Ethical attitudes and behaviour are complex. This complexity extends to the influencers operating at different levels both outside and within the organisation, and in different combinations for different individuals. There is hence a growing need to understand the proximal and distal influencers of ethical attitudes, and how these operate in concert at the individual, organisational, and societal levels. Few studies have attempted to combine these main research streams and systematically examine their combined impact. The minority of studies that have taken (...) a combined approach have often done so using conventional statistical and analytical techniques which imply linearity between variables—a situation that rarely exists in business settings and is likely to lead to simplistic or even erroneous conclusions. Applying a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis approach, this paper reports on the mutual and simultaneous influence of individual demographic factors, as well as proximal and distal factors stemming from within and outside the work environment to understand individuals’ ethical views within the workplace. The multiple configurations that emerged reveal the complex nature of influencers of ethical attitudes, and reinforce the view that “one size does not fit all”. We discuss these implications together with managerial recommendations and future research directions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This study examined how lifestyle factors and gender affect kidney allocation to transplant patients by 99 British and Singaporean participants. Thirty hypothetical patients were generated from a combination of six factors and randomly paired four times. Participants saw 60 patient pairings and, in each pair, chose which patient would receive treatment priority. A Bradley-Terry model was used to derive coefficients for each factor per participant. A mean factor score was then calculated across all participants for each factor. Participants gave (...) lower priority to patients who drank more, were overweight, smoked more and exercised less. A patient’s diet and gender had no significant effect on allocation. There were no significant cross-cultural differences. There were moderate correlations between participants’ self-reported pre- and post-experiment ordering of decision criteria, and these measures and factor coefficients, suggesting a modest level of decision-making consistency. Between participants, moderate levels of concordance with respect to factor importance were observed for self-reported orderings of factors, and weaker agreement for model-derived coefficients. Very similar results were obtained for both British and Singaporean participants, and the implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

This paper explores the psychological foundations of the 'Willingness to Pay/Willingness to Accept' discrepancy. Using a qualitative approach we find that the two response modes appear to invoke different strategies for completion. An examination of the heuristics used by respondents to answer questions concerning the buying and selling of the chance to play a straightforward lottery shows that only some could be taken as supporting current theories which aim to explain the discrepancy.

Svoeobrazie nravstvennykh vozreniĭ K.N. Leontʹeva. Istoki ėticheskikh vzgli︠a︡dov K.N. Leontʹeva ; Fenomen "ėsteticheskogo amoralizma" -- Fenomen ėskhatologicheskoĭ ėtiki. Vizantizm kak nravstvennyĭ ideal ; Pravovoĭ ideal K.N. Leontʹeva v kontekste ėskhatologicheskoĭ ėtiki.

This essay some first steps toward the naturalization of what I call rational intentionality or alternatively type II intentionality. By rational or type II intentionality, I mean that full combination of rational powers and content-bearing states that is paradigmatically enjoyed by mature intact human beings. The problem I set myself is to determine the extent to which the only currently extant approach to the naturalization of the intentional that has the singular virtue of not being a non-starter can be aggregated (...) up into an account of rational intentionality. I have in mind a broadly defined family of accounts whose main members are the indicator/information-theoretic approach of Dretske (1988), the asymmetric dependence theory of Jerry Fodor (1987, 1990, 1994) and the teleo-semantics of Ruth Millikan (1984, 1993). Somewhat inaccurately, I will call this family of approaches the information-theoretic family. To be sure, there is only a rough family resemblance among the members of the information-theoretic family. Indeed, several intense quarrels divide the members of that family one from another, but the precise outcome of those internecine struggles is not directly relevant to the aims of this essay. ² Taken collectively, the information-theoretic family yields a compelling picture of the place of at least a crude form of intentionality -- what I call frog-like or type I intentionality -- in the natural order. Though frog-like or type I intentionality is, I think, a genuine species of intentionality, it may subsist in the absence of rational powers. It is that species of intentionality enjoyed by irritable creatures who, following Brandom (1994). (shrink)

A little while ago I thought the ontological argument dead and buried beyond any possible hope of resurrection and no philosophical event has caused me much greater surprise than its revival by a member of the very linguistic school to whose line of thinking it seemed most alien and who were held to have given it its quietus once for all. I am tempted to welcome any relapse into metaphysics by a member of this school as being some sign of (...) grace, but on this issue I must for once take sides with the prevailing tradition against at least this kind of metaphysics. Let me make clear, however, what it is I am combating. The term ‘ontological argument’ has been used for arguments which its original supporters would certainly not have recognised as theirs. It has been used for instance to stand for the claim that it is an essential presupposition of thought that what we must think is true of the real, a claim which could not be used to prove the existence of God unless we had available another proof that we really must think that God exists. It has been used for kinds of ‘idealist’ arguments which I do not want to discuss here. It has been used for the argument that the idea of a perfect being cannot be explained as derived from any other idea and must therefore be explained as produced in us by a being who really is perfect, an argument which appears in Descartes side by side with the ontological argument but which he carefully distinguishes from it. (shrink)