Showing papers on "Value (ethics) published in 2008"

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Culture's Consequences in A Value Test of its Own Design

Abstract: The paper offers a critical reading of Geert Hofstede's (1980) Culture's Consequences using an analytical strategy where the book is mirrored against itself and analyzed in terms of its own proposed value dimensions. “Mirroring” unravels the book's normative viewpoint and political subtext and exposes discursive interests in its research process. Making all this evident in the canonical book's own terms, this paper communicates critical concerns across paradigm boundaries. It indicates the need to reconsider concepts and convictions that predominate cross-cultural research and to adopt norms of reflexivity that transcend existing notions of “cultural relativism.”

An Illusory Interiority: Interrogating the discourse/s of inclusion

Abstract: It is generally accepted that the notion of inclusion derived or evolved from the practices of mainstreaming or integrating students with disabilities into regular schools. Halting the practice of segregating children with disabilities was a progressive social movement. The value of this achievement is not in dispute. However, our charter as scholars and cultural vigilantes (Slee & Allan, 2001) is to always look for how we can improve things; to avoid stasis and complacency we must continue to ask, how can we do it better? Thus, we must ask ourselves uncomfortable questions and develop a critical perspective that Foucault characterised as an ‘ethic of discomfort’ (Rabinow & Rose, 2003, p. xxvi) by following the Nietzschean principle where one acts ‘counter to our time and thereby on our time ... for the benefit of a time to come’ (Nietzsche, 1874, p. 60 in Rabinow & Rose, 2003, p. xxvi). This paper begins with a fundamental question for those participating in inclusive education research and scholarship—when we talk of including, into what do we seek to include?

Managing for Stakeholders

Abstract: The purpose of this essay is to outline an emerging view of business that we shall call "managing for stakeholders." This view has emerged over the past thirty years from a group of scholars in a diverse set of disciplines, from finance to philosophy. The basic idea is that businesses, and the executives who manage them, actually do and should create value for customers, suppliers, employees, communities, and financiers (or shareholders). And, that we need to pay careful attention to how these relationships are managed and how value gets created for these stakeholders. We contrast this idea with the dominant model of business activity; namely, that businesses are to be managed solely for the benefit of shareholders. Any other benefits (or harms) that are created are incidental. Simple ideas create complex questions, and we proceed as follows. In the next section we examine why the dominant story or model of business that is deeply embedded in our culture is no longer workable. It is resistant to change, not consistent with the law, and for the most part, simply ignores matters of ethics. Each of these flaws is fatal in business world of the 21st Century. We then proceed to define the basic ideas of "managing for stakeholders" and why it solves some of the problems of the dominant model. In particular we pay attention to how using 'stakeholder' as a basic unit of analysis makes it more difficult to ignore matters of ethics. We argue that the primary responsibility of the executive is to create as much value for stakeholders as possible, and that no stakeholder interest is viable in isolation of the other stakeholders. We sketch three primary arguments from ethical theory for adopting "managing for stakeholders." We conclude by outlining a fourth "pragmatist argument" that suggests we see managing for stakeholders as a new narrative about business that lets us improve the way we currently create value for each other. Capitalism is on this view a system of social cooperation and collaboration, rather than primarily a system of competition.

The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age

Abstract: The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age Daniel J. Solove. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 290 pp. $29.95.Daniel J. Solove, like most contemporary writers on privacy, offers a sky-is-falling perspective on privacy in the modern paperless, transactional age. Due in part to the rise of so-called "digital dossiers" and perhaps, in the opinion of the reviewer, due in part to apathy, Solove observes recent developments as a new paradigm of the privacy problematic. The goal is "to rethink longstanding notions of privacy to grapple with the consequences of living in an information age" (p. 2). Much of what is covered here is not new. As Solove comments in his introduction: "There are hundreds of companies that are constructing gigantic databases of psychological profiles, amassing data about an individual's race, gender, income, hobbies, and purchases" (p. 2). Although the combination of private and public information "has long been viewed as problematic" (p. 6), Solove never adequately explains why or moves beyond the obvious: Marketing, credit, and related research companies have been engaging in such practices for years; in fairness to Solove, perhaps the difference is capacity to collect, to share, to compile, etc. This is the power of "aggregation" which contributes to the inability to assign adequate value to personal information. Though Solove does not make the connection, this may be a key to understanding the power of apathy or more kindly the unawareness that immobilizes individual responses to personal privacy protection. What is new is that "beyond articulating a new understanding of contemporary privacy problems" Solove attempts "to demonstrate the ways that the problems can be solved" (p. 6). After observing traditional conceptualizations such as big brother (Orwellian, pp. 29-35), secrecy and invasion (though he uses the idea of invasion to describe both), Solove claims to use a new Kafkaesque metaphor of irresponsible bureaucracy (pp. 36-41).On the way to this metaphor, Chapter 2 recounts the rise of public and private sector databases and the new uses of the web as a point and source of data collection. Chapter 3 reviews various metaphors and views the ultimate harm as one affecting human dignity through misjudgments, diminished capacity to participate, and unfairness (perhaps unevenness is more descriptive) in the collection of information. Chapter 4 reviews the inadequacy of the private (traditional tort and more recent statutory sector by sector approaches) and public law of privacy in the United States. …

When ways of life collide: Multiculturalism and its discontents in the Netherlands

Abstract: “There is a sequence to social science research: a dramatic event happens – say, September 11 – then a wave studies follows [...]. But then there is a predicament: we cannot tell how things have changed because we do not know how they were: and not knowing what has changed and what has not, we are not able to determine why what has happened, happened” (p. xi), argue Sniderman and Hagendoorn in their thorough study on multiculturalism, conflicts over identity and values in the Netherlands pre 9–11. Indeed in many studies 9/11 is seen as a landmark event, regarding the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, but very often prior frictions and internal conflicts are not taken into account. Showing how prejudice had the strongest impact on support for equality (p.128) towards Muslims and making clear this sentiment was already ubiquitous before 9/11 across the political spectrum, Sniderman and Hagendoorn fill an important gap. One of the most valuable aspects of their meticulous study is the part about fear of Dutch non-Muslims related to intolerance of minorities. This we often hear, but the authors go deeper by arguing that we should find out who feels threatened and by what? Two perceived threats matter: to economic self-interest and to cultural identity. The latter more likely induces intolerant reactions than the former. One of the striking results is that even those who do not agree that Dutch culture is threatened react as strongly to problems of cultural integration as those who are in agreement (p. 99). According to Sniderman and Hagendoorn the best predictor of prejudice towards minorities is the importance people attach to the value of conformity (p. 114). They make clear how people tend to yield to Cont Islam (2008) 2:151–154 DOI 10.1007/s11562-008-0039-x

Education effects on authoritarian-libertarian values: a question of socialization.

Abstract: Over the past decades an authoritarian-libertarian value dimension has become increasingly important to electoral behaviour across western countries. Previous analyses have shown that education is the most important social antecedent of individuals' positions on this value dimension; high education groups tend towards the libertarian pole and low education groups tend towards the authoritarian pole. It remains an open question, however, what aspects of education cause this relationship. The article examines a range of explanatory models: a psychodynamic, a cognitive, a socialization, and an allocation effects model. The results strongly favour the socialization model in which the relationship between education and authoritarian-libertarian values is explained as a result of differences in the value sets transferred to students in different educational milieus. The value differences between the educational groups should thus not be seen as reflecting economic differences between the groups but rather as the result of a more fundamental value conflict.

The Ethical Economy of Customer Coproduction

Abstract: In this article, the author argues that customer coproduction should be understood as an expression of a large-scale trend toward the increasing power and relevance of social production. Social production consists in the self-organized systems of (mostly immaterial) production that have evolved around the diffusion of networked information and communication technologies. An analysis of the genealogy of social production is shared; this includes tracing it to the process of re-mediation of social relations put in motion by the expansion of the capitalist economy into the fields of culture and consciousness and the concomitant socialization of production relations. The author then argues that social production, including customer coproduction, follows a very particular economic logic—that is, an ethical economy where value is related to social impact rather than monetary accumulation. A detailed analysis of the logic of this ethical economy is offered; it draws out some implications for the successful manag...

What Makes Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurial

Abstract: What are the characteristics, habits, and behaviors of the species entrepreneur? Is there such a thing as "entrepreneurial thinking"? Is there a learnable and teachable "core" to entrepreneurship? This case examines the problem-solving process of 30 entrepreneurs from a variety of industries whose companies range in value from $200 million to $6.5 billion. Careful analysis reveals a distinct thought process: "effectual reasoning." Using U-Haul as an example, the case delineates the way in which entrepreneurs factor in affordable loss, strategic partnerships, and leveraging contingencies. Thinking entrepreneurially, as opposed to managerially or strategically, means believing in a yet-to-be-made future that can be shaped by human action and realizing that, to the extent that such action can control the future, one need not expend energy trying to predict it. It is much more useful to understand and work with the people who are engaged in the decisions and actions that bring it into existence.

The Impact of Culture on Organizational Decision Making: Theory and Practice in Higher Education

Abstract: Colleges and universities are currently undergoing the most significant challenges they have faced since World War II. Rising costs, increased competition from for-profit providers, the impact of technology, and the changing desires and needs of consumers have combined to create a dynamic tension for those who work in, and study, postsecondary education. What worked yesterday is unlikely to work tomorrow. The status quo or bromides such as 'stay the course' are insufficient responses in a market that demands creativity and innovation if an organization does not simply wish to survive, but thrive. Managerial responses or top-down linear decisions are antithetical to academic organizations and most likely recipes for disaster. In today's 'flat world', decision-making for most organizations has become less hierarchical and more decentralized. Understanding this trend is of particular importance for organizations with traditions of shared governance. The message of this book is that understanding organizational culture is critical for those who recognize that academe must change, but are unsure how to make that change happen. Even the most seasoned college and university administrators and professors often ask themselves, 'What holds this place together'? The author's answer is that an organization's culture is the glue of academic life. Paradoxically, this 'glue' does not make things get stuck, but unstuck. An understanding of culture enables an organization's participants to interpret the institution to themselves and others, and in consequence, to propel the institution forward. An organization's culture is reflected in what is done, how it is done, and who is involved in doing it. It concerns decisions, actions, and communication on an instrumental and symbolic level. This book considers various facets of academic culture, discusses how to study it, how to analyze it, and how to improve it in order to move colleges and universities aggressively into the future while maintaining core academic values. This book presents updated versions of eight key articles on organizational culture in higher education by William G. Tierney. The new introduction that sets them in the context of current and future challenges will add further value to articles that are already in high demand.

Political affects in public space: normative blind-spots in non-representational ontologies

Abstract: Recent theoretical debates in human geography have been characterised by a preference for ontological styles of argument. The ontologisation of theory is associated with distinctive claims about rethinking ‘the political’. This paper draws on an avowedly ‘non-representationalist’ philosophical perspective to develop an interpretation of ontology-talk as a genre that provides reasons for certain commitments. This argument is developed with reference to recent accounts of the spatial politics of affect in cultural geography and urban studies, and of the neuropolitics of media affects in political theory. The commitments that the ontology of affect provides reasons for are shown to revolve around understandings of the value of democracy. Assertions of the political relevance of ontologies of affect rhetorically appeal to norms that are not explicitly avowed from these theoretical perspectives. The ontologisation of affect depends on a particular settlement of the priority-claims of different families of concepts. The combination of an ontological style of theoretical analysis and an imperative to claim relevance for affective aspects of life in terms of rethinking ‘the political’ leads to a presentation of affect as an effective modality of manipulation mediated by infrastructures of public space. The ontological presentation of affect therefore forecloses on a series of normative questions provoked by the acknowledgement of the affective aspects of life. While the value of democracy is thrown into new relief by affect onto-stories, the full implications of any likely reconfiguration of our understandings of democracy remain to be elaborated in this line of thought, not least because it avoids any engagement with the principle of participation by all affected interests.

A process-oriented perspective on differential business value creation by information technology: An empirical investigation

Abstract: The relationship between information technology investments and firm value as an area of inquiry has sustained interest among IS researchers over the past decade. More recently, some have challenged the notion differential value among firms through Information Technology (IT) as it evolves into a ubiquitous utility-like set of technologies. This study examines the relationship between IT and business value from a process-oriented perspective, and also helps to identify the underlying links between IT and its differential business value to firms. By drawing upon economic and organizational theories, this paper develops a process framework to assess the intermediate organizational process capabilities and overall performance of firms that effectively deploy and use IT. Using data from over 80 firms, the study finds empirical support for the differential business value created by IT along a number of process oriented dimensions. These findings are discussed as these results set an optimistic tone for IT as a major causal driver of differentiation.

The aesthetics of consumption and the consumer as an aesthetic subject

Abstract: This paper examines aesthetics in everyday consumption practices and patterns. Combining aesthetic theory with prior work of consumer scholars to support our theoretical framework, we investigate empirically the following issues: the integration of aesthetics into everyday consumption, the distinction between everyday aesthetics and of the arts, and the relationship between aestheti cs and the construction of meaning and identity. In addition, we introduce the idea of the consumer as an aesthetic subject. The data also shed light on the following aspects of aesthetic consumption: intrinsic value versus instrumental value, emotions, sensory pleasure, beauty, context, and taste formation.

Machine morality: bottom-up and top-down approaches for modelling human moral faculties

Abstract: The implementation of moral decision making abilities in artificial intelligence (AI) is a natural and necessary extension to the social mechanisms of autonomous software agents and robots. Engineers exploring design strategies for systems sensitive to moral considerations in their choices and actions will need to determine what role ethical theory should play in defining control architectures for such systems. The architectures for morally intelligent agents fall within two broad approaches: the top-down imposition of ethical theories, and the bottom-up building of systems that aim at goals or standards which may or may not be specified in explicitly theoretical terms. In this paper we wish to provide some direction for continued research by outlining the value and limitations inherent in each of these approaches.

The reasons of trust

Abstract: I argue to a conclusion I find at once surprising and intuitive: although many considerations show trust useful, valuable, important, or required, these are not the reasons for which one trusts a particular person to do a particular thing. The reasons for which one trusts a particular person on a particular occasion concern, not the value, importance, or necessity of trust itself, but rather the trustworthiness of the person in question in the matter at hand. In fact, I will suggest that the degree to which you trust a particular person to do a particular thing will vary inversely with the degree to which you must rely, for the motivation or justification of your trusting response, on reasons that concern the importance, or value, or necessity of having such a response.

Ethics and the Environment: An Introduction

Abstract: Preface 1. The environment as an ethical question 2. Human morality 3. Meta-ethics 4. Normative ethics 5. Humans and other animals 6. The value of nature 7. Nature's future.

Value Solidity in Government and Business Results of an Empirical Study on Public and Private Sector Organizational Values

Abstract: This article reports on a survey study of 382 managers from a variety of public and private sector organizations, on the values that guide sectoral decision making. Just as some important classical differences emerge, a number of similarities between the public and private sector appear to result in a set of common core organizational values. Furthermore, the data support neither increasing adoption of business values in public sector organizations nor flirtation with public values by business sector managers. This contradicts expectations in the literature on new public management and corporate social responsibility, suggesting public�private value intermixing. Value solidity seems the dominant feature in both sectors. Additional analysis shows that "publicness," the extent to which an organization belongs to the public or the private sector� rather than age, gender, years of service or a past in the other sector�strongly determines value preferences.

Ethics in international business

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to emphasise the importance of the study of ethics in an international context in business courses.Design/methodology/approach – The paper begins with proposed learning outcomes. It examines, using contemporary examples, the increased importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR), the implications of national and international legislation concerning ethical issues and the need for sound overall corporate governance. It concludes with analysis of recent progress towards sustaining ethical standards. The various key ethical dilemmas which occur in business are examined using recent examples, both from the UK and internationally.Findings – The paper presents an optimistic analysis of recent progress made in the development of ethical standards in business, including suggestions for future good practice, both internationally and at company level.Originality/value – The paper emphasises the importance of sound governance, which is fundamental to the success in foste...

Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families Under the Law

Abstract: The book reframes the family-rights debate by arguing that marriage shouldn't bestow special legal privileges upon couples because people, both heterosexual and LGBT, live in a variety of relationships. So the athor shows how marriage, whether same-sex or heterosexual, has ceased to be the only place where people incur long-term obligations and shows how the law can value all families and why it must.

A Republican Law of Peoples

Abstract: Taking states as they are (at their best), what shape ought the international order to have? In particular what shape ought it to have if the guiding value is not as austere as non-intervention among states and not as rich as cosmopolitan justice: if it is the value of freedom as non-domination? The paper seeks to outline the requirements that this value would have in the international context.

Weak Theory in an Unfinished World

Abstract: This article suggests the value of a kind of cultural theory that attends to the cultural poesis of forms of living. Its objects are textures and rhythms, trajectories, and modes of attunement, attachment, and composition. The point is not to judge the value of these objects or to somehow get their representation "right" but to wonder where they might go and what potential modes of knowing, relating, and attending to things are already present in them.

Two Conceptions of Irreversible Environmental Harm

Abstract: The concept of "irreversibility" plays a large role in the theory and practice of environmental protection. Indeed, the concept is explicit in some statements of the Precautionary Principle. But the idea of irreversibility remains poorly defined. Because time is linear, any loss is, in a sense, irreversible. On one approach, drawn from environmental economics, irreversibility might be understood as a reference to the value associated with taking precautionary steps that maintain flexibility for an uncertain future ("option value"). On another approach, drawn from environmental ethics, irreversibility might be understood to refer to the qualitatively distinctive nature of certain environmental harms - a point that raises a claim about incommensurability. The two conceptions fit different problems. For example, the idea of option value best fits the problem of climate change; the idea of qualitatively distinctive harms best fits the problem of extinction of endangered species. These ideas can be applied to a wide assortment of environmental problems.

The trouble with transparency

Abstract: This article argues for a more complex understanding of how the ethic of transparency is used within American journalism. Following the ethical theories of Jurgen Habermas and Michel Foucault, it suggests that transparency has become central to debates about identity formation, disputes over professional jurisdiction, and how journalists have come to cover political events. Recognizing the complex role that transparency plays within journalism, it calls for the articulation of an ethical framework that sees transparency less as an instrumental value and more as a normative goal.

Ethical Managerial Behaviour as an Antecedent of Organizational Social Capital

Abstract: There is a need of further research to understand how social capital in the organization can be fostered. Existing literature focuses on the design of reciprocity norms, procedures and stability employment practices as the main levers of social capital in the workplace. Complementary to these mechanisms, this paper explores the impact of ethical managerial behaviour on the development of social capital. We argue that a managerial behaviour based on the true concern for the well-being of employees, as well as their motivational and ethical development, can be particularly important for the generation of social capital in the organization. It is suggested that manager’s behaviour should be based on three principles: following exemplary behaviour, helping the employees to value the consequences of their actions in other persons, and not betraying employee’s trust. When the manager conforms to those principles, he can ease the process through which employees develop associability and identification-based trust with the firm, the two main components of ‹Organizational Social Capital’. Bringing ethics into the debate of social capital creation seems to us fundamental, as social capital in the firm is likely to be influenced by the ethical and motivational development of its members.

Soil, Work, Civilisation, and Citizenship in Kenya

Abstract: What does Kenya's crisis say to academic discussion about globalisation and the rise of local claims to ‘belong’, as autochthonous ‘sons of the soil’? The Kenya case supports the view that the changing relations between global pressures and states may exacerbate local conflicts that promote ethnocentric, exclusive concepts of belonging. But this article argues, further, for the importance of local concepts of self-worth and cultural value. Since Kenya's most ‘indigenous’ of peoples are the weakest, and almost all other Kenyans fairly recent immigrants, claims to territory are strategies justified by other arguments – to have improved the land, to have brought civilisation. Such managerial arguments do not help the poor, or women. Claims are evaluated according to an implicit moral hierarchy of ‘work’, and are best understood as expressions of local patriotism. These hold both generous and chauvinistic potential.

Two main problems in the sociology of morality

Abstract: Sociologists often ask why particular groups of people have the moral views that they do. I argue that sociology’s empirical research on morality relies, implicitly or explicitly, on unsophisticated and even obsolete ethical theories, and thus is based on inadequate conceptions of the ontology, epistemology, and semantics of morality. In this article I address the two main problems in the sociology of morality: (1) the problem of moral truth, and (2) the problem of value freedom. I identify two ideal–typical approaches. While the Weberian paradigm rejects the concept of moral truth, the Durkheimian paradigm accepts it. By contrast, I argue that sociology should be metaphysically agnostic, yet in practice it should proceed as though there were no moral truths. The Weberians claim that the sociology of morality can and should be value free; the Durkheimians claim that it cannot and it should not. My argument is that, while it is true that factual statements presuppose value judgments, it does not follow that sociologists are moral philosophers in disguise. Finally, I contend that in order for sociology to improve its understanding of morality, better conceptual, epistemological, and methodological foundations are needed.

Welfare and well-being: Social value in public policy

Abstract: Introduction The Easterlin Paradox and the dominance of the economic model Well-being and social value: 'I shall not come to your funeral' Part One: Welfare: Welfare and the economic model: 'being precisely wrong' Social capital: the missing link? Players, members, spectators and bystanders: benefits for non-participants Part Two: Well-being: Social value and well-being: paying tribute How social value works Institutions and culture Part Three: Public policy: Welfare economics and public policy: 'sputtering out' Social value and public policy: making citizens Justice, equality and social value Conclusion.

Race Consciousness: The Thematic Content of Racial Distinctiveness in Critical Race Scholarship

Abstract: The long history of exclusion followed by grudging toleration is not easily forgotten or overcome. Those who have been the insiders must be sensitive to their unspoken assumptions about the newcomers. A true acceptance of the differences in background, experience, talent, and intellectual taste that are represented by the concept of "diversity" will enable all of us to hear and value the many voices of modern legal education. No one in legal education should pretend this process of acceptance will be easy. The notion that much of history, legal and otherwise, has been written from a white, male, Judeo-Christian-centered perspective has prompted Critical Race Theorists to identify distinct perspectives that explicate the political reality of disempowered people. Critical Race scholars recognize that the unique perspective of many minority scholars has developed from their experience and progress in the face of racially invidious treatment and from their empathy with the physical and psychological conditions of those who have been marginalized. In a post-modern world in which we have come to realize that truth is somewhere, if anywhere, in the symphony of experience, the development of solid legal principles that vindicate the rights of all Americans requires a platform for marginalized voices. Socio-political reality can be understood only if a plurality of voices articulates different points of view; understanding suffers when some voices are silenced. Minority scholars are uniquely positioned to assist in the goal of breaking this silence. After surmounting the constraints of victimization and witnessing the direct and indirect disparate treatment of those of similar hue, minority scholars are often moved toward a determination to effect positive change in the world. Their positions need not be monolithic; their experiences are filtered in varying degrees through both mainstream and minority cultural viewpoints. Nevertheless, the realization of one's "otherness" in relation to American culture, and the simultaneous belief in the Constitution and its vision of oneness, creates a valuable prism through which the ideals and reality of this country can be examined. Law schools must provide for the inclusion of previously excluded voices as a necessary component for understanding the legal structure and its impact on this society.