Value (ethics)

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

The Corporate Governance Role of the Media

Abstract: In this Paper we discuss the role of the media in pressuring corporate managers and directors to behave in ways that are 'socially acceptable'. Sometimes this coincides with shareholders’ value maximization, others not. We provide both anecdotal and systematic evidence that media affect companies’ policy toward the environment and the amount of corporate resources that are diverted to the sole advantage of controlling shareholders. Our results have important consequences for the focus of the corporate governance debate and for the feasibility of reforms aimed at improving corporate governance around the world.

‘Friendship’ and ‘Self-Sufficiency’ in Homer and Aristotle

Abstract: This article falls into two parts: the first is an analysis, in the light of my earlier discussions of and of the Homeric usage of and the second, an attempt to show that, as in the case of the effects of Homeric usage persist to a considerable degree in the moral philosophy of Aristotle. In the earlier discussions I have argued that the higher value placed upon the competitive in Greek entails that co-operative relationships, even when valued and necessary, take the form dictated by the more valued qualities, the The most general words to denote co-operative relationships in Greek are and its derivatives: my purpose here is to show how the Homeric usage of these words is related to the Homeric standard and to Homeric society, and to sketch in the outline of a wider discussion, which I hope to be able to fill in later.

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

Caring for Patients in Cross‐Cultural Settings

Abstract: In our multicultural society, cross-cultural encounters are becoming increasingly common in the health care setting, often leading to distinct ethical and interpersonal tensions. Members of different cultures cannot take for granted a common catalog of recognized diseases; a shared understanding of their ascribed causes and usual treatments; or similar attitudes toward sickness, health, death, particular illnesses, and accidents. Although value differences also exist among different groups within a "shared" culture - across class, caste, gender, age, religious, and political line - cross-cultural conflicts may be more deeply rooted, for such differences embody not just different opinions or beliefs, but different ways of everyday living and different systems of meaning.[1] The difference between intra- and intercultural disagreements in health care may fall along a continuum, with intercultural tensions often appearing more striking and all encompassing. To illustrate this, consider the case of a Western patient diagnosed with carcinoma of the breast who disagrees with a Western physician's recommendation to undergo a mastectomy. The patient prefers instead to preserve the breast and treat the cancer with lumpectomy. In reaching her conclusion, the patient may stress the value she places on bodily integrity, physical wholeness, social attractiveness, and sexuality. Although the physician shares the patient's goal of preserving quality of life, the physician may place greater stress on curing disease. The physician may therefore reach a decision after consulting survival rates for the two procedures for patients at a similar stage of the disease. Despite the different concerns the patient and physician entertain, they are likely to share many of the same ethical concepts and principles. Thus they may articulate their differences in terms of a common moral vocabulary, for example, in terms of a tension between competing values of autonomy and beneficence. Or their discussion may refer to the relative priority of maximizing the quality versus the duration of the patient's life. This shared conceptual repertoire is likely to assist in reaching a treatment decision. By contrast, intercultural disagreements in health care often involve the clash of different dominant social understandings. For example, consider the case of a Navajo patient who expresses to a Western physician a preference for a traditional healing ceremony to cure disease. Both the patient's and the physician's ideas about healing seem ordinary and natural" within the context of their respective cultures. In attempting to communicate their respective orientations to each other, however, each will refer to practices and traditions, concepts and values, and systems and methods of knowledge that appear unusual from the other's perspective. Thus, cross-cultural debates often seem to introduce moral anarchy because people lack shared cultural standards or vantage points from which to communicate and resolve value differences. There are at least two distinct ways in which cross-cultural differences may become especially striking in the clinical setting. First, a health provider may come from a dominant cultural group and the patient may be a representative of an immigrant or refugee group or of a historical ethnic minority. Alternatively, health professionals themselves may be members of immigrant, refugee, or ethnic minorities and patients may be from the mainstream of society. In this paper, we address the first sort of paradigm case. Background and Context Although individuals with culturally distinct identities exist across many different subgroups in society, cultural differences among dominant and minority ethnic groups have become especially pronounced in recent years. The influx of immigrant and refugee populations has meant that today physicians are more likely than ever before to encounter patients from diverse cultures in their daily practice, and the need for ethical analyses has increased. …