In this paper the importance of public affairs management in multinational corporations in India will be examined. After briefly discussing the state of the art in international business and society literature, a conceptual framework for public affairs management in multinational corporations will be developed. This framework serves as the theoretical basis for an empirical study among German multinational corporations in India. In the main part of this paper the results of this study will be presented and discussed. The paper ends (...) with a critical assessment and some major implications for future studies. (shrink)

Hunger and deprivation, lack of education, sanitation, and health care are only a few pressing issues related to poverty in developing countries. Addressing such complex social issues requires pooling complementary resources of the civil, public, and private sector. Over the last decade, stakeholders tried to cocreate innovative solutions in cross‐sector social partnerships (CSSPs) at the base of the economic pyramid (BoP), but collaboration proved to be very challenging. Practitioners become increasingly frustrated with operational differences, intransparency, and mismatched goals in partnerships. (...) This study unravels the black box of collaboration and delivers empirical insights on trust and power inCSSPsbased on social exchange theory. Structural equation modeling (SEM) enables us explore relationships beyond case‐based insights. Our rigorous empirical analysis covers 207 interorganizational relationships and outlines a crucial gatekeeping function of trust inCSSPs. Findings provide strong empirical support for conceptual works calling for an “integrative orientation” inCSSPs. Furthermore, we pinpoint the role of intermediates and draw implications for future research. (shrink)

Primary progressive multiple sclerosis (PPMS) shows a highly variable disease progression with poor prognosis and a characteristic accumulation of disabilities in patients. These hallmarks of PPMS make it difficult to diagnose and currently impossible to efficiently treat. This study aimed to identify plasma metabolite profiles that allow diagnosis of PPMS and its differentiation from the relapsing-remitting subtype (RRMS), primary neurodegenerative disease (Parkinson’s disease, PD), and healthy controls (HCs) and that significantly change during the disease course and could serve as surrogate (...) markers of multiple sclerosis (MS)-associated neurodegeneration over time. We applied untargeted high-resolution metabolomics to plasma samples to identify PPMS-specific signatures, validated our findings in independent sex- and age-matched PPMS and HC cohorts and built discriminatory models by partial least square discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). This signature was compared to sex- and age-matched RRMS patients, to patients with PD and HC. Finally, we investigated these metabolites in a longitudinal cohort of PPMS patients over a 24-month period. PLS-DA yielded predictive models for classification along with a set of 20 PPMS-specific informative metabolite markers. These metabolites suggest disease-specific alterations in glycerophospholipid and linoleic acid pathways. Notably, the glycerophospholipid LysoPC(20:0) significantly decreased during the observation period. These findings show potential for diagnosis and disease course monitoring, and might serve as biomarkers to assess treatment efficacy in future clinical trials for neuroprotective MS therapies. (shrink)

István Hont identified a point in the history of political thought at which republicanism and commercialism became separated. According to Hont, Emmanuel Sieyès proposed that a monarchical republic should be formed. By contrast the Jacobins, in favour of a republic led by the people, rejected not only Sieyès’s political proposal, but also the economic ideology that went with it. Sieyès was in favour of a commercial republic; the Jacobins were not. This was, according to Hont, a defining moment in the (...) history of political thought. In this article, I offer a different analysis of that particular moment in the history of the commercial republic, one that instead of focusing on Sieyès and the Jacobins, looks at the thought of Girondins philosophers Nicolas de Condorcet and Sophie de Grouchy. I argue that their arguments provide sound models for a commercial republic, reconciling late 18th century republican ideals in which virtue was central, with the need for a flourishing and internationally active market economy. (shrink)

Achille Nicolas Isnard an engineer with a keen interest in political economy, is best known for demonstrating the concept of market equilibrium using a system of simultaneous equations. The breadth and depth of his work undoubtedly established him as one of the forerunners of modern mathematical economics, yet his seminal contributions to the study of economics remained largely unrecognized until the latter half of the twentieth century. This pioneering new book, the first in English, examines Isnard’s life and illuminates (...) his major contributions to political economy. It contains substantial extracts from a number of his publications presented both in English translation and in the original French so Isnard can now finally achieve his place at the heart of discussion on the origins of mathematical economics. The diverse issues covered here will ensure that this book appeals not only to economists with an interest in the history of mathematical economics, but to anyone interested in the emergence of political economy and in wider social thought during the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Recent developments in ML driven decision support systems have played an important role in clinical decision making, whether one consider clinical decisions that involves image recognition (Berge e...

Dans ce livre, Malebranche expose sa philosophie à travers des entretiens avec un philosophe, un janséniste et un mandarin chinois. Il explore les différentes dimensions de la métaphysique, de la religion et de la mort et cherche à répondre aux questions fondamentales de l'existence. Tout étudiant en philosophie trouvera ce livre intéressant et instructif. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is (...) in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This study investigates the social–psychological mechanisms leading individuals in organizations to engage in environmental citizenship behaviors, which entail keeping abreast of, and participating in, the environmental affairs of a company. Informed by the corporate greening and organizational behavior literature, we suggested that an employee’s level of involvement in the management of a company’s environmental impact was the overt manifestation of his or her discretionary sense of commitment to environmental concerns in the work context, and that such commitment developed through the (...) interplay of individual, organizational, and supervisory factors. Our general findings support the idea that when environmental protection is valued and encouraged by the company and line managers, organization members are more likely to experience a volitional sense of attachment and responsibility to corporate environmental goals and values, which is enacted through citizenship behaviors. We also expected that individual ecological beliefs would strengthen the environmental commitment of employees via identification with, and adherence to, the socially responsible cause embodied by the organization and its managerial staff. But it did not. On the contrary, the data indicated that corporate environmental policy is more likely to influence an employee’s level of environmental commitment when he or she holds weak versus strong personal ecological beliefs. Theoretical and managerial implications of our findings are discussed. (shrink)

We argue that two powerful error-theoretic concepts provide a general framework that satisfactorily accounts for key aspects of the explanation of physical patterns. This method gives an objective criterion to determine which mathematical models in a class of neighboring models are just as good as the exact one. The method also emphasizes that abstraction is essential for explanation and provides a precise conceptual framework that determines whether a given abstraction is explanatorily relevant and justified. Hence, it increases our epistemological understanding (...) of how one should go about reconstructing scientific practices by making clear that, at a fundamental level, a key aspect of mathematical modeling consists in exactly solving nearby problems. (shrink)

The physician-patient relationship has changed over the last several decades, requiring a systematic reevaluation of the competing demands of patients, physicians, and families. In the era of genetic testing, using a model of patient care known as the family covenant may prove effective in accounting for these demands. The family covenant articulates the roles of the physician, patient, and the family prior to genetic testing, as the participants consensually define them. The initial agreement defines the boundaries of autonomy and benefit (...) for all participating family members. The physician may then serve as a facilitator in the relationship, working with all parties in resolving potential conflicts regarding genetic information. The family covenant promotes a fuller discussion of the competing ethical claims that may come to bear after genetic test results are received. (shrink)

Jonathan Berg argues for the Theory of Direct Belief, which treats having a belief about an individual as an unmediated relation between the believer and the individual the belief is about. After a critical review of alternative positions, Berg uses Grice's theory of conversational implicature to provide a detailed pragmatic account of substitution failure in belief ascriptions and goes on to defend this view against objections, including those based on an unwarranted "Inner Speech" Picture of Thought. The work (...) serves as a case study in pragmatic explanation, dealing also with methodological issues about context-sensitivity in language and the relation between semantics and pragmatics. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop the beginning of Lie-differential algebra, in the sense of Kolchin by using tools introduced by Hubert in [E. Hubert, Differential algebra for derivations with nontrivial commutation rules, J. Pure Appl. Algebra 200 163–190]. In particular it allows us to adapt the results of Tressl 3933–3951]) by showing the existence of a theory of Lie-differential fields of characteristic zero. This theory will serve as a model companion for every theory of large and Lie-differential fields extending a (...) model complete theory of pure fields. As an application, we introduce the Lie counterpart of classical theories of differential fields in several commuting derivations. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhile some research has now started to suggest that there are long-term memory deficits in alexithymia, short-term memory in alexithymia remained largely unexplored. This study...

Republican and so-called independence conceptions of freedom stand out from other conceptions by embedding strong modal conditions on what it takes for a person to count as being free to do something. For this reason, the extent of one’s freedom, conceived under republican/independentist lights, cannot be measured by any of the measures of freedom that have been developed so far in the literature on freedom, since these do not register the requisite modal constraints. In this paper I propose a measure (...) of freedom that does capture the requisite modal concerns. I do so by relying on work in the semantics of counterfactuals to define a measure of how modally robustly available an option is to an individual. (shrink)

Si quisiéramos agrupar en torno a preguntas algunos de los principales núcleos de la filosofía de Plotino, esas preguntas podrían ser las siguientes: “¿quiénes somos?”, “¿de dónde venimos?” y “¿hacia dónde vamos?”. A lo largo de las _Enéadas_ el Licopolitano se vale de metáforas locativas y temporales para dar cuenta de la unidad subyacente a todas las almas y de la búsqueda que el alma humana debe emprender para regresar a esa unidad. Nuestro filósofo puntualiza que la unidad no se (...) encuentra ni “fragmentada” ni “recortada” (como la de una cera que se puede dividir en varios trozos o la de un vino que se puede verter en distintas copas) sino que es indivisible (_améristos_) y también diversificada, parangonable a la de los distintos teoremas de una ciencia, los cuales dan cuenta cada uno a su manera de la totalidad de la disciplina. A su vez también realiza una diferenciación entre capacidades (_dýnamis_) del alma que remiten al cuerpo y otra que se halla separada de lo corpóreo y ejerce la contemplación (_nóesis_) de la Inteligencia. En el caso particular del ser humano ocurriría que no posee registro de la contemplación que su propia “alma superior” lleva a cabo, por lo cual necesita reponerla. Allí radica la finalidad de la filosofía, que se reviste de una dimensión teórica (la dialéctica) y de una práctica (el cultivo de las virtudes inferiores y de las superiores en la medida que vaya perfeccionándose en la dialéctica). El sabio sería entonces quien ha conseguido adecuar sus pensamientos y sus acciones a su actividad noética, ha alcanzado la felicidad y está en condiciones de experimentar la unión mística con lo Uno. Podemos entonces señalar la contemplación, la virtud y la felicidad como tres importantes motivaciones detrás del pensamiento de Plotino. (shrink)

Les modes traditionnels de gestion politique sont progressivement complétés par une série de procédures laissant davantage de place, en amont d'une décision, à la participation des citoyens. L'équipement nécessaire à l'information, la publicisation des causes et leur mise en discussion puisent dans un large vivier d'innovations. En analysant une procédure de débat organisée par des élus porteurs d'un projet controversé de développement local - l'implantation d'un parc d'éoliennes dans le nord de la France - nous souhaitons montrer comment les technologies (...) de l'information et de la communication peuvent être mobilisées en tant que dispositif d'animation de la procédure de débat public dans son ensemble et comment le fait d'y recourir cristallise les tensions sur la nature démocratique de l'expérience.The traditional management policies are gradually complemented by a series of procedures allowing more space in front of a decision, the participation of citizens. The equipment required information, publicizing and their causes in discussions draw on a large pool of innovations. Analyzing a procedure debate organized by elected holders of a controversial local development - the establishment of a wind farm in the north of France - we want to show how information technology and communication can be mobilized as a device animation process of public debate in general and how to use them is crystallized tensions on the democratic nature of the experience. (shrink)

This longitudinal study investigated the capability of various positive psychological resources to directly or indirectly protect specific well-being outcomes and moderate the effects on well-being of health and economic threats in a lockdown situation during the 2020 health crisis in France. At the beginning of lockdown, participants completed self-assessment questionnaires to document their initial level of well-being and state of nine different well-established psychological resources, measured as traits: optimism, hope, self-efficacy, gratitude toward the world, self-transcendence, wisdom, gratitude of being, peaceful (...) disengagement, and acceptance. Three weeks later, a weekly follow-up was started to record changes in well-being and reported threats for a duration of 5 weeks. Results show that psychological resources efficiently protected well-being in a variety of ways: they buffered the adverse effects of reported threats to health and wealth, increased the well-being averages, and reduced the decline in well-being over time. More specifically, emotional well-being was positively predicted by hope, gratitude of being, and, to a lesser level, by acceptance; psychological well-being by self-efficacy, personal wisdom, and gratitude of being; social well-being only by gratitude toward the world; and inner well-being by optimism, gratitude of being, and acceptance. The study emphasizes the importance of cultivating psychological resources in ordinary times to protect individuals' well-being when difficult and extraordinary circumstances occur. It also offers clues to the kind of resources one may want to develop. (shrink)

This paper articulates an account of imperatives that sensibly supports the idea of a logic of imperative inferences. We rebuke common objections to the very possibility of such a logic, from a perspective based on recent linguistic work on the morphosyntax of imperatives. Specifically, we develop the notion that the content of an imperative sentence includes both a force operator alongside an imperational content to which the force applies. We further argue that this account of the content of imperatives constitutes (...) a plausible and flexible framework to develop a logic of imperative by examining a number of reconstructions of this idea using semantical analogs of widespread modal semantics. After studying the performance of those approaches, we conclude that progress in imperative logic has been hindered by the failure to adopt conflict-tolerant and resource-sensitive semantics, but suggest that such considerations can be incorporated in this flexible framework. Finally, we also propose a simple account of the difference between operators applying to the content of imperatives and imperative operators, in a way that sheds light on some of the issues underlying the usual antinomies. (shrink)

Involuntary autobiographical memories are conscious memories of personal events that come to mind with no preceding attempts at retrieval. It is often assumed that such memories are closely related to current concerns – i.e., uncompleted personal goals. Here we examined involuntary versus voluntary autobiographical memories in relation to earlier registered current concerns measured by the Personal Concern Inventory . We found no differences between involuntary and voluntary memories with regard to frequency or characteristics of current concern-related contents. However, memories related (...) to current concerns were rated as more central to the person’s identity, life story and expectations for the future than non-concern-related memories, irrespective of mode of recall. Depression and PTSD symptoms correlated positively with the proportion of current concern-related involuntary and voluntary memories. The findings support the view that involuntary and voluntary remembering is subject to similar motivational constraints. (shrink)

This article aims at understanding how "ethical public issues" are created, and dealt within a public arena. Here, we view ethical public issues as social constructs, which are the results of issue framing contests. Such an approach will enable us to understand how ethical public issues emerge and are shaped by strategizing actors (including firms, NGOs, the media, and governments), in an attempt to impose their own definition and preferred solution to the issue. We also propose key factors which explain (...) the success of a framing attempt, and evidence of such success. The empirical case of the labor conditions in West Africa's cocoa industry is used to illustrate this theoretical framework and methodological approach. (shrink)

The Meditations chretiennes et metaphysiques represent a renewed attempt to delve into the theoretical themes of the Recherche de la verite and the Conversations chretiennes. Their strategy consists in making God himself speak, the eternal Word, who teaches and enlightens all minds.

Ce livre apporte un nouvel eclairage sur ce qu'il conviendrait d'appeler les commencements de la phenomenologie en France et donc, plus particulierement, sur la ...