolutionary theorists have consistently pointed out that to comprehensively understand a trait or behavior, one needs to delineate not only how it supports survival but also the evolution of the mechanisms underlying the trait or behavior. Existing theories on suicide have primarily focused on its fitness benefits on surviving kin instead of providing evolutionary explanations of the more complex mechanisms leading up to such self-destructive motivations. Thus, the current paper attempts to highlight this gap in theorizing while suggesting probable proximate explanations of suicide which stresses the need to diffuse attention paid to fitness consequences of the act alone. We speculate that such explorations are needed in order to build a robust and comprehensive evolutionary theory of human suicide. (shrink)

The Aesthetic Brain takes the reader on a wide-ranging journey addressing fundamental questions about aesthetics and art. Using neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, Chatterjee shows how beauty, pleasure, and art are grounded biologically, and offers explanations for why beauty, pleasure, and art exist at all.

As our knowledge of the functional and pharmacological architecture of the nervous system increases, we are getting better at treating cognitive and affective disorders. Along with the ability to modify cognitive and affective systems in disease, we are also learning how to modify these systems in health. “Cosmetic neurology,” the practice of intervening to improve cognition and affect in healthy individuals, raises several ethical concerns. However, its advent seems inevitable. In this paper I examine this claim of inevitability by reviewing (...) the evolution of another medical practice, cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery also enhances healthy people and, despite many critics, it is practiced widely. Can we expect the same of cosmetic neurology? The claim of inevitability poses a challenge for both physicians and bioethicists. How will physicians reconsider their professional role? Will bioethicists influence the shape of cosmetic neurology? But first, how did cosmetic surgery become common? (shrink)

The forms of liberal government that emerged after World War II are in the midst of a profound crisis. In I Am the People, Partha Chatterjee reconsiders the concept of popular sovereignty in order to explain today’s dramatic outburst of movements claiming to speak for “the people.” To uncover the roots of populism, Chatterjee traces the twentieth-century trajectory of the welfare state and neoliberal reforms. Mobilizing ideals of popular sovereignty and the emotional appeal of nationalism, anticolonial movements ushered (...) in a world of nation-states while liberal democracies in Europe guaranteed social rights to their citizens. But as neoliberal techniques shrank the scope of government, politics gave way to technical administration by experts. Once the state could no longer claim an emotional bond with the people, the ruling bloc lost the consent of the governed. To fill the void, a proliferation of populist leaders have mobilized disaffected groups into a battle that they define as the authentic people against entrenched oligarchy. Once politics enters a spiral of competitive populism, Chatterjee cautions, there is no easy return to pristine liberalism. Only a counter-hegemonic social force that challenges global capital and facilitates the equal participation of all peoples in democratic governance can achieve significant transformation. Drawing on thinkers such as Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, and Ernesto Laclau and with a particular focus on the history of populism in India, I Am the People is a sweeping, theoretically rich account of the origins of today’s tempests. (shrink)

The relevance of the guna theory to applications of Western management practice is seen in this paper as an insight holding capacity to guide managerial behaviour. In its essence, the guna theory depicts values which constitute human personality into a sattwa-rajas delineation of deepened understanding, giving direction to action and which, in turn, illustrates negative values likely to cause obstruction. For managers to appreciate this level of understanding, while simultaneously sensing those values which inhibit purposeful action, may be regarded as (...) containing strength in a more intuitive, subjective way than values of moral judgement adopted to guide managerial action in the West. As such, the guna theory has deep relevance in the face of egotistical, contractual or legal values, so often defining the parameters of Western management. (shrink)

Peter Thomas’s criticism of arguments advanced recently of an era of “post-hegemony” in Western democracies may be extended by considering the experience of post-colonial Asia and Africa. Reviewing the use of the Gramscian concepts of consent and passive revolution in the study of modern South Asian history, this paper argues that both of Gramsci’s objectives –a general theory of power and the analysis of historically contingent and strategic politics– can be retained to yield valuable analytical insights. The paper concludes that (...) rather than focusing on whether the analysis of hegemony can remain true to Gramsci’s text, one can put the concept to analytical use in explaining political change in different parts of the world today. (shrink)

This book is a unique re-conceptualization of Marxism that brings together works by leading Marxist scholars across disciplines ' historical, philosophical, economic, political, social, literary and aesthetic ' in one comprehensive corpus for the first time. It argues that the works and philosophy of Marx and Engels continue to be relevant today.

If a quiz‐master were to ask the question, “Is there anything common among the philosophies of the world?” the answer that should come from the participants with perfect aplomb is, “Yes, the concern for truth.” The presumed unanimity of this response, however, does not imply that philosophers possess a uniform understanding of the notion of truth. There are, indeed, many similarities in the way great minds think on this topic, yet divergences among them are also too significant to be ignored. (...) In this article, therefore, I propose to expound the various aspects of truth from a typically Indian perspective (although, of course, in the contemporary philosophical idiom) before making a comparative assessment of different philosophical theories of truth. (shrink)

Abstract: The cosmopolitan ideal of liberal universalism seems to be at odds with liberalism's insistence on national borders for liberal democratic communities, creating disparate standards of distributive justice for insiders and outsiders. The liberal's dilemma on the question of cosmopolitan justice would seem to be an extension of this broader conundrum of conflicting loyalties of statism and globalism. The challenge for liberalism, then, seems to be to show how the practices of exclusive membership embody the principle of moral equality. While (...) discerning a variety of liberal reasons to give some scope to the claim that statism and globalism need not be an irreconcilable dilemma within liberalism, the essay argues that these reasons fail to provide a satisfactory resolution. Instead, the essay points out, global democracy can be the direction for both a statist and a cosmopolitan liberal, and the two camps a case not of conflicting loyalties but of multiple loyalties. (shrink)

This paper endeavours to present systematically the essential components of human values and their evolution through various socio-religious movements in the Indian history. The first part of the paper examines the principal values that represent the Indian ethical system. Tyaga, dana, nishtha, satya, ahimsa and upeksha are examined as the keynotes of the Indian values system. The second part looks briefly at the historical context of the evolution of this values system. Enumerating the broad gamut of ideas which emanated in (...) the upanishadic age and underlining the contributions made to the sustenance of human values in India by the various reform movements in the five thousand years of Indian history, the paper unearths the richness and resilience of Indian ethos. The paper concludes that for the perpetuation of the Indian values system, the Indian concept of dharma has acted as a sustaining principle through the ages. (shrink)