Recent data breaches underscore the importance of organizational cybersecurity. However, the high costs of such security can force chief financial officers (CFOs) to make difficult financial and ethical trade-offs that have both business and societal implications. We employ a 2 × 2 randomized experiment that varies both an observed scenario CFO’s investment decision (invest/not invest in security) and organizational outcomes (positive/negative) to investigate these trade-offs. Participant managers assess the observed CFO’s investment behavior and indicate their own intentions to invest. Results (...) indicate that when the observed scenario CFO invests in security, managers primarily follow their peers when making investment decisions. However, when the observed CFO does not invest in security, managers make their own decisions by engaging in more in-depth reasoning that includes assessment of the seriousness of consequences, as well as the ethical and societal considerations. Moderated mediation findings further deconstruct and corroborate these relationships. (shrink)

Management plays an important role in reinforcing ethics in organizations. To support this aim, managers must use incentive and goal programs in ethical ways. This study examines experimentally the potential ethical costs associated with incentive-driven and goal-induced employee behavior from a managerial perspective. In a quasi-experimental setting, 243 MBA students with significant professional work experience evaluated a hypothetical employee’s ethical behavior under incentive pay systems modeled on a business case. In the role of the employee’s manager, participants evaluated the ethicality (...) of the employee’s incentive-driven and goal-induced ethical/unethical behavior and the outcomes of behavior, with consequences that were either favorable or unfavorable to the organization. The results indicated that participants discounted the ethical considerations of incentive-driven and goal-induced behavior when consequences were favorable to the organization. Participants’ morals and outcome orientations were also significantly related to their ethical judgments and intentions to intervene. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Two articles in this issue of the Hastings Center Report address the continuing controversy over the Surfactant, Positive Pressure, and Oxygenation Randomized Trial (SUPPORT). This controversy is part of a larger discussion about the appropriate regulatory framework for protecting human research participants in comparative effectiveness research (CER), a group of studies that aims to compare two “usual” or “standard” treatments in order to provide evidence of which treatment is most effective.

Workplace incivility is a current challenge in organizations, including smaller firms, as is the development of programs that enhance employees’ treatment of coworkers and ethical decision making. Ethics programs in particular might attenuate tendencies toward interpersonal misconduct, which can harm ethical reasoning. Consequently, this study evaluated the relationships among the presence of ethics codes and employees’ locus of control, social aversion/malevolence, and ethical judgments of incivility using information secured from a sample of businesspersons employed in smaller organizations. Results indicated that (...) ethics code presence was associated with a more internal locus of control and stronger ethical judgment of workplace incivility. Social aversion/malevolence was negatively related to ethical judgment, and internal locus of control was positively related to ethical judgment. Smaller firms should develop ethics codes to manage individuals’ perceptions of control, thus encouraging enhanced ethical reasoning in situations that involve the mistreatment of coworkers; they should also monitor counterproductive tendencies that harm such reasoning and precipitate incivility. (shrink)

The question of legalizing physician-assisted suicide has become a serious public debate. Growing interest in assisted suicide reflects a public increasingly fearful of the process of dying, particularly the prospect of dying a painful, protracted, or undignified death. PAS has been proposed as a compassionate response to unrelievable suffering, designed to give terminally or incurably ill individuals direct control over the timing, manner, and circumstances of their death. Although the American Medical Association remains firmly opposed to legalizing PAS, many physicians (...) have begun to express support for the practice, and some have acknowledged that they have helped patients commit suicide despite the existing legal ban.As support for PAS grows, it becomes increasingly likely that the practice will be legalized in at least some states in the not-too-distant future. In 1994, Oregon voters approved a referendum legalizing PAS for competent, terminally ill patients; a federal court injunction preventing the referendum from going into effect is currently on appeal, and it is widely expected that the injunction will be lifted. (shrink)

If the practice of maternal‐fetal medicine sometimes results in abortion, can a physician strongly opposed to abortion maintain his own integrity and still practice in this field?

: Urban bioethics seeks to broaden the traditional focus of bioethics to encompass questions about the interplay of individuals with family, group, community, and society. Urban bioethics will need to deal with cultural diversity, issues of equity, and the conflict between individual rights and the public good. Encouraging a multicultural ethical discernment, fostering an appreciation of the political, economic, sociological, and psychological issues that inform the question of urban moral choice, urban bioethics is essentially a multi-disciplinary, synthesizing enterprise. Several theoretical (...) models including social contract, rule utilitarian, communitarian, and feminist paradigms offer complementary conceptual frameworks. This paper is offered as a proposal, a road map for future study to place current bioethical analysis into a broader context. (shrink)

A laboratory-testable, solid-state Maxwell demon is proposed that utilizes the electric field energy of an open-gap p-n junction. Numerical results from a commercial semiconductor device simulator (Silvaco International–Atlas) verify primary results from a 1-D analytic model. Present day fabrication techniques appear adequate for laboratory tests of principle.

Organ availability for transplantation has become an increasingly complex and difficult question in health economics and ethical practice. Advances in technology have seen prolonged life expectancy, and the global push for organs creates an ever-expanding gap between supply and demand, and a significant cost in bridging that gap. This article will examine the ethical implications for the nursing profession in regard to the procurement of organs from an impoverished seller’s market, also known as ‘Transplant Tourism’. This ethical dilemma concerns itself (...) with resource allocation, informed consent and the concepts of egalitarianism and libertarianism. Transplant Tourism is an unacceptable trespass against human dignity and rights from both a nursing and collective viewpoint. Currently, the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council, the Royal college of Nursing Australia, The Royal College of Nursing (UK) and the American Nurses Association do not have position statements on transplant tourism, and this diminishes us as a force for change. It diminishes our role as advocates for the most marginalised in our world to have access to care and to choice and excludes us from a very contemporary real debate about the mismatch of organ demand and supply in our own communities. As a profession, we must have a voice in health policy and human rights, and according to our Code of Ethics in Australia and around the world, act to promote and protect the fundamental human right to healthcare and dignity. (shrink)

On the Athenian disaster at Aegospotami the reaction, suppressed half a dozen years before, against the régime responsible for the war and its calamitous results sprang up again with double force. The capture of the fleet, the loss of the empire, which had been a useful buffer between the selfish interests of the wealthier citizens and the predatory appetites of the proletariate, the bankruptcy of the treasury, the discredit of the whole democratic system, the grim privations of the blockade, and (...) the imminent return of the exiles eager for power and vengeance, all portended the speedy downfall of the constitution, should the victorious enemy leave it standing. Yet the progress of the revolution was slower than might have been expected. In fact the oligarchs were at first crippled by the absence of their banished chiefs, andthroughout they had to reckon not only with a people which had long enjoyed liberty and empireand with a democratic administration already in office, but also with the middle party, disgusted indeed with the existing form of government but unwilling to substitute for it the rule ofa narrow privileged class, and led by a statesman of great ability and experience. (shrink)

Wilhelm Bousset, a leading member of the religionsgeschichtliche school and author of a seminal work on early Christology, Kyrios Christos, is typically regarded by reviewers of his work as a classic nineteenth-century liberal who sought a secure foundation for faith in the historical Jesus. However, this view of Bousset fails to appreciate the significant development of his theological perspective on the relationship between faith and history, a perspective that underwent a profound shift due to the influence of the English historian (...) Thomas Carlyle and the Kantian philosopher Jakob Friedrich Fries. It is the influence of these two figures that enables Bousset to justify a full-scale flight from history and to seek faith's foundation elsewhere, in the poetic symbol of Jesus Christ. The resulting solution to the problem of faith and history represents a unique and compelling alternative to the solutions of the leading theologians and New Testament scholars of the early twentieth century. (shrink)

When Pythodorus in 411 B.C. moved in the Athenian Assembly his decree that Commissioners should be elected to draft measures for the security of the State, Cleitophon added a rider instructing the Commissioners προσαναξητσαι κα τος πατρονς νμονς ος κλειδθνης θηκεν τε καθδτη τν δημοκραταν, πως ν κοσαντες κα τοτων βολεσωντααι τ ριστον. The instruction appears to have struck Aristotle as paradoxical and inept, for he has appended an explanation of Cleitophon's reasons which is also a criticism: ς ο δημοτικν (...) λλ παραπλησαν οσαν τν Kλεισθνους πολιτεαν τ Σλωνος. Indeed one would never imagine that the constitution of Cleisthenes as described by Aristotle could have been seriously suggested as a model or a repertory of precedents for legislators intent, like Cleitophon's friends, on restoring the πτριος πολιτεα, which it obviously disestablished; and the conjunction of τοĐς πατρουσ with τε καθστη τν δημοκραταν might seem to make the proposal a challenge or a mockery. Aristotle had already given his opinion that by Cleisthenes' innovations δημοτικωτρα πολĐ τς Σλωνος γνετο πολιτεα He recognized democratic features in Solon's laws, but they lay in the redress of social wrongs or in the method of administering justice rather than in the organization of the government; he regarded Solon's political changes, not as the establishment of democracy proper, but as a reform, conservative rather than revolutionary, of existent institutions. His comment on the rider implies that he would not have corrected Cleitophon if he had referred the Commissioners to Solon's ancestral laws, but to refer them to Cleisthenes' must, he thought, be ignorance, irony, or idiosyncrasy. (shrink)

Resumo Palavras-chave Keywords : Children’s literature. Music. Pedagogical practice : This article’s main purpose is to present a few possibilities of work with activities that involve pieces of children’s literature and music in the perspective of Children’s Education and first years of Primary School. As theoretical support, the paper presents several studies from authors such as Brito (2003), Ponso (2008), Souza (2006), Torres and Gallicchio (2004), among others who suggest developing activities of sound exploration through audition/appreciation and improvise/ sound editing (...) from some texts and books of children’s literature. A conclusion has been reached that the proposal of activities transforming words in music enables readers to experiment different sounds to compose the soundtrack of stories. Besides, when selecting a diversified repertoire with several texts, possibilities are created to the students to tell, recount and sing varied stories, allowing, thus, the entrance of different social voices. : Literatura Infantil. Música. Prática pedagógica. : O objetivo maior deste artigo é o de apresentar algumas possibilidades de trabalho com atividades que envolvam obras de literatura infantil e músicas, na perspectiva da Educação Infantil e Séries Iniciais do Ensino Fundamental. Como suporte teórico, o trabalho apresenta diversos estudos de autores, tais como Brito (2003), Ponso (2008), Souza (2006),Torres e Gallicchio (2004) entre outros, que sugerem desenvolver atividades de exploração sonora através da audição/ apreciação e improvisação/sonorização a partir de alguns textos e de livros de literatura infantil. Constatou-se que a proposta de atividades, transformando palavras em músicas, possibilita interpelar os leitores a experimentarem diferentes sons para compor a trilha sonora de histórias. Além disso, ao selecionar um repertório diversificado com vários textos, criam-se possibilidades aos alunos para contarem, recontarem e cantarem variadas histórias, permitindo, dessa maneira, a entrada de diferentes vozes sociais. (shrink)