The most challenging period for a company is the first three years following its inception, a period often referred to as the "valley of death." This article examines the factors contributing to the high mortality rate of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the town of Melipilla, Chile, and presents potential strategies for reducing or preventing this mortality. The study employs an exploratory-descriptive approach, utilizing a qualitative methodology and a cross-sectional sample size collected through convenience sampling and semi-structured interviews. Upon (...) analysis of the aforementioned data, it becomes evident that contemporary SMEs have more convenient access to capital, technology, information, and financing. These resources, which were once considered distinctive and crucial for competitive advantage, are no longer as pivotal in generating value. Conversely, the findings highlight the pivotal role of human resources and their strategic management in developing distinctive competencies, which are essential for SMEs to create value and ensure long-term sustainability. (shrink)

In recent years, the opioid crisis in the United States has sparked significant discussion on doctor–patient interactions concerning chronic pain treatments, but little to no attention has been given to investigating the vocal aspects of patient talk. This exploratory sociolinguistic study intends to fill this knowledge gap by employing prosodic discourse analysis to examine context-specific linguistic features used by the interlocutors of two distinct medical interactions. We found that patients employed both low pitch and creak as linguistic resources when describing (...) chronic pain, narrating symptoms and requesting opioids. The situational use of both features informs us about the linguistic ways in which patients frame fraught issues like chronic pain in light of the current opioid crisis. This study expands the breadth of phonetic analysis within the domain of discourse analysis, serving to illuminate discussions surrounding the illocutionary role of the lower vocal tract in expressing emotions. (shrink)

Antonio Gramsci is one of the major social and political theorists of the 20th century whose work has had an enormous influence on several fields, including educational theory and practice. Gramsci and Education demonstrates the relevance of Antonio Gramsci's thought for contemporary educational debates. The essays are written by scholars located in different parts of the world, a number of whom are well known internationally for their contributions to Gramscian scholarship and/or educational research. The collection deals with a broad range (...) of topics, including schooling, adult education in general, popular education, workers' education, cultural studies, critical pedagogy, multicultural education, and the role of intellectuals in contemporary society. (shrink)

Esta obra congrega a un grupo de reconocidos filósofos alemanes, argentinos, españoles, venezolanos y colombianos, en torno a la figura del Profesor Dr. Guillermo Hoyos Vásquez. Con aportes en los ámbitos de la fenomenología, la filosofía política y la ética se ofrece al lector especializado, pero también al estudiante de filosofía y al lector interesado en la reflexión filosófica, una serie de escritos de primer orden y de máxima actualidad.

Este trabajo parte de la concepción de la narrativa transmedia por parte de Henry Jenkins como el arte de making worlds, de construir mundos de ficción, para extender los fundamentos teóricos de esta definición al género documental. Si Bill Nichols indica que este género de no ficción tiene per se un gran poder persuasivo -por la naturaleza icónica de sus imágenes y sonidos y por el efecto psicológico de verosimilitud que suscita en el público-, aquí defendemos que este carácter (...) se potencia por medio de la narrativa transmedia. La inmersión, la extrabilidad y la performatividad de este tipo de narrativa lleva a la participación activa del usuario en el mundo transmedia, que coincide con su propio mundo, el real. Por esa razón numerosos proyectos activistas han visto en el documental transmedia una oportunidad tanto para el ejercicio del pensamiento crítico como para el cambio social. (shrink)

How is mind related to matter? This ancient question in philosophy is rapidly becoming a core problem in science, perhaps the most important of all because it probes the essential nature of man himself. The origin of the problem is a conflict between the mechanical conception of human beings that arises from the precepts of classical physical theory and the very different idea that arises from our intuition: the former reduces each of us to an automaton, while the latter allows (...) our thoughts to guide our actions. The dominant contemporary approaches to the problem attempt to resolve this conflict by clinging to the classical concepts, and trying to explain away our misleading intuition. But a detailed argument given here shows why, in a scientific approach to this problem, it is necessary to use the more basic principles of quantum physics, which bring the observer into the dynamics, rather than to accept classical precepts that are profoundly incorrect precisely at the crucial point of the role of human consciousness in the dynamics of human brains. Adherence to the quantum principles yields a dynamical theory of the mind/brain/body system that is in close accord with our intuitive idea of what we are. In particular, the need for a self-observing quantum system to pose certain questions creates a causal opening that allows mind/brain dynamics to have three distinguishable but interlocked causal processes, one micro-local, one stochastic, and the third experiential. Passing to the classical limit in which the critical difference between zero and the finite actual value of Planck's constant is ignored not only eliminates the chemical processes that are absolutely crucial to the functioning of actual brains, it simultaneously blinds the resulting theoretical construct to the physical fine structure wherein the effect of mind on matter lies: the use of this limit in this context is totally unjustified from a physics perspective. (shrink)

Augustine was arguably the greatest early Christian philosopher. His teachings had a profound effect on Medieval scholarship, Renaissance humanism, and the religious controversies of both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. Here, Henry Chadwick places Augustine in his philosophical and religious context and traces the history of his influence on Western thlught, both within and beyond the Christian tradition. -- PUBLISHER DESCRIPTION.

One of the most important topics in current work on consciousness is what relationship it has to attention. Recently, one of the focuses of this debate has been on the phenomenon of identity crowding. Ned Block has claimed that identity crowding involves conscious perception of an object that we are unable to pay attention to. In this article, we draw upon a range of empirical findings to argue against Block's interpretation of the data. We also argue that current empirical evidence (...) strongly supports an interpretation of the data that emphasises cognitive inference over conscious perception. (shrink)

A biography of Augustine's thought life, as interpreted by the acclaimed church historian, the late Professor Henry Chadwick. Augustine's intellectual development is recounted with clarity and warmth, providing a characteristically rigorous yet sympathetic narrative of this central figure in the history of Christian thought.

Both Jacques and Raïssa Maritain produced large and diverse bodies of writing, and their creative lives spanned decades and encompassed the most turbulent periods of the twentieth century. Scholarly engagement with their work continues to reap new insights, and that includes engagement with the writings produced in the earlier portions of their respective careers. Those earlier portions were themselves remarkably productive, and issued not only in important writings but also in profoundly influential professional and personal relationships nurtured and developed with (...) a truly diverse array of scholars, clergy, and artists, including such figures as Henri Bergson, Leon Bloy, Ernest Psichari, and Georges Rouault. This new anthology of essays manages both to interact with the biographies and writings of the Maritains themselves (and to a degree their close early associates) and also to contribute to novel Thomistic reflection on themes from their early careers, among them war, suffering, politics, art, intuition, and foundational issues in moral theology. The essays are historically informed yet address perennial issues of vital significance for the life of the Church and the broader culture. The contributing authors are Prudence Allen, John Deely, Elizabeth Jane Doering, Heather Erb, Doug Flippen, Heidi Giebel, Ben Huff, James Jacobs, Florian Michel, Mark Moes, Brenna Moore, Bernadette OConnor, Matthew Pugh, James V. Schall, Joshua Schulz, Daniel Shields, Michael Torre, and John Wippel. (shrink)

This volume, originally published in 2002, assembles the historical sequence of writings that Kant published between 1783 and 1796 to popularize, summarize, amplify and defend the doctrines of his masterpiece, the Critique of Pure Reason of 1781. The best known of them, the Prolegomena, is often recommended to beginning students, but the other texts are also vintage Kant and are important sources for a fully rounded picture of Kant's intellectual development. As with other volumes in the series there are copious (...) linguistic notes and a glossary of key terms. The editorial introductions and explanatory notes shed light on the critical reception accorded Kant by the metaphysicians of his day and on Kant's own efforts to derail his opponents. (shrink)

The relationship between sexuality education and religion is often framed antagonistically, especially when it comes to tensions between the teaching of sexuality education and the priorities of some religious communities. In this paper, we argue that this antagonism can be structured as much by the prevalent forms of engagement that display it (dialogue and debate), as it is by the antagonism between contrasting ethical systems. While we acknowledge the importance of debate and dialogue in the public sphere, we contend that (...) appeals to these discursive forms in schools and classrooms can limit possibilities for rethinking engagements across sexuality education and religion. This is because of the tendency within certain manifestations of dialogue (for example, dialogical models connected to liberal political projects) to err on the side of predictability, rationality and abstraction. To address some of these limits, we draw on the recent turn to conversation in educational thinking. We think through the significance of conversation in offering a mode of engagement for students, teachers and school communities that is conditioned by the dispossession of the self and is attuned to the unpredictable, affective and contextual landscapes of shared encounters. We conclude with some thoughts on the practical implications of conversation for rethinking the role of the sexuality education teacher, practices of parental consultation and processes of policy enactment in schools. (shrink)

Eight principles to take responsibility for your life"--Provided by publisher.

The present work analyzes the various expressions of the corporeal condition of human existence, from the complex, social and cultural construction of the subject and the subjectivities in Modernity, and works the metaphors of bodies (in their soma and in their psyche which are intimately linked with embodiment) disdained, mutilated and painful that are put on the scene of Latin American society, projecting what is admitted and what is forbidden, in the places of memory of resistances and dominations. Here, a (...) problematic relationship is drawn to the order and corporeal cosmos of history and society; In this way, the book expands an analysis by an inter and transdisciplinary history of the body in terms of symbolic construction and power-knowledge relations, which make it a field of events, a terrain of marriage of technical, linguistic and psychosocial devices in the aesthetic and suffering framework of the human and in the processes of subjectivation of the world. (shrink)

The article addresses issues at the nexus of physician industrial action, moral agency, and responsibility. There are situations in which we find ourselves best placed to offer aid to those who may be in vulnerable positions, a behavior that is consistent with our everyday moral intuitions. In both our interpersonal relationships and social life, we make frequent judgments about whether to praise or blame someone for their actions when we determine that they should have acted to help a vulnerable person. (...) While the average person is unlikely to confront these kinds of situations often, those in the medical professions, physicians especially, may confront these and similar situations regularly. Therefore, when physicians withhold their services for whatever reason in support of industrial action, it raises issues of moral responsibility to patients who may be in a vulnerable position. Using theories of moral responsibility, vulnerability, and ethics, this paper explores the moral implications of physician industrial action. We explore issues of vulnerability of patients, as well as the moral responsibility and moral agency of doctors to patients. Determining when a person is vulnerable, and when an individual becomes a moral agent, worthy of praise or blame for an act or non-action, is at the core of the framework. Notwithstanding the right of physicians to act in their self-interest, we argue that vulnerability leads to moral obligations, that physicians are moral agents, and the imperatives of their obligations to patients clear, even if limited by certain conditions. We suggest that both doctors and governments have a collective responsibility to prevent harm to patients and present the theoretical and practical implications of the paper. (shrink)

It is often debated whether what we ought, politically, to do is determined by standards that are independent of any actual political process or whether, by contrast, judgments reached in actual democratic processes have constitutive importance in determining what we should do. This paper argues that this is not an exclusive disjunction and that, consistently with there being independent standards, constitutively authoritative judgments can enter into the truth-conditions pertaining to claims about what we ought, politically, to do. The crucial objection (...) to constitutive judgment is that it involves an unacceptable form of bootstrapping, according to which reasons arise out of nothing. To circumvent this objection, the paper deploys John Broome's notion of a wide-scope 'normative requirement'. Normative requirements affect what ought to be done without altering the balance of reasons and defuse the bootstrapping objection by blocking the derivation of all-things-considered conclusions. To show that politics involves constitutive authority of this kind, the paper defends two illustrative normative requirements applicable to the political process that give constitutive roles to political judgments of various kinds. Throughout, the discussion is enlivened by comparisons to the judgments of a baseball umpire, which have been illuminatingly discussed by Robert Brandom. (shrink)

Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900), English philosopher and educator is today most famous for his Methods of Ethics first published in 1874 and considered by C. D. Broad among others to be the greatest single work on ethics in English. Besides philosophy, Sidgwick wrote on education, literature, political theory, the history of political institutions, and psychical research. He was also active in University politics, economics and administration, playing a large part in the founding of the first College for women - Newnham (...) College, Cambridge. Although Methods of Ethics is considered the most valuable of his writings - reprinted here in its first and last editions - his intellect is displayed in the full extent of his writings. Professor Marshall said in reference to his discussions of the proper functions of government in Principles of Political Economy that it was 'by far the best thing of the kind in any language'. In all his writings, Sidgwick is rigorous and cautious, reluctant to advance ideas without making sure of his ground. In common with Mill he was opposed to mystical and transcendental methods. This comprehensive collection brings together the most definitive editions of all his books and includes the standard biography written by his wife, as well as two volumes of previously uncollected essays and reviews. (shrink)