How much of everyday language use takes place on autopilot, how much are speakers aware of, and how do their attitudes relate to this? In particular, how do these factors together account for variation between speakers? Limburgian, a regional language within the Netherlands, is under pressure from Dutch in an intensive language contact situation. The use of a non-feminine subject pronoun for women is a Limburgian feature which is not shared with Dutch. Limburgian speakers show a large range of variation (...) regarding this feature, both when it comes to its use, and how it is perceived. By studying speakers’ self-reports of three concepts – automaticity, attitudes, and metalinguistic awareness – as well as how these together relate to self-reported language use (N = 405), this paper investigates to what extent speakers have control over their own language use. Our findings suggest that self-reported automaticity is the driving force in the use of the non-feminine pronoun, but also that this autopilot may be curbed by metalinguistic awareness and attitudes. Importantly, speakers vary considerably on all three concepts, highlighting once more that language users are not a monolith, and that individual speakers may react differently in a language contact situation. (shrink)

Some argue that managers over-invest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities to build their personal reputations as good global citizens. Others claim that CEOs strategically choose CSR activities to reduce the probability of CEO turnover in a future period through indirect support from activists. Still others assert that firms use CSR activities to signal their product quality. We find that firms use governance mechanisms, along with CSR engagement, to reduce conflicts of interest between managers and non-investing stakeholders. Employing a large (...) and extensive sample of firms within Russell 2000, S& 500 and Domini 400 indices during the 1993-2004 period, we find that consistent with the conflict-resolution hypothesis, the CSR choice is positively associated with governance characteristics, including board independence, institutional ownership, and analyst following. In addition, after correcting for endogeneity of CSR engagement, our results show that CSR engagement positively influences operating performance and firm value, supporting the conflict-resolution hypothesis as opposed to the over-investment and strategic-choice arguments. We find only a weak support of the product-signaling hypothesis as a major motive of CSR engagement. (shrink)

This study examines the relation between corporate social responsibility and institutional investor ownership, and the impact of this relation on stock return volatility. We find that institutional ownership does not strictly increase or decrease in CSR; rather, institutional ownership is a concave function of CSR. This evidence suggests that institutional investors do not see CSR as strictly value-enhancing activities. Institutional investors adjust their percentage of ownership when CSR activities go beyond the perceived optimal level. Employing the path analysis, we also (...) examine the mediating effect of institutional ownership on the relation between CSR and stock return volatility. We find that CSR decreases stock return volatility at a decreasing rate through its effect on institutional ownership. Our results remain robust under several different CSR measures and estimation methods. (shrink)

In this paper we reflect on the effectiveness of cognitive mapping as a method to study farm functioning in its complexity and its diverse forms in the framework of our own experiment with a diverse group of Flemish beef farmers. With a structured direct elicitation method we gathered 30 CMs. We analyzed the content of these maps both qualitatively and quantitatively. The central role of the concept “Income” in most maps indicated a shared concern for economic security. Further, the CMs (...) indicated that farmers dealt with this shared social reality differently, as the relationships included in their maps referred to different functional processes relating to revenue streams, marketing strategies, investment decisions, dependence on production inputs, on-farm resource management, and personal well-being. With a clustering algorithm we grouped farmers based on the relationships in their maps, which allowed us to trace some of the broader patterns within the data, such as the existence of more business- and investment-minded farmers, in contrast to farmers focused on their quality of life, and animal production-oriented in contrast to marketing-oriented farmers. Taking into account farmers’ comments, we find that the applied methods had limited capability to classify farmers based on their perspectives on farming. Still, the system presentations proved useful to study what aspects farmers were working on or towards, and how these aspects may actually fit together as a whole. CMing was therefore mostly effective in exploring farm functioning in its complexity, and less so in exploring farm functioning in its diversity. (shrink)

Research ethics guidelines grew out of several infamous episodes where research subjects were exploited. There is significant international synchronization of guidelines. However, indigenous groups in New Zealand, Canada and Australia have criticized these guidelines as being inadequate for research involving indigenous people and have developed guidelines from their own cultural perspectives. Whilst traditional research ethics guidelines place a lot of emphasis on informed consent, these indigenous guidelines put much greater emphasis on interdependence and trust. This article argues that traditional guidelines (...) are premised on relationships of equal power, and that often the researcher has more power that is not fully equalized by providing information. Where there is a relationship of unequal power, then focusing on interdependence and trust is more likely to achieve ethical safety. We illustrate this thesis by describing the detail of a research project looking at the use of interpreters, where we video-recorded live consultations and then interviewed the patient, interpreter and doctor. We conclude by suggesting that mainstream research ethics guidelines should pay more attention to the development of a trustworthy relationship between subject and researcher, and that, following the lead from clinical medicine, we should develop a culturally competent ethical framework for research on human subjects. (shrink)

We empirically examine the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on CEO compensation using a large sample of the US firms from 1996 to 2010. We develop and test two hypotheses, the overinvestment hypothesis based on agency theory and the conflict–resolution hypothesis based on stakeholder theory. We find that the lag of CSR adversely affects both total compensation and cash compensation, after controlling for various firm and board characteristics. Our estimates show that an interquartile increase in CSR is followed by (...) a 4.35% (2.78%) decrease in total (cash) compensation. We also find an inverse association between lagged employee relations and CEO compensation. Our results are robust to the correction for endogeneity using instrumental variable approach. Taken together, our results support the conflict–resolution hypothesis, but not the CSR overinvestment argument. (shrink)

In _Politics with Beauvoir_ Lori Jo Marso treats Simone de Beauvoir's feminist theory and practice as part of her political theory, arguing that freedom is Beauvoir's central concern and that this is best apprehended through Marso's notion of the encounter. Starting with Beauvoir's political encounters with several of her key contemporaries including Hannah Arendt, Robert Brasillach, Richard Wright, Frantz Fanon, and Violette Leduc, Marso also moves beyond historical context to stage encounters between Beauvoir and others such as Chantal Akerman, Lars (...) von Trier, Rahel Varnhagen, Alison Bechdel, the Marquis de Sade, and Margarethe von Trotta. From intimate to historical, always affective though often fraught and divisive, Beauvoir's encounters, Marso shows, exemplify freedom as a shared, relational, collective practice. _Politics with Beauvoir_ gives us a new Beauvoir and a new way of thinking about politics—as embodied and coalitional. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 6, June 2019, Page 30-31.

We enter this energetic debate over causes and consequences of workaholism using autoethnography. Our main contribution is to explore when our autoethnographies of workaholism experiences is narrative, and when it is expressive, living story. The difference in narrative is a re-presentation (following representationalism of a sensory remembrance), where as living story is a matter of reflexivity upon the fragile nature of our life world. We began through analysis of workaholism narratives in our own academic lives, and in the movies of (...) popular culture, the influence of a particular meta-narrative – that of the American Dream. We proceed to juxtapose our own living stories in their struggle with those American Dream narratives. (shrink)

This book chapter shows how the early Heidegger’s philosophy around the period of Being and Time can address some central questions of contemporary social ontology. After sketching “non-summative constructionism”, which is arguably the generic framework that underlies all forms of contemporary analytic social ontology, I lay out early Heidegger’s conception of human social reality in terms of an extended argument. The Heidegger that shows up in light of this treatment is an acute phenomenologist of human social existence who emphasizes our (...) engagement in norm-governed practices as the basis of social reality. I then defuse a common and understandable set of objections against invoking the early Heidegger as someone who can make any positive contribution to our understanding of social reality. Lastly, I explore the extent to which the early Heidegger’s philosophy provides insights regarding phenomena of collective intentionality by showing how the intelligibility of such phenomena traces back to individual agents’ common understanding of possible ways of understanding things and acting with one another. With the early Heidegger, I argue that this common understanding is the fundamental source and basis of collective intentionality, not the non-summativist constructionism on which contemporary analytic social ontology has sought to focus with much effort. The lesson about social ontology that we should learn from the early Heidegger is that there is a tight connection between the social constitution of the human individual and his or her capacity to perform actions or activities that instantiate collective intentionality. (shrink)

Problem solving can be readily described as one of the key activities regularly performed by professionals in any workplace setting. Despite its importance, however, there is relatively little linguistic research which looks at the complex ways in which problems are constructed in discourse. This article sees the enactment of a ‘problem’ as a discursive phenomenon with fluid boundaries. It draws on business meeting data recorded in multinational companies in Europe and focuses on excerpts identified by the participants as having a (...) PbS function. The data show that problem solving processes and practice are anchored to the structure of the organizations, the local history and employees’ shared perceptions of professional practices and hierarchies in their workplace. The analysis also shows two focal points in the PbS talk of the participants in this study, namely identification of a problem and its ownership. These, however, are not predetermined starting points but rather locally constructed in relation to the status, expertise and shared/past history of the interactants. (shrink)

This work's thesis is that since the French Revolution, the dominant ideas of liberty, equality and nationality have been given a meaning quite different from traditional liberal interpretations. Liberty, for instance, has been taken to mean that all power is nominally exercised by the people; this difference, it argues, is the cause of all the sufferings of the age.

Comité Hoene-Wronski.--Avertissement.--Discours de J. Lukasiewicz, ambassadeur de Pologne.--Discours de Ed. Bloud, maire de la ville de Neuilly.--Discours de P. Hazard, professeur au Collège de France.--Warrain, F. Hoene-Wronski : l'homme, le philosophe.--Zaleski, Z. L. Une vue sur la vie et l'oeuvre de Wronski.

Baccaro and Pontusson persuasively argue that nations may choose among models of growth strategies, and that each is associated with a distinctive composition of aggregate demand, producer coalitions, and implications for redistribution. This essay considers the political institutions—patterns of industrial relations and public sector employment—that shape national struggles among producer groups and other social forces over diverse growth strategies.

This study aimed to validate career decision ambiguity tolerance scale-Korean form applicable to a Korean sample. In study 1, 17 items from the original 18-item career decision ambiguity tolerance scale were valid based on IRT. In study 2, using the confirmatory factor analysis, we showed that excluding item 4 from the original scale is better than including it in the three factors model. Given the results of study 1 and 2, the constructs in the 17-item career decision ambiguity tolerance scale-Korean (...) form were valid. In study 3, career decision ambiguity tolerance positively predicted career decision-making self-efficacy, career indecision, and career adaptability respectively, after controlling for calling and career search self-efficacy. Thus, the incremental validity of the career decision ambiguity tolerance scale-Korean form was ensured. In study 4, the reliability of the scale was retained as the test-retest (conducted over a 4-week period) demonstrated adequate results. (shrink)

La passionnante biographie de Vera Atkins réalisée par Sarah Helm à l’issue de nombreuses enquêtes en Europe, est un document précieux, qui jette une lumière nouvelle sur l’engagement des femmes dans les services secrets britanniques opérant en France durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Née en Roumanie en 1908, dans une famille juive aisée, Vera Rosenberg fuit le nazisme et émigra en Angleterre en 1938 avec sa mère, dont elle prit le nom d’Atkins. En 1941, elle entre comme secrétaire au SOE (...) (... (shrink)

The preparation of samples for gene diagnosis is time‐consuming, labor‐intensive and costly. These problems can be overcome by dissolving a biological source in a strong solution of a chaotropic salt, then filtering the solution through an immobilizing membrane. Conditions exist for causing the selective immobilization of either DNA or mRNA. The resultant membrane is immediately ready for reaction with labeled gene probes.

Cellular dedifferentiation is an important developmental response to perturbations in morphogenesis. In the cellular slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum this process gives cells the flexibility, when multicellular development is disrupted, to respond to nutrients and reinitiate vegetative growth. Recent studies in D. discoideum described by Soll and colleagues(1) show that genes previously thought to be expressed only during spore germination are also expressed during induced dedifferentiation, suggesting that similar molecular mechanisms are involved in these two developmental processes. It should now be (...) possible to determine whether the developmental programs that control dedifferentiation during spore germination also control conversion of cell types in the multicellular organism. (shrink)

Religion ist der Kritik ausgesetzt und steht unter Rechtfertigungsdruck. Beides verbindet sie mit der Vernunft. Doch um das Thema «Vernunft und Religion», ein klassisches Thema philosophischer Theologie, ist es gegenwärtig still geworden. Neuzeitliche Metaphysikkritik und Plausibilitätsschwund des Christentums verlangen eine Neuausrichtung philosophischer Theologie. Sie muss die modernen Lebenswelten und Sozialverhältnisse, unter denen die christliche Religion heute gelebt wird, aufgreifen. Zugleich muss sie den Anspruch des Christentums, dass seine Gehalte von allgemeiner Bedeutung für den Menschen sind, gedanklich entfalten. Philosophische Theologie steht (...) dafür, Religion im Diskurs mit der Vernunft zu halten - ein Diskurs, der Strittiges nicht ausschließt und sich nicht in lebensferner Begriffsscholastik erschöpft. (shrink)

Political insider trading has brought substantial attention to ethical considerations in the academic literature. While the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act prohibits members of Congress and their staff from leveraging non-public information to make investment decisions, political insider trading still prevails. We discuss political ethics and social contract theory to re-engage the debate on whether political insider trading is _unethical_ and raises the issues of conflict of interest and social distrust. Empirically, using a novel measure of information risk, (...) we find that senator trades are associated with substantially high levels of information asymmetry. Moreover, based on inside political information, senators earn significant market-adjusted returns (4.9% over 3 months). Thus, our results do not support the prediction made by social contract theory and thereby provide a potential resolution to the ongoing debate on banning stock trading for members of Congress. (shrink)

BackgroundThere has been media coverage surrounding the dangers of heavy drinking and benefits of moderation, with TV and radio presenter, Adrian Chiles, documenting his experience of moderating alcohol consumption in an online article for the Guardian. By analysing the comments in response to Chiles’ article, this study aimed to explore posters’ attitudes or beliefs toward moderating alcohol and posters’ experiences of moderating or abstaining from alcohol.MethodA secondary qualitative analysis of online comments in response to an article about moderating alcohol consumption. (...) Main outcome measures: Comments in response to a United Kingdom online news article about moderating alcohol consumption were extracted and inductive thematic analysis was used.ResultsFor aim one, two themes were developed; “general attitudes toward drinking” and “general attitudes toward reducing consumption”. These themes reflect negative perceptions of alcohol and issues around changing attitudes. For aim two, three themes were developed: “moderation vs. abstention”, “reflection on past drinking behaviours”, and “current drinking behaviours”. These themes represent posters’ experiences and implications changing their drinking habits.ConclusionOur analysis provides a novel insight into perceptions and experiences of moderating or abstaining from alcohol. Alcohol is embedded within United Kingdom culture, creating difficulties for those who choose to moderate or abstain from alcohol. Our analysis highlights the need for public health to focus on shifting the current drinking culture, through clearer drinking guidelines and a wider availability of alcohol-free alternatives. (shrink)

Introduction/Background: Moral distress and related concepts surrounding morality and ethical decision-making have been given much attention in nursing. Despite the general consensus that moral distress is an affective response to being unable to act morally, the literature attests to the need for increased clarity regarding theoretical and conceptual constructs used to describe precisely what the experience of moral distress involves. The purpose of this study is to understand how student nurses experience morally distressing situations when caring for patients with different (...) values and beliefs than their own in the clinical environment -/- Methods: This study is based on secondary analysis of participant data. The stories of eight student nurses who completed the original study were reviewed following Yin’s multiple-case study design. -/- Results: Findings suggest there is a subtle form of moral distress that has been under appreciated in the literature and differs from Jameton’s classic definition. While traditional institutional triggers to moral distress are pervasive, personal conflict as a result of differing value systems may be a moral challenge faced by nursing students working with culturally diverse patients. -/- Conclusion: Ethics education is needed in nursing school to reduce moral distress in the clinical environment. Nursing students need opportunities to develop moral reasoning skills in addition to their clinical skills. A philosophical approach to ethics education may be needed to prevent and alleviate moral distress. (shrink)

There is a growing literature on corporate social responsibility, but few have focused on the implications of business groups for CSR. We examine the antecedents and outcomes of CSR behaviors of group firms in Korea. We find that group affiliation is associated with higher CSR overall and for its major societal and environmental components. However, the ownership disparity between cash flow and control by controlling inside shareholders is associated with lower CSR, consistent with opportunistic rent expropriation theory. We further find (...) that CSR initiatives can impact group firms positively in the event of bad events, consistent with insurance theory. This motive for CSR as a means of enhancing reputation capital to buffer the bad events is pronounced for group firms because of group-wide dissemination of negative reputational externality. (shrink)

Is a conception of human nature still possible or even desirable in light of the “postmetaphysical sensibilities” of our time? Furthermore, can philosophy make any contribution towards the articulation of a tenable conception of human nature given this current intellectual climate? I will argue in this paper that affirmative answers can be given to both of these questions. Section I rehearses briefly some of the difficulties and even dangers involved in working out any conception of human nature at all, let (...) alone one that is philosophically informed. Section II sketches what I argue to be three necessary aspects of a tenable philosophical anthropology. Finally, section III argues that such a philosophical anthropology is only justifiable, given our postmetaphysical sensibilities, by its use of “transcendental arguments” in justifying its claims, ones that nonetheless must repudiate a common but damaging assumption that arguing for the conclusions of such arguments commits one necessarily to a hyper-strong conception of subjectivity. In general, my primary aim in this paper is only to make plausible, not so much to justify, let alone defend, adequately the aspects of a conception of a tenable philosophical anthropology as sketched below. (shrink)

In recent years a growing number of philosophers in the analytic tradition have focused their attention on the significance of human sociality. An older point of departure of analysis, which actually precedes this current tide of accounts of sociality, has revolved around the debate between “holism” and “individualism” in the philosophy of the human or social sciences and social theory. The more recent point of departure for various accounts of sociality has centered on the nature of conventions, social groups, shared (...) intentions, or collective intentionality. Putting aside the disagreements among these accounts, they all take for granted an antecedently intelligible notion of individual agency as explanatorily primitive and seek to explain the possibility of plural or collective agency in terms of the former. By contrast, other philosophers who have worked at the intersection of analytic and "continental" philosophy have emphasized the primacy of practice as the proper starting point for philosophical reflections on the nature of human sociality. In the analytic tradition this emphasis is typically framed in terms of the possibility of rule-following, a topic put on the philosophical agenda by the later Wittgenstein. Peter Winch’s and Saul Kripke’s influential but controversial readings of Wittgenstein explicitly thematize the issue of rule-following, readings which have in turn generated critical reflection in various disciplines for which this issue is relevant. -/- I begin by briefly explicating the positions of Pettit and Brandom on the issue of rule-following (putting aside any specific differences between them for the moment). Next I connect Pettit’s and Brandom’s views on rule-following, and more generally on normativity and its necessarily social basis, with the views of Theodore Schatzki and Joseph Rouse, whose conceptions of the significance of practice and its inherent sociality are indebted as much to the early Heidegger as well as the later Wittgenstein. I suggest that Pettit’s and Brandom’s views of the necessarily social nature of rule-following (i.e., practice) ought to acknowledge and integrate the shared insight of Schatzki and Rouse that practices are not only modes of activity, but constitute more basically the concrete setting or world within which practices qua modes of activity are intelligible (verständlich) at all. I conclude the paper by suggesting how an integrated account of the significance of the necessarily social nature of practice undermines the assumptions of those philosophers who seek to analyze human sociality solely on the basis of modes of interactions among individual agents. (shrink)

The decades of the 1920s to the 1960s were a period of transformation in chemical science. The era was marked by erosion of boundaries that had often been drawn between chemistry and other scientific disciplines. In particular, theories, instruments, and mathematical approaches associated with the new physics of X-rays, the electron particle, and the electron wave enabled chemists and other physical scientists to address unsolved chemical problems of structure and mechanism and to ask new questions that further expanded and transcended (...) disciplinary borders. In turn, the historiography of these developments reflects the pluralism of chemistry in historical narratives written by scientists, historians, philosophers, and sociologists. (shrink)