This paper examines how good management can repair fractured relationships within organisations, addressing problems that if left unattended will threaten the future existence of many of these companies. It analyses why there is a mood for change in management thinking, and what direction that change can take. Part of the challenge is how managers can best satisfy the objectives of corporate social responsibility initiatives, and repair organisational and fractured community relationships. A possible role for management is to examine alternative ways (...) of thinking about the potential benefits for the organisation that can be achieved by enhancing employee relationships. In this regard, this paper offers strategies to examine management’s adverse affects on workers’ life-plans. The art of interpretation is used to expose how bureaucratic logic ignores workers’ rights and potentially damages the corporation’s longevity. Interpretation, as opposed to procedure, suggests that organisations are not simply profit mechanisms, but active and dynamic civil societies. By better understanding the facilitating processes of administrative and management thinking, it is possible that we can develop alternative strategies that empower individuals to circumvent the negative consequences of instrumental rationality and enable them to act more responsibly in the public interest. (shrink)

Medical practice has always involved at least three roles, three complimentary identities. Practitioners have been at once clinicians dedicated to a patient’s care, members of a professional organization promoting medicine, and informed citizens engaged in public debates on health issues. Beginning in the 1970s, a series of social and technological changes affected, and in many cases restricted, the practitioner’s ability to function equally in these three identities. While others have discussed the changing realities of medical practice in recent decades, none (...) have commented on their effect on their effect on rights of practitioners as citizens. Here several cases begin an analysis of the manner in which those changes have limited the physician’s right to act conscientiously and speak publicly in the face of organizational agendas and political priorities. (shrink)

Bioethicists have typically disdained where they did not simply ignore the Hippocratic tradition in medicine. Its exclusivity—an oath of and for physicians—seemed contrary to the perspective that bioethicists have attempted to invoke. Robert M. Veatch recently articulated this rejection of the Hippocratic tradition, and of a professional ethic of medicine in general, in a volume based on his Gifford lectures. Here that argument is critiqued. The strengths of the Hippocratic tradition as a flexible and ethical social doctrine are offered in (...) its stead. (shrink)

Role models have been used since ancient times to develop character through fictional and historical stories, but only recently have the effects of such interventions been studied. Research has shown the emotions elicited when exposed to moral exemplars can trigger the motivation to progress morally. Aristotle advocated the teaching of virtues to children at a young age through habituation, which would gradually develop into phronesis-guided virtuosity. He considered what is now referred to as ‘role modelling’ as having a significant influence (...) on children through the emotion of emulation. Based on this, the following project uses a mixed-method design to examine how a virtue-led role modelling programme could be used in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by answering the following research questions: 1) How could an effective role modelling character education programme be developed in that country? 2) How could a role modelling character education be feasibly implemented there? The first stage involved conducting a role modelling intervention to teach school-appropriate virtues to students in a school setting in The Kingdom. The virtues were presented through role models with each model presented in a lesson divided into three sections Inspire–Action–Reflect. A qualitative + quantitative research design was used to examine the intervention’s efficacy and the school’s character education background. The results then led to a qualitative study exploring how virtues, role modelling and character education in general are currently being taught in schools in Saudi Arabia; also, how it could be developed further, and what the enablers and barriers might be in feasibly implementing the programme in relation to the educational culture and policy environment. Overall, the study has shown there is potential for developing and implementing a role modelling character education programme in the Region, provided certain factors are taken into consideration and used to increase such a programme’s efficacy. (shrink)