Showing papers on "Value (ethics) published in 1998"

The State of the Notion: Knowledge Management in Practice

Abstract: To a growing number of companies, knowledge management is more than just a buzzword or a sales pitch, it is an approach to adding or creating value by more actively leveraging the know-how, experience, and judgement resident within and, in many cases, outside of an organization. Based primarily upon the results of a study of 431 U.S. and European organizations, this article describes what firms are actually doing to manage knowledge, what else they think they could be or should be doing, and what they feel are the greatest barriers they face in their efforts.

The shifting basis of life satisfaction judgments across cultures: Emotions versus norms.

Abstract: The relative importance of emotions versus normative beliefs for life satisfaction judgments was compared among individualist and collectivist nations in 2 large sets of international data (in total, 61 nations, N = 62,446). Among nations, emotions and life satisfaction correlated significantly more strongly in more individualistic nations (r = .52 in Study 1; r = .48 in Study 2). At the individual level, emotions were far superior predictors of life satisfaction to norms (social approval of life satisfaction) in individualist cultures, whereas norms and emotions were equally strong predictors of life satisfaction in collectivist cultures. The present findings have implications for future studies on cultural notions of well-being, the functional value of emotional experiences, and individual differences in life satisfaction profiles. Across the world, is the "good life" attained mostly by doing what a person would like to do or by doing what a person thinks he or she should do? More broadly, are internal processes, such as attitudes, beliefs, emotions, and the like, or external pro

Attentional limitations in dual-task performance.

Abstract: People's ability (or inability) to do different activities or tasks at the same time is a topic of much interest not only to psychologists, but also to the proverbial "person in the street". It is natural to wonder about what we as human beings can and cannot do. An understanding of our limitations should also have practical value, because the intelligent design of human/machine systems depends as much on knowing the capabilities of people as it does on knowing the capabilities of machines. Human performance limits have played an important role in catastrophes that have occurred in aviation and other fields; a better understanding of those limits might help in designing systems and procedures that can minimize the frequency of such disasters. Simultaneous performance of different tasks is intellectually intriguing as well. The limitations on simultaneous cognition may provide important clues to the architecture of the human mind. The notion that dual-task performance limitations have implications about the "unity of the mind" occurred to people long before the present era of information-processing psychology. In the late nineteenth century, for example, the educated public was fascinated with a phenomenon called "automatic writing", in which People were claimed to be able to write prose while carrying out other tasks (see Koutstaal, 1992). This chapter provides an overview of research on attentional limitations dual-task performance. The organization of the chapter follows a plan

The New Economics of Organization

Abstract: In their purest forms, markets motivate and hierarchies coordinate Have we learned to combine the best of both? Two challenges for the corporations of the future: entrepreneurialism and knowledge In a classical microeconomic theory, a company is a "black box," a purposeful entity whose inner workings cannot be observed and whose behavior is determined almost entirely by the markets in which it competes. Executives and management practitioners, on the other hand, tend to behave as though changing the internal design and operation of a company can profoundly affect its performance. Can the views of economists and managers be reconciled? Which innovations in corporate design are likely to succeed in the business environment of the next decade? We undertook a two-year research program to find out. First, we analyzed the advantages and problems of today's largest corporations. Second, we examined the strategies and organizational designs of innovative and successful firms. These are few in number, and many of them are small. For that reason, they cannot act as a ready source of best practices for giant corporations to adopt. Yet they do offer a landscape attractive to executives for whom innovation and entrepreneurialism are aspirations rather than everyday realities. Since the grounds for future competitive success cannot be understood solely on the basis of current practice, we also drew on the discipline of organizational economics, which analyzes organizational actions as outcomes of strategic interplay among individuals as they respond to incentives or otherwise pursue their own interests. Organizational economics thus looks inside the "black box" of the corporation by examining the task of motivating and coordinating human activity. Though not in the mainstream of economic thought, the field has matured rapidly, and several of its leading exponents have won Nobel prizes.(*) The work of such thinkers as Ronald Coase, Oliver Williamson, and Herbert Simon informs many contemporary practices in strategy and organization.(**) Unlike classical microeconomics, organizational economics is not at odds with a managerial view of strategy and organization. Indeed, it complements it, giving us tools for designing and changing organizations with less recourse to such ambiguous concepts as "community," "trust," and "culture." There is nothing intrinsically wrong with these ideas, which may have a central part to play in the design of effective organizations. But they are difficult to define and can impede managers' communication. With its focus on such ideas as ownership, decision rights, and incentives, organizational economics offers a practical tool in designing companies capable of responding to the business challenges of the twenty-first century. What organizations do Organizations exist to motivate their members and coordinate their activities. In general, corporate performance suffers when there is a lack of motivation, coordination, or both. For many companies, the chief challenge is insufficient entrepreneurialism: a failure to motivate top talent to seize opportunities and make the most of them. For others, the problem is an inability to develop, apply, and capture value from new technologies and practices, and to forge value-creating linkages between processes, business units, and core functions. We might think of this as primarily a knowledge challenge, or a lack of coordination. Frederick Winslow Taylor, the father of scientific management, described the classic command-and-control organization thus: "Each employee should receive every day clear-cut, definite instructions as to just what he is to do and how he is to do it, and these instructions should be exactly carried out, whether they are right or wrong."(**) Here, coordination is a matter of centrally dictating employees' activities in great detail. Treatment of this sort may easily lead to demotivation, as the discipline and monitoring put in place to ensure that work gets done also ensure that only minimum requirements are met. …

Civil Society and Social Capital Beyond Putnam

Abstract: Both civil society and social capital have proven useful heuristics for drawing attention to neglected nonmarket aspects of social reality and constitute a needed corrective to narrowly economistic models. However, both break down, although in different ways, when treated as the basis for elaborating testable hypotheses and further theory. Civil society is most useful in polemical or normative contexts, but attempts to distinguish it from other sectors of society typically break down in unresolvable boundary disputes over just what constitutes civil society and what differentiates it from “state” and “market.” Work by Robert Putnam and others has assimilated social capital to the civic culture model, using it as just another label for the norms and values of the empirical democratic theory of the 1950s. This strategy undermines the empirical value of James Coleman and Pierre Bourdieu's useful social relational concept.

Values and Voting

Abstract: We examined relations of the 10 types of values in Schwartz's (1992) theory of voting. Hypotheses were generated by relating the core motivations of each value type to the ideological messages conveyed by party policies and symbols. Eight parties that ran in the 1988 Israeli elections were arrayed by judges on three ideological dimensions: classical liberalism, economic egalitarianism, state and religion. Discriminant analyses yielded a function whose coefficients for value types corresponded to hypotheses for the state and religion dimension and ordered party supporters on this dimension. After dropping religious parties, another value-based function ordered party supporters on the classical liberalism dimension, as predicted. Both functions significantly improved the party classification of voters in a representative national sample (N= 769). Economic egalitarianism, a nonsalient dimension in Israeli politics, was unrelated to values. Results suggest that all types of values may be politically relevant depending on context.

Justice and the Environment: Conceptions of Environmental Sustainability and Theories of Distributive Justice

Abstract: Introduction 1. Social Justice and Environmental Politics 2. Three Conceptions of Environmental Sustainability 3. The Dimensions of Social Justice 4. 'Critical Natural Capital' and Social Justice (Part One) 5. 'Critical Natural Capital' and Social Justice (Part Two) 6. 'Irreversibility' and Social Justice 7. 'Natural Value' and Social Justice Conclusion

Rational choice, situated action, and the social control of organizations

Abstract: The legal and administrative apparatus responsible for the social control of organizations relies extensively on the deterrent effects of punishment. This strategy presumes a rational choice model of organizational misconduct that decontextualizes decisionmaking, emphasizing consequences while ignoring how preferences are formed. I raise three challenges to the rational choice/ deterrence model of social control: (1) research and theory on decisionmaking, (2) a sociological paradigm that situates individual action in a structure/ culture/agency nexus that influences interpretation, meaning, and action at the local level, and (3) an analysis of the Challenger launch decision at NASA as situated action, showing how structure, culture, and history shaped preferences and choice. These challenges suggest a need to reorient regulatory activity toward the social context of decisionmaking. I conclude with a research agenda to explore the relationship between situated action, preference formation, and rational choice. Management decisions in the business world that value competitive and economic success more highly than the well-being of workers, consumers, or the general public so often have come to public attention that today's most widely accepted model of corporate criminality portrays managers of profit-seeking organizations as "amoral calculators" whose illegal actions are motivated by rational calculation of costs and opportunities (Kagan & Scholz 1984). Driven by pressures from the competitive environment, managers will violate the law to attain desired organizational goals unless the anticipated legal penalties (the expected costs weighed against the probability of delaying or avoiding them) exceed additional benefits the firm could gain by violation. The amoral calculator model locates the cause of business misconduct in the calculations of individual decisionmakers. It reflects the logic of sociological rational choice theory (Hechter 1987; Friedman & Hechter 1988; Cook & Levi 1990; J. S. Coleman 1990a; Hechter & Kanazawa 1997), but with one important distinction. When decisionmakers' calculations of costs and benefits are tainted by self-interest, economics, or politics so that intentional wrongdoing and/or harm result, their calculation becomes amoral. The amoral calculator model also has wide acceptance as an explanation for the misconduct of other types of organizations that violate laws, administrative rules, and regulations. Though not corporate profit seekers, to survive, all organizations must compete for scarce resources (Pfeffer & Salancik 1978; Vaughan 1983:54-66). Competition for scarce resources encourages research institutions to falsify data in order to win grants and prestige; universities to violate NCAA recruiting regulations in order to guarantee winning athletic teams; police departments to violate the law to make arrests that bring recognition and funding; political parties and governments to commit illegalities to secure national and international power. In response to competitive pressures emanating from the external environment, according to the amoral calculator model, individuals attempt to achieve organization goals through violative behavior. The linchpin of the model's applicability to a variety of organizations is the violative behavior itself: Because laws, rules, or administrative regulations forbid the behavior and carry penalties, decisions to violate appear to be imbued with intent, calculation of costs and benefits, and some degree of forethought about harmful consequences. Punishment is considered an important tool for the social control of organizations because of institutionalized beliefs that the ultimate cause of organizational offending is rational actors who will include the costs of punishment in their calculations and be deterred from violative behavior. Most certainly, the legal and administrative apparatus for the social control of organizations utilizes diverse approaches (e. …

Cultivating the Garden of Eden: environmental entrepreneuring

Abstract: Presents a discussion on the nature of environmentalism and the nature of enterprise. It argues that while, superficially, these concepts might appear to be contradictory, on examination key communalities become evident. Crucially, both are recognised to be social processes which are based on the notion of value. In environmentalism the value of economic growth per se is questioned. It challenges ideas about what society should consider to be valuable; about whether quality of life is more important than standard of living. Entrepreneurship is argued to be about the creation of value, first at a social level in terms of new products or services, and second, at an individual level in terms of the production of idiosyncratic values, such as self‐satisfaction and gratification. The paper proposes, and demonstrates, by examples, that changes in social evaluations, brought about by “greening”, mean that new entrepreneurial opportunities have arisen to develop new businesses. Consequently, these new businesses are embedded in, and valorised by, the emergent social values. Given that they are also energised and motivated at a personal level they are seen to be both viable and environmentally sustainable.

The Information Use in a SME: Its Importance and Some Elements of Influence

Abstract: The aim of this study is to gain some insights into the importance of the information use for the success of a SME. Consequently we examine some characteristics of the owner/manager and his firm which determine the extent of this use. The value of the model is examined for 208 Belgian SME owner/managers. Our data suggest there is a positive relation between the extent of information use and the performance of a SME. Moreover, we find that SME owner/managers with a greater strategic awareness, with less firm experience prior to the present position and with a greater desire for growth use more information. Also, smaller family ownership and intervention in strategic management, as well as greater delegation of decision making, lead to a higher information use.

The Adoption of the Corporate Governance Model by Nonprofit Organizations

Abstract: This article examines the circumstances under which nonprofit organizations adopt corporate governance practices. In the study reported here, the authors found that adoption of corporate governance practices depends primarily on the presence of a supportive institutional (that is, value) context as well as available resources to support governance restructuring. These findings strongly suggest that the adoption of structures and practices from the for-profit sector is neither a feasible nor even a desirable solution to problems facing many nonprofit organizations.

Feminism and ecological communities : an ethic of flourishing

Abstract: Acknowledgements Introduction: Thinking at the crossroads Prelude: Situating Ecological Feminism 1 The Ecofeminist Project 2 Feminist Ethics and the Value of Nature 3 So As To Flourish: The Goals of Ecological Feminism Interlude: On Ethics Without Purity 4 Selves, Systems and Chaos 5 Not So Static After All: Ecological Feminism and Anti-Essentialist Criticism 6 Considering the Problems in Ecofeminism 7Activism That Is Not One Works cited and of related interest Index

Technologies of Truth: Cultural Citizenship and the Popular Media

Abstract: In a world ever more complex and media-saturated, what is the value of the truth? Here, Toby Miller provides a pithy and clear-sighted examination of how television, magazines, film, and museums influence the way our society conceptualizes such issues as citizenship, democracy, nationhood, globalization, truth, and fiction. Along the way, he explicates surprising connections between cultural objects and discourses, producing a new meeting ground for cultural, social, and political theory.

Freedom of association

Abstract: Preface and AcknowledgmentsCh. 1Freedom of Association: An Introductory Essay3Pt. IIndividual Values of AssociationCh. 2The Value of Association35Ch. 3On Involuntary Association64Ch. 4Compelled Association: Public Standing, Self-Respect, and the Dynamic of Exclusion75Ch. 5Freedom of Association and Religious Association109Ch. 6Rights, Reasons, and Freedom of Association145Pt. IICivic Values of AssociationCh. 7Ethnic Associations and Democratic Citizenship177Ch. 8Revisiting the Civic Sphere214Ch. 9Civil Society versus Civic Virtue239Ch. 10Insignificant Communities273Ch. 11The City as a Site for Free Association314Ch. 12Trade Unionism in a Liberal State330List of ContributorsIndex

A Case for Comparing Apples with Oranges: International Differences in Values

Abstract: The Nature of Comparisons Across Nations "Comparisons are odorous" (Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, III, v, 18) Popular wisdom deems that one cannot compare apples with oranges. But what do we mean by 'compare'? Both the Oxford and Webster Dictionaries(1) give two meanings to the word: (1) liken, regard as similar; and (2) examine in order to observe similarities or differences. It is obvious that the general interpretation of the word refers to the first meaning, and that scientific inquiry involves the second. Scientifically speaking, apples and oranges come under the general category of 'fruits' and can be compared on many criteria such as availability, price, color, vitamin content or keeping quality. Comparing apples with oranges, cross-cultural psychologist Harry Triandis once said, is okay as long as we possess a fruitology, a theory of fruits. Any comparison of values and attitudes across nations is in some way a comparison of apples to oranges, and without its fruitology it risks being a fruitless effort. Three basic questions have to be resolved: (1) the nature of the criteria for comparison; (2) to what extent nations are a proper unit for such a comparison, and (3) the functional equivalence of the nations concerned with respect to the criteria considered. 1. The criteria for our comparison are values and attitudes, known as constructs. A construct is "not directly accessible to observation but inferable from verbal statements and other behaviors and useful in predicting still other observable and measurable verbal and nonverbal behavior" (Levitin, 1973: 492). Constructs do not 'exist' in an absolute sense: we define them into existence. Metaphorically I called them mental programs; like computer programs, we cannot observe them directly; we can only observe what they do. In the case of people we can observe their behavior, their words and deeds - including the way they respond to survey questions - from which we infer the presence of stable mental programs (Hofstede, 1980: 14). Inspired by Kluckhohn (1951: 395) and Rokeach (1972:159ff) I defined a value as "a broad tendency to prefer certain states of affairs over others." The term values is generally reserved for mental programs that are relatively unspecific; attitudes and beliefs refer to more specific mental programs (Hofstede, 1980: 15). I treated values as part of culture, the latter defined as "the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another." This is not a complete definition of culture, which as a construct has been notoriously difficult to define, but it covers what I was able to measure in my research (Op. cit.: 25). At the level of nations, values that distinguish between nations are a component of 'national cultures.' National culture is more or less synonymous to what a generation ago used to be called national character, a term that infers psychologizing. Culture allows more emphasis on the environment in which people function.(2) 2. The use of nations as units for comparing mental programs is debatable. Most anthropologists shy away from nations as units for studying culture. They are basically right, as nations can host many cultures in the anthropological sense, and cultures can bridge more than one nation. If data are collected by field observation as anthropologists tend to do, the student of culture can choose more relevant units. If data are partly collected from secondary sources, as in most comparative research, one can hardly escape from using the nation level. Many potentially culturally relevant data are only available at that level, so the nation becomes a surrogate for more suitable units. Fortunately, quite a few nations are culturally reasonably homogeneous. Older nations have in the 20th century been subject to a process of homogenization through national media (such as TV) and national institutions (e.g., the army and the soccer league). …

Social Meaning and the Economic Analysis of Crime

Abstract: This essay examines the importance of social meaning for the economic analysis of crime. Against the background of social norms, the actions of individuals and communities convey information about what they value. Individuals take these meanings into account when they are responding to the incentives created by criminal law; communities take them into account when they decide what to punish, how to punish it, and how severely. Because meaning matters in these ways, economic analyses of criminal law that abstract from meaning—by, say, considering only how various policies affect the expected penalty for wrongdoing—produce unreliable predictions and prescriptions. The essay makes out this claim by considering a number of concrete examples, including tax evasion, juvenile gun possession, gang criminality, alternative sanctions (such as shaming penalties), and corporate criminal liability.

Life in the Balance: Humanity and the Biodiversity Crisis

Abstract: Botswana's Okavango Delta is considered by many to be one of the last "Edens" left on Earth. There a rich assortment of organisms exist in natural equilibrium. The same insults in microcosm - encroaching agriculture, water diversion, disease, and pollution - threaten the Okavango that in macrocosm threaten the entire planet. Starting with a sensual journey by plane and boat, Eldredge leads a reader first to the very heart of the Okavango, and then on a tour of Earth's organisms - animals, plants, fungi, and the microbes which underpin all of life - and ecosystems in which these organisms earn their living - from the tundra to the tropics. It is a journey that reveals the twin faces of biodiversity (the 13 million extant species and the ecosystems through which these species transform and exchange the Sun's energy) and the value of biodiversity to the Biosphere as a whole and to our own continued human existence. Eldredge's tour ends at the Panama Canal, the site of one of humankind's greatest achievements, where, if only by necessity, practical solutions to maintaining biodiversity's delicate balance have been successfully implemented. If his message is not entirely pessimistic, it is not entirely hopeful either. There are a number of difficult actions we must take as a global society if we are to stem an impending 'Sixth Extinction', and Eldredge outlines these steps in detail.

Value Incongruity and Strategic Choice

Abstract: Research addressing how values held by individuals in organizations influence strategy choice and implementation is as yet fragmented. Different strands of this research have yielded contradictory prescriptions for strategy. This paper examines how values affect strategy, by focusing on the social control they exert. Social control manifests itself through the behaviours permitted and proscribed by given values. We call a value a core value when the social control it exerts supersedes that of most other values in a value system. When the social control a value exerts is itself superseded by that exerted by most other values in a system, we call the value a peripheral value in that system. Strategies could be depicted as containing implicit values, in that they too entail prescriptions for behaviour. Thus, core values implicit to strategies enable behaviour essential for the success of strategies. Values seemingly peripheral to strategies enable behaviour peripheral or even tangential to their success. This paper discusses several contingencies – clashes between core values of decision makers and values implicitly at the core of strategies, core and peripheral values, as well as clashes between peripheral values – in the context of both corporate and competitive strategies. Finally, some factors that might mitigate these clashes, are also discussed

Human Resource Management and the Appropriation-Learning Perspective

Abstract: This paper posits the concept of "appropriation" to explain the underlying ethos and rationale for seeking to secure the contribution of people to organizational functioning. Human resource management (HRM) practice is therefore largely underpinned by the objective of appropriating the human resource "value." This is ignored by the practitioner-oriented literature which has a financial interest in helping organizations to secure this value, and by the academic literature which is unwilling to confront the contradictions and uncomfortable truths inherent in such activities. The traditional approach to appropriation is characterized by such concerns as skill-formation, commitment to the organization, shared corporate values, and a reliance on formally constituted governance structures with a putative integrative ethos. This paper advocates a reconstitution of the appropriation regime to incorporate the concepts of knowledge and learning. We draw from the innovation management literature to highlight the pro...

Skills of Clinical Supervision for Nurses: A Practical Guide for Supervisees, Clinical Supervisors and Managers

Abstract: Introduction Part One: The context of clinical supervision in nursing The surface picture: the development and value of clinical supervision The hidden picture: Resistance to clinical supervision and implications for the clinical supervision relationship Part Two: Specific skills of clinical supervision The clinical supervision relationship: A working alliance Reflective skills of the supervisee Support and catalytic skills of the clinical supervisor Informative and challenging skills of the clinical supervisor Skills of group clinical supervision Part Three: Clinical supervision systems: Implications and challenges for the organization The big picture: What the organization needs to know and needs to do Section A. Clinical supervision and clinical effectiveness: What works, what do we think works, what do we need to do to demonstrate it? Section B. The practicalities of setting up clinical supervision systems Section C. Looking to the picture of the future References Index

Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection

Abstract: Acknowledgements List of contributors 1. Introduction: aesthetics and ethics Jerrold Levinson 2. Three versions of objectivity: moral, aesthetic, and scientific Richard W. Miller 3. Aesthetic value, moral value, and the ambitions of naturalism Peter Railton 4. About consistency in one's personal aesthetics Ted Cohen 5. Art, narrative, and moral understanding Noel Carroll 6. Realism of character and the value of fiction Gregory Currie 7. The ethical criticism of art Berys Gaut 8. How bad can good art be? Karen Hanson 9. Beauty and evil: the case of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will Mary Devereaux 10. The naked truth Arthur C. Danto 11. Aesthetic derogation: hate speech, pornography, and the aesthetic contexts Lynne Tirrell Bibliography Index of names and titles.

Dance, power, and difference : critical and feminist perspectives on dance education

Abstract: " In "Dance, Power, and Difference," eight leading dance educators from around the world examine the fundamental values and goals of dance and dance education. Using a variety of approaches-including general critique, case studies, and personal histories-"Dance, Power, and Difference" provides a foundation for reconstructing dance education in light of critical, social, and cultural concerns. This is not an answer book, however. It is a thought-provoking book that encourages readers to question traditional practices and develop a personal philosophy that is both critical and feminist. "Dance, Power, and Difference" seeks to transform the way readers think about dance-not only regarding how it is taught, researched, and critiqued, but also in terms of its purpose and aims. The contributors link dance to themes of human emancipation, multicultural awareness, and gender awareness, prompting readers to contemplate questions like these: - How do we think of and value ""the body"" in dance?- What cultural values, if any, should we impart to our students?- What changes might a feminist-oriented pedagogy for dance stimulate?- How should we prepare ourselves to work with students from cultures that are different from our own?- Should we perpetuate old teaching methods?Part I introduces the reader to foundational questions concerning curriculum, pedagogy, and research. Part II presents personal stories that place these questions in the context of specific situations. Part III discusses the role of dance within the broader political and social arena. Each chapter includes an abstract, critical reflections, questions to spur class discussion and individual thought, and references. "

From legal realism to law and Society : Reshaping Law for the last stages of the social activist state

Abstract: This article tells the story of the establishment of the Law and Society Association in the early to mid-1960s. To tell the story, the authors concentrate on the personal stories of the individuals active in that early period and on four university campus sites-the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Denver, Northwestern University, and the University of Wisconsin-at which much of the impetus was focused. They also examine key institutions that funded and/or encouraged links between law and social science-the Russell Sage Foundation, the Walter E. Meyer Research Institute of Law, and the American Bar Foundation. The article seeks also to investigate more generally the factors that came together to build a field of law and social science-which in turn helped to provide the ideas and build the institutions involved in the Johnson administration's War on Poverty. The field was created in part by a process involving both competition and cooperation between law and social science over the new terrain of social problems of racial discrimination, poverty, and crime. The authors suggest that, over time, the center of gravity of the field moved toward law, leaving the social science disciplines for the most part outside. The development of the field generally was also affected by the strong shift in the relative values of these social sciences-especially sociology-in relation to economics in the 1980s. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a network of social scientists and law professors took advantage of the rising prestige of social science to renew the Legal Realists' challenge to "legal formalism." One result of the new attack on behalf of social science was the Law and Society Association-now more than 30 years old. The LSA has grown and in many respects thrived over that period. Whether this history should be characterized as a "success" can of course be debated. From whatever position we assess the LSA's accomplishments, however, it is important to recognize that both accomplishments and limitations have been shaped by the individuals who "made up" the LSA in the first place. This article explores the origins and early years of the Law and Society Association. We seek to shed light on a number of theoretical concerns about the relationship between law and social science, but the primary ambition is simply to investigate this genealogy. As should be obvious, we believe we can understand the LSA-and our own careers and approachesl-better if we can make sense of the generation that preceded us. Not surprisingly, we consider the stories of the fathers and mothers of the LSA fascinating for their own sake. We would also like others to learn about these individuals, what brought them together, and what emerged as a consequence. Instead of trying to force the story into a carefully honed argument directed toward a series of theoretical conclusions, therefore, we have given precedence to the details of the personal stories of the protagonists. At the same time, however, we have imposed what we hope is a relatively gentle framework of structural sociology. The story of LSA provides a perfect window to examine the question of the relationship between law and social science. More generally, that relationship is itself central to issues about the transformation of the state. Academics and academic ideas provide the expertise and legitimacy crucial to such transformations. What is normally characterized as "academic gossip," therefore, is quite important to our theoretical interests, since academic ideas are not only produced and shaped by the "pull of the policy audience" (Sarat & Silbey 1988) but also by the need to build careers in a very hierarchical and status-conscious academic world (cf. van Maanen 1977). The stories that intersect in this article are the product of many accidental circumstances, but the opportunities that were presented were not random events. Opportunities in the area of law and social science depended on what resources these individuals could bring, what the external world meant for the value of those resources, and the informal networks that provided the knowledge and information necessary to learn and take advantage of opportunities. …

South Africa's emergence as a middle power

Abstract: This article seeks to explain South Africa's ostensible emergence as a middle power. It makes the case for the use of a Coxian-based critical theory perspective, which relates the interrelationship between change at the level of world order, the nature of production and the social forces operative in the middle power's state-societal complex to explain South Africa's increasingly active role in international affairs. Playing a mediatory role helps the South African state make diverse foreign policy goals more compatible and it also goes some way in thwarting criticism levelled at its foreign policy in the state-societal domain. Contrary to earlier theorising about middle powers, this article supports a more recent contention that middle powers act in their own (ie dominant societal) interests. The value of such a perspective is illustrated in the light of current debates about the apparent incongruity of South African foreign policy.

The case for case studies in nursing research: the problem of generalization

Abstract: This paper examines the logic of generalizing from case studies and other nonrepresentative samples. It is argued that the generalizability of such research is often underestimated, because of a fundamental confusion about two quite distinct logical bases upon which generalizations can be made: empirical and theoretical. It is suggested that once it is accepted that theoretical generalizations do not depend upon representativeness for their validity, the full value of case study, and other small-scale qualitative research to nursing and other health care disciplines, can be appreciated.

Legal Implications of Network Economic Effects

Abstract: Economic scholarship has recently focused a great deal of attention on the phenomenon of network externalities, or network effects: markets in which the value that consumers place on a good increases as others buy the good. Though the economic theory of network effects is less than fifteen years old, and is still not thoroughly understood, network effects are increasingly playing a role in legal argument. Judges, litigators, and scholars have suggested that antitrust law, intellectual property law, telecommunications law, Internet law, corporate law, and contract law need to be modified to take account of network effects. Their arguments reflect a wide range of views about what network effects are and how courts should react to them. In this Article, we explore the application of network economic theory in each of these contexts. We suggest ways in which particular legal rules should—and should not—be modified to take account of network effects. We also attempt to draw some general conclusions about the role of network economic the-

Role Models — Guiding the Future of Medicine

Abstract: In this issue of the Journal, Wright et al. present provocative evidence that many physician-teachers do not exhibit the professional characteristics that residents desire to emulate.1 Assuming that this study's results, from two highly respected teaching programs, are representative of other institutions, these data indicate that less than half of teaching physicians are perceived as excellent role models. What does this mean? Do less than half of medical teachers have the skills and behavior of respected physicians? Do learners recognize the value of the professional roles of less than half of faculty members? Do less than half of clinical teachers . . .

Caring, patient autonomy and the stigma of paternalism

Abstract: This paper utilizes data generated during a qualitative study in palliative and maternity care settings to guide discussion of the current discourse, which emphasizes patient autonomy and derides paternalism. Data are presented which illustrate that this ideology is established in nursing practice. Respect for patient autonomy is identified as an essential element of individualized, patient-centred and ethical care but conversely, it is suggested that overemphasis may confuse and suppress beneficent intervention. The value of ethical theory to provide an objective means to explore ethical dilemmas in practice is not debated, but exploration of the issues raised by the data suggest, that principle-based ethical theory suffers the following constraints: the predetermined balance of ethical principles in favour of respect for autonomy prevents an unbiased perspective and optimum guidance; in contrast to caring relationship, application of ethical theory does not reveal the particulars necessary to guide ethical decisions aimed at promoting good for the individual; current discourse appears to disregard the inherent inequality in the relationship between the helped and helper and practitioners' need to preserve their own moral integrity. Consequently, this paper argues that beneficence derived through caring should not be superseded uncritically and suggests that mutual nurse-patient relationship, which balances respect for patient autonomy and beneficent guidance based on practitioner's clinical expertise, protects the moral integrity of both patient and practitioner. For conciseness, the term patient will be used to indicate recipients of both nursing and midwifery care and while both nurses and midwives are not always specified, any term referring to nurses, denotes both.

Deregulatory Takings and the Regulatory Contract

Abstract: This 1998 book addresses deregulatory policies that threaten to reduce or destroy the value of private property in network industries without any accompanying payment of just compensation, policies that are termed 'deregulatory takings'. The authors further consider the problem of renegotiation of the regulatory contract, which changes the terms and conditions of operation of utility companies. They argue that constitutional protections of private property from takings, as well as efficient remedies for contractual breach, provide the proper foundation for the competitive transformation of the network industries. The benefits of competition do not stem from government regulations that redistribute income from utility investors to customers, nor do such benefits stem from regulatory policies for network access that promote free riding on incumbent facilities by entrants. Such actions represent a new version of increased regulation, not deregulation.