Does responsible leadership matter when assembling an inclusive supply chain at the Base-of-the-Pyramid? Current literature implicitly assumes that it does not. BOP scholars initially focused on the importance of shaping innovative and disruptive offerings, with radically improved price–performance ratios. Subsequent studies tended to focus on barriers to implementation of large-scale ventures at the BOP. Their common characteristic was the fact that the attributes and roles of the individuals involved were deemed unimportant. If the opportunity was there, provided barriers were removed (...) and the right value proposition was offered, the inclusive venture should take off. We evaluate three cases of leaders who succeeded in building inclusive ventures at the BOP, in contexts marked by institutional voids—where formal markets were weakly structured or nonexistent. Building a viable business under those circumstances entailed two tasks: imagining what is possible and then turning that vision into a reality. We found that, in carrying out those tasks, individuals do matter. Sampled cases show that working with nontraditional partners in inclusive supply chains requires more than aligning material incentives. Our analysis suggests that responsible leadership with a strong ethical foundation can provide powerful leverage to ensure buy-in and commitment from the various actors involved. We show how RL can impact organizations and external stakeholders through positive upward spirals. Our analysis contributes to the literature on BOP and RL by confirming, extending, and challenging existing knowledge. We propose two novel attributes and argue that context matters, influencing how RL is operationalized and defined. Understanding the critical role of RL in the construction of inclusive supply chains adds a critical missing link that sheds light into the micro level of new business creation, development, and consolidation at the BOP. (shrink)

The epistemological challenges of the Anthropocene trouble distinctions of solid and fluid. In this contribution, the author proposes, after Gabrielle Hecht, that the nuclearity of the Anthropocene contributes significantly to destabilising these categories. Nuclear materials and ideas of nuclearity force (re)consideration of deep timescales and imperceptible processes, problematising fixed material ontologies. The article engages with nuclear matters and queries the logic of solids and fluids by developing the notion of elemental memory. An attention to elemental memory – an element’s capacity (...) to auto-affect over time – reveals the inadequacy of terms like solid and fluid, and highlights the expressiveness of solid fluid substances. Empirically, the author demonstrates, first, how elemental memory informs the solid-fluid processuality of radioactive glasses, especially trinitite. Second, engaging with the work of artists Mari Keto and Erich Berger, she addresses the slow auto-transformations of radioactive minerals. (shrink)

Only one volume has reached us to mark the centenary of Bergson's birth. Is this significant? If a writer lives to an advanced age his centenary usually falls at a time when fashion has turned against him, and the consequent attitudes are perhaps more interestingly gleaned from comparitively informal assessments than from carefully timed publications. In the Nouvelles Littéraires of October 22,1959, there appeared, almost a hundred years to the day after Bergson's birth, a reported discussion on his philosophy between (...) Gaston Berger, Gabriel Marcel, Henri Gouhier, Jean Brun and a young “normalien” Dominique Janicaud.The talk, presumably more or less spontaneous, was naturally desultory. The older participants could always compensate for implicit misgivings by falling back on affectionate personal recollections, and the youngest would perhaps have preferred not to have to say anything at all. The most cogent general estimate was probably M. Jean Brun's, when he described Bergson as in effect making a stand against the danger of specialist appropriation of the dismembered fragments of philosophy by the various branches of science. We have seen this very nearly come about in England, where a fairly narrow linguistic and logical sector alone has been held with any feeling of conviction. What is here exemplified is the difference of outlook on any question that the English Channel makes. I once heard an English professor of English literature say that when reading Emile Legouis' History of English Literature he had some difficulty in persuading himself that his own professional speciality was being dealt with. It is not difficult to see how this comes about. What one nation takes for granted appears to another as excitingly significant. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Good Conceived as an End The Good as a Convergent End The Meaning of “Eudaimonia” Happiness vs. the Happy Life The Finality Criterion The Self‐sufficiency Criterion Inclusivism The Shape of the Happy Life Concluding Remarks Notes Bibliography.

Based on an analysis of a landmark case Lim Mey Lee Susan v Singapore Medical Council in Singapore where a doctor was professionally disciplined for over-charging a wealthy patient, a judgement upheld by the Singapore High Court, this paper will discuss the notion of an ‘ethical price’ (EP) and its determination with respect to the provision of healthcare services. It will first examine the limitations of a legal approach for setting an ethical limit to pricing. From there, it will argue (...) that Confucian philosophy provides a useful ethical framework to explore EP, with focus on the context of Singapore. The following question is addressed: What is an ethical pricing standard for medical practice from a Confucian perspective? The strengths and limitations of a Confucian value base as regards the determination of an objective EP will be analysed through an examination of the shortcomings of the doctor’s behaviour in the Susan Lim case as well as other case scenarios. The paper will conclude with some practical suggestions on how Confucian-based ideas can be applied to decision-making on pricing and the importance of this for medical professionalism and ethics teaching. (shrink)

Our first encounter with Socrates in the Symposium is bizarre. Aristodemus, surprised to run into Socrates fully bathed and with his sandals on, asks him where he is going “to have made himself so beautiful (kalos)” (174a4, Rowe trans.). Socrates replies that he is on his way to see the lovely Agathon, and so that “he has beautified himself in these ways in order to go, a beauty to a beauty (kalos para kalon)” (174a7–8). Why does Socrates, who in just (...) a few moments will be lost in contemplation out on the front porch, care about being beautiful? His remark to Aristodemus is clearly in some sense ironic, but on the other hand, he really has taken unusual care with his physical appearance. Later, in his encomium to love, he will claim that beauty has this effect on lovers: the beauty of the beloved causes the lover to disdain his former way of life and “give birth” to beautiful “offspring.” Is the image of the squat and snub-nosed Socrates all freshly scrubbed and kitted out a comic foreshadowing, or a debunking, of his serious speech? Does Socrates really believe in the transformative power of beauty? (shrink)

A partir de una metodología filosófica naturalista, el presente artículo propone dos rasgos de la memoria episódica que resultan relevantes para pensar algunos tópicos de la ética animal: (1) el carácter reconstructivo de eventos pasados cargados afectivamente y (2) el carácter narrativo y la conciencia autonoética de la memoria episódica. Respecto del primero, se reseña brevemente el debate actual en torno a la evidencia de que algunos animales presentan experiencias impulsadas internamente con valencia hedónica y padecen trastorno de estrés postraumático. (...) Luego, se exploran algunas consecuencias que tendría esta propiedad a la hora de considerar el bienestar de los animales en sistemas de producción intensivos. A continuación, se reseña el debate vinculado con el segundo rasgo y se evidencia el rol que estas propiedades de la memoria episódica han cumplido en la atribución del carácter de persona en la tradición filosófica, junto a las concepciones más deflacionadas de estas capacidades, entendida como unidad o continuidad psicológica. En la última sección se argumenta que estas concepciones contemporáneas, que vinculan ciertas notas de la memoria con la unidad psicológica, permiten atribuir el carácter personal a animales no humanos. (shrink)

El artículo presenta algunos resultados del estudio de la participación de Karol Wojtyła, obispo auxiliar y, sucesivamente, arzobispo de Cracovia, en el Concilio Vaticano II, así como de la recepción del mismo durante su ministerio pastoral en la archidiócesis polaca y al servicio de la Iglesia universal antes de su elección como sucesor de Pedro. Es posible hablar del “estilo conciliar” de Wojtyła: lo que la Iglesia ha enseñado sobre la gloria de Dios en el Vaticano II y sobre el (...) modo en el que dicha gloria debe acontecer en la vida de los fieles de nuestro tiempo encuentra en Wojtyła una concreta e iluminadora expresión histórica. (shrink)

The objective of the text is to propose an interpretation of Hume's works that allows another way of refusing contractualism, different from the "official" refusal, and which is based (the new one) on the concept of artifice, which is extremely different from the artifice created by the contractualists, whose opposition the tradition of commentators of Humean political philosophy, generally, do not refer to, when it is the case of refusing contractualism.

We analyze the notion of indiscernibility in the light of the Galois theory of field extensions and the generalization to K-algebras proposed by Grothendieck. Grothendieck's reformulation of Galois theory permits to recast the Galois correspondence between symmetry groups and invariants as a duality between G-spaces and the minimal observable algebras that separate theirs points. In order to address the Galoisian notion of indiscernibility, we propose what we call an epistemic reading of the Galois-Grothendieck theory. According to this viewpoint, the Galoisian (...) notion of indiscernibility results from the limitations of the `resolving power' of the observable algebras used to discern the corresponding `coarse-grained' states. The resulting Galois-Grothendieck duality is rephrased in the form of what we call a Galois indiscernibility principle. According to this principle, there exists an inverse correlation between the coarsegrainedness of the states and the size of the minimal observable algebra that discern these states. (shrink)

El artículo examina, críticamente, la solución que propone Ronald Dworkin para el problema de si los ideales políticos de libertad e igualdad entran en conflicto. El núcleo de mi crítica es que la solución de Dworkin depende de un supuesto dudoso, a saber: que no puede haber casos de colisión entre dos obligaciones de igual importancia. Siguiendo una idea de Ruth Marcus, afirmo, finalmente, que la existencia de dilemas valorativos genuinos no implica, como pretende Dworkin, tener que reconocer que el (...) sistema de principios del agente es internamente inconsistente, ya que esta clase de problema surge más bien de factores circunstanciales. (shrink)

Stamps are so familiar to us as everyday objects that we – with the exception of philatelists – are not used to considering their aesthetic value or their place in a history of art. They have therefore seldom been systematically investigated in this light. Nevertheless, these issues have been treated by some scholars. Aby Warburg, for instance, was one of the first to identify the importance of stamps for political iconography; and Walter Benjamin has also made insightful observations in this (...) regard. This article takes up earlier work on the cultural history of the iconography of German money. It investigates exemplarily the presentation of the Brandenburg Gate on stamps of the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the GDR, and the Federal Re- public of Germany, in order to elucidate more generally aesthetic forms of representation and their exploitation for purposes of propaganda. (shrink)

No terceiro livro de o Mundo como vontade e representação, Schopenhauer desenvolve considerações sobre estética, apresenta os conceitos de belo e sublime, descreve as artes plásticas e poéticas, até chegar na música e na caracterização desta enquanto distinta de todas outras artes. A leitura deste livro teria impressionado o jovem Nietzsche, especialmente a concepção de música como obra de arte fundamental, sendo esta inspiração comum na estética schopenhaueriana um dos temas de sua interlocução com Wagner. O objetivo deste artigo é (...) acompanhar esse livro para seguir a formulação da metafísica da música de Schopenhauer e apresentar brevemente um pouco da recepção desta metafísica no escrito de Wagner sobre Beethoven e na obra inicial de Nietzsche. (shrink)

An argument for using Donald Davidson's metaphysics for briding the growing divide between scientiific and humanistic understanding of religion.

L’assurance de mort qu’enveloppe notre condition d’êtres finis nous expose à la tentation d’adhérer à une doctrine de désespoir qui considère toute chose sous le signe du non-être. Il appartient à la pensée dialectique de préparer la commutation de cette systématique négative en une méta-prgblé- matique de l’être ; mais cette commutation elle-même ne peut être que l’oeuvre d’une liberté qui choisit de s’ouvrir au transcendant, dont elle reconnaît la sollicitation a tergo dans l’acte même par lequel elle le salue (...) et l’invoque. (shrink)

In the genomics era, bioinformatic analysis, especially in non‐model species, facilitates the identification and naming of numerous new proteins, the function of which is then inferred through homology searches. Here, we question certain aspects of these approaches. What are the criteria that permit such a determination? What are their limits? Naming is classifying. We review the different criteria that are used to name a protein and discuss their constraints. We observe that the name given to a protein often introduces a (...) bias for further functional analyses, a bias that is not often taken into account when analysing results. Last but not least, the heterogeneity of criteria used for naming proteins leads to self‐inconsistent or contradictory protein classification that is potentially misleading. Finally, we recommend a wider use of phylogenetic criteria in protein naming. BioEssays 30:349–357, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)