Showing papers on "Value (ethics) published in 1994"

Are There Universal Aspects in the Structure and Contents of Human Values

Abstract: This article presents a theory of potentially universal aspects in the content of human values. Ten types of values are distinguished by their motivational goals. The theory also postulates a structure of relations among the value types, based on the conflicts and compatibilities experienced when pursuing them. This structure permits one to relate systems of value priorities, as an integrated whole, to other variables. A new values instrument, based on the theory and suitable for cross-cultural research, is described. Evidence relevant for assessing the theory, from 97 samples in 44 countries, is summarized. Relations of this approach to Rokeach's work on values and to other theories and research on value dimensions are discussed. Application of the approach to social issues is exemplified in the domains of politics and intergroup relations.

The Value Basis of Environmental Concern

Abstract: This article describes and presents initial empirical tests of a theory that links values, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior within a preference construction framework that emphasizes the activation of personal environmental norms. Environmental concern is related to egoistic, social-altruistic, and biospheric value orientations and also to beliefs about the consequences of environmental changes for valued objects. Two studies generally support the hypothesized relationships and demonstrate links to the broader theory of values. However, the biospheric value orientation postulated in the theoretical literature on environmentalism does not differentiate from social-altruism in a general population sample. Results are discussed in terms of value change, the role of social structural factors (including gender) in environmentalism, theories of risk perception, and the mobilization strategies of social movements, including environmental justice movements.

Research Note: How Valuable are Organizational Capabilities?

Abstract: Organizational capabilities, appropriately defined, can meet the conditions, articulated by the resource-based view of the firm, for being a source of sustainable competitive advantage. However, this paper observes that there are limits to the extent of the importance of such capabilities. They are vulnerable to threats of erosion, substitution, and above all to being superseded by a higher-order capability of the ‘learning to learn’ variety. This suggests that there can be an infinite regress in the explanation for, and prediction of, sustainable competitive advantage. The problem is resolved by arguing that the value of organizational capabilities is context dependent, and by recognizing that the strategy field will never find the ultimate source of sustainable competitive advantage.

Value in Nature and the Nature of Value

Abstract: I offer myself as a nature guide, exploring for values. Many before us have got lost and we must look the world over. The unexamined life is not worth living; life in an unexamined world is not worthy living either. We miss too much of value.

Words and life

Abstract: Hilary Putnam has been convinced for some time that the present situation in philosophy calls for revitalization and renewal; in this book he shows us what shape he would like that renewal to take. "Words and Life" offers an account of the sources of several of the central problems of philosophy, past and present, and of why some of those problems are not going to go away. As the first four part titles in the volume suggest - "The Return of Aristotle", "The Legacy of Logical Positivism", "The Inheritance of Pragmatism" and "Essays after Wittgenstein" - many of the essays are concerned with tracing the recent, and the not so recent, history of these problems. The goal is to bring out what is coercive and arbitrary about some of our present ways of posing the problems and what is of continuous interest in certain past approaches to them. Various supposedly timeless philosophical problems appear, on closer inspection, to change with altered historical circumstances; while there turns out to be much of permanent value in Aristotle's, Peirce's, Dewey's and Reichenbach's work on some of the problems that continue to exercise us. A unifying theme of the volume as a whole is that reductionism, scientism and old-style disenchanted naturalism tend to be obstacles to philosophical progress. As the titles of the final three parts of the volume indicate - "Truth and Reference", "Mind and Language" and "The Diversity of the Sciences" - the sweep of the problems considered here comprehends all the fundamental areas of contemporary analytic philosophy.

The Skilled Facilitator: Practical Wisdom for Developing Effective Groups

Abstract: Today more than ever, groups play a critical role in the lives of effective organizations - empowering employees, generating needed change, and producing innovative solutions to complex problems. Skilled group facilitation is a resource such organizations cannot do without. In this book, Roger Schwarz draws on his own extensive facilitation experience and insight to bring together theory and practice, creating a comprehensive reference for consultants, peer facilitators, managers, leaders - anyone whose role is to guide groups toward realizing their creative and problem-solving potential. The book provides essential materials for facilitators, including simple but effective ground rules for governing group interaction; word-for-word examples, drawn from the author's own cases, of what to say to a group - and when to say it - to keep it on track and moving toward its goal; proven techniques for starting meetings on the right foot - and ending them positively and decisively; practical methods for handling emotions - particularly negative emotions - when they arise in a group context; and a diagnostic approach for helping both facilitators and group members identify and solve problems that can undermine the group process. The Skilled Facilitator provides a clearly defined set of basic principles to help facilitators develop sound, value-based responses to a wide range of unpredictable situations. It also includes advice on how to work with outside consultants and facilitate within one's own organization, along with a groundbreaking section on facilitative leadership.

The Intellectual Virtues

Abstract: In every society men prize and value not only states of character (the moral virtues), but also capacities, abilities and dispositions which are concerned with aiming at the truth, with the advancement and the transmission of knowledge. These states were called by Aristotle 'the intellectual virtues' (Nicomachean Ethics Book 6). It is my aim in this paper to ask what the principal intellectual virtues are and whether we can think of them as in any way having a unity. For the purposes of this paper I shall leave to one side any intellectual virtues which are specifically concerned with moral action, the arts and crafts, or the creation of works of art. There are, of course, limitations on any attempt to form a taxonomy of the intellectual virtues. One is tempted to say that there is 'an intimate connection' between either some or all of them; only this suggests that they are related like the holly and the ivy instead of flowing into one another legato. Consequently, the search for a taxonomy has to steer a middle course between presenting the intellectual virtues, on the one hand, and, on the other, as a tightly-knit architectonic structure of logically related virtues. Neither course does justice to 'the phenomena'. One possible approach would be to observe what specific words are most frequently used in one's native language to draw attention to the merits or demerits, the advantages and shortcomings, of our intellectual habits and dispositions. This was the method followed by Aristotle in The Nicomachean Ethics. The first failing of this

The Slavery Debate in Antebellum America: Cognitive Style, Value Conflict, and the Limits of Compromise

Abstract: This article explores the relations among value conflict, cognitive style, and policy preferences in pre-Civil War America. Drawing on major historical works, prominent political figures were classified into 1 of 4 political positions: abolitionists, free-soil Republicans who would tolerate slavery in the South but prevent further spread, Buchanan Democrats who would permit slavery in new territories, and advocates of slavery. Results revealed (a) greatest integrative complexity among free-soil Republicans and Buchanan Democrats, with declines in complexity moving either leftward toward abolitionists or rightward toward slavery supporters; (b) integrative complexity was a positive function of endorsing values widely regarded as in conflict in that historical period (property rights, states' rights, and domestic peace vs. the threat of "Southern slave power" to free labor and democracy). The results are consistent with the value pluralism model and raise warnings against the tendency to view integratively simple reasoning as both cognitively and morally inferior to complex reasoning.

Public faces, private voices : community and individuality in South India

Abstract: Individuality is often viewed as an exclusively Western value. In non-Western societies, collective identities seem to eclipse those of individuals. These generalities, however, have overlooked the importance of personal uniqueness, volition, and achievement in these cultures. As an anthropologist in Tamil Nadu, South India, Mattison Mines found private and public expressions of self in all sectors of society. Based on his twenty-five years of field research, Public Faces, Private Voices weaves together personal life stories, historical description, and theoretical analysis to define individuality in South Asia and to distinguish it from its Western counterpart. This engaging and controversial book will be of great interest to scholars and students working in anthropology, psychology, sociology, South Asian history, urban studies, and political science.

Assessing the application of cognitive moral development theory to business ethics

Abstract: Cognitive moral development (CMD) theory has been accepted as a construct to help explain business ethics, social responsibility and other organizational phenomena. This article critically assesses CMD as a construct in business ethics by presenting the history and criticisms of CMD. The value of CMD is evaluated and problems with using CMD as one predictor of ethical decisions are addressed. Researchers are made aware of the major criticisms of CMD theory including disguised value judgments, invariance of stages, and gender bias in the initial scale development. Implications for business ethics research are discussed and opportunities for future research delineated.

The impact of personal values on judgments of ethical behaviour in the workplace

Abstract: This study examines how our personal values influence our judgment of the morality of some workplace behaviours. Sixty-nine undergraduates were asked to rank order separately Rokeach's instrumental and terminal values in terms of their importance as guiding principles in their life. Subjects then read four scenarios, each of which described ethically questionable behaviour of the sort that might be encountered in business. They were then asked to rate whether or not the behaviour of the person described in the scenario was ethical, and whether or not they had any intentions to rectify the situation. People with different value hierarchies perceived the targeted behaviours differently. For example, subjects who valued “honesty” perceived the behaviour as more immoral than subjects who did not value honesty. While the ranking of the instrumental valuehonesty was the best predictor of people's judgments about the morality of the behaviour, their ranking of the instrumental valueambition was the best predictor of their behavioural intentions.

Information technology and society

Abstract: This text covers the range of information technology, from fax, robotics, and traffic control, to virtual reality and virtual corporations. The larger picture is also addressed, with an emphasis on IT's value in business, its social impact, and the need for a problm-solving perspective.

Aesthetics and ideology

Abstract: Over the last decade a radical transformation of literary study has taken place, a transformation most distinctly connected to a fundamental change in the conception of what constitutes the "literary." A shift in emphasis from interpretation to theory and from questions about what texts might "mean" to questions about the systems that contain them, along with the movement to replace literary study with cultural studies, have all contributed to this change. In response to this transformation, George Levine has assembled essays by a wide variety of leading scholars in the field of literary study. The contributors to this book rethink the aesthetic, rewrite its history, and reestablish the formal as a necessary element in criticism of literature and of its ideological implications. An early step in the recuperation of the aesthetic, Aesthetics and Ideology works through the discourses of race, gender, class, and politics, using many of the strategies of contemporary theory, to show how the aesthetic vitally and richly opens itself to new politics, and new possibilities of human value. This is an important contribution to the current academic culture wars.

The Role of Values in Rational Choice Theory

Abstract: Most empirical applications of rational choice employ a typical value assumption—that actors are motivated to pursue private and instrumental goods. When is this typical value assumption warranted, and when is it not? This article proposes guidelines for thinking about the use of value assumptions in rational choice theory. When instrumental and immanent values are substitutable, use of the typical value assumption is justifiable. However, in cases where there is imperfect substitutability—in which actors face production constraints, significant role conflict, or in which immanent values are nonrandomly distributed—the typical value assumption should be reexamined.

Toward Motivational Theories of Intrinsic Religious Commitment

Abstract: G. W. Allport referred to religious intrinsicness as an “orientation.” The scales in Allport and J. M. Ross reflect that concern, including items that illustrate not only affect and values in the religious domain but also behavior, such as church attendance. The results were as predicted from a motivational theory of intrinsic religiousness and were directly counter to Allport’s position: Those whose commitment to their faith was internalized and whose religious group had a norm of prejudice were indeed prejudiced; those whose religious norms included tolerance were tolerant. Cognitive theories are only indirectly motivational, but they do seek to explain some of the same phenomena. The affect/value distinction is useful for hypothesizing which motivational theory relates to what part of religious commitment. Debates over attributions of causation are widely known in psychology. In social psychology, attributing a cause to a personal source rather than to environmental forces is referred to as the fundamental attribution error.

Welfare economics and public subsidies to the Arts

Abstract: Subsidizing the Arts involves the same kind of issues as subsidizing particular industries or services in the economy, however distasteful this may seem to those who are conditioned to think in terms of a moral hierarchy in the ordering of consumption expenditure. In this analysis, attention is confined to two arguments for subsidization which are derived from the existence of 'market failure', i.e. the recognition that the strict Paretian assumptions of divisibility of goods and absence of externalities of production and consumption are not met with in practical life. A particular aspect of the problem of indivisibility which is relevant to the subsidization of the Arts is the taking account of the welfare of future generations, that is to say the welfare of those whose interests cannot be directly expressed at present through the exercise of their own preferences in the market. It is assumed that we are not interested in the contribution of Arts to stabilization or growth. Full employment of resources is given and we ignore the possibility that subsidizing the Arts might be a possible way of inducing people to work harder and more efficiently than if cultural activities were left solely to the judgement of the market. Cultural paternalism which might be justified on the grounds that the community does not know what is good for it, is ruled out. Apart from any predisposition of the author to oppose paternalism, the assertion of imposed value judgements is too easy a way of deriving support for public intervention designed to give the public not what it wants but what it ought to have! Before we can proceed to answer the question, should we subsidize the Arts, and how it might be done, we need information on two matters. The first is the scope of the 'industry'. Here I shall consider only the performing arts, although much of the argument could be applied to the visual arts. I shall also assume that

O estudo de caso na investigação em Educação Matemática

Abstract: Case studies got a remarkable popularity in mathematics education research in Portugal. They have both their strengths and their problems. This paper discusses how this approach is different from other ways of conducting research; the nature of knowledge that is produced, specially when they are done within an interpretative perspective; and what quality criteria may be used to assess their value. A case study focus on a well-defined entity such as a program, an institution, an educational system, a person or a social unit. It intends to know in a deep way its "how" and its "why", recognizing its unity and identity. Is is deliberately particularistic, searching to discover what is most essential and characteristic in it. A case study may draw upopn an explicit theoretical orientation. Besides, it may follow an interpretative perspective, that seeks to understand how is the world from the point of view of the participants. Or else, it may follow a more pragmatic perspective, simply seeking to create a global, complete and coherent account of the object of study. Among case studies there are investigations of different value. It is important to discuss why to define quality criteria and how to apply them. This paper finishes with the mention to several criteria and with some considerations about recent works carried out in Portugal.

Distinguished Lecture on Economics in Government Public Policy, Values, and Consciousness

Abstract: Economists should pay more attention to value formation in economic analysis. First, preferences are not stable in any operationally meaningful sense. Any estimated micro behavior that does not take account of the consequences of the behavior on underlying preferences is incapable of serving as a guide to future action. Second, the economist's model of human psychology is inaccurate and misleading. Third, most analyses of complex social behavior start from models incapable of producing empirical results adequate for useful structural analyses. The paper suggests avenues for making progress on each of these issues, beginning with a different approach to utility maximization.

The Costs of Living: How Market Freedom Erodes the Best Things in Life

Abstract: This text argues that market freedom is undermining much that is good in life and offers ways to put an end to this erosion. People value their freedom, family, friends, work, education, health and leisure - the things that are regarded as the best things in life. However, the pressure to satisfy both the "bottom line" and the seemingly insatiable need to consume is eroding these "best things". Children are more interested in what their sporting heroes earn than their actual sporting success; educational systems have become financial investments, and not media for learning; the business world turns idealists into cynics who cut corners, choose quantity over quality and cross legal boundaries; and professional people weigh the "opportunity costs" of spending time with their family and friends against working longer hours.

The Rhetorical Use of Values to Justify Social and Intergroup Attitudes

Abstract: In this article we review research relevant to Rokeach's (1973) suggestion that, by appealing to socially shared conceptions of what is good, people may use values to ego defensively rationalize or justify their attitudes. In line with this value justification hypothesis, research suggests that, although attitudes may originally stem from the relative importance that people ascribe to various values, once formed, attitudes may well produce self-serving biases that affect both the values that people deem relevant to an issue and the complexity or open-mindedness of their reasoning about an issue. In addition, just as people may appeal to values to justify their attitudes toward social issues such as nuclear weaponry or abortion, data suggest that people may exaggerate perceptions of intergroup value differences in an effort to rationalize prejudicial intergroup attitudes and justify discrimination. Aspects of the ego defensive use of values that merit elaboration and have yet to be addressed, as well as the more general implications of a functional approach to the study of values, are discussed.

Human Values and Their Relation to Justice

Abstract: This article describes studies that relate justice-related behavior and experience to the content of human values. The studies are concerned with moral judgment, belief in a just world, distributive justice in the context of allocation decisions, and the nature of deservingness. In each case the focus is on associations between particular values or value types and an aspect of justice. A theoretical analysis of deservingness is presented that takes account of perceived responsibility and the conjunction of positively (or negatively) valued actions and positively (or negatively) valued outcomes. The subjective values (or valences) assigned to the actions and outcomes are assumed to be related to a person's underlying system of values. It is argued that research on justice has tended to ignore the values held by individuals, groups, and cultures, and that this deficiency should be remedied in future research.

The Racism of Psychology: Time for Change

Abstract: The nature of racism the liberal tradition in the psychology of racism fascism and racist psychology racism of the middle ground positivsm, value and the encouragement of racism professional organizations and racism Eurocentrism and psychological knowledge towards a racism-free psychology.

The Appeal of Political Liberalism

Abstract: The appeal of liberalism derives to a considerable extent from its commitment to tolerating diverse ways of life and schemes of value. Yet this same commitment is also responsible for much of what is puzzling about liberalism. For what is the basis of liberal toleration? One answer rests the case for toleration on a pluralistic understanding of the nature of human value, on a conviction that the realm of value is irreducibly heterogeneous. Diverse ways of life should be tolerated, on this view, because they are routes to the realization of diverse human goods. A very different answer rests the case for tolerance on a general skepticism about value, on a conviction that there is no good sense to be made of the idea of objective value or the notion of a good life. On this view, diverse ways of life should be tolerated because there is nothing to the thought that some ways of life are better than others, and so there is no legitimate basis for intolerance. If the case for liberal toleration rests on some pluralistic thesis about the nature of human values, then both the depth of such toleration and the extent of its appeal seem called into question. For, inevitably, the pluralistic thesis will itself be controversial. Thus, on this interpretation, liberalism's professed toleration of differing conceptions of value turns out to depend on a more fundamental commitment to a particular conception of value, a conception which will be uncongenial or even abhorrent to some of the very evaluative outlooks that liberalism purports to tolerate, and which will not, therefore, serve to recommend liberal institutions to people who share those outlooks. Much the same will be true, it seems, if toleration is seen as the outgrowth of skepticism rather

Unitary versus Collective Models of the Household: Time to Shift the Burden of Proof?

Abstract: Until recently, most economists viewed the household as a collection of individuals who behave as if in agreement on how best to combine time and goods (purchased or produced at home) to produce commodities that maximize some common welfare index. This model has been extended far beyond standard demand analysis to include the determinants of health, fertility, education, child fostering, migration, labor supply, home production, land tenure, and crop adoption. The appeal of the unitary model is the simplicity of comparative statics generated and the diversity of issues it can address. But, argue the authors, its theoretical foundations are weak and restrictive; its underlying assumptions are of questionable validity; it has not stood up well to empirical testing; and it ignores or obscures important policy issues. They argue that economists should regard households as collective rather than unitary entities. They make a case for accepting the collective model (with cooperative and noncooperative versions) as the industry standard - with caveats. The unitary model should be regarded as a special subset of the collective approach, suitable under certain conditions. The burden of proof should shift to those who claim the unitary model as the rule and collective models as the exception. Implicit in the authors'argument is the view that household economics has not taken Becker seriously enough."A household is truly a'small factory,'"wrote Becker (1965)."It combines capital goods, raw materials, and labor to clean, feed, procreate, and otherwise produce useful commodities."The authors, too, perceive the household as a factory, which, like all factories, contains individuals who - motivated at times by altruism, at times by self-interest, and often by both - cajole, cooperate, threaten, help, argue, support, and, indeed, occasionally walk out on each other. Labor economists and industrial organization theorists have long exploited the value of going inside the black box of the factory. It is time to do the same for household economics, say the authors.

Practical Philosophy of Sport

Abstract: Part 1 Getting started: developing philosophic skills dualism - bodies separated from persons holism - bodies united with persons. Part 2 The values of sport, exercise science and physical education: sports and the need of society sport, dance and exercise values the extrinsic value of fitness, knowledge, skill and pleasure the instrinsic value of fitness, knowledge, skill and pleasure. Part 3 Improving life through our profession - applications of philosophic thinking: making changes that matter the significance of games and play making sound ethical decisions writing a personal philosophy.

Profoundly diminished life. The casualties of coercion.

Abstract: A war of words is being waged about whether physicians can refuse, unilaterally, to provide life support for patients who are hopelessly or terminally ill. For many years one scenario predominated: the patient or his family said, "Stop this treatment and let me die," while the physician said, "I cannot stop lest I be sued, or indicted for murder." Physicians coped by inventing "slow codes" and "show codes" until time and the courts freed them to write "no codes." And families, once excluded along with patients from making decisions, gradually won the right to speak for a loved one who no longer could. Suddenly we see a reversal. A patient or family says, "Do everything," while the physician says, "Stop." In Minnesota, Helga Wanglie's physicians and hospital objected to sustaining indefinitely a woman in a persistent vegetative state while her family admonished that only God can take a life.[1] In Washington, D.C., the physicians caring for Baby Rena, an eighteen-month-old in constant pain with AIDS, hydrocephalus, respiratory distress, heart failure, and kidney dysfunction, believed that medicine must not be used to torture the dying and made plans to go to court Her foster parents insisted that all treatment be continued, because God would surely work a miracle.[2] In these new scenarios, physicians typically argue that it is not only permissible, but morally mandatory to cease aggressive treatment. The treatment is futile, they argue, or pointlessly cruel. The families of these patients, however, do not agree that their loved one would be better off dead. They may hold a vitalism that all life is of value, regardless of its quality. Or they may believe that personhood is not lost just because one can no longer think. I will argue that this dispute about whether physicians ethically can, or ought, unilaterally to refuse to provide life support revolves around fundamentally irresolvable moral conflicts concerning our most deeply held beliefs about the value of life, especially profoundly diminished life. Thus the "futility debate" is itself largely futile. The fundamentally intractable nature of this dispute, in turn, prompts coercion and the threat of coercion: where a dispute cannot be resolved by rational argument or persuasion, then believers of one side can only prevail on dissenting others by force. This, not the dispute about the value of diminished life, provokes the practical moral dilemmas. Physicians do not wish to be coerced into providing care that they believe is medically or morally wrong. Families do not want to be precluded from supporting the lives of their loved ones by the veto of physicians who have monopoly control over the means to those patients' survival. And the people who pay the taxes and insurance premiums that fund such care may object where they see "social hijacking" committed by patients and families pursuing private goals at common expense. If the central moral challenge concerns coercion in the face of an irresolvable value conflict, then a proper solution must inquire how best to preserve freedom for each party to honor its own values without coopting unwilling others. Despite the acrimony and divisiveness often surrounding these cases, I will suggest that considerable freedom can be preserved for all. The Standard Arguments "Profoundly diminished life" refers to patients whose condition is irreversibly very poor. Two scenarios predominate. First, like Nancy Cruzan, Karen Quinlan, or Helga Wanglie, the patient maybe permanently unconscious, or perhaps deeply demented. Many of these patients are not terminally ill, in that they can survive many years with proper nutrition and nursing care. Second are the terminally ill who will die soon no matter what medical interventions are provided. They may be awake and aware, but they have no realistic prospects for enjoyment or personal fulfillment in what remains of their lives. …

A Study of the Ethical Values of Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Small Business Owners

Abstract: Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment (Twain 1962, 156). The insightful, yet admittedly cynical Mark Twain was speaking of small town life at the turn of the century. If Mark Twain were observing business behavior in small town America today, would he feel the same way? Would it make a difference if Twain's focus was on urban business practices rather than that of the small town enterprise? What other factors influence the manner in which business owners view business decisions? This study addressed these questions and attempted to improve our understanding of factors which influence the ethical values of small business owners. BACKGROUND The increased interest in the study of business ethics is reflected by the plethora of articles currently appearing in scholarly journals (for example, Serwinek 1992, Stark 1993, Trevino 1992). The primary thrust of these articles is an attempt to explain the institutionalization of formal policies and the manner in which ethics are incorporated into decision making and work practices. With few exceptions (Brown and King 1982; Chrisman and Fry 1982; Longenecker, McKinney, and Moore 1989), ethics research has centered on large organizations (Thompson and Smith 1991). Beyond fiction and folklore, little is known about the ethical values of the approximately 18 million men and women who operate small firms in the U.S. (State of Small Business 1991). These individuals personify our image of American free enterprise. Unquestionably, they face ethical and moral dilemmas similar to those faced by managers of larger organizations. Yet, according to research conducted by Longenecker, McKinney, and Moore (1989), owners of small firms are far more demanding than generally perceived in their ethical attitudes. Ethical Values Framework While there is scant empirical evidence, normative assertions lead us to believe that a manager's personal values establish the basic character of his or her business decisions and strategies (Barnett and Karson 1987, Carroll and Hoy 1984, Guth and Tagiuri 1965). Such values "are the bases of human activity, and it is upon them that the purpose and objectives of a corporation rest" (Serpa 1985, 426). They "reflect the organization's general goals, ideals, standards, and 'sins'...[they] are often articulated in statements of organizational identity or management philosophy" (Dyer 1985, 203). Early theorists (Spranger 1928) postulated a variety of classifications of personal values: economic, religious, and aesthetic. More recently Barnett and Karson (1987) suggested that current social norms may result in additional value categories pertinent to contemporary business issues. Evidence of this supposition is reflected in the number of scholarly articles which address environmentalism (Hoffman 1991, Newton 1988), affirmative action (Groarke 1990), sexual harassment (Olson and Currie 1992), and multinational commerce (De George 1993). Nonetheless, the relationship between the concept of personal values and that of organizational actions continue to challenge students of organizational behavior (Palmer 1982). Environmental Influences on Ethical Values For more than a century, sociologists have studied the differences in rural and urban environments and the values they embrace. The pioneering sociologist Toennies introduced the terms "Gemeinschaft" and "Gesellschaft" in 1887 to describe these differences (Toennies 1887). Gemeinschaft refers to social organizations based on tradition and personal relationships, while Gesellschaft describes an impersonal culture where people are motivated by narrow self-interest. Toennies observed that the time-honored traditions of rural values (Gemeinschaft) were not found in the new industrial cities of Germany. In urban America, a major figure from the Chicago school of urban sociology, Louis Wirth, observed the same characteristics of communities in the late 1930s (Wirth 1938). …

Emotion and Spirit: Questioning the Claims of Psychoanalysis and Religion

Abstract: Psychoanalysis, with Freud as its founder, has vehemently denied the value of religious belief. In this radical book, re-issued with a new preface by the author and a foreword by Jon Stokes, Neville Symington makes the case that both traditional religion and psychoanalysis are failing because they exist apart and do not incorporate each other's values. The controversial conclusion of this fascinating study is that psychoanalysis is a spirituality-in-the-world, or a mature religion, and inseparable from acts of virtue.

Overcoming resistance to resistance: insights from a study of the shadows

Abstract: INTRODUCTION This article analyzes how students of organizations have used the concept of resistance Its purposes are twofold First, the authors seek to deepen understanding of the concept of resistance by discussing certain lacunae in treatments of this topic Second, by exploring the origins and nature of these lacunae, they seek to gain insights into fundamental assumptions that are associated with significant limitations in contemporary thought about organization development and related branches of applied social science The analysis develops from an application of Carl Jung's concept of the Shadow The authors apply the idea of the Shadow to two sets of treatments of resistance--the treatments by writers whom we describe as managerialist in their view of the study of change and those by another group that have been highly critical of the managerialist views In addition to deepening our understanding of resistance and sources of shortcomings in the approaches of both of these groups, the analysis leads to suggestions for improvement THE SHADOW Although Jung's (1969) metaphor of the Shadow originally referred to the parts of an individual's personality that s/he refused to accept, the term recently has been used to deepen our understanding of organizations For example, Denhardt (1981:vii) employs the concept to call attention to "the ethic of existence of an organization" that pervades contemporary life Bowles (1991:400) demonstrated the value of "the Shadow" metaphor for revealing detrimental effects that organizational management can have on "human, moral and social concerns" The authors suggest that similar insights can be gained through application of the Shadow metaphor to frameworks of thought in the social sciences Bowles (1991:388), following Jung, observed: "The Shadowrepresents the inferior part of the personality, the sum of all the personal and collective psychic elements which, because of their incompatibility, are banished to the unconscious" It also includes information from the outside world which does not carry sufficient energy to be recorded in consciousness The Shadow has a symbiotic relationship with the individual's ego As Bowles (Ibid, 389) put it: "Qualities or characteristics which the ego does not need or cannot make use of are set aside or repressed" In other words, the content of the Shadow is a function of the ego--what the ego rejects comes to rest in the Shadow If the ego were different, so would the Shadow be different Often, coming to terms with reality requires that the latent element of the personality be brought out of the Shadow The authors suggest an analogue of this process operates in social theories The manifest content of a theory predisposes its users to exclude elements systematically from their consciousness that, in some circumstances, are important in order for the theory to provide a useful guide to reality Moreover, given the symbiotic relationship between the manifest and latent aspects of a theory, exploration of the Shadow side is as important to understanding a perspective as is analysis of its manifest contents It also seems likely that critics of a theory will be concerned with both its manifest and latent content Thus we might be able to learn about the Shadow side of a theory by looking at its critics Of course critics will have Shadow sides as well Therefore, we might also expect to find clues about the critics' Shadow side in the manifest content of the theory they critique If, however, we find that two conflicting approaches have relegated the same elements to their respective Shadows, it may be that we have uncovered parts of a Collective Shadow Discovery of such widely repressed components could lead us to insights about major barriers to progress in thought For example, if all theorists of a certain subject, even those who appear to be holding conflicting positions, are making common, erroneous assumptions, uncovering these could be an important step to progress …