Firm managers make ethical decisions regarding the form and quality of disclosure. Disclosure can have long-term implications for performance, earnings manipulation, and even fraud. We investigate the impact of venture capital (VC) backing on the quality and informativeness of disclosure controls and procedures for newly public companies. We find that these controls and procedures are stronger, as evidenced by fewer material weaknesses in internal control under Section 302 of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, when companies are VC-backed. Moreover, these disclosures are informative (...) and are more likely to be followed by subsequent financial statement restatements than are disclosures made by non-VC-backed IPO companies. (shrink)

From an aging research and life-course perspective, the transition to retirement marks a significant life-event and provides a unique opportunity to study psychological health and coping during a period of substantial change in everyday life. The aim of the present paper is to: (a) outline the rationale of the HEalth, Ageing and Retirement Transitions in Sweden (HEARTS) study, (b) describe the study sample, and (c) to present some initial results from the two first waves regarding the association between retirement status (...) and psychological health. The HEARTS study is designed to annually study psychological health in the years before and following retirement, and to examine change and stability patterns related to the retirement event. Among a representative Swedish population-based sample of 14 990 individuals aged 60 to 66 years, 5 913 completed the baseline questionnaire in 2015. The majority of the participants (69%) completed a web-based survey, and the rest (31%) completed a paper version. The baseline HEARTS sample represents the general population well in terms of gender and age, but is more highly educated. Cross-sectional findings from the first wave showed that retired individuals demonstrated better psychological health compared to those who were still working. Longitudinal results from the first and second waves showed that individuals who retired between waves showed more positive changes in psychological health compared with those still working or previously retired. (shrink)

The following article deals with atmospheric boundaries in landscapes. The first part focuses on their change, the situational shifting of atmospheric boundaries – their fading in and out, their temporality on the one hand, and their permanence on the other. The initial focus will be on landscapes in general, and on their boundaries that include atmospheres as boundary phenomena. Special attention (in a phenomenological sense) is given to the ‘psychoscape’ in which emotional border-experience is formed. The second part is dedicated (...) to a current topic of political atmospherology. It will explore the atmospheric borders of war, which, for their part, unfold in actual space, but at the same time, also dispose of the atmospheric border experience. Thus, the article presents an analysis and description of the varieties of borders and boundaries that war transforms or creates. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is used as an example. (shrink)

The work of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty touches on some of the most essential and vital concerns of the world today, yet his ideas are difficult and not widely understood. Lawrence Hass redresses this problem by offering an exceptionally clear, carefully argued, critical appreciation of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. Hass provides insight into the philosophical methods and major concepts that characterize Merleau-Ponty's thought. Questions concerning the nature of phenomenology, perceptual experience, embodiment, intersubjectivity, expression, and philosophy of language are fully and systematically discussed (...) with reference to main currents and discussions in contemporary philosophy. The result is a refreshingly jargon-free invitation into Merleau-Ponty's important and transformational way of understanding human experience. (shrink)

In this book Zagzebski gives an extended argument that the self-reflective person is committed to belief on authority. Epistemic authority is compatible with autonomy, but epistemic self-reliance is incoherent. She argues that epistemic and emotional self-trust are rational and inescapable, that consistent self-trust commits us to trust in others, and that among those we are committed to trusting are some whom we ought to treat as epistemic authorities, modeled on the well-known principles of authority of Joseph Raz. These principles apply (...) to authority in the moral and religious domains. (shrink)

Why should we obey the rules that constitute a code of conduct? If a rule is justified by conclusive moral reasons, then those reasons are sufficient, from a rational point of view (rather than, sa...

Among the readers of Swedenborg, the Swedish thinker’s ‘theory of correspondences’ is often interpreted as treating empirical realities as only imperfect manifestations of spiritual realities. This interpretation that ascribes idealism to Swedenborg was originally proposed by Kant in the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer. Although Kant criticizes Swedenborg’s theory, he considers it no inferior to the theories of Leibniz and Wolf, which can entice a reader of Swedenborg to take Kant’s interpretation at face value: even if Kant did not agree with (...) Swedenborg, at least he took him to be on par with these ‘serious’ philosophers. However, this paper attempts to show that unless a reader of Swedenborg is willing to endorse Kant’s disdain towards ‘enthusiasm’, Swedenborg should not be interpreted as a Platonic idealist, because he devised his theory of correspondences precisely in order to avoid such idealism. As few scholars have recently pointed out, Swedenborg, like Kant, thinks that all our cognitive abilities operate in the limits of time and space, i.e. in the empirical world, but for Swedenborg, as opposed to Kant, this does not imply that we cannot acquire knowledge of the spiritual world. According to these scholars, Swedenborg thinks that such knowledge can only be acquired mystically, which would render him a Platonic idealist, just as Kant claimed. However, this paper claims that pace the aforementioned scholars, this is not the only or even the default way of coming to know the spiritual world according to Swedenborg. The paper argues that when positing that every empirical and spiritual reality ‘correspond’ with one another, Swedenborg uses the Latin word correspondere in a technical sense. In other words, he thinks that any human cognition is both spiritual in the sense of involving a logical relationship between extension and spirit, and empirical by occurring in time and space. Thus, by cognising something in the empirical world, we also cognise something in the spiritual world, even if we were not capable of knowing spiritual realities in themselves. This element of Swedenborg’s theory distances him from Platonic idealism. The paper concludes with a suggestion that Kant might have perceived the limitations of his interpretation of Swedenborg later on, as signalled by the fact that in the early 1780s, Kant extended his conception of Platonism to include all philosophy other than his own. However, taking this road would make Platonic idealism an uninformative concept for an interpreter of Swedenborg and apt to be replaced by the term ‘enthusiasm’–the concept that Kant used when describing those with whom he disagreed. (shrink)

Knowledge is a highly valued state in which a person is in cognitive contact with reality. It is, therefore, a relation. On one side of the relation is a conscious subject, and on the other side is a portion of reality to which the knower is directly or indirectly related. While directness is a matter of degree, it is convenient to think of knowledge of things as a direct form of knowledge in comparison to which knowledge about things is indirect. (...) The former has often been called knowledge by acquaintance since the subject is in experiential contact with the portion of reality known, whereas the latter is propositional knowledge since what the subject knows is a true proposition about the world. Knowing Roger is an example of knowledge by acquaintance, while knowing that Roger is a philosopher is an example of propositional knowledge. Knowledge by acquaintance includes not only knowledge of persons and things, but also knowledge of my own mental states. In fact, the knower's own mental states are often thought to be the most directly knowable portion of reality. (shrink)

How do we talk meaningfully about the sacred in contexts where conventional religious expression has so often lost its power? Inspired by the influential work of David Jasper, this important volume builds on his thinking to identify sacrality in a world where the old religious and secular debates have exhausted themselves and theology struggles for a new language in their wake. Distinguished writers explore here the idea of the sacred as one that exists, paradoxically, in a space that is both (...) possible and impossible: profoundly theological on the one hand, but also deeply this-worldly and irreligious on the other. This is a sacredness that is simultaneously 'present' and 'absent': one which encompasses – as Jasper himself characterises it – 'the impossible possibility of an absolute vision'. The book teaches us that the sacred assumes a renewed potency when fully engaged with the creativity that happens across religion, literature, philosophy and the arts. (shrink)

Offering both a discussion of feminism in its postmodern context and a critique of contemporary theory, the author here challenges feminists to move away from a theory-based approach, which focuses on securing or contesting "women" as an ...

"First Published in 1992, Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.".

Abstract:Previous research has identified multiple approaches to the design and implementation of corporate ethics programs (Paine, 1994; Weaver, Treviño, and Cochran, in press b; Treviño, Weaver, Gibson, and Toffler, in press). This field survey in a large financial services company investigated the relationships of the values and compliance orientations in an ethics program to a diverse set of outcomes. Employees’ perceptions that the company ethics program is oriented toward affirming ethical values were associated with seven outcomes. Perceptions of a compliance (...) orientation were associated with four of these outcomes. The interaction of values and compliance orientations was associated with employees’ willingness to report misconduct. In general, a values orientation makes a greater unique contribution to the measured outcomes when compared to a compliance orientation. (shrink)

This paper explores how managers’ and supervisors’ equity incentives impact the likelihood of committing corporate fraud in Chinese-listed firms. Previous research has shown that corporate fraud in China is a widespread phenomenon and has severe consequences for affected firms and executives. However, our understanding of the reasons that fraud is committed in a Chinese setting has been very limited thus far. This is an increasingly important topic, because corporate governance is rapidly changing in China, and it is unclear whether adopting (...) the executive compensation practices of the West is appropriate for Chinese firms. We show that managers’ equity incentives increase their propensity to commit corporate fraud. We also find that this effect is more pronounced for state-owned firms. However, we find a negative but not significant relationship between the equity incentives of the supervisory board and the incidence of fraud. (shrink)

A key objective of the law in the assessment of decision-making capacity in clinical settings is to allow clinicians and judges to avoid making value judgements about the reasons that patients use to refuse treatment. This paper advances two lines of argument in respect of this objective. The first is that authorities cannot rationally avoid significant evaluative judgements in the assessment of a patient’s own assessment of the facts of their case. Assessing reasoning is unavoidably value-laden. Yet the underlying motivation (...) behind clinicians’ and the law’s value-neutral aims, ie, the avoidance of undue paternalism, is worth preserving. That being so, the second line of argument will try to show that that underlying motivation is better served in a limited range of cases by embedding a ‘reversibility standard’ in the assessment process so that the patient can, if they wish, and in due course, bring about the consequences that they were prevented from realising as a result of a determination of incapacity. (shrink)

This article advances two views on the role of evaluative judgment in clinical assessments of decision-making capacity. The first is that it is rationally impossible for such assessments to exclude judgments of the values a patient uses to motivate their decision-making. Predictably, and second, attempting to exclude such judgments sometimes yields outcomes that contain intractable dilemmas that harm patients. These arguments count against the prevailing model of assessment in common law countries—the four abilities model—which is often incorrectly advertised as being (...) value-neutral in respect of patient decision-making both by its proponents and in statute. A straightforward evaluative model of capacity assessment which wears its values on its sleeves and is biased against what are called ‘serious prudential mistakes’ avoids these rational and practical problems. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, James Christensen, Tom Parr and David Axelsen argue that millionaire salaries are unjust and women have no grounds of fairness to unjust salaries in parity with men. They accept that disrespect is expressed toward women when they are paid less than men because of their gender. Their argument largely replicates a similar argument developed earlier by Anca Gheaus. By drawing on the distinction between ideal and nonideal theory, we argue that Christensen et al. (...) and Gheaus hold women to unacceptably high standards of justice and arguably higher standards than men are held to. (shrink)

Background: Treating medication-refractory freezing of gait in Parkinson’s disease remains challenging despite several trials reporting improvements in motor symptoms using subthalamic nucleus or globus pallidus internus deep brain stimulation. Pedunculopontine nucleus region DBS has been used for medication-refractory FoG, with mixed findings. FoG, as a paroxysmal phenomenon, provides an ideal framework for the possibility of closed-loop DBS.Methods: In this clinical trial, five subjects with medication-refractory FoG underwent bilateral GPi DBS implantation to address levodopa-responsive PD symptoms with open-loop stimulation. Additionally, PPN (...) DBS leads were implanted for CL-DBS to treat FoG. The primary outcome of the study was a 40% improvement in medication-refractory FoG in 60% of subjects at 6 months when “on” PPN CL-DBS. Secondary outcomes included device feasibility to gauge the recruitment potential of this four-lead DBS approach for a potentially larger clinical trial. Safety was judged based on adverse events and explantation rate.Findings: The feasibility of this approach was demonstrated as we recruited five subjects with both “on” and “off” medication freezing. The safety for this population of patients receiving four DBS leads was suboptimal and associated with a high explantation rate of 40%. The primary clinical outcome in three of the five subjects was achieved at 6 months. However, the group analysis of the primary clinical outcome did not reveal any benefit.Interpretation: This study of a human PPN CL-DBS trial in medication-refractory FoG showed feasibility in recruitment, suboptimal safety, and a heterogeneous clinical effect in FoG outcomes. (shrink)

This book describes Descartes's The Passions of the Soul as a foundational work of the Enlightenment, a precursor of later notions of the historicity of the human, and the first psychology of modern type: to understand and heal ourselves, we look not outward at the world in immediate relation to it, but inward, at the self, its brain, and its past history. Special attention is given to Descartes’s account of imagination and its problematic impact on passion and volition.

When is one person entitled to sanction another for moral wrongdoing? When, instead, must one mind one’s own business? Stephen Darwall argues that the legitimacy of social sanctioning is essential to the very concept of moral obligation. But, I will argue, Darwall’s “second person” theory of accountability unfortunately implies that every person is entitled to sanction every wrongdoer for every misdeed. In this essay, I defend a set of principles for differentiating those who have the standing to sanction from those (...) who do not. (shrink)

This book provides an accessible comprehensive exploration of phenomenological theory and research methods and is geared specifically to the needs of therapists ...

This paper summarizes the findings of a three-year exploratory qualitative study of teenage childbearing in 20 low-income multigeneration black families. Teenage childbearing in these families is part of an alternative life-course strategy created in response to socioenvironmental constraints. This alternative life-course strategy is characterized by an accelerated family timetable; the separation of reproduction and marriage; an age-condensed generational family structure; and a grandparental child-rearing system. The implications of these patterns for intergenerational family roles are discussed.