A questionnaire on business ethics was administered to business professionals and to upper-class business ethics students. On eight of the seventeen situations involving ethical dilemmas in business, students were significantly more willing to engage in questionable behavior than were their professional counterparts. Apparently, many students were willing to do whatever was necessary to further their own interests, with little or no regard for fundamental moral principles. Many students and professionals functioned within Lawrence Kohlberg's stage four of moral reasoning, the law (...) and order stage. Individualism and egoism remain strong patterns in the moral reasoning of many professionals, but they influence moral reasoning patterns among students to a much greater degree. (shrink)

Tom Andersen’s reflecting team process, which allowed families to witness and respond to the talk of professionals during therapy sessions, has been described as revolutionary in the field of family therapy. Reflecting teams are prominent in a number of family therapy approaches, more recently in narrative and dialogical therapies. This way of working is considered more a philosophy than a technique, and has been received positively by both therapists and service users. This paper describes how dialogical therapists conceptualise the reflective (...) process, how they work to engage families in reflective dialogues and how this supports change. We conducted semi-structured, reflective interviews with 12 dialogical therapists with between 2 and 20 years of experience. Interpretative Phenomenological analysis of transcribed interviews identified varying conceptualisations of the reflecting process and descriptions of therapist actions that support reflective talk among network members. We adopted a dialogical approach to interpretation of this data. In this sense, we did not aim to condense accounts into consensus but instead to describe variations and new ways of understanding dialogical reflecting team practices. Four themes were identified: Lived experience as expertise; Listening to the self and hearing others; Relational responsiveness and fostering connection; and Opening space for something new. We applied these themes to psychotherapy process literature both within family therapy literature and more broadly to understand more about how reflecting teams promote helpful and healing conversations in practice. (shrink)

This paper reports on the results from two studies that were conducted eight years apart with different respondents. The studies examined the role of the Mere Exposure Effect on ethical tolerance or acceptability of particular business decisions. The results from Study 1 show there is a significant difference in ethical judgment for 12 out of 16 vignettes between those who have been exposed to such situations compared to those who have not been exposed to them. In those 12 situations, those (...) who have been exposed to such situations adopted a more tolerant stance toward the ethically questionable behavior. The results from Study 2 show there is a significant difference in ethical judgment for 9 out of 16 vignettes between those who have been exposed to such situations compared to those who have not been exposed to them. Again, in those nine situations, those who have been exposed to such situations adopted a more tolerant stance toward the ethically questionable behavior. Interestingly, the 9 situations in Study 2 were 9 of the 12 situations found to be significant in Study 1, and in the same direction, suggesting that we have found consistency in our findings and support for the Mere Exposure Effect. Implications are provided for both higher education and practitioners. (shrink)

This article compares the ethical attitudes of Ukrainian business professionals with those of United States business professionals. A widely used survey instrument consisting of 16 hypothetical situations involving ethical dilemmas was employed to gather information on ethical attitudes in the two countries. On 13 of 16 vignettes, Ukrainian respondents demonstrated less stringent ethical attitudes than did their United States counterparts. Possible reasons for these differences are discussed, with primary emphasis on the transition from one economic system to another that is (...) underway in Ukraine. Comments from Ukrainian respondents are presented so as to give an indication of the thought processes behind the questionnaire responses. (shrink)

Sex steroids, through their receptors, have potent effects on the signal pathways involved in osteogenic or myogenic differentiation. However, a considerable segment of those signal pathways has a prominent role in epithelial neoplastic transformation. The capability to intervene locally has focused on specific ligands for the receptors. Nevertheless, many signals are mapped to interactions of steroid receptor motifs with heterologous regulatory proteins. Some of those proteins interact with the glucocorticoid receptor and other factors essential to cell fate. Interactions of steroid (...) receptor domain motifs with heterologous proteins affect specific target pathways; consequently, manipulation of specified protein modules complexed with steroid receptors may be a next major step for enhancing molecular targeted therapeutics. In the future, intervention at specific sections of receptor primary sequence may prove therapeutically more efficient in targeting pathways of choice than ligand selectivity can be. (shrink)

This article reports the findings of a survey examining if there are gender and career stage differences between male and female practitioners regarding ethical judgment. The results show that, on average, females adopted a more strict ethical stance than their male counterparts on 7 out of 19 vignettes. Males on the other hand, demonstrated a more ethical stance than their female counterparts on 2 out of 19 vignettes. The results furthermore indicate there is a significant difference in ethical judgment across (...) career stages. Overall, it appears that practitioners in later career stages display higher ethical judgment than practitoners in lower career stages. Implications are provided for both practitioners and academicians. (shrink)

Physiological concentrations of retinoic acid can induce acute alterations in the expression of the enzyme tissue transglutaminase in cultured macrophages. The induction of this enzyme offers a probe to study the mechanism of retinoid action in both normal and leukemic cells.

Our studies of naturally occurring human dialogue have led to the recognition of a class of regularities which characterize impoltant aspects of communication. People appear to interact according to established patterns which span several turns in a dialogue and which recur frequently. These patterns appear to be organized around the goals which the dialogue serves for each participant. Many things which are said later in a dialogue can only be interpreted as pursuit of these goals, established by earlier dialogue.These patterns (...) have been represented b) a set of knowledge structures called Dialogue‐Games, capturing shared, conventional knowledge that people have about communication and how it can be used to achieve goals. A Dialogue‐Game has Parameters, which represent those elements that vary across instances of a particular pattern‐the particular dialogue participants and the content topic. The states of the world which must be in effect for a particular Dialogue‐Game to be employed successfully are represented by Specifications of these Parameters. Finally, the expected sequence of intermediate states that occur during instances of a particular conventional pattern are represented by the Components of the corresponding Dialogue‐Game.Representations for several Dialogue‐Games are presented here, based on our analyses of different kinds of naturally occurring dialogue. A process model is discussed, showing Dialogue‐Game identification, pursuit, and termination as part of the comprehension of dialogue utterances. This Dialogue‐Game model captures some of the important functional aspects of language, especially indirect uses to achieve implicit communication. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Research on the relationship between religious commitment and business ethics has produced widely varying results and made the impact of such commitment unclear. This study presents an empirical investigation based on a questionnaire survey of business managers and professionals in the United States yielding a database of 1234 respondents. Respondents evaluated the ethical acceptability of 16 business decisions. Findings varied with the way in which the religion variable was measured. Little relationship between religious commitment and ethical judgment was found when (...) responses were compared on the basis of broad faith categories – Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, other religions, and no religion. However, respondents who indicated that religious interests were of high or moderate importance to them demonstrated a higher level of ethical judgment (less accepting of unethical decisions) than others in their evaluations. Evangelical Christians also showed a higher level of ethical judgment. (shrink)

Refiguring the Sacred offers perspectives on Ricoeur's life-long reflections about religion. This collection includes two essays by Ricoeur and new interpretations of some of his most significant writings by several noted Ricoeur scholars.

This article analyzes the attitudes of United States business professionals toward the issue of international bribery, and in particular, whether or not having a written code of ethics has an effect on these attitudes. A vignette relating to international bribery from a widely used survey instrument was employed in a nationwide survey of business professionals to gather information on ethical attitudes of respondents. Data were also collected on gender of respondents, whether or not respondents were self-employed, whether or not the (...) respondents' firms had a written code of ethics, and to what extent the respondents' firms generated revenues from international operations. Attitudes concerning whether or not international bribery is ever acceptable exhibited wide dispersion. Respondents from firms that have a written code of ethics were significantly less likely to find international bribery acceptable. Firms that generate revenues from international operations were significantly more likely to have a written code of ethics than were firms which did not generate revenues from international operations. Implications of the findings for business policy are discussed. (shrink)

This unique edited collection illuminates Paul Ricoeur's engagement with Scripture. The contributors include one of the primary translators, several who studied at the University of Chicago, and some of this generation's noted Ricoeur scholars. The essays discuss Hebrew and Christian Scripture, hermeneutics, and biblical scholarship.

Cultural difference has been largely ignored within bioethics, particularly within the end-of-life discourses and practices that have developed over the past two decades in the U.S. healthcare system. Yet how should culturebe taken into account?

The paper begins by exploring whether a “tendency to avarice” exists in most capitalist business organisations. It concludes that it does and that this is problematic. The problem centres on the potential threat to the integrity of human character and the disablement of community.What, then, can be done about it? Building on previous work (Moore, 2002) in which MacIntyre’s notions of practice and institution were explored (MacIntyre, 1985), the paper offers a philosophically based argument in favour of the rediscovery (...) of craftsmanship by those who work in business organisations, and the exercise of craftsmanship in community.The practical implications for individuals of this way of conceptualising business, and the virtues which must then come to the fore, are discussed. (shrink)

This essay constitutes an attempt to probe the very idea of a saying/showing distinction of the kind that Wittgenstein advances in the Tractatus—to say what such a distinction consists in, to say what philosophical work it has to do, and to say how we might be justified in drawing such a distinction. Towards the end of the essay the discussion is related to Wittgenstein’s later work. It is argued that we can profitably see this work in such a way that (...) a saying/showing distinction arises there too. In particular, in the final sub-section of the essay, it is suggested that we can see in Wittgenstein’s later work an inducement to say what we are shown. (shrink)

The experience of causation is a pervasive product of the human mind. Moreover, the experience of causing an event alters subjective time: actions are perceived as temporally shifted towards their effects [Haggard, P., Clark, S., & Kalogeras, J.. Voluntary action and conscious awareness. Nature Neuroscience, 5, 382-385]. This temporal shift depends partly on advance prediction of the effects of action, and partly on inferential "postdictive" explanations of sensory effects of action. We investigated whether a single factor of statistical contingency could (...) explain both these aspects of causal experience. We studied the time at which people perceived a simple manual action to occur, when statistical contingency indicated a causal relation between action and effect, and when no such relation was indicated. Both predictive and inferential "postdictive" shifts in the time of action depended on strong contingency between action and effect. The experience of agency involves a process of causal learning based on statistical contingency. (shrink)

Restrictions upon international bribery by U.S. business firms, as incorporated in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, have been controversial since this legislation was passed in 1977. Despite many attempts to repeal or change the law, it remains as originally enacted.This article reports on a survey of U.S. business professionals concerning international bribery. Response to our survey reveals a divided business community in terms of their opinions on the ethics of international payments prohibited by the present law.

Questions about when to limit unhelpful treatments are often raised in general medicine but are less commonly considered in psychiatry. Here we describe a survey of U.S. psychiatrists intended to characterize their attitudes about the management of suicidal ideation in patients with severely treatment-refractory illness. Respondents (n = 212) received one of two cases describing a patient with suicidal ideation due to either borderline personality disorder or major depressive disorder. Both patients were described as receiving all guideline-based and plausible emerging (...) treatments. Respondents rated the expected helpfulness and likelihood of recommending each of four types of intervention: hospitalization, additional medication changes, additional neurostimulation, and additional psychotherapy. Across both cases, most respondents said they were likely to provide each intervention, except for additional neurostimulation in borderline personality disorder, while fewer thought each intervention would be helpful. Substantial minorities of respondents indicated that they would provide an intervention they did not think was likely to be helpful. Our results suggest that while most psychiatrists recognize the possibility that some patients are unlikely to be helped by available treatments, many would continue to offer such treatments. (shrink)

In this book, the first systematic study of Socrates' reflections on self-knowledge, Christopher Moore examines the ancient precept 'Know yourself' and, drawing on Plato, Aristophanes, Xenophon, and others, reconstructs and reassesses the arguments about self-examination, personal ideals, and moral maturity at the heart of the Socratic project. What has been thought to be a purely epistemological or metaphysical inquiry turns out to be deeply ethical, intellectual, and social. Knowing yourself is more than attending to your beliefs, discerning the structure (...) of your soul, or recognizing your ignorance - it is constituting yourself as a self who can be guided by knowledge toward the good life. This is neither a wholly introspective nor a completely isolated pursuit: we know and constitute ourselves best through dialogue with friends and critics. This rich and original study will be of interest to researchers in the philosophy of Socrates, selfhood, and ancient thought. (shrink)

This paper explores whether MacIntyrean virtue ethics concepts are applicable in non-Western business contexts, specifically in SMEs in Taiwan, a country strongly influenced by the Confucian tradition. It also explores what differences exist between different polities in this respect, and specifically interprets observed differences between the Taiwanese study and previous studies conducted in Europe and Asia. Based on case study research, the findings support the generalizability of the MacIntyrean framework. Drawing on the institutional logics perspective and synthesizing this with MacIntyrean (...) concepts, the paper explains the differences between the studies largely by reference to the Confucian tradition operating at both the micro-level within firms and at the macro-level as a means of harmonizing the potentially competing institutional logics to which firms are subject. The recent weakening of this tradition, however, suggests that increased conflict may characterize the future. (shrink)

Paul Grice’s account of the nature of intentional communication has often been supposed to be cognitively too complex to work as an account of the communicative interactions of pre-verbal children. This chapter is a (fairly uncritical) review of a number of responses to this challenge that others have developed. I discuss work on Relevance Theory (by Sperber and Wilson), Pedagogy Theory (by Gergely and Csibra), and Expressive Communication (by Green and Bar-On). I also discuss my own response to the challenge (...) of Gricean communication. (shrink)