In the wake of the most recent financial crisis, corporations have been criticized as being self-interested and unmindful of their relationship to society. Indeed, the blame is sometimes placed on the corporate legal form, which can exacerbate the tension between duties to shareholders and interests of stakeholders. In comparison, the Benefit Corporation (BC) is a new legal business entity that is obligated to pursue public benefit in addition to the responsibility to return profits to shareholders. It is legally a for-profit, (...) socially obligated, corporate form of business, with all the traditional corporate characteristics combined with societal responsibilities. Considering the history and perception of shareholder primacy in United States law, it is argued that this new business structure is an ethical step toward empowering socially committed commercial entities. The contribution of this research is to provide a fundamental base of knowledge about the new legal form of business, the BC, upon which further study may rely. First, the legal history of the corporation is briefly reviewed in order to provide context to the relationship of the corporate form to society, including exploration of the premise that shareholder wealth maximization is its best and only purpose. Second, the BC is described in detail, and state statutes are compared. Third, the BC is placed within the context of corporate social responsibility. Finally, opportunities for future research are discussed. (shrink)

PERRON A and HOLMES D. Nursing Inquiry 2011; 18: 191–204Constructing mentally ill inmates: nurses’ discursive practices in correctionsThe concepts of discourse, subjectivity and power allow for innovative explorations in nursing research. Discourse take many different forms and may be maintained, transmitted, even imposed, in various ways. Nursing practice makes possible many discursive spaces where discourses intersect. Using a Foucauldian perspective, were explored the ways in which forensic psychiatric nurses construct the subjectivity of mentally ill inmates. Progress notes and individual (...) interviews constitute discursive spaces within which nurses construct patients’ subjectivities. Progress notes provide a written (and permanent) form of discourse, while interviews set the space for a more fluid and contextual form of discourse. We identified five types of subjectivities – the (in)visible patient, the patient as risk, the deviant patient, the disturbed patient and the disciplined patient. These subjectivities were rooted in various types of discourses circulating in the selected setting. Despite the multiple discursive dimensions of forensic psychiatric nursing, progress notes remain the main formal source of information regarding nursing care even though it is not representative of the care provided nor is it representative of nurses’ complex discursive practices in corrections. (shrink)

In this paper I distinguish three senses of could turn out/couldhave turned out in an attempt to elucidate how each is connected tothe notion of discovery and how each determines that a statement ofthe form `X could turn out P' (`X could have turned out P') is true.I argue that the actuality-oriented sense of could turn outbest captures what we ordinarily mean when we use could turnout or could have turned out in a nonevidential sense.

Des mortalités anormales frappent les ruchers d’Europe et d’autres continents depuis un peu plus de vingt ans. Depuis le début des troubles, des suspicions pèsent sur des insecticides d’un genre nouveau, utilisés en traitement de semences. La législation prescrivant l’évaluation des risques environnementaux de toute substance insecticide dès avant sa mise sur le marché, des apiculteurs sont allés consulter les dossiers portant sur les molécules suspectées, ce qui les a amenés à s’impliquer dans la critique et l’élaboration des règles d’évaluation, (...) et à côtoyer le monde des experts en toxicologie de l’abeille.Beehives across Europe and other continents have been affected by abnormal mortality for the last twenty years. Since these problems first appeared, suspicion has fallen on a new type of insecticide, which is used to treat seeds. The legislation prescribes environmental risk assessments of any insecticide substance before it reaches the market, and beekeepers therefore decided to consult the files concerning the suspect molecules. As a result, they became involved in critically reviewing and developing assessment rules, and thus came to rub shoulders with experts in bee toxicology. (shrink)

The concept of citizenship is becoming more and more prominent in specific fields, such as psychiatry/mental health, where it is constituted as a solution to the issues of exclusion, discrimination, and poverty often endured by the mentally ill. We argue that such discourse of citizenship represents a break in the history of psychiatry and constitutes a powerful strategy to counter the effects of equally powerful psychiatric labelling. However, we call into question the emancipatory promise of a citizenship agenda. Foucault's concept (...) of governmentality is helpful in understanding the production of the citizen subject, its location within the 'art of government', as well as the ethical and political implications of citizenship in the context of mental health. (shrink)

An eighth grade student from Oregon delves into the meaning of art.

When shared decision making breaks down and parents and medical providers have developed entrenched and conflicting views, ethical frameworks are needed to find a way forward. This article reviews the evolution of thought about the best interest standard and then discusses the advantages of the harm principle (HP) and the zone of parental discretion (ZPD). Applying these frameworks to parental refusals in situations of complexity and uncertainty presents challenges that necessitate concrete substeps to analyze the big picture and identify key (...) questions. I outline and defend a new decision-making tool that includes three parts: identifying the nature of the disagreement, checklists for key elements of the HP and ZPD, and a “think list” of specific questions designed to enhance use of the HP and ZPD in clinical decision making. These tools together will assist those embroiled in complex disagreements to disentangle the issues to find a path to resolution. (shrink)

The debate surrounding the issue of collective moral responsibility is often steeped in metaphysical issues of agency and personhood. I suggest that we can approach the metaphysical problems surrounding the issue of collective responsibility in a roundabout manner. My approach is reminiscent of that taken by P.F. Strawson in "Freedom and Resentment" (1968). Strawson argues that the participant reactive attitudes - attitudes like resentment, gratitude, forgiveness and so on - provide the justification for holding individuals morally responsible. I argue that (...) the framework of the reactive attitudes extends to collectives and provides the justification for holding collectives morally responsible. (shrink)

Any worlds semantics for intentionality has to provide a plenitudinous theory of impossibility: For any impossible proposition, it should provide a world where it is true. Hence, also any semantics for impossibility statements that extends Lewis’s concretism about possible worlds should be plenitudinous. However, several such proposals for impossibilist semantics fail to accommodate two kinds of impossibility that, albeit not unheard of, have been largely neglected in the literature on impossible worlds, but that are bound to arise in the Lewisian (...) context. The proposals discussed here stop short of plenitude because they adhere to what Lewis occasionally referred to as ‘ontological truth’, as they lack the semantic ability to misrepresent ontological facts. The paper develops a framework for systematic misrepresentations on the basis of Mares’s situation-based account of impossible ‘worlds’, and which confines ‘ontological truth’ to possibility. It thus illustrates how a plenitude of impossibilities can be achieved. (shrink)

Louis Perron Le discours cosmologique actuel permet-il d’affirmer le caractère théophanique du cosmos, au sens où celui-ci pourrait être considéré comme le lieu de la manifestation visible et immédiate de Dieu? Plus généralement : est-il en mesure d’ouvrir un chemin vers la foi? Contrairement à un discours récurrent, l’auteur, s’appuyant sur l’oeuvre de Jean Ladrière, défend la thèse qu’il n’existe pas de voie royale conduisant de la science à la foi. Celle-ci peut cependant recueillir l’image scientifique du monde et (...) lui conférer une signification propre, moyennant un parcours herméneutique s’appuyant sur l’articulation des différents registres de sens et dont la médiation philosophique constitue le passage obligé. (shrink)

This paper examines whether and to what extent the overall business strategy influences the firm’s mismanagement of sustainability. Specifically, an empirical measure for the mismanagement of sustainability is developed by exploiting the newly available materiality guidelines for US firms to define industry-specific material sustainability issues. Using this measure, this paper shows that mismanagement of sustainability can represent unethical business behavior when firms intentionally perform better on immaterial issues than on material issues by diverting stakeholders’ attention from the firm’s low overall (...) sustainability performance. This paper assumes that the right business strategy can prevent such unethical actions. Based on Miles and Snow’s organizational theory, this paper distinguishes between Prospector and Defender business strategies. By employing multiple firm-level panel regressions, the findings suggest that Prospector-type firms are more likely to mismanage sustainability issues compared to Defender-type firms intentionally. The results give implications for researchers, regulators and standard setters, auditors, sustainability practitioners, and scholars. (shrink)

A wealth of literature and best practices on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) document how it can be implemented in projects. However, each project is too specific to simply replicate existing patterns. Especially in early projects with a high degree of uncertainty, where indicators and measures cannot be applied, the so-called provenance assessment as a methodological change of perspective makes it possible to assess the procedural quality of research by means of narratives. A clear picture of the challenges for European (...) bio-economy projects is sought by mapping the broader debate on "RRI in practice" in the context of biotechnology. The SUSPHIRE project is used as a case study to show how project-specific narratives integrate and signify RRI. By unpacking various concepts of "responsibility" that are already present in the project narrative at an early stage, I will show how this assessment differs significantly from other attempts to "do RRI". It is precisely in the absence of other criteria that the assessment of provenance can bring to the fore the specific form(s) of responsibility inherent in the development of projects. (shrink)

This article examines the Canadian case, focusing on the ways in which the political rationalities that have informed the Canadian variants of post-war social liberalism and neoliberalism have opened and then closed spaces for the articulation and institutionalization of gender-based equality claims-making. The article recounts how the Canadian welfare state underwrote a unique gender equality infrastructure inside the state and a thick field of gender organizations in civil society and later how this potent political and symbolic node of social liberalism (...) became a critical field of contestation for those promoting neoliberal political rationalities. The article describes a protracted war of position in which the gendered politics and identities of the 20th century have been displaced and marginalized, but not fully consumed by neoliberal idioms, representations and policy interventions. (shrink)

The study examines gradation as a central mode of 18th century thought. Originally a structural notion in the natural sciences, gradation underwent a change in the 17th century to become a major descriptive trope for gradually intensifying patterns of change. As a trope that extends across disciplinary boundaries, gradation became an important aesthetic concept of the period in areas as diverse as rhetoric, aesthetics, dramatic art, and music."--Provided by publisher.

The Administration of Buddhism in China: A Study and Translation of Zanning and the Topical Compendium of the Buddhist Clergy, by Albert Welter. Cambria Press, 2018. 722pp., Hb. $154.99. ISBN-13: 9781604979428.

An anthology that provides new translations and makes available much of the relevant historical literature needed for an exploration of the view that morality is very literally created by God. Contains 41 selections representing discussions of divine command morality in Ancient philosophy, scholastic philosophical theology, the Reformation tradition, the British modern period, and contemporary analytic philosophy. This book includes a bibliography of Latin, French, English, German, and Italian sources on divine command morality.

Objective: To evaluate the effect of an intervention on the understanding and use of DNR orders by physicians; to assess the impact of understanding the importance of involving competent patients in DNR decisions. Design: Prospective clinical interventional study. Setting: Internal medicine department (70 beds) of the hospital of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Participants: Nine junior physicians in postgraduate training. Intervention: Information on the ethics of DNR and implementation of new DNR orders. Measurements and main results: Accurate understanding, interpretation, and use of (...) DNR orders, especially with respect to the patients’ involvement in the decision were measured. Junior doctors writing DNR orders had an extremely poor understanding of what DNR orders mean. The correct understanding of the definition of a DNR order increased from 31 to 93% (p<0.01) after the intervention and the patients’ involvement went from 17% to 48% (p<0.01). Physicians estimated that 75% of their DNR patients were mentally competent at the time of the decision. Conclusion: An intervention aimed at explaining the ethical principles and the definition of DNR orders improves understanding of them, and their implementation, as well as patient participation. Specific efforts are needed to increase the involvement of mentally competent patients in the decision. (shrink)

The idea of agency has long been used in the nursing literature in the study of nurses' roles regarding the patients they take care of, but it has not often been used to study its relationship with nurses themselves and their status in the healthcare system. The purpose of this article is to analyze how the idea of agency is used in nursing research to better understand how we might advance our thinking around nurses' agency to shape nursing and healthcare (...) with an emancipatory intent. Based on the results of a literature review focused on the study of conceptions, treatments, and applications of the concept of agency in nursing, we present a critical discussion to reflect on the need to consistently define the idea of nurses' agency, to guide research concerned with this topic in theoretical frameworks with emancipatory and social change tenets, and to make a call to develop the idea of agency as a central one to rework nurses' relationship with themselves. The idea of agency provides a valuable analytical framework for the study of a wide range of issues around nurses' status in healthcare organizations and in the healthcare system while offering a means for nurses' emancipation. (shrink)

"Teaching after all is about knowing children well" -- from A Letter to Teachers "Perrone has given us a gift, a book worth reading over many times, an important reflection on his many years of close observation of schools and school people, parents, teachers, children, and their communities." -- Deborah W. Meier, principal, Central Park East Secondary School Simple, elegant and full of common sense, these reflections on the art of teaching address the deepest concerns teachers have for their work (...) with children and young people. (shrink)

This article unfolds in three stages. First, it locates the emergence of modern conceptions of social justice in industrializing Europe, and especially in the discovery of the “social,” which provided a particular idiom for the liberal democratic politics for most of the twentieth century. Second, the article links this particular conception of the social to the political rationalities of the postwar welfare state and the identity of the social citizen. Finally, the article discusses the myriad ways in which this legacy (...) of the social and social justice has been disrupted, although not yet fully displaced, by the economic orthodoxies and individualization that inform the contemporary neoliberal governing project in Canada. The result, the article concludes, has been the institutionalization of insecurity, which demands the renewal of a social way of seeing and a politics of social justice on local and global scales. (shrink)

The sexual assault of persons with mental disabilities occurs at alarmingly high rates worldwide. These assaults are a form of gender-based violence intersecting with discrimination based on disability. Our research on the treatment of such cases in the Canadian criminal justice system demonstrates the systemic barriers these victims face at the level of both substantive legal doctrine and trial procedure. Relying on feminist legal theory and disability theory, we argue in this paper that abuses of trust and power underlie most (...) sexual assaults of women with mental disabilities. We argue that existing Criminal Code provisions in Canada are inadequate to address this type of exploitation because courts have consistently failed to recognize that such abuses of power and trust are fundamentally inconsistent with any notion of voluntary consent. (shrink)