The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity for management scholars to address large-scale and complex societal problems and strive for greater practical and policy impact. A brief overview of the most-cited work on COVID-19 reveals that, compared with their counterparts in other disciplines, leading management journals and professional associations lagged in providing a platform for high-impact research on COVID-19. To help management research play a more active role in responding to similar global challenges in the future, we propose an integrative framework (...) that emphasizes a phenomenon’s impact, the conditions that the phenomenon creates at multiple levels, and the responses of actors to such conditions, as well as the dynamic relationships and interactions among these actors. By shifting attention to phenomena and their overall impact, this framework can help scholars better position their work to address large-scale and complex problems and also to assess research for its contribution to generate impact beyond academia. (shrink)

In this paper I will be implicitly defending the following thesis: An individual X obtains knowledge of scientific claim p in virtue of being a member of a community A that regards claim p as knowledge. The thesis states is that a claim p only becomes scientific knowledge once it's been through a process of validation by a scientific community. This is meant to be contrasted with the claim that individuals first obtain scientific knowledge perception or inference, and then transmit (...) it to their colleagues, without the community playing any epistemological role. The strategy that I will follow is the following. In the first section I will consider the claim “that collaboration plays a causal role in advancing scientists' epistemic goals, and that its growing popularity is a consequence of its effectiveness in aiding communities of scientists to realize their epistemic goals”. I will conclude that the claim is rather weak in the sense that it only justifies certain sections of scientific practice and does not establish that in principle scientific knowledge is produced in the manner described above. An attempt to strengthen the thesis will be made through the presentation of evidence that all through history in what is widely recognised as scientific activity the scientist is never alone, even if they are the single author of a scientific work. I will draw on certain insights from Latour's study in the making of scientific knowledge to support the thesis that the individual scientist is necessarily surrounded by allies. This attempt will consist of two parts, the first being what the exploration of what I term the intra-laboratory aspect of scientific activity, and the second being the public forum aspect. I will conclude that the latter aspect is the aspect which supports the claim that the production of scientific knowledge is in principle social, that is that the appropriate unit of epistemological analysis of the production of scientific knowledge is the scientific community rather than the individual scientist. Finally, I will promote the thesis that community agreement is constitutive of knowledge, presenting and arguing for the communitarian account of scientific knowledge. I will briefly argue against an individualistic conception of knowledge acquisition, based on the model of the solitary Cartesian thinker and the notion that knowing something involves being in a certain mental state, and then briefly talk about belief as the property of plural subjects before I move on to present the communitarian model of knowledge acquisition. (shrink)

Pickering & Garrod (P&G) explain dialogue dynamics in terms of forward modeling and prediction-by-simulation mechanisms. Their theory dissolves a strict segregation between production and comprehension processes, and it links dialogue to action-based theories of joint action. We propose that the theory can also incorporate intentional strategies that increase communicative success: for example, signaling strategies that help remaining predictable and forming common ground.

Objective: The objectives of this study are to understand the current functions, structure and operation of hospital ethics committees (HECs) in Shanghai and to facilitate their improvement. Methods: (1) A questionnaire survey, (2) interviews with secretaries and (3) on-site document reviews of HECs in Shanghai were used in the study, which surveyed 33 hospitals. Results: In Shanghai, 57.56% of the surveyed hospitals established HECs from 1998 to 2005. Most HECs used bioethical review of research involving human subjects as well as (...) bioethical review or consultation regarding medical care services and administrative decision- making. Of the surveyed HECs, 14.3% did not provide any formal bioethical training to the HECs’ members and many HECs had no standard operating procedures. Some HECs had no clear definition of what was “conflict of interest” that should be considered by the HECs, while 44.4% of the HECs did not perform continuing review. Discussion: After the issues of related national regulations, more and more hospitals established HECs in Shanghai, but the functions of HECs need to be further developed and formal training on bioethics should be provided to HEC members. To assure the independence and good performance of HECs, the conflict of interest procedure, the standard operating procedures and bioethical review should be improved. Conclusion: HECs in Shanghai had developed in the preceding 10 years and they played great roles in protecting the rights and welfare of human subjects and patients; some areas need improvement. (shrink)

An edition of the letters of Erasmus, regarded as one of the greatest humanist writers. All 12 volumes of this work have been reissued, complete with their scholarly apparatus of commentary and notes, as well as plates.

The managerial and personal approaches to Business Ethics are inadequate to address the systemic problems facing ethical reflection in Africa. It is argued that the ethical guidance position that takes the least advantaged individuals or groups in society as reference points is a more suitable ethical approach. The philosophical version of this egalitarian view as set out by John Rawls is then shortly explained, after which a few implications for Business Ethics in Africa are drawn.

Progressive public opinion has proclaimed 1983 Karl Marx Year. On 5 May of this year, 165 years will have passed since the day of his birth; and a hundred years ago, on 14 March 1883, his mighty heart stopped beating. His intensive work in organizing the international revolutionary movement of the proletariat, the sedulous persecution of him by the authorities, and the constant material need and theoretical concerns that drove him to the point of exhaustion steadily undermined and ultimately destroyed (...) Marx's health. History granted him only sixty-five years of life, but his creative work in those years was the work of a century. (shrink)

The Limits of the Formal Treatment of Language. Within the philosophy of language, there is a distinction between the natural language philosophers and the ideal language philosophers. The distinction is drawn based on the way these philosophers reflect on language and the world. Natural language philosophers stress the context-based feature of meaning, while the ideal language philosophers emphasize the context-free feature of meaning. In my study I want to show that that even within the formal study of language, in the (...) apparent absence of any context, the notions of valuation and interpretation help us to understand the meaning of sentences. (shrink)

Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) has been employed to investigate the glass transition activation energy E g, thermal stability and glass-forming ability (GFA) of Se90In10− x Sb x (x = 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10) chalcogenide glasses. DSC runs were performed at six different heating rates. Well-defined endothermic and exothermic peaks were obtained at glass transition and crystallization temperature. The dependence of glass transition temperature T g on heating rate (α), as well as composition of Sb, has been studied. From (...) the dependence of glass transition temperature on heating rate, the E g has been calculated on the basis of the Kissinger [Anal. Chem. 29 (1957) p.1702] and Moynihan [J. Phys. Chem. 78 (1974) p.267] models. Thermal stability has been monitored through the calculation of temperature differences T c–T g, the stability parameter S, and the enthalpy released during crystallization H c. The GFA has been investigated on the basis of the Hruby parameter H r, which is strong indicator of GFA. Results for GFA are in good agreement with fragility index F i calculations, indicating that Se90In6Sb4 is an excellent glass-former. (shrink)

Anyone who knows Solov'ev mainly from his mystical speculations and aspirations will of course be surprised to hear that he was a brilliant and outstanding representative of the philosophy of law. One is not immediately able to see how such a supremely real and practical idea as the idea of law [pravo] was able to find a place among his dreams and prophecies. And yet we have all the evidence to affirm that this idea was for him one of the (...) most important and precious. It would be an act of unfairness toward the late philosopher, at this solemn celebration of his memory, to forget that aspect of his activity, which he bequeathed to us to remember and esteem. (shrink)