Profound and wide-ranging values shifts among industrialized nations, first noted following World War II and measured on an ongoing basis since, have affected individual decision making in political, social, and institutional settings across the globe. Consequently, the adoption of this set of expansive values is having pronounced and measurable effects on organizational missions, standards, and activities. This change is particularly notable in terms of accountability practices, moral responsibility, and the distinction between ethical and unethical decision making. This article documents this (...) change, the need for a recalibration of ethical standards, and the principalization of a new organizational values order. Future research on the implications of adopting expansive values in organizations is delineated. (shrink)

New technologies are changing our lives radically and quickly. New biotechnologies are moving to commercial uses faster than government regulators or private citizens can monitor. This tension manifests itself in the current debates over xenotransplantation technologies in medicine. The possibility of removing cells, tissues, and organs from animals and transplanting them into human beings is startling and unnerving. Natural immunesystem barriers between species, and even between individuals within a species, are formidable. Typically, transplantation results in violent rejection and death of (...) the grafted organ. But despite the natural barriers to transplantation, xenotransplantation aims specifically to overcome them.In this paper, I will discuss applications of xenograft technology, which raises clinical risks, ethical concerns, and policy issues. I conclude with a set of specific recommendations. As a recent letter to the journal Nature puts it, there is a “split between those who want to get it right, and those who want to get it right now.” No one knows what all the risks, benefits, and unintended consequences of xenotransplantation will be. (shrink)

New technologies are changing our lives radically and quickly. New biotechnologies are moving to commercial uses faster than government regulators or private citizens can monitor. This tension manifests itself in the current debates over xenotransplantation technologies in medicine. The possibility of removing cells, tissues, and organs from animals and transplanting them into human beings is startling and unnerving. Natural immunesystem barriers between species, and even between individuals within a species, are formidable. Typically, transplantation results in violent rejection and death of (...) the grafted organ. But despite the natural barriers to transplantation, xenotransplantation aims specifically to overcome them.In this paper, I will discuss applications of xenograft technology, which raises clinical risks, ethical concerns, and policy issues. I conclude with a set of specific recommendations. As a recent letter to the journal Nature puts it, there is a “split between those who want to get it right, and those who want to get it right now.” No one knows what all the risks, benefits, and unintended consequences of xenotransplantation will be. (shrink)

This study, based upon empirical phenomenological research, explores an essential phenomenon of human existence: the interpermeating communion of self and world. In interpermeation, the supposed separation of self and world is transcended. The being, energy, life, and meaning of the world "flow into" one's self and become integrated as part of who one is; simultaneously, one's being, consciousness, awareness, and self "flow into" the world and become part of the world. Conscious of interpermeation, we tend to understand ourselves and reality (...) differently, and to be more aware and compassionate with others and the natural world: awareness of interpermeation generates love as love generates awareness of interpermeation. A hermeneutic dialogue is offered between existential phenomenology, transpersonal psychology, and the world's spiritual traditions. (shrink)

The human dynamism implied by the concept of Thrival is of particular concern to futurists engaged in exploring our human potential. This potential is not simply a matter of being able to chart a course and realise it; it is the ability to engage the multidimensional facets of out humanness in order to create maps to preferable futures that retain their promise and their openness. Such futures resist definition, challenging us as both individuals and societies to be our best, do (...) our best and dream our best. The utopian nature of any such future cannot be denied, it is a future in potential only. Much critical humanism has focussed on our current world - with its structures and illusions, its iniquities and inequities, its promises and false prophets - and developed thorough critiques of the social order. Critical futures is rooted in this tradition, it is a rebellious humanism, which at its best offers a host of heterodox and paradoxical visions rooted in the critique of those forces that seek the closure of human potential. (shrink)