The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze people's confidence in political institutions in the so-called BRICS countries, that is, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. I argue that the quality of macroeconomic indicators cannot explain the variation in political confidence between the five most dynamic new emerging economies, and that there is no substantial difference among the young, middle-aged, and senior-aged groups. By combing data from the Asia Barometer Survey and the World Value Survey, I (...) provide two complementary approaches, one sociocultural and the other micropolitical, to reveal the factors that influence people's confidence in four major political institutions. The explanatory effects of these two approaches are mixed. Political identity and values, in most cases, have a significant impact on political confidence. On the other hand, high levels of interpersonal social trust, individual happiness, and satisfaction with living standards also show positive influences. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to determine the relationship between the economic well-being of countries and their openness to external markets. The scientific novelty consists in the comparison of two groups of countries with different characteristics and identifying specific patterns of the impact of selected macroeconomic factors on GDP. The article presents an econometric analysis and contains regression equations for each state. Interpretation of the coefficients of the derived models makes it possible to estimate changes in GDP (...) with the change of indicators. As a result, it was revealed that export is the most stable and strongly influencing the economy of all countries macroeconomic factor, and the strength of influence depends on the level of development of the country. The stability of GDP in developing countries is largely achieved through the regulation of internal factors, and in developed countries through exports regulation. (shrink)

This article investigates the use of favors by managers of BRIC firms to accomplish business goals, the ethicality of which should be determined by the moral reasoning in these countries rather than from a developed country perspective. We define a favor as an exchange of outcomes between individuals, typically utilizing one's connections, that is based on a commonly understood cultural tradition, with reciprocity by the receiver typically not being immediate, and its value being less than what would constitute (...) bribery within that cultural context. This exchange normally takes place between and among members of networks, and may involve a network outsider contacted by a network insider on behalf of another insider. We see the giver and receiver of the favor, as well as network insiders and outsiders, as stakeholders. Additionally, society could also be considered to be a stakeholder since the practice of using favors generally inhibits the development of legitimate, strong formal institutions, since the use of favors in emerging economies is rooted in cultural traditions that we view as informal institutions. Furthermore, we assert that the practice of using favors can lead to bribery which harms society as a stakeholder both morally and economically. We posit that BRIC-country managers' behaviors stem from informal, culturally based practices—jeito in Brazil, blat/sviazi in Russia, jaan-pehchaan in India, and guanxi in China. We utilize institutional theory to explain why favors are relied upon, and ISCT to support the argument that the use of favors in environments like the BRICs is generally considered ethical. (shrink)

According to modern organizational theory, the growth of companies in developing nations is due to the coming together of public and private sector interorganizational networks and globalization. Within an open system and a very dynamic environment, a corporation cannot work autonomously. Here are the objectives of the study: The goals of this research are threefold: first, to learn how Thai SMEs expanded into BRICS countries; second, to find out what kinds of inter-organizational networks Thai SMEs relied on when going (...) global; and third, to give some advice to Thai SMEs that want to expand internationally in BRICS and to the Thai government on how to set up management networks that help with investment and internationalization. Documentary analysis of the database from the office of small and medium enterprise promotion and in-depth interviews were among the qualitative approaches employed in this study. This study examined 76 individuals from Thailand who were considered significant informants due to their extensive understanding of developing markets, namely those in the BRICS countries. A total of 63 executives responsible for overseeing their businesses' activities in the BRICS nations, together with 10 operational officers and 3 government officials, were chosen as key informants. In order to get trustworthy information for this study, the researcher used the triangulation method. Executives and government officials with operational responsibilities inside government agencies were interviewed in-depth, and their data was cross-referenced with that from pertinent papers. Thai SMEs were affected by the BRICS countries' political, legal, and socio-cultural frameworks, according to the study. Companies in the BRICS countries went global for three main reasons: to tap into untapped markets, to boost operational efficiency, and to secure access to critical resources. For Thai SMEs looking to grow their business in BRICS nations, the following factors were crucial to their success: 1) The network between different organizations; 2) the capacity to adjust to political and legal changes in BRICS countries; 3) non-formal ties; 4) the capability of local employees; 5) the appropriateness of the entrance method approach; and 6) knowledge gained from past mistakes. (shrink)

The article presents an analytical review of the section “The Future of Education, Mindset and Skillset” of the VIII BRICS Young Scientists Forum (31 July — 2 August 2023, Gkeberha, South Africa). The programme of this Forum section includes such sub-themes as application of new and convergent technologies in education, new educational tools for overcoming local socio-economic barriers, as well as leadership and entrepreneurial thinking for navigating the ever-changing future. The Forum in general and this section in particular brought together (...) young scientists from five countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) representing both technical and humanitarian scientific fields. The author identifies three key markers in the reports on the education made by young scientists from the BRICS countries and provides their philosophical and anthropological understanding. (shrink)

The motivation of the study is to explore the nexus tourism-led sustainable human capital development in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa for the period 1984–2019. The study applied several econometrical techniques for exposing the empirical association between tourism and HCD, such as the conventional and structural break unit root test, the combined cointegration test, long-run and short-run coefficients detected through implementing the Augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lagged, and directional causality by following Toda-Yamamoto with Fourier function. The unit-roots test established (...) variables are integrated in mixed order, wherein variables are stationary at a level or after the first difference. The estimated test statistics from the combined cointegration test and AARDL confirmed the long-run association between tourism, gross capital formation, financial development, and HCD. Tourism revealed a positive and statistically significant tie with HCD in the long run. Moreover, the joint effects of interactive terms TOR*GCF and TOR*FD established a positive and statistically significant relationship with HCD. In addition, the causality test revealed the feedback hypothesis available between tourism and HCD in all sample countries except India. In conclusion, the role of tourism development is critically important for sustainable HCD in BRICS. Therefore, in case of a policymaking concern, it is inevitable to address the tourism issues with care for capitalizing on the benefits for tourism development. (shrink)

The global economy’s centre of gravity is shifting. Emerging and developing countries have been contributing over 50% of the global GDP since the onset of the 21st century, which is unprecedented since the Industrial Revolution. This article offers the first analysis of the creeping convergence of the BRIC world (ie Brazil, Russia, India and China) with global legal standards in a key area of International Law: the International Tax Regime (ITR). The ITR is a legal technology fundamentally designed (...) by the League of Nations in the 1920s, when the BRICs played no relevant role. This article proposes a theory that aims to illuminate the core driving forces of the on-going trend towards global convergence in this area of International Law from both the static and dynamic dimensions. It is grounded on the logic of two-sided platforms. (shrink)

This study focuses on comparison of perceptions of ethical business cultures in large business organizations from four largest emerging economies, commonly referred to as the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), and from the US. The data were collected from more than 13,000 managers and employees of business organizations in five countries. The study found significant differences among BRIC countries, with respondents from India and Brazil providing more favorable assessments of ethical cultures of their organizations than respondents (...) from China and Russia. Overall, highest mean scores were provided by respondents from India, the US, and Brazil. There were significant similarities in ratings between the US and Brazil. (shrink)

Recent studies :98–144, 2002; Weismann, J Bus Ethics 88:615–66, 2009) revealed that in the first 28 years of its existence, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was not enforced by the federal government. The Weismann study further concluded that the FCPA, designed by Congress as a self-regulatory model of corporate governance, failed to achieve the regulatory goal of deterring global bribery by U.S. companies. The current article addresses the reasons that the FCPA remains an ineffective measure to control bribery as a (...) global market entry strategy despite the highly publicized 2006 Department of Justice initiative to increase prosecutions and tighten enforcement efforts. The failure arises out of both the increased use of informal dispositions of case prosecutions,, which has made “getting caught” merely an increased “cost of doing business” and the failure to close the regulatory gaps in the statute that permit violators to slip through the enforcement net. The article updates and compiles the case prosecution data for every reported case prosecuted between 1977 and 2011. That data are then compared to the results of a 2010 integrity risk survey performed by Deloitte Financial Advisory Services and Forbes which reveal a widely held global business perception that compliance and integrity risks appear to be rising sharply and that the FCPA is ineffective in deterring bribery and corruption in foreign markets. The article aims to serve as a predictive tool for policy makers and business professionals in assessing risk in the global markets, particularly as commerce intensifies in the BRIC countries, notable for bribery and corruption. (shrink)

By the very nature of information technology (IT), change and dynamism have always been significant drivers on its path to further development—and it has traditionally been the Western countries leading these. Now the picture is changing. The new high growth economies of the world (also known as BRIC countries) are increasingly pressing forward as active IT development drivers. Internal IT organizations of international companies are experiencing these global shifts firsthand and are facing changes in their traditional roles. (...) This exploratory research is aimed at clarifying the context of the impact of high growth economies on such IT departments of Western-rooted enterprises. Forty-six interviews were conducted with IT managers, HR managers and expatriates emphasizing the importance of intercultural interaction, maturing IT economies, change in IT landscape and entrepreneurship. (shrink)

This paper discusses so-called post-trial access to drugs for patients who participated in clinical trials in Brazil. Brazil is currently a relevant country for the pharmaceutical industry due to the dimensions of its actual and potential market. As a consequence, the number of pharmaceutical trials has been rising. It is the largest market for pharmaceutical companies in Latin America, the 8th biggest in the world and second only to China among the so-called BRICS’s emerging countries. The demand for pharmaceutical (...) products in the country has been increasing by double digits over the last few years, reaching 20% in 2008. Not surprisingly, we are also witnessing a steady increase in the number of applications by national and international pharmaceutical companies before ethical research authorities for authorization to perform clinical trials of drugs. (shrink)

In the last several years, Brazil has gained international attention as an emerging BRIC economy, was awarded the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, and elected its first female president. This has led many to declare that Brazil is emerging as a potential world power for the 21st century. In addition to improving its international stature, in the last several decades Brazil has also significantly improved the availability and quality of health care within the country. Despite these gains, however, (...) Brazil still suffers from poor maternal health. In fact, Brazil's Maternal Mortality Ratio is five to ten times higher than the rates in high-income countries. Last year, these conditions lead the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women to issue a decision declaring that Brazil was violating its international obligations to provide pregnant women with adequate health care, and to call for a reduction in preventable maternal deaths. It is against this backdrop that Brazil enacted a new law last December, Provisional Measure 557, to require pregnant women to register with the state. (shrink)

“Songspirals are a university for us, they are a map of understandings” (Gay’wu Group of Women, 2019, p. 33). This paper is authored by Bawaka Country, acknowledging Country’s ability to teach and share. Country is homeland and place. Country is everything and the relationships that bring everything to life. Country is knowledge. This paper is shaped and enabled by songspirals. Songspirals are sung and cried by Yolŋu people in north east Arnhem Land, Australia, to awaken Country, to make and remake (...) the life-giving connections between people and place. The Goŋ-gurtha songspiral leads this paper, showing us how a Yolŋu Country-led pedagogy centres Country’s active agency by learning through, with, and as Country. This pedagogy shares with us the ongoing connections within and between generations to ensure that knowledge remains strong and that sharing is done the right way, according to Yolŋu Rom, Law/Lore. This learning is predicated on relationality and responsibility. It is a more-than-human learning in which human knowing is decentred and Country is knowledgeable. It is a learning which recognises and respects its limits and it is a learning in which the ongoing sovereignty of Yolŋu people is front and centre. (shrink)

In the small but growing literature on the philosophy of country music, the question of how we ought to understand the genre’s notion of authenticity has emerged as one of the central questions. Many country music scholars argue that authenticity claims track attributions of cultural standing or artistic self-expression. However, careful attention to the history of the genre reveals that these claims are simply factually wrong. On the basis of this, we have grounds for dismissing these attributions. Here, I argue (...) for an alternative model of authenticity in which we take claims about the relative authenticity of country music to be evidence of ‘country’ being a dual character concept in the same way that it has been suggested of punk rock and hip-hop. Authentic country music is country music that embodies the core value commitments of the genre. These values form the basis of country artists’ and audiences’ practical identities. Part of country music’s aesthetic practice is that audiences reconnect with, reify, and revise this common practical identity through identification with artists and works that manifest these values. We should then think of authenticity discourse within country music as a kind of game within the genre’s practice of shaping and maintaining this practical identity. (shrink)

Pitchfork Country: The Photography of Bob Moorhouse showcases the beautiful, almost mystical photos taken by the vice president and general manager of the historic Pitchfork Ranch in Guthrie, Texas. Moorhouse's photographic work reflects his trademark style and traditional western subjects that create the illusion of scenes from a bygone era. As a working cowboy who carries his camera sometimes twenty to thirty miles a day on horseback, Moorhouse has been able to record moments in the field few photographers will ever (...) see. With an appreciation for great light and its selected application to the subject, his photographic images are an accurate portrayal of ranch life. Viewed in future years with the work of Erwin E. Smith, Ray Rector, and others who have photographed ranch life of the past 150 years, Moorhouse's images will be the standard for documenting ranching in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Also 04 Activeable in a limited edition. Distributed for the National Ranching Heritage Center. (shrink)

Papers presented at the 6th BRICS Academic Forum held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2014.

First published in German in 1995, volume 77 of Heidegger's Complete Works consists of three imaginary conversations written as World War II was coming to an end. Composed at a crucial moment in history and in Heidegger's own thinking, these conversations present meditations on science and technology; the devastation of nature, the war, and evil; and the possibility of release from representational thinking into a more authentic relation with being and the world. The first conversation involves a scientist, a scholar, (...) and a guide walking together on a country path; the second takes place between a teacher and a tower-warden, and the third features a younger man and an older man in a prisoner-of-war camp in Russia, where Heidegger's two sons were missing in action. Unique because of their conversational style, the lucid and precise translation of these texts offers insight into the issues that engaged Heidegger's wartime and postwar thinking. (shrink)

Developing countries have recently experienced a burgeoning of small-scale individual entrepreneurs (SIEs) – who range from petty traders to personal service workers like small street vendors, barbers and owners of small shops – as a result of market-based reforms, rapid urbanisation, unemployment, landlessness and poverty. While SIEs form a major part of the informal workforce in developing countries and contribute significantly to economic growth, their potential is being undermined when they engage in irresponsible and deceptive business practices such (...) as overpricing, sale of underweight or substandard products, or attempts to hoard goods, to name a few. Despite the growing interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of small businesses in developing countries, the SIEs have received almost no attention. To address this void in the literature, we explore the reasons for the less than optimal level of social responsibility demonstrated by some SIEs in developing countries. We do so by drawing upon the existing literature to develop a comprehensive framework of social responsibility of SIEs highlighting their unique characteristics and the different contextual factors that they encounter in developing countries. Based on this framework, we then present a set of propositions specifying the influence of these contextual factors such as business environment, cultural traditions, socio-economic conditions, and both international and domestic pressures on the business practices of SIEs. The framework offers an explanation for the lack of responsible entrepreneurship of SIEs and has important implications for promoting sustainable business practices in developing countries where businesses are striving hard to survive and compete. (shrink)

A country report describing the teaching of philosophy in Singapore's primary and secondary schools.

BRICS has philosophical significance. It creates new pressure on cross-cultural skill. This is analysed here as requiring transduction: a variety of defeasible practical reasoning. This replaces a simplistic model of the relation between knowledge and action with a more realistic and contemporary model. The transduction format has utility in cross-cultural training.

Using an international sample of firms from 32 countries, we study the relation between media independence and corporate tax aggressiveness. We measure media independence by the extent of private ownership and competition in the media industry. Using an indicator variable for tax aggressiveness when the firm’s corporate tax avoidance measure is within the top quartile of each country-industry combination, we find strong evidence that media independence is associated with a lower likelihood of tax aggressiveness, after controlling for other institutional (...) determinants, including home-country tax system characteristics. We also find that the effect of media independence is more pronounced when the legal environment is weaker, and when the information environment is less transparent. We contribute to the business ethics literature by documenting the role of independent media as an external monitoring mechanism in constraining corporate tax aggressiveness. (shrink)

Roger Eberhard, Swiss-born and American-educated photographer, conceives his works as series, taking-up impulses and inspirations for new projects from any possible source, such as a story he learns about or media reports catching his attention. He is pa.

Through corporate social responsibility activities, a firm can develop the capability for managing and benefiting from stakeholder relationships. This study refers to such a capability as stakeholder influence capacity. In a host country, locally sourcing parts and/or materials can generate economic value and improve social welfare. Moreover, local sourcing provides opportunities for a foreign firm to apply and advance SIC while closely interacting with host-country stakeholders. Accordingly, we expect that a firm, having gained SIC through CSR activities in its home (...) country, will be more likely to source parts and/or materials in the host country. We also expect that the relationship between SIC and host-country sourcing is conditional upon a foreign firm’s intangible resources and liabilities of foreignness. Our empirical analysis, using Korean datasets, supports the positive relationship between CSR and local sourcing. We find that this positive relationship is more pronounced either when the firm is committed to technology development or when its home and host countries are geographically or culturally distant. (shrink)

In this article I consider Thomas Pogge’s thesis that affluent countries are violating the human rights of the global poor by contributing support to the current global institutional order. My claim is that affluent countries are not violating the human rights of the global poor in the ways suggested by Pogge. I start by defining a set of conditions that ought to obtain in order to say that a human rights violation has taken place. Then I consider two (...) possible interpretations of Pogge’s thesis and argue that none of them fulfills the conditions required to speak of a human rights violation. On my view, as long as domestic states have the capacity to fulfill the human rights of their own people, poverty constitutes a domestic human rights violation even if the international institutional order somehow contributes to creating this state of affairs. Finally, I examine what transnational duties human rights entail and claim that affluent countries must contribute to the creation of an international order providing domestic states accurate background conditions for the promotion of human rights at the domestic level. (shrink)

First published in German in 1995, volume 77 of Heidegger’s Complete Works consists of three imaginary conversations written as World War II was coming to an end. Composed at a crucial moment in history and in Heidegger's own thinking, these conversations present meditations on science and technology; the devastation of nature, the war, and evil; and the possibility of release from representational thinking into a more authentic relation with being and the world. The first conversation involves a scientist, a scholar, (...) and a guide walking together on a country path; the second takes place between a teacher and a tower-warden, and the third features a younger man and an older man in a prisoner-of-war camp in Russia, where Heidegger’s two sons were missing in action. Unique because of their conversational style, the lucid and precise translation of these texts offers insight into the issues that engaged Heidegger’s wartime and postwar thinking. (shrink)

Kings, Countries, Peoples: Selected Studies on the Achaemenid Empire. By Pierre Briant, translated by Amélie Kuhrt. Oriens et Occidens, vol. 26. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2017. Pp. xxv + 633. €99.

How are we to know that which knows? How are we to know the knower?

How are we to know that which knows? How are we to know the knower?

This country report provides an update on the status of Pre-University Philosophy education in Singapore.

Countries are ranked on many criteria, the results of which can have far-reaching ethical and practical implications, particularly for emerging nations seeking role models. One highly influential ranking, the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, has been criticized for containing multiple methodological, conceptual, and logical flaws that bias competitiveness rankings toward countries that favor neoliberalism. Using datasets not afflicted by such flaws, we examine Bergsteiner and Avery’s :391–410, 2012) prediction that competitiveness scores of the USA and the UK (...) are substantially overstated. Results of re-ranking 104 countries using 29 economic, environmental, and social datasets from reputable sources support this assertion, with the USA showing the greatest discrepancy on a 100-point scale between its 2013–2014 GCR score and our study’s 2013 score, and the UK falling from GCR score 9 to 40. We explore reasons for this discrepancy, including examining the relationship between a country’s neoliberal traditions and its rankings on the indicators. (shrink)

"That is no country for old men." So declared William Butler Yeats in "Sailing to Byzantium", a poem picturing "the young in each other's arms." Almost 80 years later, Cormac McCarthy titled his 2005 novel No Country for Old Men to emphasize the plight of Ed Tom Bell, an aging sheriff who retires when faced with violence, drug trafficking. and moral chaos in a small West Texas town. As the lawman of Terrell County, Texas, for over 30 years, Bell has (...) anchored his life in traditional values and common sense. But when a gruesome drug deal goes wrong, and the ruthlessly violent, amoral mercenary Anton Chigurh appears on the scene, Bell's world is shattered. On a... (shrink)

Prior research that analyses the cross-firm variation in the prevalence of women on corporate boards has tended to emphasise the importance of firm and industry-level factors, such as firm size, the quality of corporate governance, and the proximity to final consumers. In contrast, very little research has explored the role of national institutional factors for this important phenomenon. In this study, we explore the relative importance of country, industry, and firm-level factors in explaining the cross-firm variation in the proportion of (...) directorships occupied by female directors. Findings indicate that while all levels of influence are significant, country-level effects are a highly-important and under-researched antecedent of the presence of women on corporate boards. (shrink)

In economic researches, much effort was devoted to the problem of how to increase the economics of countries. However, the development of a country may fluctuate a lot due to international and domestic problems. Thus, we should also evaluate the robustness of countries against unexpected economic recessions. In this paper, we use perturbation to quantify the robustness of countries using two renowned algorithms: method of reflections and fitness-complexity method. The robustness characterizes the stability of countries’ competitiveness (...) against economic recessions. The experiments in the international trade networks show that FCM could characterize the robustness better than MR. High fitness countries of FCM have strong robustness against economic crises, which enlarges the application fields of FCM. Additionally, we simulate the trade conflict between USA and China. The simulation results show that China suffers much in the trade conflict, while USA loses very little and has strong robustness in this conflict. (shrink)

Recognizing the growing interdependence of the European Union and the importance of codes of conduct in companies’ operations, this research examines the effect of a country’s culture on the implementation of a code of conduct in a European context. We examine whether the perceptions of an activity’s ethicality relates to elements found in company codes of conduct vary by country or according to Hofstede’s (1980, Culture’s Consequences (Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, CA)) cultural constructs of: Uncertainty Avoidance, Masculinity/Femininity, Individualism, and Power (...) Distance. The 294 individuals, who participated in our study, were from 8 Western European countries. Their responses to our 13 scenarios indicate that differences in the perceptions of ethicality associate primarily with the participants’ country as opposed to their employer (i.e., accounting firm), employment level, or gender. The evidence also indicates that these country differences associate with Hofstede constructs of Individualism and Masculinity. (shrink)