Value (ethics)

About: Value (ethics) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 21347 publications have been published within this topic receiving 461372 citations.

[The Implications of Knowledge-Based Growth for Micro-Economic Policies]

Abstract: The Implications of Knowledge-based Growth for Micro-economic Policies. Peter Howitt. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1996.Attention to the problems which social science addresses tells us a great deal about the nature of the Canadian economy and the national identity, about not only material realities but also Canadian values.Values are ever present in the lexicon of economics. They penetrate economics at a level of vocabulary, perceptional selectivity, definition of the problem, choice of subject matter, rationalization and normative certitude. Values serve as a filtration system governing the formulation and evolution of ideas. They can take the form of some notion of human nature, a partial theory knowledge or a specific conception of reality. Whatever form they take, values determine how scholars order the world around them. Of course -- as the books under review demonstrate -- at any one time a plurality of values exists and these values compete in the formulation of theory, the direction of public policy and our understanding of the immediate and distant past.The six works under review are diverse in both method and scope. Diversity is part of the Canadian condition. Indeed -- as Robin Neill has demonstrated in his classic study -- the history of Canadian economic thought is one of contradiction, paradox and heterogeneity.(f.1) The fact that the Canadian nation is made up of five distinct regions, each displaying its own pace and pattern of economic growth, has contributed to the assortment of competing economic discourses and paradigms. Yet such variance need not be problematic. On the contrary, states the intellectual historian A.B. McKillop, our national identity is based on the existence of diversity.(f.2)Despite their differences, the books under review are similar in the matters to which they attend. Two books analyze the nature of the debt and debt discourse (albeit in very different ways). Two others -- utilizing dissimilar methodologies -- attempt to account for the role of innovation and invention in economic growth. A fifth questions the value of the quintessentially Canadian programme of equalization payments while the sixth seeks to understand the economic and political forces involved in the recent neo-conservative transformation of Canadian society.In the first section of this review, the choice of subject matter, the arguments of the authors, as well as the political-valuational judgments that colour their reasoning, will be identified and compared. In the second and third sections, a closer examination of some of their metaphysical preconceptions will be undertaken, specifically of the authors' perceptions of human nature and conceptions of reality. The last section is dedicated to an analysis of methodology and the role of the historical method in economics.The Matters to Which We AttendEach way of ordering -- or interpreting -- postmodern life starts with an implicit or explicit decision about priority. When dealing with economic phenomena the tendency in the discourse of social science has generally been to pick one main topic of interest and regard the rest as secondary, indeed, epiphenomenal. To do so is to manifest one's perception of what things are good, important, and desirable in the world.Three of the books under review deal with public finance. In The Uneasy Case for Equalization Payments, Dan Usher calls into question the belief that equalization payments from Ottawa to the provinces redistribute income, increase GNP and further equality. He uses arithmetical examples to illustrate the potential inequalities (Part II), inefficiencies (Part III) and inequities (Part IV) in the existing system. Having made his case, Usher concludes that the subsidization of have-not provinces is not necessarily beneficial to the poor nor is it necessarily favourable to general prosperity. Indeed, it is just as likely, Usher maintains, that intergovernmental transfers have simply shifted income from one group of affluent people to another, with little -- and only incidental -- benefit to the poor. …

Application of Value Beliefs Norms Theory to the Energy Conservation Behaviour

Abstract: This paper tries to explain the conservation behaviour as one of the aspects of sustainable consumer behaviour. The theory of Values Beliefs Norms is chosen as the theoretical framework of this research. This theory discusses that the conservation behaviour is adopted owing to the activation of the personal norms by the values and the beliefs of individuals. A study of 703 individuals has been made in an attempt to test the model of this study. The data is analysed through the structural equations method. The results have enabled us to validate the VBN model in the Tunisian context.

Values as Hypotheses: Design, Inquiry, and the Service of Values

Abstract: Values: A Problem of Practice The question of the relationship of design and values has sparked much scholarship during the past 30 years. These investigations have led to the growing consensus that design is not a neutral activity; rather, it is value-laden: design is laden with, or bears, values. Despite substantial agreement that design is value-laden, significant variation arises in understanding how and why design bears values.1 Some scholars argue that artifacts act to determine what is possible and impossible in human engagements with the world—that is, products bear consequences that affect what we value in human life and living.2 Others note that products, broadly conceived, bear the conscious and unconscious intentions, values, and politics of the individuals and corporations that designed them.3 Some scholars propose that designed products bear the preferences and values of those who use them,4 while others view values as ideals, and design bears the burden of approximating an ideal.5 Others speak of products as embodying values, as valuebearing material expression.6 Others emphasize the capacity of designers and publics to give voice to values, to contest and argue for what should be valued; here, values are born and borne in argument.7 None of these positions offers a definitive, settled, or uncontested account of the relation of design and values. This scholarship, however, has led to calls for practitioners to explicitly address values in their everyday design practice. Values-oriented practitioners not only are faced with a variety of theoretical understandings; they also regularly encounter the empirical fact that a given value (e.g., autonomy) can be both valuable and not valuable in its participation in design products and practices. Batya Friedman provides a useful example that illustrates this problem. She describes a situation in which a new computer workstation, designed to support speech input and multimedia, includes a built-in, always-on microphone. When a user of this workstation wishes to have a conversation that is not recorded, she must go through multiple steps to turn off the microphone—a cumbersome solution. Out of this case, Friedman explores the concept of autonomy, she asks: 1 For a thorough scholarly explication of the history of ethics and design from a European perspective see, Anna Valtonen, “Back and Forth with Ethics in Product Development—A History of Ethical Responsibility as a Design Driver in Europe” (presentation, Conference of the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM), CergyPontoise, France, October 13, 2006). 2 Bruno Latour, “Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts,” in Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, ed. Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994), 225–58. 3 Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?,” in The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for the Limits in an Age of High Technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 19–39. 4 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 1st edition, Annette Lavers, trans. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972); cf. (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1957). 5 Victor J. Papanek, Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972). 6 Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects (Boston: August Media, 2001). 7 Carl DiSalvo, Adversarial Design (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012).

CSR beyond the corporation: contested governance in global value chains

Abstract: The frontier of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is constantly being negotiated by corporate and non-corporate actors that vie to define its meaning and scope. In this article, we explore the relationship between CSR and governance in the context of global value chains that span both organizational boundaries and geographic borders. We draw on the CSR and global value chain literature to highlight the nexus between CSR and what we see as two overlapping dimensions of governance. These are industrial governance (or the coordination of relationships among actors in a global value chain) and global governance (the efforts of non-state actors to manage transnational processes, including via the creation of norms and rules regarding global production). Drawing inspiration from an emergent neo-Gramscian perspective on global value chains, we propose the notion of contested governance to explain how CSR becomes a key domain in which these contending, though potentially complementary, ways of defining and delimiting governance as an analytic concept play out.

Loving the mess : navigating diversity and conflict in social values for sustainability

Abstract: This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of ‘lenses’ and ‘tensions’ to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the ‘mess’ of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses.