Environmental, social, and governance is an indicator that measures a company’s non-financial performance. Many firms have recently emphasized the importance of ESG. Ascertaining what topics are being discussed around ESG and how they change over time will contribute significantly to gaining insight into ESG. Using 73,397,870 text data scraped and refined from publicly available Twitter data, this study applied Latent Dirichlet Allocation and the dynamic topic model to ascertain the hidden structure of the ESG-related document collection and the topics being (...) discussed. The study further conducts a sentiment analysis to examine the sentiment of the general public regarding ESG. Topic modeling shows that various topics regarding ESG are being discussed and evolve over time. Sentiment analysis shows that many people have neutral or positive sentiments toward ESG-related issues. This study contributes to exploring insights into ESG among the public and understanding public reactions toward ESG. We further conclude the study with a discussion of managerial implications and potential future research. (shrink)

Background Over the past few decades, moral distress has been examined in the nursing literature. It is thought to occur when an individual has made a moral decision but is unable to act on it, often attributable to constraints, internal or external. Varying definitions can be found throughout the healthcare literature. This lack of cohesion has led to complications for study of the phenomenon, along with its effects to nursing practice, education and targeted policy development. Objectives The aim of this (...) analysis was to uncover unique definitions of moral distress as found in the nursing literature and to examine the relationship between these definitions. Research Design and Context Morse’s method of concept clarification was applied given the large body of literature which includes definitions, descriptions and measurements of the concept in research. The steps include (a) conducting a literature review; (b) analysing the literature; and (c) identifying, describing, comparing, and contrasting attributes, antecedents and consequences of each category. Findings Each of the 18 included studies described constraints in their definition of moral distress, whether implied or explicitly stated. External constraints are widely described as obstacles outside of the individual, whether institutional, systemic or situational, while internal constraints are located within the individuals themselves and are described as personal limitations, failings or weakness of will. Conclusion Upon reviewing these definitions, we determined that the term ‘internal constraints’ is problematic due to the emphasis of responsibility on the individual experiencing moral distress. We propose an alteration to ‘internal characteristics’ that will assume less responsibility of change from the individual to place a heavier onus on systemic and institutional constraints. (shrink)

Previous research reported that college students' symbolic addition and subtraction fluency improved after training with non-symbolic, approximate addition and subtraction. These findings were widely interpreted as strong support for the hypothesis that the Approximate Number System (ANS) plays a causal role in symbolic mathematics, and that this relation holds into adulthood. Here we report four experiments that fail to find evidence for this causal relation. Experiment 1 examined whether the approximate arithmetic training effect exists within a shorter training period than (...) originally reported (2 vs 6 days of training). Experiment 2 attempted to replicate and compare the approximate arithmetic training effect to a control training condition matched in working memory load. Experiments 3 and 4 replicated the original approximate arithmetic training experiments with a larger sample size. Across all four experiments (N = 318) approximate arithmetic training was no more effective at improving the arithmetic fluency of adults than training with control tasks. Results call into question any causal relationship between approximate, non-symbolic arithmetic and precise symbolic arithmetic. (shrink)

This study investigated how decision-makers differ in processing their organizational environment, depending on the levels of their idealism and relativism. Focusing on socially responsible buying/sourcing issues, responses from buying/sourcing professionals from U.S. apparel and shoe companies were analyzed, using a series of regression analyses. The results generally supported the proposition that the degrees of idealism and relativism determine involvement levels that, in turn, result in varying levels of reactions to the organizational environment and corresponding amounts of information processing. Highly idealistic (...) individuals were influenced by only idealistic signals of organizational environment. Further analysis showed highly idealistic and relativistic individuals were more likely to evaluate the organizational environment in terms of its business merit. The results suggest that organizations need to carefully plan how to communicate underlying meanings of organizational initiatives with their employees, knowing that individuals who have strong ethical opinions will only react to what they believe and elaborate its value for business. Further theoretical and practical implications and suggestions are discussed. (shrink)

The title of our session today is “Virtue Ethics from a Global Perspective.” In my remarks, I would like to sketch out an account of what a global perspective on virtue ethics would look like. Here’s how I’ll proceed. First, I would like to explore some of the reasons why we need a global perspective on virtue ethics. This leads naturally to the second issue, which is a clarification of what we mean by a global perspective on virtue ethics. I (...) shall suggest a three part framework—consisting of the object of the virtue, the virtue itself, and the actions through which that virtue is expressed—for a global perspective on virtue ethics. This framework is a pluralistic one, striking a middle ground between absolutism and relativism. Along the way, especially in part two, I will look at several specific virtues, especially respect and courage, to see how this tripartite framework can be applied. The final result, I hope, will be an outline of what a global perspective on virtue ethics would look like. (shrink)

A common approach to quantum physics is enshrouded in a jargon which treats state vectors as attributes of physical systems and the concept of state preparation as a filtration scheme wherein a process involving measurement selects from a primordial assembly of systems those bearing some prescribed vector of interest. By contrast, the empirical experiences with which quantum theory is actually concerned relate measurement and preparation in quite an opposite manner. Reproducible preparation schemes are logically and temporally anterior to measurement acts. (...) Measurement extracts numbers from systems prepared in a specified manner; these data are then regularized by the theory by means of a state concept which is in turn used to characterize succinctly the given mode of preparation. The present paper offers, in a simple spin model, a method for determining the quantum state that represents any reproducible preparation. (shrink)

In this study, we examine whether corporate environmental responsibility plays a role in enhancing operating performance in the financial services sector. Because achieving success with CER investing is often a long-term process, we maintain that by effectively investing in CER, executives can decrease their firms’ environmental costs, thereby enhancing operating performance. By employing a unique environmental dataset covering 29 countries, we find that the reducing of environmental costs takes at least 1 or 2 years before enhancing return on assets. We (...) also find that reducing environmental costs has a more immediate and substantial effect on the performance of financial services firms in well-developed financial markets than in less-developed financial markets. These results are economically and statistically significant and robust even after alleviating endogeneity and using an additional performance measure. We interpret our empirical results as supporting the social impact and reputation-building hypothesis. Our findings also suggest that policy makers dealing with corporate sustainability management should pursue an environment-centered industry policy not only at the manufacturing sector but also at the financial services sector, as firms in both sectors with lower environmental costs perform better. (shrink)

The genre of fable tends to be overlooked in the study of Korean literary history on the ground that the genre seems too archaic to reflect the aesthetic standards established in the modern European novel, in which the focus lies in the realistic representation of the individual or contemporary society. However, the genre was not completely abandoned by modern Korean writers. Few critics have noted the continuing role played by the rich Korean fable tradition, which eventually made the reinvention of (...) the genre in the mass media possible. In particular, it is worth noting that there was the emergence of a new subgenre of fable in the late nineteenth century: that is, fabulous court case fiction, which is quite distinct from the Chinese literary tradition that had underprivileged imaginative narrative texts under the absolute domination of Confucian historiography. The genre of fabulous court case fiction makes us reconsider the plurality of narrative forms and various narrative functions. In this study, I examine how imaginative narrative texts such as fables simultaneously pursue the pleasure of storytelling and the purposes of both moral and specialized education. (shrink)

The evolution of color categorization systems is investigated by simulating categorization games played by a population of artificial agents. The constraints placed on individual agent’s perception and cognition are minimal and involve limited color discriminability and learning through reinforcement. The main dynamic mechanism for population evolution is pragmatic in nature: There is a pragmatic need for communication between agents, and if the results of such communications have positive consequences in their shared world then the agents involved are positively rewarded, whereas (...) if the results have negative consequences, then involved agents are punished. A mechanism for changing the composition of the population due to agents’ birth and death is also investigated. This birth-death mechanism is found to effectively move an established population color naming system toward a theoretically more optimal one. The simulation results of this article provide insights regarding mechanisms that may constrain universal tendencies in human color categorization systems observed in the linguistic and anthropological literatures. (shrink)

The epistemic account and the noetic account hold that the essence of scientific progress is the increase in knowledge and understanding, respectively. Dellsén (2018) criticizes the epistemic account (Park, 2017a) and defends the noetic account (Dellsén, 2016). I argue that Dellsén’s criticisms against the epistemic account fail, and that his notion of understanding, which he claims requires neither belief nor justification, cannot explain scientific progress, although it can explain fictional progress in science-fiction.

The pessimistic induction holds that successful past scientific theories are completely false, so successful current ones are completely false too. I object that past science did not perform as poorly as the pessimistic induction depicts. A close study of the history of science entitles us to construct an optimistic induction that would neutralize the pessimistic induction. Also, even if past theories were completely false, it does not even inductively follow that the current theories will also turn out to be completely (...) false because the current theories are more successful and have better birth qualities than the past theories. Finally, the extra success and better birth qualities justify an anti-induction in favor of the present theories. (shrink)

Nickles (2017) advocates scientific antirealism by appealing to the pessimistic induction over scientific theories, the illusion hypothesis (Quoidbach, Gilbert, and Wilson, 2013), and Darwin’s evolutionary theory. He rejects Putnam’s (1975: 73) no-miracles argument on the grounds that it uses inference to the best explanation. I object that both the illusion hypothesis and evolutionary theory clash with the pessimistic induction and with his negative attitude towards inference to the best explanation. I also argue that Nickles’s positive philosophical theories are subject to (...) Park’s (2017a) pessimistic induction over antirealists. (shrink)

Sample (2015) argues that scientists ought not to believe that their theories are true because they cannot fulfill the epistemic obligation to take the diachronic perspective on their theories. I reply that Sample’s argument imposes an inordinately heavy epistemic obligation on scientists, and that it spells doom not only for scientific theories but also for observational beliefs and philosophical ideas that Samples endorses. I also delineate what I take to be a reasonable epistemic obligation for scientists. In sum, philosophers ought (...) to impose on scientists only an epistemic standard that they are willing to impose on themselves. (shrink)

Public companies in the US stock market must annually report their activities and financial performances to the SEC by filing the so-called 10-K form. Recent studies have demonstrated that changes in the textual content of the corporate annual filing can convey strong signals of companies’ future returns. In this study, we combine natural language processing techniques and network science to introduce a novel 10-K-based network, named Lazy Network, that leverages year-on-year changes in companies’ 10-Ks detected using a neural network embedding (...) model. The Lazy Network aims to capture textual changes derived from financial or economic changes on the equity market. Leveraging the Lazy Network, we present a novel investment strategy that attempts to select the least disrupted and stable companies by capturing the peripheries of the Lazy Network. We show that this strategy earns statistically significant risk-adjusted excess returns. Specifically, the proposed portfolios yield up to 95 basis points in monthly five-factor alphas, outperforming similar strategies in the literature. (shrink)

This article introduces a satellite technology, High Resolution Picture Transmission (HRPT), for a science activity. HRPT is a digital data stream transmitted from environmental satellites. The HRPT imagery is capable of providing real-time studies of regional geology, glacial processes, atmospheric processes, ocean circulation, coastal processes, hydrology, and so on. Obtaining and manipulating HRPT data creates a variety of exciting experiences in science classrooms. A Science and Technology for Individuals, Societies, and the Environment (STISE) teaching model was developed to use satellite (...) technologies for science activities. STISE is a conceptual model for addressing key cognitive and affective parameters when designing science lessons. STISE is designed to encourage students to understand science and technology from their levels of cognition, then relate their understanding to the environment, levels of societies, and their lives. Relationships among science, technology, and society become both obvious and interesting to students as they process and interpret the HRPT imagery. (shrink)

This book provides philosophers of science with new theoretical resources for making their own contributions to the scientific realism debate. Readers will encounter old and new arguments for and against scientific realism. They will also be given useful tips for how to provide influential formulations of scientific realism and antirealism. Finally, they will see how scientific realism relates to scientific progress, scientific understanding, mathematical realism, and scientific practice.

Dawes (2013) claims that we ought not to believe but to accept our best scientific theories. To accept them means to employ them as premises in our reasoning with the goal of attaining knowledge about unobservables. I reply that if we do not believe our best scientific theories, we cannot gain knowledge about unobservables, our opponents might dismiss the predictions derived from them, and we cannot use them to explain phenomena. We commit an unethical speech act when we explain a (...) phenomenon in terms of a theory we do not believe. (shrink)

When the state of a physical system is not fully determined by available data, it should be possible nevertheless to make a systematic guess concerning the unknown state by applying the principles of information theory. The resulting theoretical blend of informational and mechanical constructs should then constitute a modern structure for statistical physics. Such a program has been attempted by a number of authors, most notably Jaynes, with seeming success. However, we demonstrated in a recent publication that the standard list (...) of so-called “mutually exclusive and exhaustive” quantum states that is commonly employed by these authors is in fact not exhaustive. It follows that the information-theoretic foundations of quantum statistics must be reformulated. The present paper discusses the fundamental problems involved and establishes a format for the correct application of information theory to quantum mechanical situations. (shrink)

Autophagy and YAP1‐WWTR1/TAZ signalling are tightly linked in a complex control system of forward and feedback pathways which determine different cellular outcomes in differing cell types at different time‐points after perturbations. Here we extend our previous experimental and modelling approaches to consider two possibilities. First, we have performed additional mathematical modelling to explore how the autophagy‐YAP1 crosstalk may be controlled by posttranslational modifications of components of the pathways. Second, since analogous contrasting results have also been reported for autophagy as a (...) regulator of other transduction pathways engaged in tumorigenesis (Wnt/β‐catenin, TGF‐β/Smads, NF‐kB or XIAP/cIAPs), we have considered if such discrepancies may be explicable through situations involving competing pathways and feedback loops in different cell types, analogous to the autophagy‐YAP/TAZ situation. Since distinct posttranslational modifications dominate those pathways in distinct cells, these need to be understood to enable appropriate cell type‐specific therapeutic strategies for cancers and other diseases. (shrink)

In the special section ‘Body Hacking: Self-Made Cyborgs and Visions of Transhuman Corporeality’, attention is drawn to cyborgism, a set of cultural and very personal practices of experimentation with the human body that often take place outside the confines of institutionalised technoscience. Known, for example, as ‘body hackers’, ‘grinders’ or ‘self-made cyborgs’ and engaging in unusual forms of body modification, the practitioners are enthusiasts who do not necessarily have any ‘disability’ in the conventional sense of the term. They consider the (...) body a highly malleable material, a transformable, improvable, augmentable entity. The collection of papers in this special section encompasses first-hand accounts of cyborg practices as well as intellectual reflections on their implications. (shrink)

Scientific realists and antirealists believe that a successful scientific theory is true and merely empirically adequate, respectively. In contrast, epistemic reciprocalists believe that realists’ positive theories are true, and that antirealists’ positive theories are merely empirically adequate, treating their target agents as their target agents treat other epistemic agents. Antirealists cannot convince reciprocalists that their positive theories are true, no matter how confident they might be that they are true. In addition, reciprocalists criticize antirealists’ positive theories exactly in the way (...) that antirealists criticize their epistemic colleagues’ theories. Reciprocalism is a better epistemic policy than realism and antirealism in the epistemic battleground in which we strive to be epistemically safe vis-à-vis our epistemic colleagues’ theories and strive to convince our epistemic colleagues that our theories are true. (shrink)

We examined nurses’ perceptions of the ethical climate of their workplace and the relationships among the perceptions, medical error experience and intent to leave through a cross-sectional survey of 1826 nurses in 33 Korean public hospitals. Ethical climate was measured using the Hospital Ethical Climate Survey. Although the sampled nurses perceived their workplace ethical climate positively, 19% reported making at least one medical error during the previous year, and 25% intended to leave their jobs in the near future. Controlling for (...) individual and organizational characteristics, we found that nurses with a more positive perception of the ‘patient’ dimension of ethical climate were less likely to have made medical errors. Nurses with a more positive perception of the ‘patient’, ‘manager’, ‘hospital’ and ‘physician’ dimensions of ethical climate were less likely to leave their current job. Enhancing workplace ethical climate could reduce medical errors and improve nurses’ retention in public hospitals. (shrink)

There are nine antirealist explanations of the success of science in the literature. I raise difficulties against all of them except the latest one, and then construct a pessimistic induction that the latest one will turn out to be problematic because its eight forerunners turned out to be problematic. This pessimistic induction is on a par with the traditional pessimistic induction that successful present scientific theories will be revealed to be false because successful past scientific theories were revealed to be (...) false. (shrink)

Healey (2019a) makes four comments on my (Park, 2019a) objections to van Fraassen’s positions. The four comments concern the issues of whether ‘disbelief’ is appropriate or inappropriate to characterize van Fraassen’s position, what the relationship between a theory and models is for van Fraassen, whether he believes or not that a theory is empirically adequate, and whether destructive empiricism is tenable or not. I reply to those comments in this paper.

Although early-stage finance is critical to the growth of most ventures, it is even more important for social ventures as they face the challenges of balancing their social and commercial objectives. Drawing on institutional logics and signaling theory, this study uses a panel data set of 3,401 nascent social ventures to investigate the important role philanthropic grant funding plays in the organizational and financial development of social ventures. We find mixed results, with positive effects on employment and subsequent access to (...) debt finance, but no effects on revenues and access to equity. Our findings connect these theories by suggesting philanthropic grants provide social ventures with flexibility to invest in human capital without pushing them to pursue short-term financial objectives, and that receiving a philanthropic grant provides a signal that is interpreted differently by debt and equity financiers. These findings are especially relevant as funders increasingly use grants to support social entrepreneurship. (shrink)

Extensional scientific realism is the view that each believable scientific theory is supported by the unique first-order evidence for it and that if we want to believe that it is true, we should rely on its unique first-order evidence. In contrast, intensional scientific realism is the view that all believable scientific theories have a common feature and that we should rely on it to determine whether a theory is believable or not. Fitzpatrick argues that extensional realism is immune, while intensional (...) realism is not, to the pessimistic induction. I reply that if extensional realism overcomes the pessimistic induction at all, that is because it implicitly relies on the theoretical resource of intensional realism. I also argue that extensional realism, by nature, cannot embed a criterion for distinguishing between believable and unbelievable theories. (shrink)

In the digital age, many corporations communicate with their publics via online channels. Among many channels, a corporation’s official Web site is often used for informing publics of its performance and other corporate-related information and for shaping a positive corporate image. This study quantitatively analyzed corporate Web sites, particularly the “About us” Web pages of Fortune 500 corporations based on symbolic convergence theory, which describes the formation of symbolic reality and the shared meaning of that symbolic reality among the public. (...) A content analysis revealed that economic corporate management was the dominant rhetorical vision, and the fantasy, in the context of SCT, of being a superior company was emphasized by the 500 examined corporations. Such symbolic reality was constructed using corresponding structural tools of Web content, such as dramatis personae, plot line, and scene. In addition, the rhetorical vision and fantasy themes created by the Web sites turned out to be contingent on business classifications. Companies that pursued other types of fantasy themes and rhetorical visions were also identified. Some suggestions for corporate communicators are provided based on the results of this analysis. (shrink)

If the ordinary quantal Liouville equation ℒρ= $\dot \rho $ is generalized by discarding the customary stricture that ℒ be of the standard Hamiltonian commutator form, the new quantum dynamics that emerges has sufficient theoretical fertility to permit description even of a thermodynamically irreversible process in an isolated system, i.e., a motion ρ(t) in which entropy increases but energy is conserved. For a two-level quantum system, the complete family of time-independent linear superoperators ℒ that generate such motions is derived; and (...) a physically interesting example is presented in detail. (shrink)

To date there seems to be no disciplined way of distinguishing between ad hoc hypotheses and legitimate auxiliary hypotheses. This is embarrassing not just for Popperian falsificationist scientific methodology, for the need for such a distinction seems an important part of scientific practice. Do scientists bother about ad hoc hypotheses at all? Did any towering figure in the history of science care about ad hoc hypotheses? Ironically, the answers to these questions seem to be “Yes” and “No” in both cases. (...) Inspired by Paglieri and Woods’ recent proposal for a theory of enthymeme based on the principle of parsimony, I propose to approach the problem of ad hoc hypothesis by interpreting it as a kind of enthymeme resolution. One reason for this interpretative strategy lies in its potential for understanding the pervasiveness and the longevity of the Aristotelian scientific methodology embedded in the scientific practice throughout the ages. (shrink)