The discourse on CRS began late in Spain. Its permeation into political institutions also began later than in many Western countries. The Spanish government neither contributed nor reacted to the green paper Corporate social responsibility. A business contribution sustainable development, published by the European Commission in 2002. However, the publication of this document gave the definitive impulse for the start of the Spanish debate on CSR. After this initial impulse, the debate rapidly developed into a consolidated field of discourse. This (...) field is the object of the present paper. Here, we seek to elaborate on a concept of corporate social citizenship viewed as a "field of discourse", which is being produced by an epistemic community, at Spanish yet also at a global level. Thus, we seek to depict the contours of the Spanish discourse on CSR, researching its evolution over the last 5 years. We focus on its main actors, the central topics on its agendas, the conflicts that are appearing, and how they are being dealt with. In order to in to achieve these objectives, we focus primarily on the transcription of 61 speeches made by different stakeholders at the Spanish Parliament during 2005. This initiative of the Spanish Parliament is unique of its kind. A special sub-commission was created to discuss the role that Spanish public institutions should play regarding corporate social responsibility. Sixty-one experts from different areas (academia, business, trade unions, and NGOs) were invited to present their views on CSR. Members of the sub-commission had the opportunity to discuss with these experts the nature, limits, results and evolution of CSR, seeking with special interest their opinions on the role that the Spanish Government should play in the consolidation of CSR in Spain. The thesis of this paper is that through an exhaustive analysis of the transcriptions of these interventions at the Spanish Parliament, we can identify who constitutes the Spanish epistemic community on CSR. We can also trace the main contours of this field of discourse, to identify the main actors in its development (particularly, of course, on the binding point between CRS and government) and the main issues discussed, as well as the "hot topics". The presentation will also locate the uniqueness of this debate generated in parliament within the context of the wider Spanish debate on CSR. (shrink)

The study explores the challenges UK-based institutional investors face when trying to monitor investee companies and influence their social, environmental, and governance practices. Consistent with previous research, I find that misalignment of interests within the investment chain and dispersed ownership are factors which inhibit investor activism. However, other underexplored challenges include lack of investee company transparency and investor experience in activism, as well as low client demand for engagement and internal conflicts of interest. The results contribute to the literature on (...) institutional investor activism by using direct empirical evidence to systematically discuss the challenges to stewardship. Given the intensification of media and regulatory attention on shareholders in the post-global financial crisis era, coupled with investors’ growing awareness and practice of stewardship, the research opens new avenues for enquiry which go beyond the on-going debate about the monitoring versus short-termism roles of institutional investors. (shrink)

The red tape and delays around research ethics and governance approvals frequently frustrate researchers yet, as the lesser of two evils, are largely accepted as unavoidable. Here we quantify aspects of the research ethics and governance approvals for one interview- and questionnaire-based study conducted in England which used the National Health Service procedures and the electronic Integrated Research Application System. We demonstrate the enormous impact of existing approvals processes on costs of studies, including opportunity costs to focus on the substantive (...) research, and suggest directions for radical system change. We have recorded 491 exchanges with 89 individuals involved in research ethics and governance approvals, generating 193 pages of email text excluding attachments. These are conservative estimates. The exchanges were conducted outside IRAS, expected to be the platform where all necessary documents are provided and questions addressed. Importantly, the figures exclude the actual work of preparing the ethics documentation. We propose six areas of work to enable system change: 1. Support the development of a broad range of customised research ethics and governance templates to complement generic, typically clinical trials orientated, ones; 2. Develop more sophisticated and flexible frameworks for study classification; 3. Link with associated processes for assessment, feedback, monitoring and reporting, such as ones involving funders and patient and public involvement groups; 4. Invest in a new generation IT infrastructure; 5. Enhance system capacity through increasing online reviewer participation and training; and 6. Encourage researchers to quantify the approvals processes for their studies. Ethics and governance approvals are burdensome for historical reasons and not because of the nature of the task. There are many opportunities to improve their efficiency and analytic depth in an age of innovation, increased connectivity and distributed working. If we continue to work under current systems, we are perpetuating, paradoxically, an unethical system of research approvals by virtue of its wastefulness and impoverished ethical debate. (shrink)

The causal theory of action is widely recognized in the literature of the philosophy of action as the "standard story" of human action and agency -- the nearest approximation in the field to a theoretical orthodoxy. This volume brings together leading figures working in action theory today to discuss issues relating to the CTA and its applications, which range from experimental philosophy to moral psychology. Some of the contributors defend the theory while others criticize it; some draw from historical sources (...) while others focus on recent developments; some rely on the tools of analytic philosophy while others cite the latest empirical research on human action. All agree, however, on the centrality of the CTA in the philosophy of action. The contributors first consider metaphysical issues, then reasons-explanations of action, and, finally, new directions for thinking about the CTA. They discuss such topics as the tenability of some alternatives to the CTA; basic causal deviance; the etiology of action ; teleologism and anticausalism; and the compatibility of the CTA with theories of embodied cognition. Two contributors engage in an exchange of views on intentional omissions that stretches over four essays, directly responding to each other in their follow-up essays. As the action -oriented perspective becomes more influential in philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science, this volume offers a long-needed debate over foundational issues. Contributors: Fred Adams, Jesús H. Aguilar, John Bishop, Andrei A. Buckareff, Randolph Clarke, Jennifer Hornsby, Alicia Juarrero, Alfred R. Mele, Michael S. Moore, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Josef Perner, Johannes Roessler, David-Hillel Ruben, Carolina Sartorio, Michael Smith, Rowland Stout The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket. (shrink)

Background:Altering components of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) measures to better suit the purposes of individual studies is a common and oftentimes necessary step. Though the inherent flexibility in EMA has its benefits, no resource exists to provide an overview of the variability in how convergent constructs and symptoms have been assessed in the past. The present study fills that gap by examining EMA measurement design for mood and anxiety symptomatology.Methods:Various search engines were used to identify 234 relevant studies. Items administered, (...) data collection schedules (i.e., beeps per day), response scales (i.e., Likert), data collection platforms (i.e., apps), and psychometric properties (i.e., reliability) were extracted.Results:Study designs varied greatly in all aspects across the identified papers. Over 4,600 extracted items were qualitatively analyzed, resulting in the identification of 12 themes. The most EMA items focused on affect, with categories such as “happiness” and “tension” appearing most frequently. We provide all of our data extraction in the format of an open-source database.Limitations:Despite our best attempts to include as much of the relevant literature as possible, this review and the accompanying database are not exhaustive, but can easily be built upon to include other, newer studies.Conclusions:The fact that the affect theme featured both positive and negative emotional constructs highlights the dichotomous focus on valence and affect within the literature surrounding anxious and depressive symptomatology. We hope that our database will act as a helpful design decision-making resource for researchers studying this kind of symptomatology in the future.Systematic Review Registration:PROSPERO (CRD42019139409). (shrink)

In vitro fertilisation (IVF) ‘add-ons’ are therapeutic or diagnostic tools developed in an endeavour to improve the success rate of infertility treatment. However, there is no conclusive evidence that these interventions are a beneficial or effective adjunct of assisted reproductive technologies. Additionally, IVF add-ons are often implemented in clinical practice before their safety can be thoroughly ascertained. Yet, patients continue to request and pay large sums for such additional IVF tools. Hence, this essay set out to examine if it is (...) ethical to provide IVF add-ons when there is no evidence of a benefit if the patient requests it. In order to determine what is ethical—namely, morally good and righteous, the question was considered in relation to three key values of medical ethics—autonomy, beneficence and non-maleficence. It was determined that providing IVF add-ons might be morally acceptable in specific circumstances, if true informed consent can be given, there is a potential of cost-effective physiological or psychological benefit and the risk of harm is minimal, particularly with regard to the unborn child. (shrink)

Human health is inextricably linked to the state of the environment, making it important to find ways to raise children’s interests in the topics of human health and the environment in which they live. The Goal 4 of the 2030 Agenda addressing quality education offers a guideline on how it is necessary to provide education for sustainable development directed to promoting sustainable lifestyles. The research results show that students show a greater interest in human health topics compared to environmental topics. (...) Boys in grade 6, compared to girls, show a statistically significantly higher interest in environmental topics, the ones related to energy. Girls generally show a statistically significantly higher interest in environmental topics compared to boys. Therefore, in the educational system in general, including the subjects of Science and Biology, it is necessary to find methods of active and exploratory learning that will increase students’ interest in environmental topics that are not currently perceived as particularly interesting. (shrink)

El presente artículo pretende acercarse a la propuesta de una concepción republicana de la ética empresarial realizada por la Escuela de Erlangen que se ha convertido en una referencia ineludible a nivel europeo. Esta propuesta, fundamentada en el constructivismo de la Escuela de Erlangen y la ética del discurso de la Escuela de Frankfurt, empezó a fraguarse a finales de los años ochenta en Alemania y define a la empresa como una institución con responsabilidades y deberes públicos. Con este artículo (...) se pretende mostrar una concepción de la ética empresarial sólida y coherente, tanto desde el punto de vista teórico como práctico, dada su capacidad de integrar las exigencias éticas con los aspectos organizativos, su proximidad a la praxis y su sistematicidad. The main purpose of this paper is to present the proposals of the Erlangen School for a republican conception of business ethics, which has become a key reference in the European context. Republican business ethics, based on the constructivism of the Erlangen School and the discourse ethics of the Frankfurt School, began to take shape at the end of the eighties in Germany and defines the company as "an institution with public responsibilities and duties". Throughout this article I will attempt to present a solid and coherent conception of business ethics, from both the theoretical and the practical points of view. Republican business ethics is capable of integrating ethical claims with organizational aspects, it comes close to praxis and it is systematic. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar las aportaciones que los avances en neuroética tienen en la toma de decisiones en las empresas. Empezaremos por cuestionar el paradigma dominante de la toma de decisiones empresariales desde el análisis crítico de los presupuestos epistemológicos de la teoría económica liberal, así como desde las perspectivas de las ciencias cognitivas y sus aportaciones al análisis del comportamiento humano. Continuaremos presentando dos grandes modelos de toma de decisiones éticas que se basan en la creación (...) de sentido intuitivo y que tienen sus fundamentos en los avances de las neurociencias. Concluiremos con breves observaciones críticas. (shrink)

Clarke and Beck discuss in their sections on congruency and confounds literature that has challenged the claim that the approximate number system represents numerical content. We argue that the propositions put forward by these studies aren't that far from the indirect model of number perception suggested by C&B.

Y lo que es más decisivo, con El Cine y la Metáfora aprendemos a ver las películas de una manera más compleja, porque nos enseña a desmenuzar inteligentemente algunos de los elementos y objetos cotidianos que constituyen el alfabeto de ...

The paper presents some of the results of an ongoing anthropological study on the socialization of “green” and “sustainable” practices, both in business operations and in citizens’ daily lives. We shed light on controversial aspects of sustainability through presenting and analyzing examples of Bulgarian businesses and their leaders, including freelancers, all of whom explicitly link their work to sustainability. The article focuses on the role of consumption as the main channel for transmitting “green“ messages and policies, thereby altering individuals’ attitudes (...) and behavior, and on how these processes unfold in a digital environment, particularly, and in the broader context of the implementation and socialization of the European Green Deal – a set of political initiatives of the European Commission launched in its efforts to lead the continent to climate neutrality by 2050. (shrink)

Languages around the world differ in terms of the number of adnominal and pronominal demonstratives they require, as well as the factors that impact on their felicitous use. Given this cross-linguistic variation in deictic demonstrative terms, and the features that determine their felicitous use, an open question is how this is accommodated within bilingual cognition and language. In particular, we were interested in the extent to which bilingual language exposure and practice might alter the way in which a bilingual is (...) using deictic demonstratives in their first language. Recent research on language attrition suggests that L2 learning selectively affects aspects of the native language, with some domains of language competence being more vulnerable than others. If demonstratives are basic, and acquired relatively early, they should be less susceptible to change and attrition. This was the hypothesis we went on to test in the current study. We tested two groups of native Spanish speakers, a control group living in Spain and an experimental group living in Norway using the Memory game paradigm. Contra to our expectations, the results indicate a significant difference between the two groups in use of deictic terms, indicative of a change in the preferred number of terms used. This suggests that deictic referential systems may change over time under pressure from bilingual language exposure. (shrink)

We critically address current theories of figurative language, focusing on the role of literal or compositional meaning in the interpretation of non-literal expressions, including idioms and metaphors. Specifically, we formulate and discuss the processing hypothesis that compositional meaning may either facilitate or impede the recovery or construction of the intended figurative meaning depending on multiple factors, and in particular, on the expression’s decomposability and on the “strength” of semantic relations between the compositional and figurative meanings. As a case study, we (...) consider research on processing and acquisition of figurative expressions in highly verbal individuals with autism spectrum disorder in comparison to neuro-typical individuals, and examine the factors that may account for the observed comprehension deficits in the ASD group. Based on this evidence, we discuss some of the strategies employed by language users in processing non-compositional or non-literal expressions, and we highlight implications for research on natural language comprehension and processing systems in the domain of figurative meaning. (shrink)

Managers often ask why their firm should have an ethics program, especially if no one has complained about unethical behavior. The pursuit of business ethics can cost money, they say. It can lose sales to less scrupulous competitors and can drain management time and energy. But as Harvard business professor Francis Aguilar points out, ethics scandals (such as over Beech-Nut's erzatz "apple juice" or Sears's padded car repair bills) can severely damage a firm, with punishing legal penalties, bad publicity, (...) and irreparably injured customer relations. Equally important if less obvious, unethical behavior can undermine a firm's organizational spirit. On the other hand, Aguilar argues, in a well run firm, ethical programs can actually enhance corporate performance, strengthening the company at every level and supercharging employee risk taking and innovation. In Managing Corporate Ethics, Aguilar shows managers how to create ethical programs within their organizations that not only discourage large-scale wrongdoing, but can contribute substantially to the achievement of corporate excellence. Aguilar's program is down-to-earth and comprehensive, and based on his extensive research on highly successful, ethical companies, both large and small. He recommends action on three fronts: first, get senior management to provide effective ethical leadership; second, set up an ethics program that promotes concern for the interests of people affected by the firm's operations and that provides safeguards against corrupting business pressures; and third, staff the company with ethical people and surround the organization with ethical advisors (including legal, financial, accounting, tax, and marketing consultants). To illuminate this three-step program, Aguilar incorporates the lessons learned in his in-depth study of ten prominent firms with proven successful ethics programs--among them Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Nucor Steel, Cray Research, ServiceMaster, and Texas Instruments. He examines Lincoln Electric's attention to compensation and job security to ensure quality products and to reduce the pressure or temptation to act unethically. He shows how General Mills, while pushing product line managers to compete aggressively, uses corporate staff units to guard against illegal or unacceptable claims (testing cake recipes, for example, to see if a product's quality fails under the less-than-perfect conditions of a normal kitchen). And he details how Armstrong World Industries uses pep talks, inspirational stories, role models, and ready access to management to promote ethical standards among employees. Throughout, Aguilar demonstrates convincingly that an ethical program pays dividends: that employees, suppliers, customers, and the community at large know when they are being treated in a positive and constructive manner, and are likely to respond in kind. Packed with real life examples of successful (and failed) ethical programs, Managing Corporate Ethics is a valuable roadmap to an often overlooked source of business success. (shrink)

El presente ensayo analiza la obra de Augusto de Campos y su relación con la poesía visual. A partir del uso que hace el poeta brasileño de la página en negro para componer sus poemas, se propone una lectura de su obra en relación con el legado de Mallarmé y su idea de la escritura. Posteriormente, a partir de la idea de la materialidad de la lengua poética que está en el centro del proyecto poético de Augusto de Campos, se (...) plantea el pasaje hacia una dimensión háptica que se produce en sus poemas, sobre todo en “Anticéu” (“Anticielo”) de 1984. (shrink)

This article deals with nurses’ ethical concerns raised by the consequences of changes in governmental and institutional policies on nursing practice and patient care. The aims of this project were to explore perspectives of registered nurses who provide or manage direct patient care on policies that affect nursing and patient care, and to provide input to policy makers for the development of more patient-centred policies. Four focus groups were conducted with a total of 36 registered nurse participants. The project team (...) identified major themes that emerged in the analysis of transcripts of the focus group discussions. The four major themes were: effects of policy focused on cost containment, effects on quality of care, effects on patient education and access to needed services, and effects on nurses and nursing. The participants identified primarily negative effects of changes in national health policy and legislation that influence institutional policies on patient care and nursing practice. The effects of identified policy changes raised concerns about meeting nurses’ ethical obligations to patients and families. Participants specified key points for consideration by legislators and other policy makers. They viewed nurses who are involved in direct patient care as a critical resource for legislators and other policy makers in the development of public and institutional policies that affect nursing and patient care. (shrink)

La nueva era de exploración espacial ha sopesado una y otra vez las posibilidades que tiene nuestro planeta de ser el lugar cósmico en el que las únicas formas de vida inteligentes del universo se hayan desarrollado. La astrofísica y la astrobiología lo ha hecho con números. Esta inquietud existencial se ha plasmado en una serie de escalas científicas que miden la importancia relativa del posible impacto sobre nuestra civilización de un encuentro con vida extraterrestre inteligente. Lamentablemente las consecuencias medidas (...) se han limitado a factores científicos y un hipotético control de daños, y a la credibilidad para con estos por parte de la opinión pública. Han olvidado sin embargo su trascendencia antropológica, moral y filosófica para nuestra especie. (shrink)

In the famous account of his two-year experiment of a simple life away from the distractions of society, Walden, or Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau wrote that "a man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period."1 Since its first publication in 1854, Walden has had as many critics as (...) adherents, and until now, Thoreau's attempt at a life of self-sufficiency in harmony with nature has divided views. Despite this, the above quote embodies a dilemma that is as salient in the current crisis of our unsustainable model of fashion consumption as it was in the nineteenth century, when the... (shrink)

2018 marked the centenary of Georg Simmel’s death, coinciding with the publication of several monographs dealing with his oeuvre and legacy. The four monographs discussed here deal with Simmel from the perspective of scholars who have specialized in cultural and sociological theory and/or philosophy whilst addressing the intellectual and social challenges of our times. These problems, questions and even anxieties are beyond those Simmel ever knew or could have envisioned, despite his extraordinary capacity to detect tendencies and to analyse potentialities (...) in his own present. (shrink)

Social science research, whether observational or interventional, is confronted with situations where the dignity of participants and respect for cultural practices can be seriously affected. The aim of this article is twofold. Firstly, we will reflect on the ethical challenges facing social science research with special consideration of research in contexts of vulnerability. Secondly, we will propose the Kantian sense of respect as a normative framework to guide social science research.

In this work, we focus on the problem of selecting low-level heuristics in a hyperheuristic approach with offline learning, for the solution of instances of different problem domains. The objective is to improve the performance of the offline hyperheuristic approach, identifying equivalence classes in a set of instances of different problems and selecting the best performing heuristics in each of them. A methodology is proposed as the first step of a set of instances of all problems, and the generic characteristics (...) of each instance and the performance of the heuristics in each one of them are considered to define the vectors of characteristics and make a grouping of classes. Metalearning with statistical tests is used to select the heuristics for each class. Finally, we used the Naive Bayes to test the set instances with k-fold cross-validation, and we compared all results statistically with the best-known values. In this research, the methodology was tested by applying it to the problems of capacitated vehicle routing and graph coloring. The experimental results show that the proposed methodology can improve the performance of the offline hyperheuristic approach, correctly identifying the classes of instances and applying the appropriate heuristics in each case. This is based on the statistical comparison of the results obtained with those of the state of the art of each instance. (shrink)

In their letter to the Editor in this issue, Kolstoe and Carpenter challenge a core aspect of our recently published case study of research approvals [BMC Medical Ethics 20:7] by arguing that we conflate research ethics with governance and funding processes. Amongst the key concerns of the authors are: 1) that our paper exemplifies a typical conflation of concepts such as governance, integrity and ethics, with significant consequences for claims around the responsibility and accountability of the organisations involved; 2) that, (...) as a consequence of this conflation, we misrepresent the ethics review process, including in fundamental aspects such as the ethics approval-opinion distinction; 3) that it is difficult to see scope for greater integration of processes such as applying for funding, research approvals, Patient and Public Involvement, etc., as suggested by us. Here we present an alternative point of view towards the concerns raised. (shrink)

This study describes Raden Panji Natarata's thoughts as a humanist, poet and religious scholar who thinks that the concepts of Javanese Sufism and Islamic Sufism are two contradictory ideas. Raden Panji Natarata describes his ideas through the medium of têmbang macapat (Javanese song) in a classic Javanese literature entitled Sêrat Bayanullah. Sêrat Bayanullah, which is used as a source of data for this research, is a collection of the Pura Mangkunegaran library, Surakarta, with catalogue number A-393. The scope of this (...) study focuses on Raden Panji Natarata's thoughts on the nature of life, which include the concepts of human creation, human death, and the after-death union of the servant with God. To obtain objective and comprehensive research results, the researchers used a qualitative descriptive research paradigm by applying hermeneutic theory. The results showed that Raden Panji Natarata's thoughts about the nature of life did not go beyond the limits of monotheism, while other poets tended to acculturate Javanese Sufism thoughts, which sometimes were not in line with the teachings of monotheism. CONTRIBUTION: As an academic contribution, this research is expected to enrich and preserve the repertoire of local research literature with Sufism nuances and their relationship with the thoughts of Sufi experts. Differences in perspective is natural, and the most important thing is mutual respect for differing opinions for the sake of creating harmony in life. (shrink)

El llamado “pacto de postguerra” fue una de las mayores transformaciones institucionales de la historia europea que delimitó los cauces por los que discurrió su política durante varias décadas. En este artículo se ofrece, primero, una descripción de los fundamentos básicos del pacto que ahonda particularmente en el caso británico. En segundo lugar, se aborda el debate socialista británico que generó esta reforma del capitalismo. El desafío del ala derecha del laborismo fue replicado por los miembros del Partido Comunista de (...) Gran Bretaña y de la primera New Left. Se reconstruyen aquí los argumentos del debate prestando especial atención a los disputados conceptos de “democracia”, “propiedad” y “socialismo”. (shrink)

We investigate the possibility of inducing the cosmological constant from extra dimensions by embedding our four-dimensional Riemannian space-time into a five-dimensional Weyl integrable space. Following the approach of the space-time-matter theory we show that when we go down from five to four dimensions, the Weyl field may contribute both to the induced energy-tensor as well as to the cosmological constant Λ, or more generally, it may generate a time-dependent cosmological parameter Λ(t). As an application, we construct a simple cosmological model (...) in which Λ(t) has some interesting properties. (shrink)

On the Causal Theory of Action (CTA), internal proper parts of an agent such as desires and intentions are causally responsible for actions. CTA has increasingly come under attack for its alleged failure to account for agency. A recent version of this criticism due to François Schroeter proposes that CTA cannot provide an adequate account of either the executive control or the autonomous control involved in full-fledged agency. Schroeter offers as an alternative a revised understanding of the proper role of (...) consciousness in agency. In this paper we criticize Schroeter’s analysis of the type of consciousness involved in executive control and examine the way in which the conscious self allegedly intervenes in action. We argue that Schroeter’s proposal should not be preferred over recent versions of CTA. (shrink)

Film clips are proven to be one of the most efficient techniques in emotional induction. However, there is scant literature on the effect of this procedure in older adults and, specifically, the effect of using different positive stimuli. Thus, the aim of the present study was to examine emotional differences between young and older adults and to know how a set of film clips works as mood induction procedure in older adults, especially, when trying to elicit attachment-related emotions. To this (...) end, we use this procedure to analyze differences in subjective emotional response between young and older adults. A sample of 57 older adults and 83 young adults watched a film set previously validated in young population. Their responses were studied in an individual laboratory session to elicit 6 target emotions (disgust, fear, sadness, anger, amusement and tenderness) and neutral state. Self-reported emotional experience was measured using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM). Our results show that film clips are capable of evoking positive and negative emotions in older adults. Furthermore, older adults experienced more intensely negative emotions than young adults, especially in response to disgust and fear clips. They also reported higher arousal than young adults, especially in the case of sadness, anger and tenderness clips. Nevertheless, the older adults recovered more easily from the effects of the emotion induction. The young adults reported higher arousal ratings than older adults in response to amusement film clips. On the other hand, this study reflects the importance of controlling the baseline state to study the real strength of mood induction. Overall, current data suggests significant differences occur in emotional response in adult age and that film clips are an effective tool for studying positive and negative emotions in aging research. (shrink)