The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"--metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them. In (...) this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language. (shrink)

Drawing upon Marxist, French structuralist and American pragmatist traditions, this lively and accessible introduction to the sociology of knowledge gives to its classic texts a fresh reading, arguing that various bodies of knowledge operate within culture to create powerful cultural dispositions, meanings, and categories. It looks at the cultural impact of the forms and images of mass media, the authority of science, medicine, and law as bodies of contemporary knowledge and practice. Finally, it considers the concept of "engendered knowledge" through (...) a consideration of the complex and often troubled relationship between women and science. The sociology of knowledge has sometimes been marginalized as a narrow academic specialization. This lucid study reclaims it as an essential tool for all serious students of culture in all its forms. (shrink)

This book reformulates the sociological subdiscipline known as the sociology of knowledge. Knowledge is presented as more than ideology, including as well false consciousness, propaganda, science and art.

Our research has found that companies which have diverged from traditional management in order to adopt strategies which include ethics, cooperation and a joint vision of management obtain a greater added value. The new challenges of competitiveness require a position of active cooperation between firms and their suppliers, which should be considered as collaborators rather than adversaries. An active cooperation management may well allow the company to improve the quality of its products and its image, speed up delivery to its (...) clients and make its production and trading more agile, thus enhancing the perception the client has of the product. An improved ethical quality in our dealings, generating trust, improving communication and establishing long-term relationships with joint added value, results in higher competitiveness and greater creation of wealth. (shrink)

Human beings have the unique ability to view the world in a detached way: We can think about the world in terms that transcend our own experience or interest, and consider the world from a vantage point that is, in Nagel's words, "nowhere in particular". At the same time, each of us is a particular person in a particular place, each with his own "personal" view of the world, a view that we can recognize as just one aspect of the (...) whole. How do we reconcile these two standpoints--intellectually, morally, and practically? To what extent are they irreconcilable and to what extent can they be integrated? Thomas Nagel's ambitious and lively book tackles this fundamental issue, arguing that our divided nature is the root of a whole range of philosophical problems, touching, as it does, every aspect of human life. He deals with its manifestations in such fields of philosophy as: the mind-body problem, personal identity, knowledge and skepticism, thought and reality, free will, ethics, the relation between moral and other values, the meaning of life, and death. Excessive objectification has been a malady of recent analytic philosophy, claims Nagel, it has led to implausible forms of reductionism in the philosophy of mind and elsewhere. The solution is not to inhibit the objectifying impulse, but to insist that it learn to live alongside the internal perspectives that cannot be either discarded or objectified. Reconciliation between the two standpoints, in the end, is not always possible. (shrink)

C. C. W. Taylor presents a clear and faithful new translation of one of the most famous and influential texts in the history of Western thought, accompanied by an analytical and critical commentary focusing on philosophical issues. In Books II to IV of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle gives his account of virtue of character, which is central to his ethical theory as a whole and a key topic in much modern ethical writing.

In this book Haridimos Tsoukas, one of the most imaginative organization theorists of our time, examines the nature of knowledge in organizations, and how individuals and scholars approach the concept of knowledge. -/- Tsoukas firstly looks at organizational knowledge and its embeddedness in social contexts and forms of life. He shows that knowledge is not just a collection of free floating representations of the world to be used at will, but an activity constitutive of the world. On the one hand (...) the organization as an institutionalized system does produce regularities that can can be captured via propositional forms of knowledge. On the other, the organization as practice, as a lifeworld, or as an open-ended system produce stories, values, and shared traditions which can only be captured by narrative forms of knowledge. -/- Secondly, Tsoukas looks at the issue of how individuals deal with the notion of complexity in organizations: Our inability to reduce the behaviour of complex organizations to their constituent parts. Drawing on concepts such as discourse, narrativity, and reflexivity, he adopts a hermeneutical approach to the issue. -/- Finally Tsoukas examines the concept of meta-knowledge, and how we know what we know. Arguing that the underlying representationalist epistemology of much of mainstream management causes many problems, he advocates adopting a more discursive approach. He describes what such an epistemology might be, and illustrates it with examples from organization studies and strategic management. -/- An ideal introduction to the thinking of a leading organizational theorist, this book will be essential reading for academics, researchers, and students of Knowledge Management, Organization Studies, Management Studies, Business Strategy, and Applied Epistemology. (shrink)

The many gods of modernity -- The dynamics of relativization -- Relativism -- Fundamentalism -- Certainty and doubt -- The limits of doubt -- The politics of moderation.

This paper investigates the influence of innovation on the relationship between corporate strategy and social issues. Specifically, we employ firm-level data for a large sample of UK companies drawn from a diverse range of industrial sectors to investigate, given innovation, the determinants of both the probability that the innovation brings reduced environmental impacts and/or improved health and safety, and the strength of this effect. In this connection, we find evidence of a dichotomy between product and process innovations, and roles for (...) firm size, industrial sector, a foreign market presence, access to various information sources and the extent to which activities are constrained by regulation. Furthermore, we find a tendency for the influences of many of these factors to vary between older and newer firms. (shrink)

An interrogation of the term 'theory' from the perspective of linguistic discourse Zima offers a new definition of theory from a cultural and sociological perspective, with a view to encountering heterogenerous points of view in critical dialogue.

"The burgeoning field of evolutionary economics has developed as a result of the traditional failure of the discipline to explain certain phenomena that impact greatly on teconomy: evolution, institutions, knowledge and technology." "This book proposes a new analytic framework for the study of the nature and causes of long run economic growth and development in market systems. It starts out by analyzing the foundations of the neoclassical tradition, before developing a thesis through micro, meso and macro domains drawing conclusions as (...) to what can be learned from the point of view of policy analysis. Dopfer and Potts focus on an open-systems analytical framework and successfully formulate and refine the analytical foundations of a new general theory of economic evolution." "The book is unique in that its general theory of economic evolution is intended as an integrated generic framework to define the rules of an economic system, how they are coordinated, and the causes and consequences of their change. It is essential reading for scholars and students of economic evolution and is also broadly intended for anyone who might seek to better understand the complex evolutionary nature of the structure and dynamics of the knowledge-based economy in todays society."--Book Jacket. (shrink)

This paper presents and illustrates the concept of sustainable corporate finance. Sustainability is a well-established concept in the disciplines of environmental economics and business ethics. The paper uses a broader definition of what is called the firm to pinpoint sustainability to the finance literature. The concept of sustainable finance is compared to traditional and behavioral finance. Four criteria are used to systematically analyze the basic differences. First on the order is the theory of the firm: the definition of the firm (...) is reconsidered by integrating behavioral aspects and by expanding financial analysis to a three-dimensional goal setting. Secondly, a closer look is taken at the assumed behavior of economic agents and its consequences for the applied methodology. The shareholders paradigm is discussed against the background of growing stakeholder importance. Finally, the fourth criterion deals with the different ethical framework and its implication for financial behavior. (shrink)

Product safety has always been one of the main problems in engineering ethics. At times it has been discussed as primarily a problem of engineering ethics. However the right to safety is one of the four fundamental consumer rights and so it is an important theme also in business ethics. At the same time the problem of product safety is inseparably connected with business effectiveness: how much can we spend on product safety without making our production unprofitable?Below we will present (...) a possible treatment of the safety problem in teaching business ethics to post-graduate industrial engineering students – as we deal with the problem in Tallinn Technical University. (shrink)

Starting from MacIntyre’s virtue ethics, we investigate several codes of conduct of banks to identify the type of virtues that are needed to realize their mission. Based on this analysis, we define three core virtues: honesty, due care, and accuracy. We compare and contrast these codes of conduct with the actual behavior of banks that led to the credit crisis and find that in some cases banks did not behave according to the moral standards they set themselves. However, although banks (...) and the professionals working in them can be blamed for what they did, one should also acknowledge that the institutional context of the free market economy in which they operated made it difficult to live up to the core values lying at the basis of the codes of conduct. Given the neo-liberal free market system, innovative and risky strategies to enhance profits are considered desirable for the sake of shareholder’s interests. A return to the core virtues in the financial sector will therefore only succeed if a renewed sense of responsibility in the sector is supported by institutional changes that allow banks to put their mission into practice. (shrink)

In our global economy knowledge-based industry is takingmore importance. Recent years have seen the success of anincreasing number of start-up companies, most technology-basedenterprises financed by private persons or companies, or through venture capital funds and public offering. In manyyears, those companies are faced at certain critical momentswith matters involving intellectual property rights, insiderinformation and raising money. These facts all have an ethicaldimension. There is an increasing need for ethical behaviourfrom all parties involved. A code of conduct of all partiesshould be (...) applied. This paper describes the growth processof a company and the valuation of an innovation project. Itwill overview a number of ethical issues, at different stagesin the innovation business, and in the lifetime of a start-upcompany, such as the problems of intellectual property, theconfidentiality of information, the negotiation processbetween the entrepreneur and the financier, the marketingof raising funds and of an IPO, and finally the informationand insider trading. The paper concludes with aplea for increased ethical ethical behaviour and the needfor rules of best practice for all parties: the inventor,the entrepreneur, the financial investor, and other stakeholders. (shrink)

If we presume an organizational ontology of complex, dynamic change, then what role remains for strategic intent? If managerial action is said to consist of adaptive responsiveness, then what are the foundations of value on the basis of which strategic decisions can be made? In this essay, we respond to these questions and extend the existing strategy process literature by turning to the Aristotelian concept of prudence, or practical wisdom. According to Aristotle, practical wisdom involves the virtuous capacity to make (...) decisions and take actions that promote the "good life" for the "polis". We explore contemporary interpretations of this concept in literature streams adjacent to strategy and determine that practical wisdom can be developed by engaging in interpretative dialogue and aesthetically-rich experience. With these elements in view, we re-frame strategy processes as occasions to develop the human capacity for practical wisdom. (shrink)

This article investigates whether Aristotelian practical wisdom could be considered as an advantageous "sense" in management practice and as an alternative rationality to that defended by modern tradition. Aristotelian practical wisdom is re-conceptualised in order to emphasise the intuitive component of practical wisdom, an aspect often sidelined by business ethicists. Levinas' insights are applied to Aristotelian practical wisdom in such a way that the role of emotion in moral action would be reinforced. It is argued that the role of emotion (...) in moral action and wise deliberation requires re-definition in accordance with the indeterminate character of the moral. Moreover, I argue Levinas' approach might be helpful to bring to light the conflictual aspect inherent in being prudential. By reinterpreting the intuitive component of practical wisdom as Levinas' moral impulse, wisdom theory is expanded to include the face, and to better account for the conflictive and the emotional aspects of phronesis. This approach enables practical wisdom to be understood as a human "sense" in ways that assist how we manage and understand contemporary organizations. (shrink)

Starting from MacIntyre’s virtue ethics, we investigate several codes of conduct of banks to identify the type of virtues that are needed to realize their mission. Based on this analysis, we define three core virtues: honesty, due care, and accuracy. We compare and contrast these codes of conduct with the actual behavior of banks that led to the credit crisis and find that in some cases banks did not behave according to the moral standards they set themselves. However, although banks (...) and the professionals working in them can be blamed for what they did, one should also acknowledge that the institutional context of the free market economy in which they operated made it difficult to live up to the core values lying at the basis of the codes of conduct. Given the neo-liberal free market system, innovative and risky strategies to enhance profits are considered desirable for the sake of shareholder’s interests. A return to the core virtues in the financial sector will therefore only succeed if a renewed sense of responsibility in the sector is supported by institutional changes that allow banks to put their mission into practice. (shrink)

This article investigates the influence of innovation on the relationship between corporate strategy and social issues. Specifically, we employ firm-level data for a large sample of U.K. companies drawn from a diverse range of industrial sectors to investigate, given innovation, the determinants of both the probability that the innovation brings reduced environmental impacts and/or improved health and safety, and the strength of this effect. In this connection, we find evidence of a dichotomy between product and process innovations, and roles for (...) firm size, industrial sector, a foreign market presence, access to various information sources (e.g. universities and government research organisations) and the extent to which activities are constrained by regulation. Furthermore, we find a tendency for the influences of many of these factors to vary between older and newer firms. (shrink)

Although wisdom might be considered a quaint concept in a post-industrialised, instrumental and secular world, it deserves serious consideration. This is done primarily from a philosophical perspective and is intended to encourage the reintroduction of wisdom into educational and developmental programmes, especially for managers and leaders. Mindful of the potential naïvete of transplanting systems of thinking from one epoch to another, we nonetheless examine the relevance of pre-modern thought to the post-modern condition. This is done by radically reinterpreting classical Greek (...) texts as Pierre Hadot has done to derive a meaning of "philosophy" and the place of wisdom in the ancient world. The concepts of wisdom, virtue and enacted ethics derived from this re-interpretation are then applied to an ethnographic case study involving a senior executive. This study suggests that a Stoical "wisdom of the moment" philosophy may characterize contemporary leadership practice. (shrink)

Organizations are searching for innovative business approaches that deliver profits and create shared value for all stakeholders. We show what can be learned from the relational wisdom approach of Indigenous Māori and reframe the prevailing economic argument that has seen companies profit and prosper at the expense of communities and ecologies. We develop an ethic of kaitiakitanga model premised on Māori values which holds the potential to enrich and further humanize our understanding of business. The Māori economy is a globally (...) connected, prosperous, and profitable sector of the New Zealand economy. By drawing on Māori values, we present a wisdom position through an ethic of kaitiakitanga or stewardship to emphasize and illustrate the interconnectedness of life in a woven universe. Through practicing kaitiakitanga , organizations can build businesses where wisdom is consciously created through reciprocal relationships. In this worldview of business, humans are stewards endowed with a mandate to use the agency of their mana (spiritual power, authority, and sovereignty) to create mauri ora (conscious well-being) for humans and ecosystems—and this commitment extends to organizations. (shrink)