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Central Argument (central + argument)
Selected AbstractsCorporate Governance and Business Ethics: insights from the strategic planning experience*CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, Issue 6 2005Ingrid Bonn In this paper we develop an integrated approach towards corporate governance and business ethics. Our central argument is that organisations can learn from the development of strategic planning in the 1970s and 1980s. We identify three weaknesses , a bureaucratic and formalised approach, lack of implementation and lack of integration throughout the organisation , which were prevalent in strategic planning in the past and which are potentially just as problematic for an integrated corporate governance approach to business ethics. We suggest ways these weaknesses might be avoided and provide questions for boards of directors to consider when integrating ethical concerns into their organisations' corporate governance structures. [source] (RE)PRODUCING A "PERIPHERAL" REGION , NORTHERN SWEDEN IN THE NEWSGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 4 2008Madeleine Eriksson ABSTRACT. Building on theories of internal orientalism, the objective of this study is to show how intra-national differences are reproduced through influential media representations. By abstracting news representations of Norrland, a large, sparsely populated region in the northernmost part of Sweden, new modes of "internal othering" within Western modernity are put on view. Real and imagined social and economical differences between the "rural North" and the "urban South" are explained in terms of "cultural differences" and "lifestyle" choices. The concept of Norrland is used as an abstract essentialized geographical category and becomes a metonym for a backward and traditional rural space in contrast to equally essentialized urban areas with favoured modern ideals. Specific traits of parts of the region become one with the entire region and the problems of the region become the problems of the people living in the region. I argue that the news representations play a part in the reproduction of a "space of exception", in that one region is constructed as a traditional and undeveloped space in contrast to an otherwise modern nation. A central argument of this study is that research on identity construction and representations of place is needed to come to grips with issues of uneven regional development within western nations. [source] Why Is the Intelligence Community So Difficult to Redesign?GOVERNANCE, Issue 3 2007Conflicting Goals, Smart Practices, the Creation of Purpose-Based Organizations The adoption of "smart practices" requires that smart practices can actually be identified for the areas of public policy in which we are interested. For the problem of designing structures for public agencies, however, identifying smart practices is not easy. This article explores the reasons for the substantial conservativism, lasting over 50 years, regarding the structural design of the U.S. intelligence community. One central argument is simply that it was very difficult to discover a clearly superior structure; in fact, the long-standing structure may have had some unrecognized virtues. But the other central argument is that one smart practice may have emerged since the 9/11 attacks: It involves the creation of problem-focused interagency centers that are intended to enhance the sharing and integration of information within the intelligence community. These conclusions about redesigning the structure of the intelligence community are based on the arguments of Luther Gulick on methods of departmentalization and Martin Landau on redundancy and system reliability. [source] Style Versus Substance: Multiple Roles of Language Power in PersuasionJOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2008John R. Sparks This research explores how message style influences persuasion in conjunction with message substance. Using the elaboration likelihood model, the study operationalizes message style as language power and message substance as argument quality, then considers the multiple roles language power can assume in persuasion. The authors investigate whether language power acts as a (a) central argument, (b) peripheral cue, (c) biasing influence on assessment of arguments, or (d) distraction that inhibits argument processing. Additionally, they manipulate exposure time to examine how processing ability influences which persuasive roles language power assumes. The authors find empirical support for the multiple-roles perspective and conclude that the role of message style depends partially on the ability to process message details. [source] Health in Organization: Towards a Process-Based View*JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 2 2007Robert MacIntosh abstract This paper reports on a collaborative project involving organization scholars and clinicians to examine the ways in which individual and organizational health are conceptualized in the literature. We illustrate how the use of systems theories (in this case complexity theory) in relation to organizational health introduces problems such as the risk of promoting organizational health at the expense of individual well-being. The phenomena of organizational health and individual health are often presented as having a symbiotic relationship and we suggest some circumstances where this is not the case. Our central argument is that we need to move beyond current conceptual limitations and move towards a more process-based model of health in organization rather than organizational health. [source] Ethical Theory as Social PracticeAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 1 2006MARK GOODALE This article represents a search for a different analytical language through which anthropology can engage with human rights. This effort is intended to contribute to what is an expanding range of ways in which anthropologists conceptualize, advocate for, and critique contemporary human rights. Its central argument is that current ethnographic studies of human rights practices can be used as the basis for making innovative claims within human rights debates that take place outside of anthropology itself. To do this, ethnographic description that captures the contradictions and contingencies at the heart of human rights practices is not enough. What is needed is a different understanding of how the idea of human rights comes to be formed in context. In this article, I suggest several possible ways that an anthropological philosophy of human rights can accomplish this. I conclude by locating this approach in relation to a longer history of anthropological skepticism toward universalist discourses. [source] ,The Miserablest People in the World': Race, Humanism and the Australian AborigineTHE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2007Kay Anderson This paper considers how an idea of the Australian Aborigine impacted upon the development of racial thinking throughout the nineteenth century. We distinguish three phases of this development. Against the background of what was considered to be a distinctly human capacity to rise above nature, our central argument however is that the extreme and irremediable savagery attributed to the Aborigine led to the mid-nineteenth shift to a polygenist, or an innatist, idea of race. The first part of our discussion, covering the early 1800s, elicits a specifically humanist puzzlement at the unimproved condition of the Aborigines. But, as we will show in the central part of our discussion, it was not only the Aborigines' inclination but their capacity for ,improvement' that came to be doubted. Challenging the very basis upon which ,the human' had been defined, and the unity of humankind assumed, the Aborigine could not be accommodated within a prevailing conception of racial difference as a mere variety of the human. The elaboration of polygenism may therefore be understood as arising out of this humanist incomprehension: as an attempt to account for the ontologically inexplicable difference of the Australian Aborigine. In the final part of our discussion, we trace the legacy of the Aborigine's place within polygenism through the evolutionary thought of the late nineteenth century. Despite an explicit return to monogenism, here the Aborigine is invoked to support the claim that race constitutes a more or less permanent difference and, for certain races, a more or less permanent deficiency. And as, in these terms, the anomalous Aborigine became an anachronism, so Australia's indigenous peoples came to embody the most devastating conclusion of evolutionary thought: that in the human struggle for existence certain races were destined not even to survive. [source] Can services lead to radical eco-efficiency improvements?CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2003a review of the debate, evidence Eco-efficient services, or sustainable product,service systems, are a popular topic in discussions on sustainability and eco-efficiency. In these discussions, ,service' actually refers to many different things. It may refer to the role of the service sector in the economy, or to a new business strategy, or to the service (utility) provided by a product. Furthermore, the discussion on eco-efficient services has been linked to concepts such as the ,new', ,experience' or ,customized' economy. The article analyses the central arguments and evidence put forth in the discussion on eco-efficient services. The findings address questions occupying policy-makers, managers and researchers: how relevant are eco-efficient services in environmental management, and what might be the next steps in exploring their potential? Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] Debating the ,Power' of AuditINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AUDITING, Issue 1 2000Christopher Humphrey This paper provides a critical but constructive review of Michael Power's recent text entitled The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification (1997). The paper first summarises the essential ideas put forward by Power with regard to the scale and significance of the Audit Society. It then debates some of Power's central arguments and claims, focusing, among other things, on the causes underlying the rise of the audit society, the definition of audit, the meaning of auditability and the relationship between audit and performance measurment. The paper concludes by considering the possibilities for auditing to serve a more positive role in society than that generally portrayed by Power. [source] Liberal Nationalism and Territorial RightsJOURNAL OF APPLIED PHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2003Tamar Meisels It asks what type of justifications could be morally acceptable to "liberal nationalism" for the acquisition and holding of territory. To this end, the paper takes a brief look at five central arguments for territorial entitlement which have become predominant in political debates. These are: so called "historical rights" to territory; demands for territorial restitution; efficiency arguments; claims of entitlement to territories settled by co-nationals; and lastly, territorial demands based on claims of equal entitlement to the earth's natural resources. These popular arguments point towards several potential criteria for the arbitration of territorial conflicts. The paper attempts to outline the morally relevant guidelines for thinking about territorial issues that flow from, or are at least consistent with, applying liberal values to the national phenomenon. It places the territorial aspect of nationalism at the head of the liberal nationalist agenda and offers an initial common ground for discussion (including disagreement) among liberals, and for the mediation of claims between nations. [source] The Immortality Requirement for Life's meaningRATIO, Issue 2 2003Thaddeus Metz Many religious thinkers hold the immortality requirement, the view that immortality of some kind is necessary for life to have meaning. After clarifying the nature of the immortality requirement, this essay examines three central arguments for it. The article establishes that existing versions of these arguments fail to entail the immortality requirement. The essay then reconstructs the arguments, and it shows that once they do plausibly support the immortality requirement, they equally support the God-centred requirement, the view that God's existence is a necessary condition for life to be meaningful. The paper concludes by explaining why we should expect any argument for the immortality requirement also to constitute an argument for the God-centred requirement. [source] | |||||||||||||