For many years, researchers and practitioners have sought out meaningful indicators of sales performance. Yet, as the concept of performance has broadened, the understanding of what makes up a successful seller, has become far more complicated. The complexity of buyer–seller relationships has changed therefore as the definition of sales performance has expanded, cultivating a growing interest in ethical/unethical actions since they could potentially have impacts on sales performance. Given this environment, the purpose of this study is to explore the impact (...) of moral judgment on sales performance and sellers engaging in a customer-oriented selling approach. Specifically, by utilizing a sample of 345 business-to-business salespeople, this study examines the relationships between moral judgment, customer-oriented selling, and outcome and behavior based performance. Results, managerial implications, and opportunities for future research are provided. (shrink)

There is a process that starts from the Lagrangian of a set of field equations and leads to a spectrum of particle states. The process is applied in this article to a Lagrangian for the Dirac equation. It leads to a differential equation with solutions that describe particles with definite mass, angular momentum J, charge, and isotopic spin I, having I = J. There is no suggestion of strangeness. The theory is in rough agreement with the masses of many of (...) the 0+ (0–+) and 0+ (0++) mesons and with the masses of the nonstrange 1/2 (1/2+) and 3/2 (3/2+) baryons. (shrink)

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

Good Sport argues that the values and meanings embedded within sport provide the guidance we need to make difficult decisions about fairness and performance-enhancing technologies. By examining how sport's history, rules and practices identify and celebrate natural talent and dedication, the book illuminates not just what we champion in the athletic arena but more broadly what we value in human achievement.

ABSTRACT Offsetting is a very ineffective way to do good. Offsetting your lifetime emissions may increase aggregated life expectancy by at most seven years, while giving the amount it costs to offset your lifetime emissions to a malaria charity saves in expectation the life of at least one child. Is there any moral reason to offset rather than giving to some charity that does good so much more effectively? There might be such a reason if your offsetting compensated or somehow (...) benefitted the victims of your emission, since that could mean that you would satisfy the duty not to harm others by emitting and offsetting. But that is typically not true. If your emission harms some person and your offsetting benefits some person, then these are most likely different people. Hence, I conclude, we have a stronger reason to give to effective charities than we have to offset our emissions. (shrink)

Tales of good deeds in the light of Hadith.

One of the lesser known features of Bernard Lonergan’s Insight is his theory of the relationship between being and goodness. Central to that theory is his claimthat the totality of being is good. From this central claim, Lonergan worked out an “ontology of the good,” in which the structures of ontological interdependencyare reflected in a theory of the scale of higher and lower values. Unfortunately, Lonergan’s way of supporting his claim in Insight is problematic. This article firstsummarizes Lonergan’s theory of (...) the goodness of being, then identifies problems with his exposition, and finally shows how Lonergan could have arrived at thesame positions by closer adherence to his own philosophical methods. The article concludes by showing some of the advantages of Lonergan’s account of the goodness of being for contemporary debates in ethics. (shrink)

On the importance of good deeds in Islam.

Health checks or health screenings identify disease in people without a specific medical indication. So far, the perspective of health check users has remained underexposed in discussions about the ethics and regulation of health checks. In 2017, we conducted a qualitative study with lay people from the Netherlands. We asked what participants consider characteristics of good and bad health checks, and whether they saw a role for the Dutch government. Participants consider a good predictive value the most important characteristic of (...) a good health check. Information before, during and after the test, knowledgeable and reliable providers, tests for treatable disease, respect for privacy, no unnecessary health risks and accessibility are also mentioned as criteria for good health checks. Participants make many assumptions about health check offers. They assume health checks provide certainty about the presence or absence of disease, that health checks offer opportunities for health benefits and that the privacy of health check data is guaranteed. In their choice for provider and test they tend to rely more on heuristics than information. Participants trust physicians to put the interest of potential health check users first and expect the Dutch government to intervene if providers other than physicians failed to do so by offering tests with a low predictive value, or tests that may harm people, or by infringing the privacy of users. Assumptions of participants are not always justified, but they may influence the choice to participate. This is problematic because choices for checks with a low predictive value that do not provide health benefits may create uncertainty and may cause harm to health; an outcome diametrically opposite to the one intended. Also, this may impair the relationship of trust with physicians and the Dutch government. To further and protect autonomous choice and to maintain trust, we recommend the following measures to timely adjust false expectations: advertisements that give an accurate impression of health check offers, and the installation of a quality mark. (shrink)

This study investigates what professional caregivers working in nursing homes consider to be a good life for residents suffering from dementia. Ten caregivers were interviewed; special attention was paid to the way in which they deal with conflicting values. Transcripts of the interviews were analysed qualitatively according to the method of grounded theory. The results were compared with those from a similar, earlier study on ideals found in mission statements of nursing homes. The concepts that were mentioned by most interviewed (...) participants as important for a good life were ‘peace and quiet’, ‘going along with subjective experience’ and ‘no enforcement: the way the resident wants it’. A considerable overlap was found between the interviews and the mission statements; however, when compared with the mission statements, the interviews put less emphasis on individuality and on giving meaning, and more on offering residents pleasant activities. When faced with conflicting values, caregivers tend to make pragmatic and more or less intuitive decisions. Although this has its merits, it may be desirable to stimulate conscious reflection regarding conflict between different values. (shrink)

Protection of study participants is an integral function of the Institutional Review Board. Recently, great efforts were dedicated to enhance investigators’ awareness of ethical principles in conducting human research and to implement reviewing committees’ standards in Jordan to ensure the transparency, versatility, and responsibility in handling human subjects research in the country. The aim of the current study is to evaluate the awareness and attitudes of healthcare investigators in Jordan towards the structure and importance of IRBs. A questionnaire was distributed (...) to 200 investigators and graduate students from the Jordan University of Science and Technology. The majority of the responses indicated positive knowledge towards core ethics guidelines and the importance of IRBs. This includes beneficence, confidentiality, informed consent, and treating participants with respect. In addition, the majority of participants agreed on the importance of the IRB for ensuring the rights, safety, and well-being of the research subjects. Moreover, the majority of participants agreed that the IRB members should be trained on ethics regulations in conducting research and declare any conflict of interest with the investigators. On the other hand, about 30% of participants believed that being reviewed by the IRB would delay research and make it more difficult for the researcher. Jordanian investigators have good awareness of and knowledge about research ethics and the importance of IRBs, though more education is needed. (shrink)

Distributive justice on the income and on the service aspects is the most vexing modern day problem for the creation and maintenance of an all inclusive health care system. A pervasive problem of all current schemes is the lack of effective cost control, which continues to result in increasing burdens for all public and private stakeholders. This proposal posits that the responsibility and financial obligation to achieve an ideal outcome of equal and affordable access and benefits for all citizens is (...) misplaced. The Good Samaritan demonstrated basic ethical principles, which are revisited, elaborated and integrated into a new approach to health care. The participants are limited to individual contributors and beneficiaries and organized as a citizen carried, closed, independent, and self-sufficient self-governing cooperative for their own and the benefit of a minority of disadvantaged health care consumers. The government assumes oversight, provides arbitration, enforces democratic decision making, a scheme of progressive taxation, a separate and transparent accounting system, and a balance between income and reinvestment in health care. The results are a fair distribution of cost, its effective control, and increased individual motivation to take on responsibility for personal health as a private good and a sharpened focus towards community health. At the sociopolitical level the government as well as employers are released from the inappropriate burden of catering to individual health. (shrink)

Umbilical cord blood banking is one of many biomedical innovations that confront pregnant women with new choices about what they should do to secure their own and their child’s best interests. Many mothers can now choose to donate their baby’s umbilical cord blood (UCB) to a public cord blood bank or pay to store it in a private cord blood bank. Donation to a public bank is widely regarded as an altruistic act of civic responsibility. Paying to store UCB may (...) be regarded as a “unique opportunity” to provide “insurance” for the child’s future. This paper reports findings from a survey of Australian women that investigated the decision to either donate or store UCB. We conclude that mothers are faced with competing discourses that force them to choose between being a “good mother” and fulfilling their role as a “good citizen.” We discuss this finding with reference to the concept of value pluralism. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: For the Patient's Good: The Restoration of Beneficence in Health Care. By Edmund D. Pellegrino and David C. Thomasma.

How can we develop a global economic architecture which is efficient, morally acceptable, geographically inclusive, and sustainable over time? If global capitalism -- arguably the most efficient wealth-creating system known to man -- is to be both economically viable and socially acceptable, each of its four constituent institutions must be both technically competent and buttressed by a strong moral ethos. Leading thinkers in international business and ethics identify the pressing moral issues which global capitalism must answer.

Income is a primary determinant of social mobility, career progression, and personal happiness. It has been shown to vary with demographic variables like age and education, with more oblique variables such as height, and with behaviors such as delay discounting, i.e., the propensity to devalue future rewards. However, the relative contribution of each these salary-linked variables to income is not known. Further, much of past research has often been underpowered, drawn from populations of convenience, and produced findings that have not (...) always been replicated. Here we tested a large (n = 2,564), heterogeneous sample, and employed a novel analytic approach: using three machine learning algorithms to model the relationship between income and age, gender, height, race, zip code, education, occupation, and discounting. We found that delay discounting is more predictive of income than age, ethnicity, or height. We then used a holdout data set to test the robustness of our findings. We discuss the benefits of our methodological approach, as well as possible explanations and implications for the prominent relationship between delay discounting and income. (shrink)

Healthcare organizations and workers are under pressure to produce increasingly complete and accurate data for multiple data-intensive endeavors. However, little research has examined the emerging occupations arising to carry out the data work necessary to produce “improved” data sets, or the specific work activities of these emerging data occupations. We describe the work of Clinical Documentation Integrity Specialists, an emerging occupation that focuses on improving clinical documentation to produce more detailed and accurate administrative datasets crucial for evolving data-intensive forms of (...) healthcare accountability, management, and research. Using ethnographic methods, we describe the core of CDIS’ work as a translation practice in which the language, interests, and concerns of clinicians and clinical documentation are translated via real-time “nudging” and ongoing education of clinicians into the language, interests, and concerns of medical coders, structured administrative datasets, and the various stakeholders of these datasets. Further, we show how the institutional context of CDIS’ work shapes the occupational virtues that guide CDIS’ translation practice, including financial reimbursement, quality measures, clinical accuracy, and protecting clinician’s time. Despite the existence of these multiple virtues, financial reimbursement is the most prominent virtue guiding CDIS’ limited attention. Thus, overall clinical documentation is “improved” in specific, partial ways. This research provides one of the first studies of the emergent data work occupations arising in the wake of digitization and big data opportunities, and shows how local data settings shape large scale data in specific ways and thus may influence outcomes of analyses based on such data. (shrink)

Bonuses, as incentives or rewards for health -related behavior, feature prominently in German social health insurance. Their goal is centered around promoting personal responsibility, but reducing overall health -care expenditure and enabling competition between sickness funds also play a role. The central position of personal responsibility in German health -care policy is described, and a framework is offered for an analysis of the ethical issues raised by policies seeking to promote responsibility. The framework entails seven tests relating to: solidarity; equality (...) and equity; intrusiveness; attributability and opportunity of choice; evidence, rationale, and feasibility; affected third parties; and coherence. It is contended that a focus on tests, in particular from within contractualism, is the most appropriate way of addressing the question of health responsibility in pluralistic societies. However, taken by themselves, the tests also allow an identification of the key ethical issues by particular policies, which are illustrated by applying the framework to particular bonus polices. (shrink)