We study whether changes in analyst recommendation ratings systems encouraged by the implementation of NASD 2711 in 2002 are associated with improved objectivity and independence in analyst recommendations. Using recommendations issued during windows surrounding major investment banking events, we show that reductions in analyst optimism following the reforms concentrate in the recommendations of analysts whose employer adopted a three-tier rating system at the time of the reforms, and that this effect is generally stronger for analysts whom the underlying incentives to (...) engage in unethical behaviour is greatest. We also find evidence that adoption of the three-tier system improved the market’s perception of the objectivity of analyst recommendations issued after SEOs, and that for hold and sell-type recommendations this effect was stronger for analysts subject to the greatest potential ethical conflicts. While we find some evidence of a general post-reform increase in the profitability of recommendations issued following equity transactions, this improvement was only conditioned by changes to the rating system in our IPO sample. (shrink)

In recent years, knowledge management has been utilized as an essential strategy to foster the creation of organizational intellectual capital. Organizational intellectual capital can be derived both individually and collectively in the process to create, store, share, acquire, and apply personal and organizational knowledge. However, some organizations only focus on the development of public good, despite the concerns arising from individuals' self-interest or possible risks. The different concern of individual and collective perspectives toward knowledge management inevitably leads to ethical conflicts (...) and ethical culture in the organization (Jarvenpaa et al., J Manage Inf Syst 14(4): 29-64, 1998; Ruppel and Harrington, IEEE Trans Prof Commun 44(l): 37-52, 2000). The purpose of this study is to examine the ethical climate within the organization and its possible influence on members' evaluation, satisfaction, engagement, and job performance with respect to knowledge management practice. The research results reveal that several types of organizational ethical climate coexist in the organization and have different degrees of influence on employees' attitude as well as participation in knowledge management activities. In this article, we argue the importance of organizational ethical climate and highlight the implications of such a climate for facilitating knowledge management. (shrink)

We conducted this study in order to understand the extent to which Taiwanese social studies teachers are prepared to grapple with controversial issues in their classrooms. To do so, we employed a curricular-instructional gatekeeping framework to make meaning of teacher decisions and the contexts in which they work. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 preservice teachers and five university professors of teacher education in Taiwan. The findings suggest that writ large, social studies education in Taiwan is largely social science education (...) and within this context, preservice teachers have variable conceptualizations of controversial issues which are shaped by a wide variety of external forces that ultimately serve to undermine enactment of discussion. (shrink)

Humans are creatures of articulation: an essential part of our form of life is the expression of what appears to us significant in what we experience and how we behave. The aim of this volume is to proceed from this realisation to an integrative anthropology that not only takes into account the uniqueness of our form of life, but also our evolutionary context. This has important consequences for our understanding of our corporeality, actions, language, consciousness and morals.

Abstract This study was designed to investigate the factors affecting ethical practices of public relations professionals in public relations firms. In particular, the following organizational ethics factors were examined: (1) presence of ethics code, (2) top management support for ethical practice, (3) ethical climate, and (4) perception of the association between career success and ethical practice. Analysis revealed that the presence of an ethics code along with top management support and a non-egoistic ethical climate within public relations firms significantly influenced (...) public relations professionals' ethical practices. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s13520-011-0013-1 Authors Eyun-Jung Ki, Department of Advertising and Public Relations, College of Communication and Information Sciences, The University of Alabama, Box 870172, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0172, USA Junghyuk Lee, Division of Communication Arts, Kwangwoon University, Seoul, South Korea Hong-Lim Choi, School of Communication, Sun Moon University, 100, Kalsan-ri, Tangjeong-myeon, Asan-si, Chungnam 336-708, South Korea Journal Asian Journal of Business Ethics Online ISSN 2210-6731 Print ISSN 2210-6723. (shrink)

This article aims to describe the last 10 years of the collaborative scientific endeavors on polarization in particular and collective problem-solving in general by our multidisciplinary research team. We describe the team’s disciplinary composition—social psychology, political science, social philosophy/epistemology, and complex systems science— highlighting the shared and unique skill sets of our group members and how each discipline contributes to studying polarization and collective problem-solving. With an eye to the literature on team dynamics, we describe team logistics and processes that (...) we believe make our multidisciplinary team persistent and productive. We emphasize challenges and difficulties caused by disciplinary differences in terms of terminology, units/levels of analysis, methodology, and theoretical assumptions. We then explain how work disambiguating the concepts of polarization and developing an integrative theoretical and methodological framework with complex systems perspectives has helped us overcome these challenges. We summarize the major findings that our research has produced over the past decade, and describe our current research and future directions. Last, we discuss lessons we have learned, including difficulties in a “three models” project and how we addressed them, with suggestions for effective multidisciplinary team research. (shrink)

In her last novella, The Hour of the Star, Lispector makes plain that the brilliance of life – any life whatever – lies in its capacity to endlessly contemplate itself and that as such it is inseparable from its mode of contemplation. As we will suggest in this article, Lispector’s view of life as living contemplation resonates with Giorgio Agamben’s conception of being as potentiality. In the last installment of his Homo Sacer series, The Use of Bodies, Agamben tries to (...) offer an alternative paradigm of life to that of Western biopolitics, whose power operates on its separation of bare life from forms of life. Central to this new ontology is Agamben’s notion of a life as inseparable from its mode or form, as he highlights using a hyphen: form-of-life. By form-of-life, Agamben means that one’s living is never reducible to the biological or economic facts of existence because it essentially concerns itself with its potentialities, its singular modes of being. Life that contemplates itself is a life which simply is without being reducible to its function. In The Hour of the Star, Lispector’s heroine, Macabéa is not simply a figure of bare life as some critics have suggested by reducing her life to her factual circumstances. She is rather a figure whose life is affected by its own sensation of existing – its unborn possibilities. (shrink)

What does God know about future contingents? – according to some fourteenth-century English thinkers The paper is concerned with the problem of God’s knowledge aboutfuture contingents, which has raised many doubts connected with the incompatibility of certainty and necessity of God’s knowledge and contingency of future events, or, even more, with the incompatibility of God’s precognition causing necessary events with human’s free choice guaranteed by his free will. From the very beginning of the Middle Ages theologians tried to find solutions (...) to these questions, but—in my opinion—the most interesting ones were those expressed by John Duns Scotus. This paper presents mostly the theories of some English thinkers who were active at Oxford Universityin the 14th century and who criticized or agreed with Scotus’s ideas. They introduced new terminology and clarified particular problems initiating original logico-theological debates, in which the problem of God’s action with regard to His potentiaabsoluta et ordinataplayed the main role. Keywords: Middle Ages theologians, English thinkers, God’s knowledge, future contingents. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 96 Heft: 1 Seiten: 334-337.

2020 marks 100 years of women’s suffrage in the U.S. Considering this anniversary and the Christian presumption in favor of democracy, this essay invites readers to honor all those who worked for women’s suffrage in two specific ways. First, it invites them to tell the whole truth about the movement, both its many moments of grace and its moral failures. Second, it encourages readers to make the connection between this ambiguous legacy and ongoing forms of voter suppression in the U.S. (...) and then to celebrate suffrage by finishing the fight for it. (shrink)

Das Werk des soziologischen Klassikers Karl Mannheim ist bisher primär unter zwei Lesarten rekonstruiert worden: einer ideologischen und einer wissenssoziologischen. Die wissenssoziologische Lesart ist dabei die Interpretationsweise, die noch bis heute die Rezeption dominiert. Diese Interpretationsstudie praktiziert einen dritten Weg der Werkrekonstruktion. Ausgehend von der Mannheim'schen These der prinzipiellen Seinsgebundenheit des Denkens werden seine Schriften als Grundlegung einer Denksoziologie gelesen, bei der die soziologische Analyse der sozialen Funktionalität von Denk- und Weltanschauungsweisen im Vordergrund steht. Mannheim und sein Werk werden so (...) als ein Dokument eines soziologischen Erkenntnis- und Denkskeptizismus rekonstruiert, dessen basale Argumentationsstruktur beständig zwischen Synthese und Agonalität oszilliert. Dieses Buch stellt zudem eine systematische Aufarbeitung der inhaltlichen wie methodischen Grundkategorien der Mannheim'schen Soziologie dar, sodass es zugleich als grundlegende Einführung in das Werk Karl Mannheims für Studierende der Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften genutzt werden kann. (shrink)

The main characteristic of modern science is that its new theories contain the old ones as their particular cases. In this respect, one can speak of "modern" science only since 17th century discoveries of Galileo, Kepler and Descartes. Yet, one can find certain traits of the modern scientific mode of thinking as early as in 14th century; they include interest in the practical use of science, introduction of experiment and mathematical method. Late medieval science was powerfully influenced by the doctrines (...) of Aristotle, who found the essence of scientific pursuit in establishing the causes of the phenomena observed in the world in the inductive process of abstraction, which has three main stages of generalization: physics, mathematics, and metaphysics. In physics the solutions were hinged on the concept of natural directions and the belief that uniform motion requires permanent application of power. The foundations of Aristotelean physics were first questioned in the 14th century. Duns Scotus and Wiliam of Ockham critically discussed the doctrine of induction, originating the shift of interest towards observation. Peter of Abano started the theory of experiment. Some criticism came from the theologians, who questioned certain limitations of the Aristotelean frame of mind. The main subject of controversy was the concept of vacuum, discussed especially with the reference to motion. Here the Aristotelean standpoint was criticised from the positions of atomism and Platonism by a number of scholars starting from Robert Grosseteste, through Giles of Rome and Nicholas of Autrecourt, to Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno. Other controversial problems included plurality of the worlds, privileged positions in the universe, circular motion of the earth. Here an important contribution was made by Nicolas Copernicus. Another group of scholars, which helped to overcome Aristoteleanism, was the so-called Merton school of Oxford. Their new theories of motion, which distinguished between its kinematic and dynamic aspects, quickly spread through Europe and are said to have influenced Galileo. Yet another source of inspiration was found by Galileo in the views of the nominalist school of Paris, notably Nicholas of Oresme and John Buridan. By reaping the benefit of their innovations and overcoming their deficiencies Galileo was able to lay foundations for the modern science, first fully formulated by Newton. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article sets out to investigate the discourses, ideologies, and identities of international teaching assistants as they engage in hegemonic diversity discourses concerning inequ...