In this paper, I examine Foucault’s conception of agency by reconstructing two complementary approaches he takes: the ‘analytics of power’, which examines the relation between norms and practice by charting the institutional development within which a set of norms emerge, and the concept of ‘problematization’, which examines reason-giving practices, or varieties of normative justification that legitimize rational institutions and agents’ participation in them. Contrary to the standard caricature, Foucault’s analysis of the relation between norms and institutions does not (...) merely reduce the former to relations of ‘power’. In short, he also thinks standards of justification are just as revisable as social practices themselves, and the focus here will be on the relation and importance of these two complementary approaches to his critique of normativity. Key Words: agency • critique • Foucault • normativity • social practice. (shrink)

This paper gives an account of proxy agency in the context of collective action. It takes the case of a group announcing something by way of a spokesperson as an illustration. In proxy agency, it seems that one person or subgroup's doing something counts as or constitutes or is recognized as (tantamount to) another person or group's doing something. Proxy agency is pervasive in institutional action. It has been taken to be a straightforward counterexample to an (...) appealing deflationary view of collective action as a matter of all members of a group making a contribution to bringing about some event. I show that this is a mistake. I give a deflationary account of constitutive rules in terms of essentially collective action types. I then give an account of one form of constitutive agency in terms of constitutive rules. I next give an account of status functions—of which being a spokesperson is one—that also draws on the concept of a constitutive rule. I then show how these materials help us to see how proxy agency is an expression of the agency of all members of the group credited with doing something when the proxy acts. (shrink)

Fear generalisation is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when fear that is elicited in response to a frightening stimulus spreads to similar or related stimuli. The practical harms of pathological fear generalisation related to trauma are well-documented, but little or no attention has been given so far to its epistemic harms. This paper fills this gap in the literature. It shows how the psychological phenomenon, when it becomes pathological, substantially curbs the epistemic agency of those who experience the fear (...) that generalizes, limiting their ability to respond to evidence, and substantially limiting their epistemic horizons. It is argued that when these epistemic harms are caused by wrongful actions and decisions of individuals or institutions, because the fear is elicited in response to a traumatic experience inflicted by them, the harms should be considered epistemic wrongs. The epistemic wrongs are closely akin to agential epistemic injustice, a variety of distributive epistemic injustice, and sometimes also involve epistemic exclusion. The paper thereby identifies a previously underexplored psychological mechanism that can be a vehicle through which both individuals and institutions can epistemically wrong others. The argument has implications for how both epistemic wrongs and epistemic injustice should be conceived, suggesting that both can occur without being caused by primarily epistemic flaws or errors, or a bad epistemic character. Finally, it highlights the advantage of taking a victim-centred approach to understanding epistemic harm. (shrink)

According to the Market Failures Approach to business ethics, beyond-compliance duties can be derived by employing the same rationale and arguments that justify state regulation of economic conduct. Very roughly the idea is that managers have a duty to behave as if they were complying with an ideal regulatory regime ensuring Pareto-optimal market outcomes. Proponents of the approach argue that managers have a professional duty not to undermine the institutional setting that defines their role, namely the competitive market. This (...) answer is inadequate, however, for it is the hierarchical firm, rather than the competitive market, that defines the role of corporate managers and shapes their professional obligations. Thus, if the obligations that the market failures approach generates are to apply to managers, they must do so in an indirect way. I suggest that the obligations the market failures approach generates directly apply to shareholders. Managers, in turn, inherit these obligations as part of their duties as loyal agents. (shrink)

Poverty, Agency, and Human Rights collects thirteen new essays that analyze how human agency relates to poverty and human rights respectively as well as how agency mediates issues concerning poverty and social and economic human rights. No other collection of philosophical papers focuses on the diverse ways poverty impacts the agency of the poor, the reasons why poverty alleviation schemes should also promote the agency of beneficiaries, and the fitness of the human rights regime to (...) secure both economic development and free agency. The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 considers the diverse meanings of poverty both from the standpoint of the poor and from that of the relatively well-off. Part 2 examines morally appropriate responses to poverty on the part of persons who are better-off and powerful institutions. Part 3 identifies economic development strategies that secure the agency of the beneficiaries. Part 4 addresses the constraints poverty imposes on agency in the context of biomedical research, migration for work, and trafficking in persons. (shrink)

The thought that children should be given greater opportunity to participate meaningfully in affairs which concern them and to show their capacity for reasonable measured thoughts and choices has been displayed by many others (COHEN, 1980; FARSON, 1974; KENNEDY, 1992). It has also been suggested than in order to ensure that we are fair to all individuals, regardless of their age, that our primary consideration should be the capacity for decision making and agency. However, whether or not children are (...) indeed capable of this kind of decision-making and developed agency is greatly contested (most notably perhaps by Plato and Aristotle), and so too are the reasons for this. In what follows then, I will examine the ways in which children may be encouraged to gain this kind of agency, and what our role in facilitating this may be. Moreover, I will show that while difficult, it is possible to approach ‘teaching’ young people to become autonomous agents in ways that do not interfere with their agency, either presently or in a future-oriented sense. Establishing this is essential as in order to make authentic choices, and allow for holding individuals responsible for their choices, they must be a result of the deliberation of their own choices, and not some other influence, be that external or internal. Finally, in relation to educative aims as a whole, I will follow Seneca’s statement above: that education should go beyond inculcating only learning and practises that are of immediate use to the institutions in which they are learned. (shrink)

I argue that same-sex divorce presents a different kind of potential constraint to the agency of persons pursuing the dissolution of their marriage; a constraint upon one’s counterstory and the reconstitution of one’s personal identity. The dialectic within the paper mirrors the movements that I have had to make as I have sought to constitute and reconstitute myself throughout my divorce process. Beginning from a juridical perspective, I examine how the constraints on same-sex divorce present constraints on one’s (...) class='Hi'>agency that are antithetical to the spirit of a liberal democratic conception of freedom of movement. I then explore the role of narrative in my self-(re)constitution, as well as the limits of the narrative and counterstories, when the institutional framework of the State fails to acknowledge the change in my State-sanctioned personal relationship. I end by arguing that this view from the law ignores the ways in which we relationally constitute ourselves, and in so doing covers over the harms done to persons that find themselves in a married-yet-not state of limbo. (shrink)

At the centenary of Frank H. Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit (1921), we explore the continuing relevance of Knightian uncertainty to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship. There are three challenges facing such assessment. First, RUP is complex and difficult to interpret. The key but neglected element of RUP is that Knight’s account is not solely about risk and uncertainty as states of nature, but about how an agent’s beliefs about uncertain outcomes and confidence in those beliefs guide their choices. (...) Second, RUP is Knight’s only effort in this area. His subsequent career led elsewhere, so he did not engage with subsequent interpretations of this work. Third, much of the current literature emphasizes that decisions must be different under the two states of nature with a consequent misunderstanding of entrepreneurial agency. This paper addresses each challenge in sequence. First, we explicate Knight’s (1921) approach and explain why that approach is murky. Second, as a complement to Knight’s interpretation, we examine Frank P. Ramsey’s approach to subjective probabilities to help clarify Knight’s murky approach. What links Knight and Ramsey is a shared pragmatism about entrepreneurial agency under uncertainty that depends upon the beliefs about, and confidence in, their judgments of possible outcomes. This Knight-Ramsey approach does not require actor’s behaviors to be determined by the class of uncertain environment (whether risk, uncertainty, or ambiguity) they face. We focus on the response by the entrepreneur to the existence of uncertainty in all its forms. We argue that this reductive account provides a foundation to examine common problems in management, including managerial hubris, the interaction between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and the need for experimentation (such as prototyping and market research) in advance of new product and venture launches. Third, we critique current literature that favors epistemic purism about the ontology of risk and uncertainty and ignores Knight-Ramsey pragmatism in meeting uncertainty, such as using formal and informal institutions for uncertainty mitigation. Our account locates Frank Knight’s subtleties in entrepreneurial behavior firmly in the literature on entrepreneurial agency a century later. (shrink)

The article provides an overview of the basic concepts and principles of the theory of institutions as well as of the mechanisms of emergence and evolution of social institutions. It introduces a distinction between formal and informal institutions based on the the criterion of the enforcement agency of institutions. Finally it discusses the problem of path dependence.

The problem of standard of care in clinical research concerns the level of treatment that investigators must provide to subjects in clinical trials. Commentators often formulate answers to this problem by appealing to two distinct types of obligations: professional obligations and natural duties. In this article, I investigate whether investigators also possess institutional obligations that are directly relevant to the problem of standard of care, that is, those obligations a person has because she occupies a particular institutional role. (...) I examine two types of institutional contexts: (1) public research agencies – agencies or departments of states that fund or conduct clinical research in the public interest; and (2) private-for-profit corporations. I argue that investigators who are employed or have their research sponsored by the former have a distinctive institutional obligation to conduct their research in a way that is consistent with the state's duty of distributive justice to provide its citizens with access to basic health care, and its duty to aid citizens of lower income countries. By contrast, I argue that investigators who are employed or have their research sponsored by private-for-profit corporations do not possess this obligation nor any other institutional obligation that is directly relevant to the ethics of RCTs. My account of the institutional obligations of investigators aims to contribute to the development of a reasonable, distributive justice-based account of standard of care. (shrink)

Agents have powers to bring about change. Do agents have normative powers to bring about normative change directly? This chapter distinguishes between direct normative change and descriptive and institutional changes, which may indirectly be normatively significant. This article argues that agents do indeed have the powers to bring about normative change directly. It responds to a challenge claiming that all normativity is institutional and another claiming that exercises of normative powers would violate considerations of supervenience. The article also (...) responds to a challenge - generalizing Kent Hurtig’s recent challenge about consent - which states that exercises of normative powers are valid only in cases that do not matter - they never bring about a “normative transformation” of what the agent overall ought to do. It turns out that consent is normatively transformative in some cases, but the main contribution of exercises of normative powers is at the contributory level not that of overall oughts. Invalid exercises of normative powers are void of any normative effects. Rational agents as possessors of normative powers are not merely responsive to pre-existing normative reasons, but they can also create normative reasons. A “responsive” view of rational agency sees us as being able to track existing normative reasons and make descriptive changes (on which normative changes supervene). The “creative” view of rational agency sees us as being able not only to construct institutions but also to create normative reasons directly. The chapter concludes that agents are both responsive and creative. (shrink)

In his ground‐breaking study Complicity, Christopher Kutz introduces the notion of ‘participatory intentions’ (individual intentions whose content is collective) to explain an agent's complicity with groups or organisations. According to Kutz, participatory intentions allow us to hold individuals morally accountable for collective wrongs independent of their causal contribution to the wrong and its ensuing harm. This article offers an alternative account of complicity. Its central claim is that an agent's complicity might be due to the dependence of his professional role (...) on the normative principles that make up the organisation or institution in whose practices he partakes. In other words, there might arise a constitutive failure in an agent's attempt to ascribe to himself a non‐complicit professional identity. I use the case of SS‐Judge Konrad Morgen in order to illustrate this understanding of complicity. (shrink)

About the analogy between the epistemological and methodological aspects of the activity of intelligence agencies and some scientific disciplines, advocating for a more scientific approach to the process of collecting and analyzing information within the intelligence cycle. I assert that the theoretical, ontological and epistemological aspects of the activity of many intelligence agencies are underestimated, leading to incomplete understanding of current phenomena and confusion in inter-institutional collaboration. After a brief Introduction, which includes a history of the evolution of the (...) intelligence concept after World War II, Intelligence Activity defines the objectives and organization of intelligence agencies, the core model of these organizations (the intelligence cycle), and the relevant aspects of the intelligence gathering and intelligence analysis. In the Ontology section, I highlight the ontological aspects and the entities that threaten and are threatened. The Epistemology section includes aspects specific to intelligence activity, with the analysis of the traditional (Singer) model, and a possible epistemological approach through the concept of tacit knowledge developed by scientist Michael Polanyi. In the Methodology section there are various methodological theories with an emphasis on structural analytical techniques, and some analogies with science, archeology, business and medicine. In Conclusions I argue on the possibility of a more scientific approach to methods of intelligence gathering and analysis of intelligence agencies. -/- ISBN 978-606-033-219-0, DOI: 10.58679/MM58823. (shrink)

This chapter argues for deregulation of the credit-rating market. Credit-rating agencies are supposed to contribute to the informational needs of investors trading bonds. They provide ratings of debt issued by corporations and governments, as well as of structured debt instruments (e.g. mortgage-backed securities). As many academics, regulators, and commentators have pointed out, the ratings of structured instruments turned out to be highly inaccurate, and, as a result, they have argued for tighter regulation of the industry. This chapter shows, however, that (...) the role of credit-rating agencies in achieving justice in finance is not as great as these commentators believe. It therefore argues instead for deregulation. Since the 1930s, lawgivers have unjustifiably elevated the rating agencies into official, legally binding sources of information concerning credit risk, thereby unjustifiably causing many institutional investors to outsource their epistemic responsibilities, that is, their responsibility to investigate credit risk themselves. (shrink)

Literature frequently describes how ineffective implementation of instructional policy frameworks can make distance learning a lonely and unrewarding academic pursuit, characterized by high student drop-out rates, high failure rates and academic exclusion. In trying to mitigate this catastrophe, academic departments in distance learning institutions utilize learning management systems (LMSs) to stimulate students’ learning experiences. In keeping with techno-progressivism, the researchers (and authors of this paper) turned to extant documentary policy and literature to review – qualitatively – how the University of (...) South Africa’s (Unisa’s) Open Distance Learning Policy (ODLP) promotes academic inclusion and learning agency as cornerstones of student success and social justice, especially in an unequal society like South Africa. The findings revealed the following: 1) Unisa’s ODLP position has the impetus to influence the deployment of the LMS to promote academic inclusion; 2) Practical means of promoting inclusion were mirrored in the provision of manual or electronic learning material, computer laboratories and free internet connectivity in regional centres across all nine provinces of South Africa, as well as in the provision of laptops for National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS)-funded students, 30 gigabytes of free monthly mobile data to all students, and assistive technologies for students with disabilities; 3) Practical utilization of an LMS to foster self-regulated learning occurred through problem-based individual activities supplemented by asynchronous demonstrative learning material (e.g. audio, video), while collaborative learning agency was enabled through e-tutoring, which afforded students the opportunity to interact with e-tutors and their peers about the learning content; 4) Drawbacks in the use of the LMS stemmed from the insufficiency of assistive learning technologies that are required for students with disabilities to participate fully in online learning, and a corpus of students’ irregular attendance at and participation in e-tutoring discussions and their projection of a negative attitude towards the e-tutors. -/- . (shrink)

It is rather natural to suppose that what we mean when we say that an institutional organization has a moral duty is parallel to whatever it is that we mean when we say that an individual has a duty. I challenge this interpretation on the grounds that it assumes that institutional organizations possess those characteristics or abilities requisite for moral agency—an assumption which I argue is highly suspicious. Against such an interpretation, I argue that we have very (...) good reasons to suppose that the term 'has a duty' is used equivocally across individual and institutional contexts. In other words, the meaning of an institutional duty-claim is quite different than that of an individual duty-claim, so much so that we ought to recognize that institutional duty-claims are not really duty-claims at all. (shrink)

In this chapter I offer a critique of the received way of thinking about responsibility for collective inaction and propose an alternative approach that takes as its point of departure the epistemic agency exhibited by people navigating impossible situations together. One such situation is becoming increasingly common in the context of climate change: so-called “natural” disasters wreaking havoc on communities—flooding homes, collapsing infrastructures, and straining the capacities of existing organizations to safeguard lives and livelihoods. What happens when philosophical reflection (...) begins here—in places where the institutions and practices that have emerged over the last century seem incapable of addressing the problems communities face now, and where people find themselves turning to one another for the sake of their own survival? (shrink)

Worldwide, many impoverished parents migrate, leaving their children behind. As a result children are deprived of continuity in care and, sometimes, suffer from other forms of emotional and developmental harms. I explain why coercive responses to care drain are illegitimate and likely to be inefficient. Poor parents have a moral right to migrate without their children and restricting their migration would violate the human right to freedom of movement and create a new form of gender injustice. I propose and defend (...) an institutional solution. Taxes levied on the remittances sent by temporary migrants ought to be used to provide migrants' children with psychological counselling in order to mitigate the harm resulted from discontinuity in care. (shrink)

The study aims to identify the reality of management of electronic documents and electronic archiving retirement in the Palestinian Pension Agency -analytical study, as well as to recognize the reality of the current document management system in the Palestinian Pension Agency. The study found the following results: that the reality of the current system for the management of documents in the agency is weak and suffers from many jams. Employee in the agency understand the importance and (...) benefits of the management of electronic documents system, where the application of electronic document management system provide important features and benefits most of which reduce the loss of documents between departments, illustrates the flow path, the speed, accuracy, transparency, and reduce the proportion of damage and destruction of files. Furthermore, the electronic documents system cost will be less than the cost of the current system and it will reduce the tasks assigned for the staff. The existence of a clear adoption of the agency for the policies and procedures established for the application of electronic documents management system. There are weak plans for training and developing of staff in the agency to raise their efficiency. The study found a set of recommendations, including: increased interest and awareness of the need to implement policies, mechanisms, and procedures to ensure the success of electronic document management system through benefiting from the experiences of other organizations and the private sector. The agency need to increase and develop its services for retirees in order to encourage the private sector, universities, and institutions to join the agency, and open the way for all segments of society in Gaza and West Bank and enhance its competitiveness between international social security institutions. The need to focus its attention on developing and publishing appropriate clear plans and specific goals about management of electronic documents and the agency should be committed to apply them. The need to focus on the establishment of a public management of archiving in the structure dealing with all technical operations and having competent and qualified employees in the field of electronic document management. The need to focus on the Palestinian National Archives and the follow-up with the international standards by the International Council Archives (ICA). (shrink)

When it comes to social criticism of the economy, Critical Theory has thus far failed to discover specific immanent norms in that sphere of activity. In response, we propose that what is needed is to double down on the idealism of Critical Theory by taking seriously the sophisticated structure of agency developed in Hegel’s own account of freedom as self-determination. When we do so, we will see that the anti-metaphysical gestures of recent Critical Theory work in opposition to its (...) attempts to develop immanent critique. In this paper we first briefly reconsider Axel Honneth’s project as it concerns economic institutions and then respond by returning to the problem of freedom and articulating a view according to which the problem of individual self-determination and the problem of social production are the same problem seen from different angles. Then we present briefly Hegel’s own social theory from this perspective before moving on to trace the outlines of such a critical theory of contemporary capitalism. (shrink)

In this paper I sketch a socially situated account of responsible agency, the main tenet of which is that the powers that constitute responsible agency are themselves socially constituted. I explain in detail the constitution relation between responsibility-relevant powers and social context and provide detailed examples of how it is realized by focusing on what I call ‘expectations-generating social factors’ such as social practices, cultural scripts, social roles, socially available self-conceptions, and political and legal institutions. I then bring (...) my account to bear on the debate about the exculpatory potential of moral ignorance. I show that a prominent position in this debate – the position that denies that moral ignorance exculpates – is grounded on an individualistic and acontextualist conception of moral capacities, moral cognition, and blameworthiness, and that this conception leads those philosophers who endorse it to make a number of questionable claims regarding the ability of ordinary agents to overcome their moral ignorance and the culpability they bear for the latter. I conclude by indicating how my socially situated account addresses the issue of moral ignorance. (shrink)

The aim of the research is to identify the role of policies and procedures for the electronic document management system in the success of the electronic document management system in the Palestinian Pension Agency. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, the researchers used the analytical descriptive method in which the tries to describe the phenomenon studied, analyze its data, the relationship between its components and the opinions that are raised around it, and use the comprehensive inventory (...) method due to the small size of the society. (108) questionnaires were distributed to the community of 65 employees in Gaza Strip and 43 employees in the West Bank. All the responses were retrieved. The research found that there is a clear adoption by the Commission of the policies and procedures put in place to implement the electronic management system of electronic documents. The study showed that there are no statistically significant differences between the responses of the study population regarding the role of policies and procedures for the electronic document management system in the success of the electronic document management system in the Palestinian Pension Agency due to variable (age, nature of job, specialization). And showed that there is a fundamental difference in the opinion of members of the study community on the role of policies and procedures for the electronic document management system in the success of the electronic document management system in the Palestinian Pension Agency attributed to the scientific qualification, and shows the difference in favor of the bachelor's degree. And years of service, and shows the difference in favor of the 11-15 year category. The research led to a number of recommendations, the most important of which is the increase of interest and awareness of the need to implement policies and procedures to ensure the success of the electronic document management system through access to and benefit from the experiences of other institutions and the private sector. And the need to focus on the attention to develop appropriate and clear plans and dissemination on the electronic document management system and specific to specific objectives and the Commission is committed to apply them, the need to pay attention to the development of strategic plans and policies and work mechanisms commensurate with the electronic document management system, and the need to define a policy in advance to form a team of different specialties of the staff of the Authority and cooperation with consultants from outside the body to work on the electronic document system. (shrink)

One of the key challenges of social policy in Poland in the early 21st century is to adapt its management to the requirements of a service economy. Essential conditions for the mixed economy of welfare have been already created after adjustments of the subsystems of national social policy during the first years of membership in the European Union since 2004. Labour market policies already include the relationships between providers from the public sector, the commercial sector, and the non-governmental sector. However, (...) the tasks and services of individual entities and institutions still lack coordination and integration. This paper focus on the examples of possibilities for their development by combining the activation policy with concepts of the governance and welfare mix. The paper presents the results of the author’s research on the implementation of welfare mix solutions in the field of professional activation of the unemployed people in Poland. Two case studies are included the implementation of outplacement programs that are based on the cooperation between different entities; and the cooperation between the public employment services and non-governmental employment agencies in the activation of people with disabilities in the labour market. Moreover, basic concepts of ongoing reforms of active labour market policies in Poland were discussed. The summary contains the practical recommendations and possible directions for further research in the field of integration of employment services. (shrink)

Many researchers experiment with participatory settings to increase public engagement in research and innovation (R&I). Because of their temporary nature, it often remains unclear how such participatory experiments can contribute to structural change. This paper empirically explores options for bridging this gap. It analyzes how participants can be supported to act as institutional entrepreneurs to actively promote public engagement in R&I. To draw lessons, we analyze empirical material gathered on nineteen Social Labs which were set up to promote the (...) uptake of Responsible Research and Innovation in a European R&I funding program (Horizon 2020). Involvement of motivated participants, insight in their institutional context, and specific methods and management choices that enhance a sense of agency are identified as essential for organizing change. These findings and the resulting framework of interventions may prove valuable for further (action) research into the institutionalization of public engagement in R&I. (shrink)

In the words of Aristotle, "The state is a union of families and villagers having for an end, a perfect and self-sufficing life by which we mean a happy and honourable life. A state exists for the sake of good life and not for the sake of life only". This definition has given a clear vision on the relationship between man and the state. The state, in modern times is regarded as an important agency or in other words a (...) human organization for maintaining disciplined and a well-arranged environment for education. In contemporary world, the functions to be performed by a state are going wide day by day. So, one of the functions of a state is to give proper education and to create a proper environment for imparting knowledge among people. In a democratic country the role of state in spreading education is very much important. These states provide educational aims and objectives, open schools and colleges; arrange the syllabus and curriculum, plan, control and direct educational activities for their citizens. Performing these functions the modern states can create such an environment in every society where every citizen can be made educated enough to understand the complexities of modern world. Besides these, the modern world can make proper arrangements for research and experiments in various fields of education. For this a state should establish such institutions and organisations to inspire the eligible individuals. In a big country like India, the state makes educational policies based on needs, ideals and aspirations of the people. For this there are various administrative unites are established. Each such unites maintain an educational department of it’s own for providing liberal and vocational education up to highest standard. States also maintain one or more universities for higher education. Thus, it can be said that a state exerts it’s direct and indirect influences on all aspects of education. (shrink)

World Crisis and Underdevelopment examines the impact of poverty and other global crises in generating forms of structural coercion that cause agential and societal underdevelopment. It draws from discourse ethics and recognition theory in criticizing injustices and pathologies associated with underdevelopment. Its scope is comprehensive, encompassing discussions about development science, philosophical anthropology, global migration, global capitalism and economic markets, human rights, international legal institutions, democratic politics and legitimation, world religions and secularization, and moral philosophy in its many varieties.

The research aims to identify the status of the application of electronic document management system in governmental institutions – the study was applied on the Palestinian Pension Agency. The population of this study is composed of all employees in the Palestinian Pension Agency. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, the researchers used the descriptive and analytical approach, through which try to describe the phenomenon of the subject of the study, analyze the data and the relationship (...) between the components and the views put around it. Census method was used due to the small size of the study population and ease of access to the target group. (108) questionnaires were distributed to all members of the study population, were (65) employees in the Gaza Strip and (43) employees in the West Bank. All questionnaires were recovered. The study found the following results: There were no statistically significant differences in the members of the population in response to differences in the study about the reality of the application of electronic document management system in governmental institutions - case study on the Palestinian Pension Authority due to the age. There are no statistically significant differences in population members in response to the reality of the application of electronic document management system in governmental institutions - case Study on the Palestinian Pension Authority due to the variable nature of the job. As well as there are no statistically significant differences in the members of the population in response to the study about the reality of the application of electronic document management system in governmental institutions - case study on the Palestinian Pension Authority due to the variable of specialization. There are statistically significant differences in the study about the reality of the application of electronic document management system in governmental institutions - case study on the Palestinian Pension Authority due to Qualification variable for the benefit of members of the population study who are holding a Bachelor degree. There are statistically significant differences in the study about the reality of the application of electronic document management system in governmental institutions – case study on the Palestinian Pension Authority due to the variable number of years of experience for the benefit of members of the study population who have experience between 11-15 years. The study found a group of recommendations, including: the need to focus on the establishment of a general management of electronic documents in the organization structure that takes care of all the technical processes in it an contains scientifically qualified persons in the field of electronic document management. The need is for the attention in developing strategic plans, policies and mechanisms of action commensurate with the electronic document management system. (shrink)

Abstract: Efficient law enforcement depends on the quality and outlook of the institutions and personnel saddled with this responsibility. There are several agencies in Nigeria created for the purpose of law enforcement. Despite the multiplicity of these agencies, however, the country is still far from being a reflection of a society where security and orderliness are being maintained. The essence of this paper is to explore the law-enforcement terrain of the country with a view to ascertaining the state of affairs (...) vis-a-vis the existing law enforcement agencies, their functional relevance, and general impact on the society in terms of maintenance of law and order. Findings reveal that the state of security and maintenance of law and order is still abysmally low in spite of the fact that there exist several law enforcement agencies within the country. The main recommendation is that instead of placing emphasis on creating more and more law enforcement agencies, which sometimes amount to duplication of functions, efforts should be made to reorganize, streamline and strengthen the existing institutions. (shrink)

I argue that law is best understood as an institutionalized abstract artifact. Using the ideas of John Searle on institutions and Amie Thomasson on artifacts, I show how the law is capable of generating new reasons for action, arguing against recent work by David Enoch who holds that legal reason-giving is ultimately a form of triggering conditional reasons.

This Note offers a normative critique of cost-benefit analysis, one informed by deontological moral theory, in the context of the debate over whether tort litigation or a non-tort approach is the appropriate response to mass harm. The first Part argues that the difference between lay and expert intuitions about risk and harm often reflects a difference in normative judgments about the existing facts, rather than a difference in belief about what facts exist, which makes the lay intuitions more defensible. The (...) second Part considers how tort has dealt with this divergence between lay and expert perspectives. It also evaluates how tort's approach has differed from that of public law approaches to accident law, such as legislative compensation and risk regulation by administrative agencies. Ultimately, tort's ability to recognize the value of lay intuitions supports retaining the tort perspective as part of our societal arsenal of responses to risk and harm. This ability can also support a pro-tort perspective in two practical debates in the arena of tort law: that over preemption of tort law by administrative agency judgments, and that over access to tort recovery as part of a no-fault system. (shrink)

Dr. Seyed Mohammad Mohajer, author of this book, for the first time, on the subject of SEM (Student Experience Management) and TEM :(Teacher Experience Management), Expresses and writes In today’s competitive world in which men are looking for acquiring a better place for themselves and their properties, indeed it can be said that people who compete on a full scale in marketing and branding by learning knowledge and experience, are more successful. Apart from people, countries, cities, businesses, historical and religious (...) sites, companies, products, services, and even government agencies are endeavoring and competing to possess a better place and more profitability. In the meantime, universities, higher education institutions, and specialized schools such as Business Schools, Language Schools, Art Schools, etc are not exceptions. Contest in the digital and traditional area, simultaneously, and with a proper strategy and developing systematic advertising campaigns can make a university or higher education institutions a brand. Since the branding process, as its name implies, has a -ing (continuous), the process must be continual and running continuously. One of the most significant tools in higher education institutions branding is CEM (Client Experience Management) which includes SEM (Student Experience Management) and TEM (Teacher Experience Management). Valuing the main audiences, which are students and professors, and creating a distinctive and excellent experience in the educational environment either in a digital or in a traditional area, can lead to receive excellent feedback from these audiences and direct them to the brand layers that are Awareness, Knowledge, Attitude, Engagement, Satisfaction, Loyalty and the highest level that is Passion, which the same matter make the sense of constancy and belonging and conversion Trademark (Servicemark) a higher education institution to a Lovemark. But how this distinctive experience and feeling can be infused with the audiences? Undoubtedly, many solutions are recommended in this field, such as the use of sensory branding methods, but the important point here is who can create and improve this experience? Certainly, the University Staff has a key and very effective role in the mentioned process. However, the significant point is which employees can make this experience? The answer is very simple but key: Employees who first receive a good sense of working in a scientific and educational environment. Therefore, we are facing a phenomenon called SEM (Staff Experience Management), that is, university administrators and heads, before engaging in Client Experience Management, should seek to create a sense of satisfaction, belonging, and loyalty in the educational environment and grow their educational brand set, which its tools are certainly Employer Branding and Human Capital Management. By mentioning all the foregoing keywords, each of which is a deep concept in BRAND Building and Branding of higher education institutions discussion, we begin our main discussion, namely marketing and branding in higher education institutions. I hope you will be with us by the end of the book and experience a different studying the book, dear reader. Dr. Mohajer writes in his introduction: Be the best version of yourself I daresay all brand and branding concepts and definitions can be observed in the above sentence. whereof the brand, like a human, experiences all the before birth, birth, growth, maturity, wane and death processes, and since a real human being is always looking for growth and ascendancy, and this continuous process to reach the endpoint Life, thus the grown man is always looking to reach a higher point of his present and past. The most important tool in a human ascendancy or a brand is certainly an education. Either for a human or a brand, becoming a distinct brand goes through practical training. The above sentences are a summary of my little experience as Seyed Mohammad Mohajer in education and especially training in the brand management field. Certainly, the brand and education and the combination of these two words are the main and vital tools for the development of any country and human being. Now that I am the President of Tarjoman Oloom Higher Education Institute and the BrandAfarin international group, I consider it necessary as my social mission to start first from myself and with a better understanding of myself, then the great God and comprehending the universe; I announce to the cultured society that we seek to identify brilliant talents in the three areas of education, research and management consulting, and we warmly welcome intellectuals, professionals and individuals seeking individual and organizational growth. Also, by creating skill training courses in four specialized fields of management in the Business School, foreign languages ​​in the Language School of Art and Media in the Art School, and new technologies in the i4.0 School for people who can not afford to pay for the training tuition, We have created the chance to study at Tarjoman Oloom Higher Education Institute for free and then go to the business market. It would be my honor to contact me for more information and direct communication through my website www.mohajer.tvLinks to an external site. and my email info(at)mohajer.tv. Book Details: ISBN-13 : 979-8574963845 Paperback : 272 pages Language: : English ASIN : B08PJPQSK9 Paperback : 272 pages Author: Seyed Mohammad Mohajer, PhD. (President of Tarjoman Oloom Higher Education Institute) For more information on Marketing and Branding in Higher Education Institute, visit: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08PJPQSK9Links to an external site. (shrink)

What is the ontology of collective action? I have in mind three connected questions. 1. Do the truth conditions of action sentences about groups require there to be group agents over and above individual agents? 2. Is there a difference, in this connection, between action sentences about informal groups that use plural noun phrases, such as ‘We pushed the car’ and ‘The women left the party early’, and action sentences about formal or institutional groups that use singular noun phrases, (...) such as ‘The United States declared war on Japan on December 8th, 1941’ and ‘The Supreme Court ruled that segregation is unconstitutional in 1954 in Brown vs. Board of Education’? 3. Under what conditions does it make sense to speak of a group doing something together, and what, if anything, is a collective action? In this paper, I argue that a) understanding action sentences about groups does not commit us to the existence of group agents per se, but only to the existence of individual agents; b) there is no difference in this regard between sentences which attribute actions to informal groups on the one hand and institutional groups on the other; c) collective action can be both intentional and unintentional; d) any random group of agents each of whom does something is also a group which does something together; e) while there is a sense in which groups per se perform no primitive collective actions, and therefore no actions at all, f) there is a sensible extension of talk of actions to groups, though it should be treated strictly speaking, like talk of group agents, as a façon de parler, for g) the only agents per se are individuals and the only actions are theirs. -/-. (shrink)

In this chapter, we focus on collective action and intention, and their relation to conventions, status functions, norms, institutions, and shared attitudes more generally. Collective action and shared intention play a foundational role in our understanding of the social. -/- The three central questions in the study of collective intentionality are: -/- (1) What is the ontology of collective intentionality? In particular, are groups per se intentional agents, as opposed to just their individual members? (2) What is the psychology of (...) collective intentionality? Do groups per se have psychological states, in particular propositional attitudes? What is the psychology of the individuals who participate in collective intentional behavior? What is special about their participatory intentions, their we-intentions, as they are called (Tuomela and Miller 1988), as opposed to their I-intentions? (3) How is collective intentionality implicated in the construction of social reality? In particular, how does the content of we-intentions and the intentional activity of individual agents create social institutions, practices and structures? -/- We first discuss collective action and shared intention in informal groups. Next we discuss mechanisms for constructing institutional structures out of the conceptual and psychological resources made available by our understanding of informal joint intentional action. Then we extend the discussion of collective action and intention to institutional groups, such as the Supreme Court, and explain how concepts of such organizations are constructed out of the concepts of a rule, convention, and status function. Finally we discuss collective attitudes beyond intention. (shrink)

The fight against corruption has become increasingly sophisticated and such demands a well-integrated, multidisciplinary strategy. This has necessitated the establishment of anti-corruption institutions, agencies or commissions which invariably have one or more of three functions: investigation and enforcement; corruption prevention; and awareness and education. However in Ghana, despite the existence of anti-corruption institutions, the perception of corruption has steadily increased to overwhelming levels. Why the increase in corruption in the face of these anti-corruption institutions is the subject matter of this (...) study. This study brings to fore the systemic barriers, their frequency of occurrence and magnitude. This study aimed at identifying the challenges that affect the effectiveness of these anti-corruption institutions in Ghana. The study was purposely carried out within anti-corruption institutions in Ghana. A simple random probability sampling was employed in sampling nine (9) anti-corruption institutions in the Ashanti Region of Ghana and questionnaires administered to their administrative heads. Relative importance, frequency and severity equations were used to analyze and rank the challenges affecting the work of these institutions. Lack of political will and inadequate leadership and management with Relative importance Index RII of 0.9778 respectively were the two (2) most critical challenges affecting the effectiveness of anti-corruption institutions in Ghana. Lack of donor initiatives with RII of 0.6667 was considered as the least challenge. The most frequent challenge identified by the anti-corruption agencies was the lack of budget and fiscal autonomy, with an index of 0.8148. In the face of these challenges, the government of Ghana should improve upon its efforts at fighting corruption as it strengthens the various anti-corruption institutions financially and logistically. (shrink)

Sumantra Ghoshal’s condemnation of “bad management theories” that were “destroying good management practices” has not lost any of its salience, after a decade. Management theories anchored in agency theory (and neo-classical economics generally) continue to abet the financialization of society and undermine the functioning of business. An alternative approach (drawn from a more classic institutional, new ecological, and refocused ethical approaches) is reviewed.

The paper provides a taxonomy of group speech acts whose main division is that between collective speech acts (singing Happy Birthday, agreeing to meet) and group proxy speech acts in which a group, such as a corporation, employs a proxy, such as a spokesperson, to convey its official position. The paper provides an analysis of group proxy speech acts using tools developed more generally for analyzing institutional agency, particularly the concepts of shared intention, proxy agent, status role, status (...) function, convention and constitutive rule. (shrink)

(Runner-up, Royal Institute of Philosophy 2020 Philosophy Essay Prize) Technological developments have led to the digitization of certain sectors of the economy, and this has many authors looking ahead to the prospects of a post-work society. While it is valuable to theorize about this possibility, it is also important to take note of the present state of work. For better or worse, it is what we are currently stuck with, and as the COVID-19 pandemic has ensured, much of that work (...) is now taking place online. Though a ‘return to normalcy’ is on the horizon, part of that normalcy involves online work, which is itself a significant change in the lives of many workers. Here I develop an account of work on which work is teleologically structured. This gives the result that working is something we can fail at doing, even when we try, and we can also be unsure of whether we’ve succeeded or failed. The shift of certain work from in-person to online modes generates a persistent uncertainty for workers in affected professions. Because our ability to work is something we typically value, this uncertainty has significant negative consequences for a worker’s self-conception. Indeed, it is analogous to disorders of agency and generates a kind of alienation. (shrink)

Corporations have often been taken to be the paradigm of an organization whose agency is autonomous from that of the successive waves of people who occupy the pattern of roles that define its structure, which licenses saying that the corporation has attitudes, interests, goals, and beliefs which are not those of the role occupants. In this essay, I sketch a deflationary account of agency-discourse about corporations. I identify institutional roles with a special type of status function, a (...) status role, in which the collectively accepted function is expressed in part through its occupier’s intentional expression of her agency in that role. I identify institutions as systems of status roles and show how this is compatible with seeing the agency of institutions generally, even over time periods in which there is complete change in role occupiers, as a matter of the contributions only of individual agents. I explain how the reduction of the institution to its members is compatible with its potentially having had a completely different membership. I show in the case of the corporation in particular that, once we see its origins and function, the surface features of legal discourse about corporate agency are misleading and are compatible with a deflationary account of corporate agency. I show in connection with this that the corporation is to be identified with its shareholders, and that where a corporation separates ownership and control, its managers and employees are proxy agents of the shareholders doing business under the corporate form. Finally, I canvass the legitimate ways of construing ordinary talk about corporate intention, belief, and so on, in light of this, none of which support the attribution of genuine agency or intentionality to any group per se associated with the corporation. (shrink)

As the principle of natural selection is generalized to explain (adaptive) patterns of human behavior, it becomes less clear what the selective environment empirically refers to. While the environment and individual are relatively separable in the non-human biological context, they are highly entangled in the context of moral, social, and institutional evolution. This chapter brings attention to the problem of generalizing the selective environment, and argues that it is ontologically disunified and definable only through its explanatory function. What unifies (...) the selective environment is that it explains adaptation in a non-agential way, by screening off various forms of agency, whether divine, organismic, or human. This explanatory function of the selective environment helps avoid some sources of confusion when the theory of natural selection is applied to humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Abstract: A self-abnegating person lacks contact with their agency. This can be against their will, in absence of their will, or voluntarily. This does not mean that they cannot provide reasons for or a narrative about their actions. It’s just that the reasons or narrative are someone else’s. People abnegate parts of their agency regularly; for example, within hierarchical institutions. In other cases, the self-abnegation is all-encompassing; for example, a victim of brainwashing. An agent in such a position (...) can completely fail to understand themselves or be understood by others as having a self. I focus on two problems related to self-abnegation. The first is whether there is a conception of a self that can reliably discriminate between strong selves and abnegated selves. The second is whether a person with an abnegated self should be treated as a person with a strong self. I conclude that the good of respecting derived or instrumental agency comes in putting that person in a position to agentially flourish and in maintaining the structural conditions and expectations of agency. (shrink)

This article articulates our everyday notion of cooperation. First, I topple an orthodoxy of shared agency theory by arguing that shared intentions to J are neither necessary nor sufficient for J to be cooperative. I refute the necessity claim by providing examples of shared intention-free cooperation (in institutional contexts and beyond). I refute the sufficiency claim by observing that coercion and exploitation need not preclude shared intentions but do preclude cooperation. These arguments, in turn, lead to my positive (...) proposal. People cooperate, I argue, just in case their activities are coordinated in ways that do not undermine any participant’s agency. (shrink)

Legal norms are an invention. This paper advances a proposal about what kind of invention they are. The proposal is that legal norms derive from rules which specify role functions in a legal system. Legal rules attach to agents in virtue of their status within the system in which the rules operate. The point of legal rules or a legal system is to solve to large scale coordination problems, specifically the problem of organizing social and economic life among a group (...) of people and their successors, though not every legal rule pertains to a coordination problem. The framework for thinking about legal norms that I describe is a framework for thinking about institutions and policies more generally. The idea is to show that legal norms are a species of institutional norm. There are two central ideas. The first is the idea of a role in an institution. The second is the idea of proxy agency. Proxy agency involves one agent or group acting under the authorization of another agent or group (perhaps subsuming it) in a way that makes the actions of the proxy count as actions (under a description) of the individual or group for which it is a proxy. We get the characteristic structure of a legal system by conceiving of an institutional group, itself conceived of as a set of interlocking roles realized in individuals, as having one or more roles for proxy agents who are authorized by the group to make policy for the group. The set of rules governing the basic constitution of the group and spelling out the powers of the policy proxies determine fundamental norms for the group with specific role responsibilities attaching to particular positions in institutional arrangements. The policies determine further norms whose force derives from the fundamental norms. We must then say some further things to distinguish institutions and policies which we wish to designate as legal. (shrink)

Landscape Agency New York was founded by Gavin Keeney, c.1997, and encompassed a wide array of activities and effects – e.g., research, writing, design, consulting, and teaching. /S/OMA (Syntactical Operations Metaphorical Affects) was the mobile, and sometimes global design and teaching module within LANY, focusing primarily on entirely hypothetical and/or irreal projects, many becoming the foundation for lectures and courses delivered at institutions in the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe, from 2003 to 2007. Lastly, the LANY Archive-Grotto was established (...) following publication of On the Nature of Things: Contemporary American Landscape Architecture (Birkhauser, 2001), primarily as a means of escaping the then-formulaic production of texts common to Landscape Architecture and Architecture. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates what it identifies as ‘the institutional theory of freedom’ developed within recent neo-Hegelian philosophy. While acknowledging the gains made against the Kantian theory of autonomy as detachment it is argued that the institutional theory ultimately undermines the very meaning of practical agency. By tying agency to institutionally sustained recognition it effectively excludes the exercise of practical reason geared toward emancipation from a settled normative order. Adorno's notion of autonomy as resistance is enlisted (...) to develop an account of practical reason that is neither institutionally constrained nor without appropriate consideration of the historical location of the practical agent. (shrink)

International relations (IR) scholars have increasingly integrated Hannah Arendt into their works. Her fierce critique of the conventional ideas of politics driven by rulership, enforcement, and violence has a particular resonance for theorists seeking to critically revisit the basic assumptions of IR scholarship. Arendt’s thinking, however, contains complexity and nuance that need careful treatment when extended beyond domestic politics. In particular, Arendt’s vision of free politics—characterized by the dualistic emphasis on agonistic action and institutional stability—raises two crucial issues that (...) need further elaboration for IR research that appropriates her thinking. One involves the orientation of her international thoughts. Although Arendt shows “idealistic” aspirations for authentic politics practiced by diverse equals in an institutionally articulated space of freedom, she never loses interest in the extant situation of “non-idealistic” politics. Engaging with Arendt’s theory orientation requires a careful analysis of difficult topics, such as her distinctive conception of the political and her critiques of the nation-state and international law. The other topic that needs clarification when Arendt’s thoughts are applied to IR involves specific ways of associating different sites of power. A close examination of Arendt’s council-based federalism reveals her distinctive idea of international politics, based on her acute awareness of the fundamental complexity that lies in power association and state agency. Bringing IR topics like state agency into conversation with her works generates illuminating questions for Arendt scholarship. Likewise, the ongoing debate on agonistic and institutional features of Arendt’s thoughts can provide crucial insights into critical studies of international politics. (shrink)

On the Periphery of the Artworld. The Case of the 55th Venice Biennale -/- The Venice Biennale is sort of a patent agency for art: if a work is exhibited at the Biennale, it is already regarded as being in the center of the contemporary artworld. This year the peculiarity of the Biennale was the emphasis on peripheral works: outsider art is brought to the center of the artworld. The notion of outsider art is paved with contradictions – it’s (...) difficult to find its place either in traditional art theory, or in avant-garde conceptions. This paper aims at making a parallel between outsider art and the readymade, highlights the similarities and differences, and proposes a new term instead of outsider art: “institutional readymade”. (shrink)

Educational institutions are in need of increasing their high standards as an essential factor in improving the level of quality in education. Hence, they are looking at better ways to develop such a curriculum which reaches the pre-decided standards. This calls for curriculum evaluation. This study was aimed at evaluating the implementation of the 2010 Curriculum (K-10) of English Education Department at the Universitas Islam Negeri Alauddin Makassar, Indonesia. The research design adapted Stake's Countenance Model. The data collected were quantitative (...) and qualitative data. The findings revealed that at the transactions stage, the concordance level between the objective conditions and the standard actuality/objective intensity objective for the curriculum implementation components was overall classified as 'Medium' (Score 48.75%). It indicated that some of the sub components still required limited changes or revisions in accordance with the Indonesian National Education Standards Agency instructions. Thus, the formative evaluation of the department’s curriculum implementation needs to be conducted periodically (annually) to ensure the quality of the program and anticipate the changes and development of workplace needs. (shrink)

The concept of Teaching-Research Nexus (TRN) is one of the main characteristics of the academic orientation. The current study attempts to examine how this perception is implemented in Israeli Academic Colleges of Education (ACEs) and how it is expressed in the work of senior teacher educators who have previously served as teachers in schools. An analysis of nine semistructured interviews pointed to teacher students’ and teacher educators’ agency as being prominent patterns in the TRN implementation, and which are expressed (...) in three ways: (a) agency of research insights to the educational field; (b) agency of reflective practitioning (an ability of the individual to create a relationship between his or her social and emotional world in the professional context); and (c) agency of cross-cultural research. The discussion delineates the similarities and differences between the perception of TRN among teacher educators in ACEs and academics in other institutions of higher education. (shrink)

Anglophone philosophy in the last three decades has seen a growing interest in the way participation in human society—as characterized by our doing things that count as taking up and conferring norm-governed roles within institutions like language, the law, social custom, and education—is part of what explains our existence as rational (to whatever extent we are) animals. Using the label discursive norms to refer to the standards of evaluation that attend the exercise of rational thought and agency, this development (...) in philosophy can be understood as a growing interest over the the social institution of discursive norms. The essays in this volume present a sample—by no means representative—of the sorts of issues that arise when we ask and look to answer questions about the way our social lives constrain and support our lives as rational animals. (shrink)