Femicide is an ongoing public health and human rights crisis of global proportions. Currently, however, there is a relative vacuum of ethics theory and discussion about femicide amongst the health professions. This article draws from three illustrative case examples along the continuum of femicide to explore contemporary ethical concerns relevant to addressing gender-based violence and death through clinical medicine and public health. Using an epistemic justice framework, we analyze the relative invisibility of femicide in public health discourse today, and renew (...) a conversation about ethical issues inherent to health interventions and policy-making around femicide. (shrink)

Preventing sexual and gender-based violence—and mitigating its devastating impacts on individuals and societies—is a central challenge of public health. A Woman in Berlin is 34-year-old journalist Marta Hillers’s first-hand account of life during the 1945 Red Army occupation of Berlin at the conclusion of World War II, when Russian soldiers collectively raped 2 million German civilians. Reflecting upon Hillers’s testimony, I argue that historical narratives about large-scale acts of sexual and gender-based violence deserve a more central place in public health (...) discourse. I also question how the ethical challenges of memorializing and studying mass crimes might inform future public health efforts to advance gender equity and mitigate sexual violence globally. (shrink)

This paper examines stakeholder responses to impression management tactics used by firms that express environmental commitment. We inductively analyzed data from 98 open-ended questionnaires and identified two impression management tactics that led respondents to believe that a firm was credible in its commitment to the natural environment. Approximately, half of the respondents responded to illustrative impression management tactics that provide images of, and/or broad-brush comments about, the firm's commitment to the natural environment. The other half responded to demonstrative impression management (...) tactics, which provide specific facts and details about the firm's operations. The research results provide important insights into the effects of organizational transparency. In this paper, we explore these findings and provide directions for future research. (shrink)

The main focus of this essay is to closely engage with the role of scientist-subjectivity in the making of objectivity in Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s book Objectivity, and Daston’s later and earlier works On Scientific Observation and The Moral Economy of Science. I have posited four challenges to the neo-Kantian and Foucauldian constructions of the co-implication of psychology and epistemology presented in these texts. Firstly, following Jacques Lacan’s work, I have argued that the subject of science constituted by the (...) mode of modern science suffers from paranoia. It is not the fear of subjectivity interfering with objectivity but the impossibility of knowing the truth of the real that causes paranoia. Here, I have argued that it is not the ethos of objectivity that drives epistemology as Daston and Galison suggest, but the pathos of paranoia. The second challenge builds upon Kant’s own denial that the perfect correspondence between the human will and the moral law is possible. Kant himself thought that an ethical human act is impossible without the component of “pathology.” This questions Daston and Galison’s argument that there is always ethical imperative at the core of epistemic virtue. The third challenge contests the way Daston and Galison take appearance for being in their application of the Foucauldian concept of technologies of the self in modeling the master scientist-self. The fourth challenge questions the notion of the psychological and unconscious in the making of epistemology in Daston’s later and earlier work. Against this background, I aim to make a claim that understanding and disclosing “entities” in the scientific domain presupposes an understanding of “being” in general. My goal is to open up the discussion for an alternative conception of the scientist-subject and thereby an affective and existential formulation of science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Decolonizing Universality:Postcolonial Theory and the Quandary of Ethical AgencyEsha Niyogi De (bio)Living in colonial India, the Bengali thinker and creative writer Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) often meditated on ways that "concord" (milan) and "harmony" (sāmanjasya) could be established between persons and cultures [BIC 450-51]. Noting that "ruptures in balance and harmony" (bhār sāmanjasyer abhāv) that once were more localized now affected the whole world, he maintained that these reinforced the (...) progressive message of the modern age that the local "problems of a people are a part and parcel of humankind's" (swajātir samasyā samasta mānusher samasyār antargata) [RC 279]. In his view, the means to reestablish harmony in this unequal world lay in social practices and ideas conducing "freedom" (mukti) rather than enforcing "power" (shakti) and "coercive discipline" (shāsan) [SaS 408-09]. He argued that such progressive trends of practice and thought would be found not in one culture alone but through traveling across different cultural "seas of knowledge (jnān)" [SwSm 699]. For only through such conceptual journeys would we enkindle in ourselves "arguments with and doubts about" (yukti tarka o sandeher udbhav) our own cultures, and also learn from all the "voyagers in the path of progress" (unnatipather yātri) who emerge in different locations and times [SJ 39-40].As these comments reveal, Rabindranath maintained that inequalities could be rectified by making individual and collective norms and actions accountable to and measurable in terms of a speculative notion of universal humanity. While alert to the injustices proliferating from European colonization, he insisted that coercive practices and imbalances of power could not be entirely localized, and that in order to correct multiple forms of coercion we must seek across cultures and societies for (partial) achievements of human freedom and harmony. In so viewing transcultural negotiations of a common humane proclivity as the means to decolonize the world, Rabindranath did not stand alone but in a diverse company of anti-imperialist thinkers who adapted modern humanism to their ends: W. E. B. Dubois—who lauded Rabindranath's appropriation of [End Page 42] such liberal notions as democracy and equal opportunity "for greater ends" than were allowed by the "inconsistencies" of a racist European perspective [74]—Frantz Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre, and from Rabindranath's own colonial context, the Bengali Anarchist poet Kazi Nazrul Islam (to name but a few). Reflecting upon worldwide experiences of subjection, these radical modern intellectuals tried above all to avoid reinventing separatism by declaring non-Western cultures to be unilaterally superior to Western imperialist culture. Driven by an activist ethics, they attempted instead to correct the roots of separatism through objectively evaluating, against a common frame of reference, right and wrong, relatively successful or failed practices of human empowerment and community.In this essay, I consider if and how we could characterize as "postcolonial" these evaluative ethics that rationally seek to correct coercive relations between persons and societies through referring to an affirmative idea of a human nature shared by all. If we take postcolonial agency to rest on a thorough critique of and resistance to all political and epistemic maneuvers that subordinate or exclude people and cultures, might this form of resistant agency reside in the ethical normativity of anti-imperialist humanism? This question elicits conflicting responses from contemporary postcolonial theorists.The argument, on the one hand, is that if postcolonial theory is to ethically address the multiple and interlocked hierarchies of a postimperial world, it indeed must take into account how people mobilize against separatism by working through critiques of ethnic divisiveness to negotiate a common human ground. Commenting on the universalism of thinkers such as Rabindranath Tagore and W. E. B. DuBois, Edward Said, for example, suggests that "vital" critiques of chauvinistic separatism arise only from viewing "local identity as not exhaustive" but as elaborating in reference to "larger, more generous realities of community between cultures, peoples, and societies" [Culture and Imperialism 217, 229]. His implication is that only through evaluating ourselves on the basis of a notion of noncoercive universality are we able to think against the identity politics that pervade our world, stemming at once from a nativist... (shrink)

The rapid development of CRISPR-based gene editing has been accompanied by a polarized governance debate about the status of CRISPR-edited crops as genetically modified organisms. This article argues that the polarization around the governance of gene editing partly reflects a failure of public engagement with the current state of research in genomics and postgenomics. CRISPR-based gene-editing technology has become embedded in a narrow narrative about the ease and precision of the technique that presents the gene as a stable object under (...) technological control. By tracing the considerably destabilized scientific understanding of the gene in genomics and postgenomics, this article highlights that this publicly mediated ontology strategically avoids positioning the “ease of CRISPR-based editing” in the wider context of the “complexity of the gene.” While this strategic narrowness of CRISPR narratives aims to create public support for gene-editing technologies, we argue that it stands in the way of socially desirable anticipatory governance and open public dialogue about societal promises and the unintended consequences of gene editing. In addressing the polarization surrounding CRISPR-based editing technology, the article emphasizes the need for engagement with the complex state of postgenomic science that avoids strategic simplifications of the scientific literature in promoting or opposing the commercial use of the gene-editing technology. (shrink)

Prior research on sustainability in business often assumes that decisions on social and environmental investments are made for instrumental reasons, which points to causal relationships between corporate financial performance and corporate social and environmental commitment. In other words, social or environmental commitment should predict higher financial performance. The theoretical premise of sustainability, however, is based on a systems perspective, which implies a tighter integration between corporate financial performance and corporate commitment to social and environmental issues. In this paper, we describe (...) the important theoretical differences between an instrumental and integrative logic in managing business sustainability. We test the presence of each logic using data from 738 firms over 13 years and find evidence of integrative logic applied in business. (shrink)

There are two different, and somewhat competing, strategic explanations for why firms certify for ISO 14001. On the one hand, firms may seek to reinforce their present strategies thereby further enhancing their competitive advantage. On the other hand, firms may use ISO 14001 as a mechanism to reorient their strategies, so that a clear signal is sent about the firm's change in strategic positioning. This paper aims to identify the most likely explanation for early adopters of ISO 14001. Using a (...) matched pair design, we test these alternative explanations on a sample of US firms that certified for ISO 14001 in the first two years after its introduction. In particular, we tested whether ISO 14001 was used to reinforce or reorient firm strategies in respect to the natural environment, corporate social responsibility, quality, and internationalization. We found that firms that certified early for ISO 14001 had considerable environmental legitimacy and a strong international presence. We also found that the firm's commitment to corporate social responsibility and quality were not significantly different between certified and non-certified firms. These findings suggest that early adopters of ISO 14001 leaned towards reinforcing rather than reorienting their firm strategy, which calls into question the ultimate reach of ISO 14001. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to map the emotional competencies of Mahatma1 Gandhi through biographical analysis of his life which is divided into seven phases, as this will give the real insight that how he managed his emotions in different phases of his life and over the longer period of time. The Emotional Competency Inventory framework given by Daniel Goleman is used, which helps in mapping the Emotional Competencies on five parameters i.e., Self Awareness, Self Regulation, Self Motivation, Empathy, (...) Social Skills. Further, the article brings out that which particular component was low, medium or high in which particular phase of his life. (shrink)

Prior research in strategic decision making has relied primarily on the application of economic and financial models within strategic decisions. Environmentaland social issues have, as a result, been force-fit into existing models, rather than developing a deep understanding of how these ‘soft’ issues are actually incorporated into strategic decisions. This study aims to fill this gap by investigating how social and environmental concerns are addressed in strategic decisions. It does so inductively, by interviewing 29 professionals addressing corporate social responsibility and (...) 110 strategic decision makers in 19 companies in Canada. This paper reports some of the interim findings. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop an argument to show why we expect that multinational companies will ensure that they communicate credibly about their environmental responsibility, across all their subsidiaries. Credible environmental communication helps to increase the firm’s legitimacy and reduce its liability of foreignness on an issue that is globally relevant. We develop a measure to test if there is a standardized level of environmental communication credibility on the country-specific web sites of MNC subsidiaries around the world and find, in (...) fact, that there is considerable variation across countries, among subsidiaries of different firms and among subsidiaries of the same multinational. We discuss the reasons for this and the implications for firm legitimacy. (shrink)

In 1843, Søren Kierkegaard said, “ It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.” Management researchers are often attracted to the business and society domain because of a desire to impact management practice to create a better world. However, they often do not have the impact that they hope, because researchers tend to rely on historical data, but managers seek insights that inform future (...) actions. In this commentary, we describe our impact journey in three distinct moments in time. In the last one, both researchers and managers live forward. (shrink)

BackgroundIt has been argued that ethics review committees—e.g., Research Ethics Committees, Institutional Review Boards, etc.— have weaknesses in reviewing big data and artificial intelligence research. For instance, they may, due to the novelty of the area, lack the relevant expertise for judging collective risks and benefits of such research, or they may exempt it from review in instances involving de-identified data.Main bodyFocusing on the example of medical research databases we highlight here ethical issues around de-identified data sharing which motivate the (...) need for review where oversight by ethics committees is weak. Though some argue for ethics committee reform to overcome these weaknesses, it is unclear whether or when that will happen. Hence, we argue that ethical review can be done by data access committees, since they have de facto purview of big data and artificial intelligence projects, relevant technical expertise and governance knowledge, and already take on some functions of ethical review. That said, like ethics committees, they may have functional weaknesses in their review capabilities. To strengthen that function, data access committees must think clearly about the kinds of ethical expertise, both professional and lay, that they draw upon to support their work.ConclusionData access committees can undertake ethical review of medical research databases provided they enhance that review function through professional and lay ethical expertise. (shrink)

India today is facing value crisis. Drift started during the British era and since then it has been witnessing continuous erosion of values. At that time the man who came to India’s rescue was Mahatma Gandhi, man of principles and values who never compromised with his values. He along with his powerful values of truth and non-violence helped India regain its strength. Almost after 64 years of freedom there is a heartfelt need to go back to these values for effective (...) management and survival. This article is an endeavour for reviving these time-tested values and to draw insights for management of organization. The values like truth, non-violence, renunciation, humility, equanimity, etc., at the organization’s roots may provide it a firm footing in this turbulent scenario. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to investigate whether internal and external institutional environmental conditions play a role in the institutionalization of strategic commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR) among Indian firms in the wake of the mandatory CSR norms or not (where the firms of certain size and profitability are mandated to spend on CSR). The study examines the fixed effects regression on balanced panel data collected from the annual reports and Prowess database of Bombay Stock Exchange-listed firms. Our (...) results show that both internal and external institutional environments play a major role in diffusing a strategic commitment to CSR among firms. Furthermore, we find that firms indulge in frequency, outcome, and trait-based imitations while learning from peer firms to attain legitimacy from their stakeholders. Overall, our findings show that vicarious learning through imitation plays an important role in making firms truly committed to CSR instead of just donating money or greenwashing. To the best of our knowledge, our study is among the pioneering attempts to look at the impact of both internal and external environments on institutionalizing CSR commitment among firms in India. (shrink)

This paper examines stakeholder responses to impression management tactics used by firms that express environmental commitment. We inductively analyzed data from 98 open-ended questionnaires and identified two impression management tactics that led respondents to believe that a firm was credible in its commitment to the natural environment. Approximately, half of the respondents responded to illustrative impression management tactics that provide images of, and/or broad-brush comments about, the firm’s commitment to the natural environment. The other half responded to demonstrative impression management (...) tactics, which provide specific facts and details about the firm’s operations. The research results provide important insights into the effects of organizational transparency. In this paper, we explore these findings and provide directions for future research. (shrink)

Talks about a man who had it all - looks, wealth, culture, fame, travel, career - and gave it all up to find for himself the answer to his question, Is there actually anything like freedom, enlightenment or liberation behind all the abstractions the religions have thrown at us? This book aims to introduce you to the unknown truth of life.

Context: Although there are rich descriptive accounts of skill acquisition in the literature, there are no satisfactory explanatory models of the cognitive processes involved. Problem: The aim of the paper is to explain some key phenomena frequently observed in the acquisition of motor skills: the loss of conscious access to knowledge of the structure of a skill and the awareness that an error has been made prior to the receipt of knowledge of results. Method: In the 1970s, the first author (...) implemented a computer program model of the cognitive processes involved in learning and skill acquisition, based on a series of empirical investigations. Recently, with assistance from the second author, the model has been reviewed, updated and re-implemented. Result: The model provides a constructivist account of skill acquisition and associated phenomena. Implications: The model adds to the understanding of motor skill acquisition and will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in physical therapy and sports science. It is also provides a constructivist cognitive architecture that can be fruitfully contrasted with non-constructivist cognitive architectures well-known in cognitive science. (shrink)

Monitoring of clinical trials is important to ensure adherence to protocol, to safeguard the rights of research participants and to achieve compliance with principles of good clinical practice. Recent regulatory changes in India require Ethics Committees to keep an oversight of ongoing clinical trials including on-site monitoring. In this article, we share the experience of on-site monitoring of clinical trials by the Ethics Committee of a tertiary care, academic and research centre in India. We found a large number of shortcomings (...) in the areas of informed consent, adverse events, insurance and reimbursement, which would not have been detected by off-site document review. Interestingly, many shortcomings were also not detected by on-site monitoring arranged by clinical trial sponsors. We therefore conclude that on-site monitoring of ongoing clinical trials is a highly important activity for Indian Ethics Committees. (shrink)

Research involving and impacting Indigenous Peoples is often of little or no benefit to the communities involved and, in many cases, causes harm. Ensuring that Indigenous research is not only ethical but also of benefit to the communities involved is a long-standing problem that requires fundamental changes in higher education. To address this necessity for change, the authors of this paper, with the help of graduate and Indigenous community research assistants, undertook community consultation across their university to identify the local (...) and national ethical needs of Indigenous researchers, communities, and Elders. This paper provides an overview of the consultation process, the themes that emerged from the consultations, and a model of the Wholistic Indigenous Research Framework that emerged. (shrink)

Collaborative filtering recommender system (CFRS) plays a vital role in today’s e-commerce industry. CFRSs collect ratings from the users and predict recommendations for the targeted product. Conventionally, CFRS uses the user-product ratings to make recommendations. Often these user-product ratings are biased. The higher ratings are called push ratings (PRs) and the lower ratings are called nuke ratings (NRs). PRs and NRs are injected by factitious users with an intention either to aggravate or degrade the recommendations of a product. Hence, it (...) is necessary to investigate PRs or NRs and discard them. In this work, opinion mining approach is applied on textual reviews that are given by users for a product to detect the PRs and NRs. The work also examines the effect of PRs and NRs on the performance of CFRS by evaluating various measures such as precision, recall, F-measure and accuracy. (shrink)

Recommender system depends on the thoughts of numerous users to predict the favourites of potential consumers. RS is vulnerable to malicious information. Unsuitable products can be offered to the user by injecting a few unscrupulous “shilling” profiles like push and nuke attacks into the RS. Injection of these attacks results in the wrong recommendation for a product. The aim of this research is to develop a framework that can be widely utilized to make excellent recommendations for sales growth. This study (...) uses the methodology that presents an enhanced clustering algorithm named as modified density peak clustering algorithm on the consumer review dataset to ensure a well-formed cluster. An improved recurrent neural network algorithm is proposed to detect these attacks in hybrid RS, which uses the content-based RS and collaborative filtering RS. The results are compared with other state of the art algorithms. The proposed method is more suitable for E-commerce applications where the number of customers and products grows rapidly. (shrink)

We argue that imaginary worlds gain much of their appeal because they fulfill the fundamental need of human beings to feel connected to other humans. Immersion into story worlds provides a sense of social connection to the characters and groups represented in the world. By fulfilling the need to belong, imaginary worlds provide a buffer against rejection and loneliness.

Articles on political and philosophical thoughts of Michel Foucault, French philosopher, in the last decade of his career.

On the philosophy of recognition in Kashmir Saivism.

On Jaina philosophy and epistemology; special issue of Jainadarśana, journal published in 1934.

Study on knowledge in Vaiśeṣika and Buddhist philosophy with special reference of Praśastapādācārya and Dignāga, active 5th century.

On philosophical and historical perspectives of education : with special reference to Sri Aurobindo, 1872-1950, Indian philosopher and John Dewey, 1859-1952, an American philosopher and educational reformer.

Contributed seminar papers on philosophy of sentence according to Mimamsa philosophy and Bhartrhari' Sanskrit grammar. Special issues of Journal of Foundational reserach.

Study of Jaina logic and philosophy with reference to Tattvabodhavidhāyinī of Abhayadeva, 10th century, commentary on Sammatitarkaprakaraṇa of Siddhasena Divakara.

Study on the concept of illusion in Indic philosophy with special references to Bhāmatī of Vācaspatimiśra, fl. 976-1000, supercpmmentary on Brahmasūtra of Bādarāyaṇa.

Study of logic in Mimamsa philosophy with special reference to Mīmāmṣābhāṣya of Śabarasvāmi, classical commentary on Mīmāṃsāsūtra of Jaimini.

On Indic philosophy; with special reference of Jaina philosophy.

On Indic philosophy with special reference to Gujaratis (Indic people) and Gujarat, India.

Study on the aspect of consciousness in Indic philosophy with special reference to the works of Vasubandhu, Śaṅkarācārya, and Aurobindo Ghose, 1872-1950, philosophers.

Study of Aṇabhai-vāṇī by Sukharāmadāsa, 1716-1816, on Jaina doctrines and philosophy.

Concept of matter (Dravya) in Nyaya, Vaiśeṣika and Mimamsa philosophies with special reference to Nyāyasiddhāntamuktāvalī of Viśvanātha Nyāyapañcānana and Mānameyodaya of Nārāyaṇabhaṭṭapāda; a study.