Manh-Tung Ho, Khanh-Linh Hoang, Minh-Hoang Nguyen, Manh-Toan Ho (2019). Chapter 8. The emerging business of science in Vietnam. In Quan-Hoang Vuong, Trung Tran (Eds.), The Vietnamese Social Sciences at a Fork in the Road (pp. 163–177). Warsaw, Poland: De Gruyter. DOI:10.2478/9783110686081-013. -/- Online ISBN: 9783110686081 © 2019 Sciendo / De Gruyter.

The tracer study for the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA) degree with Business Economics (BE), Financial Management (FM), Human Resource Management (HRM), and Marketing Management (MM) of the School of Business Administration (SBA) tracks and gathers information about the career outcomes and experiences of graduates of the degree program. This study focuses on determining the employment opportunities pursued by the graduates of 2018–2022, as well as exploring the influence their education from the SBA of (...) San Isidro College (SIC) has had on their careers. Through this tracer study, valuable insight has been gained into the effectiveness of the SBA's BSBA program offered by SIC and its graduates' overall success and impact in the job market. The lack of respondents in the BE major suggests a need to revisit and modify the curriculum and marketing efforts to generate more interest among potential students. The FM, HRM, and MM major should be capitalized and sustained to maintain the positive momentum. The study's findings show a mix of employment outcomes for graduates, with opportunities for both early career growth and long-term employment. The program equips graduates with a diverse skillset for various job levels and industries. Most graduates find employment within the province, implying effectiveness in equipping them with the necessary skills. However, the distribution of salaries suggests potential issues with the job market or degree value, requiring further investigation. The program has successfully developed graduates with communication, human relations, and entrepreneurial skills but may need improvement in marketing management, problem-solving, and critical thinking. The study concludes that graduates have higher communication skills but lower problem-solving and critical thinking skills, emphasizing the need for curriculum modifications and additional support to improve overall skills. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence has arrived. In the online world it is already a part of everyday life, sitting invisibly behind a wide range of search engines and online commerce sites. It offers huge potential to enable more efficient and effective business and government but the use of artificial intelligence brings with it important questions about governance, accountability and ethics. Realising the full potential of artificial intelligence and avoiding possible adverse consequences requires societies to find satisfactory answers to these questions. This (...) report sets out some possible approaches, and describes some of the ways government is already engaging with these issues. (shrink)

Many natural scientists of the past and the present have imagined that they pursued their activity according to its own inherent rules in a realm distinctly separate from the business world, or at least in a realm where business tended to interfere with science from time to time, but was not ultimately an essential component, ‘because one thought that in science one possessed and loved something unselfish, harmless, self-sufficient, and truly innocent, in which man’s evil impulses (...) had no part whatever’, as Nietzsche once commented (Nietzsche 1974, p.106). With the extreme technological changes that have occurred in the last fifty years and the orchestrated management changes in the culture of science, it is now obvious that science is intimately tied to private businesses, industry, and society. Within this structure, the scientist has generally unknowingly defined him or herself in accordance with obsolete myths that have tended to handicap the scientist’s freedom of action, by obscuring the modern political and economic realities of science, and neglecting the inherent responsibilities of the scientist as a critical actor in the theater of human civilization. The increasing incorporation of academic science and private industry, and the governmentally supervised nature of modem academic science, has corrupted the traditional freedom and character of the scientist. In order to navigate oneself and find meaning within the new structure of science, scientists now desperately need a fresh ethos that at once considers modern realities of the politics and management of science, societal urgencies, and global politics, as well as establishing a moral perspective where modern scientists can be actors with their own intentionality and responsibility. -/- In the culture of science, myths and ideologies are of critical importance for the formation of the scientist, because these ideas determine how scientists conceive of themselves as professionals and free individuals. More importantly, these ideas determine how scientists approach scientific activity, which exists in a social context, and which ultimately has the potential to dramatically change the characteristics of civilization as it is played out on the political and technological battlefield. It is a commonly held notion in the community of the natural sciences that science now is essentially what it was when it was described by the Nobel laureates of the past; those sweet, cushioning, pleasant words consecrating the ‘temple of science’; the picture of a humble, rational, and noble Einstein is imprinted into our memories. By dismantling these obsolete myths of the scientist and surveying contemporary trends in science, this article will explore a more realistic perspective toward the field of science. The goal of this investigation is to determine the modern reality and ultimate meaning of ‘science as a vocation’ (Shorett 2003). Finally, moral philosophy will be demonstrated to be a critical clement in the self-assertion of the scientist and the elucidation of the meaning of science as a vocation in a global technological society. -/- From the Postscript, 2015: This article took final form when I was a postdoctoral researcher in Canada. Reading it now, I recognize the article still has value, despite its many flaws, hyperboles, and idealism. Many issues in the article have become increasingly relevant, such as the need to make constant trade-offs in courses of action and continuously search for more morally significant research paths. Perhaps the greatest goals in writing the article were to increase intellectual control over the path of my scientific research, to escape the increasing conformity and constraints on modern life, to participate in an open society, to formulate my personal goals and goal hierarchies, to dispel any delusions of overconfidence, and to not be corrupted. (shrink)

An understanding of the ethical problems that have arisen in the funding of scientific research at universities requires some attention to doctrines that have traditionally been held about science itself. Such doctrines, we hope to show, are themselves central to many of these ethical problems. It is often thought that the questions examined by scientists, and the theories that guide scientific research, are chosen for uniquely scientific reasons, independently of extra-scientific questions of value or merit. We shall argue that (...) this is an illusion. It is an illusion to think, especially in the present era, that science can even have a coherent direction apart from extra-scientific considerations. (shrink)

In hindsight, it is not surprising that the exegesis of Aristotle’s Sophistici elenchi developed into one of the most substantial parts of the Latin commentary tradition. To make a long story short, in its customary capacity as the art of arts and the science of sciences, medieval logic was primarily concerned with discerning the true from the false in arguments as they occur in natural, ordinary speech as opposed to the more formalised parlance later logicians will resort to. It (...) makes perfect sense, then, that medieval logicians paid special attention to everything that threatens sound reasoning and that prevents us from speaking the truth. Indeed, they were second to none and better than most at exposing and elucidating arguments’ flaws and shortcomings. After all, as John Buridan – faithful to a long and illustrious tradition – aptly put it, «rooting out errors» is logic’s first order of business. As early as the 1140s, Aristotle’s Sophistici elenchi provided the most fertile ground for such keen interest in fallacies; which, in turn, explains etc. This much is uncontroversial or, at any rate, can withstand any amount of scrutiny we care to throw at it. Courtesy – first and foremost – of Sten Ebbesen, whose long-standing interest in medieval writings on bad arguments has turned the Byzantine and Latin aftermath of Aristotle’s Sophistici elenchi into well-charted territory, by all standards. The Anonymus Cantabrigiensis has played no small part in shaping this picture. As a matter of fact, time and again over the last forty years or so, quotes and insights from the anonymous work have kept showing up in Ebbesen’s editions and studies: since he first discovered the commentary in the late 1970s and brought it to the general attention, Ebbesen has routinely drawn on the Anonymus as an early witness of the circulation of Aristotelian logical works and related texts, as a convenient illustration of major trends and distinctive features of the Latin literature on fallacies, and as a sensible interpreter in his own right. (shrink)

The orientation of this paper is that there is no special science of "business ethics" any more than there is one of "medical ethics" or "legal ethics". While there may be issues that arise in medicine or law that require special treatment, the ways of relating to such issues are derived from a basic ethical stance. Once one has evolved such an ethical stance and thus has incorporated a fundamental mode of relating to her or his fellow human (...) beings, the "how" to deal with various ethical "issues" will follow as a natural consequence of one's ethical stance or modality. It is not necessary, in the formation of one's fundamental ethical stance to know if one is a utilitarian or a deontologist. It is doubtful whether Buddha knew what kind of ethics he was practising. If one conceives of ethics as something extrinsic to various disciplines and attempts to first practise a discipline and then to apply ethics to modify the results of that discipline it is entirely possible that conflicts will result between what is perceived of as the proper pursuit of that discipline and the ethical considerations. The argument of this paper is that it is more efficacious (in addition to being more true) to take ethical considerations into account in the construction of the definition of the discipline. This paper is devoted to showing that business and ethics are not two different and competing fields of interest (thus requiring a discipline of business ethics to be grafted onto the study of business enterprise), but that ethical concerns are part and parcel of the very concept of a business enterprise and the internal operation of a business organization. (shrink)

Using incoming revenues and the associated costs that underpin the concept of breakeven analysis, this article investigates the business survival strategies of immigrant-own-businesses in the context of African immigrants in the Cape Town Metropolitan Area of South Africa, and proposes a framework for the start-up survival of these businesses. The study was designed within the quantitative and qualitative research paradigms. A triangulation of three methods was utilised to collect and analyze the data. The research revealed that African immigrant entrepreneurs (...) face a range of challenges when starting their businesses and again as they try to grow or stay afloat. Furthermore, the study indicated that African immigrants rely more on certain entrepreneurial attributes as they seek innovative solutions to the problems that they encounter relating to business. As a business survival strategy, these immigrants develop a number of unconventional initiatives aimed at increasing sales revenue while minimising cost. (shrink)

When you type the word “serendipity” in a word-processor application such as Microsoft Word, the autocorrection engine suggests you choose other words like “luck” or “fate”. This correcting act turns out to be incorrect. However, it points to the reality that serendipity is not a familiar English word and can be misunderstood easily. Serendipity is a very much scientific concept as it has been found useful in numerous scientific discoveries, pharmaceutical innovations, and numerous humankind’s technical and technological advances. Therefore, there (...) have been many books written around the concept. So why do we need this additional book? This is not just another book about serendipity. It has evolved from the Editor’s question lingering for a decade after finishing his widely cited article (coauthored with Prof. Nancy K. Napier of Boise State University, ID, USA) “Serendipity as a strategic advantage?” in T. Wilkinson’s edited volume Strategic Management in the 21st Century, published by Praeger. The Editor and contributing authors have tried to achieve the following in this title. Demystifying the Serendipity Myth The phenomenon of serendipity has always been thought of as a “miracle”. It is the mystery of human innovation and one of the ultimate secrets of our society. But serendipity is not just a lucky coincidence nor any hidden conspiracy. This book explores the science of the information process behind this seemingly miraculous phenomenon. It connects human society with nature, going back to the root of our existence and looking at the flame of survival to discover the harmony in making creativity. Presenting the nuts and bolts of being an adventurer of science The authors present their conceptual investigations into serendipity’s nature and its mechanism by examining interesting real events and stories. The content is thought-provoking, and readers are led to question and explore their own life stories and problems along the journey of reading this book. Catching an elusive high-value target requires great strategies and efforts. But there are no dark secrets here because this is the “way of nature” – how we humans have always strived for innovation without realizing the blueprints behind such processes. Unlike other books on serendipity, this book will show you that a powerful “secret” is closer than you think. Delivering practical uses for different audiences By understanding the conditionality and survival drivers of serendipity, individuals or organizations can make better decisions on creating the right environment to facilitate the encounter and attainment of this valuable phenomenon. For scientists: With clear explanations of the information processes underlying serendipity, flexible theoretical frameworks of mindsponge and the 3D principle of creativity, researchers are provided with the tools they need to dig deeper into their own fields of study and find practical applications, be it psychology, economics, sociology, or anything that involves innovation (which is, in fact, every scientific discipline). For curious casual readers: Everybody needs innovation to make breakthroughs or spice up one’s life. If you think great ideas come to people randomly from an unknown fairy place, this book will convince you otherwise without taking away that awe and wonder. But above all, you will know how to become more creative, scientifically and straightforwardly, with no snake oil and no weird tricks. For ambitious business people: The flame that brought about great successes throughout human history is within you. But you can only use it if you understand it. While others wait for serendipity to come, you will be able to actively hunt for those precious moments. As it has always been: the best hunters triumph, not the passive wanderers. And in this age of information chaos, finding the golden fruits is not easy. Those from information technology know this problem well, and this book is the treasure map that they have been seeking to navigate that stormy ocean looking for jewels. Like a kingfisher tracking its prey through the water, waiting to gracefully strike, with serendipity, a person seizes the prize of creativity amid the chaos of life. ¤ ¤ ¤ Official introduction: The book explores the nature, underlying causes, and the information processing mechanism of serendipity. It proposes that natural or social survival demands drive serendipity, and serendipity is conditional on the environment and the mindset, on both individual and collective levels. From Darwin's evolution theory to Sun Tzu's war tactics, major innovations throughout human history are unified by this key concept. In the rapidly changing world, information is abundant but rather chaotic. The adaptive power of serendipity allows people to notice treasures within this wild sea, but only for those who understand how it works. To increase the probability of encountering and attaining serendipity, one should employ the mindsponge mechanism and the 3D process of creativity, for without these frameworks, serendipity is truly an elusive target. The book also discusses methods to build environments and cultures rich in navigational and useful information to maximize the chance of finding and capitalizing on serendipity. As a skill, serendipity has a resemblance to how kingfishers observe and hunt their prey. (shrink)

Despite the financial support that is provided to informal small businesses by the South African government, small businesses struggle to grow. This paper sought to learn the effect of seed funding that is provided by the government on the growth of the informal businesses and the ensuing challenges faced by these businesses. Utilising the quantitative approach, questionnaires were administered to 60 entrepreneurs who received seed funding from the Cape Winelands district municipality. The data was analysed using version 25 of the (...) Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Besides, lack of finance due to limited access to financial intermediaries and insufficiency of the seed funds, the results point to instability of businesses, limited access to business space, crime, lack of infrastructure, marketing, coaching and mentoring, business management skills and transport as challenges reported by the respondents. A recommendation is for the government to provide flexible policies that allow them to customise the support that they provide to businesses. (shrink)

This study investigates all available literature related to critical thinking in business education in a survey of publications in the field produced from 1990-2019. It conducts a thematic analysis of 787 articles found in Web of Science and Google Scholar, including a specific focus on 55 highly-cited articles. The aim is to investigate the importance of critical thinking in business education, how it is conceptualised in business education research, the business contexts in which critical thinking (...) is situated, and the key and more marginal themes related to critical thinking outlined in the business and business education literature. The paper outlines six key areas and topics associated with those areas. It suggests future directions for further scholarly work in the area of critical thinking in business education. (shrink)

The article provides the analysis of the entrance into the innovative activity and organized regulation of interaction which is based on the scientific and technological changes, concentration of production and the feasibility study of administrative decisions, which are dominated by a conglomerate of technical, technological and engineering management decisions. The research formulates the provisions for the productive use of business as the form of economic relations which is based on the entrepreneur function. These provisions are formulated basing on the (...) conditions of efficient division of labour and cooperation. The research singles out a number of systemic positions which allow perceiving logically and distinguishing the production, service and business, to distribute human activities between the groups of occupations and types of service activities. Among these systemic provisions the most efficient is a modelling approach which, when the society enters more complex social and economic stage, transfers the science from the environment of operations with the bulk characteristics into the environment of the analysis of specific sets of coefficients. The logistics of Ukraine’s joining the process of business is associated with the position of the recognition of the primacy of the physical abilities of the person, which should be developed in part in the system of public security and partly in the business environment, commercialization and private capital. Person enters the business environment and habitat as an initiative individual. These indicators are the following: «connections» between the old and the new, between the objects which exist and those which only start to appear and will exist in future; «sources» of development, movement, changes; «mechanism» of development, ways of changing from old to new quality; «direction» of development; «style» of thinking, understanding reality; «essence» of true knowledge; «essence itself» of cognition; «alternativeness» of metaphysics and dialectics. (shrink)

Purpose – The current review aims to examine the growth trajectory, most influential documents, intellectual and conceptual structure of the literature regarding gender issues in family business research. Design/methodology/approach – The bibliometric analysis was performed using 224 documents from 1991 to 2020 extracted from the Web of Science database. Findings – The review finds that this field’s knowledge grew exponentially during the last three decades, mainly after 2003 and the last several years. Based on the co-citation analysis, three (...) major research lines are identified: “Women’s challenges and opportunities in the family business”, “Gender diversity in the family business corporate board”, and “Gender and family SMEs management.” The temporal co-word analysis reveals that “Gender diversity in the family business corporate board” is the latest research line. Originality/value – By reviewing prominent cited references and documents that cited them, the authors provide the landscapes and research gaps of three major research lines for further development. (shrink)

Drawing on the literature on the support of small businesses and case studies, this article advances the case for the support of African immigrant-owned businesses in South Africa which is currently neglected. In the past justification for the institution of support policies in favour of small businesses was predominantly based on the fact that they disproportionately encountered more obstacles than their larger counterparts. Shying away from the traditional “business focus” justification for the support of small business, this study (...) advances an “owner focus” justification - one that is based on the unique needs of the owner, rather than that of the business itself. Following similar logic, given that most immigrants start small businesses as a means of survival in their host countries, this study advances an even more compelling reason why immigrant-owned businesses should be supported. Acknowledging the role that a supported small business sector in general and immigrant-owned business, in particular, can play in the economy and taking steps to strengthen this sector would be in the right direction for the South Africa government. (shrink)

This article introduces a strategic decision-game theoretic approach, the Pardoner’s Dilemma, and juxtaposes it with the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Game theory has emerged as a significant approach in the twentieth century for explaining strategic decision-making in numerous arenas, including economics, business, politics, ethics, international relations, biology, law, and war studies. ‘Game theory’ explains how and why players/actors/agents cooperate or conflict to procure their self-interests in a social world. Life is a game, and human, corporate, and artificial intelligent agents are players (...) who play different games to maximise utility or minimise disutility. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a promising game-theoretic approach that explains strategic decision-making in zero-sum and non-zero-sum games. ‘Strategic decision-making’ means that the outcome does not depend upon the actions of a player but upon all players. There are numerous essential game strategies, including tossing, negotiation, bargaining, balloting, competition, chance, power, and arbitration. Although the Prisoner’s Dilemma is a good game-theoretic approach, it does not allow players to use the key game strategies. In contrast, Pardoner’s Dilemma is a game theoretic approach that not only explains zero-sum and non-zero-sum games but also allows the players to use different game strategies, such as negotiation, bargaining, tossing, chance, balloting, competition, arbitration, and power. The article develops and defends the Pardoner’s Dilemma in the game-theoretic approach as an alternative to the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The article claims that the Pardoner’s Dilemma is a more promising approach than the Prisoner’s Dilemma in the decision-game theoretic framework. By introducing the Pardoner’s Dilemma, the article enhances the scope of decision/game theory in social sciences. (shrink)

Looking out of Information Science (IS) it´s a dangerous attempt to compare this relative new science direct with Philosophy. Here you find a first circumspective trial of an investigation of the traditionally named “queen of science”, Philosophy, two thousand years old and - direct opposite - the only a half century old Information Science. For me it is till now not yet clear how to do this in a serious scientific manner. I worked in Applied Informatics (...) for 30 years and make Information Science since about 15 years. Here I dare to publish for first time the results. SOKRATES (469 – 399 b.Chr.), PLATON (428/27- 348/47 b.Chr.) und ARISTOTELES (384 - 322 b.Chr.) as inventors of our traditional occidental Philosophy, have founded the search of the sense of our Human Life, Thinking and Acting as an own science. They set the Joy of Life on top of their way of thinking. PLATON has separated this special new thinking from the „Sophists“ who had a very good public image too at his time. But they were thinking more about common business facts and knowledge only. Today we would call them manufacturer, qualified skilled workers or even bachelors of special sciences. Philosophy has (since over 20 centuries) till today first of all the smart and high duty to serve Religion and Ethics as mental, spirit- and language-grounded science-base. In other direction it was used to overthink our whole surrounding nature theoretically and completely by our best Human Mind. It´s our traditional science on our mental highest level. All sciences can be related by Philosophy. That´s possible by our human ability to Learn, Think, Understand and finally Know any interesting new fact. Where and how do we have now to integrate this new own science Information Science? We search consciously term-oriented and make an abstract science-theoretical comparison to find answers and definitions. (shrink)

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought science to the fore of public discourse and, considering the complexity of the issues involved, with it also the challenge of effective and informative science communication. This is a particularly contentious topic, in that it is both highly emotional in and of itself; sits at the nexus of the decision-making process regarding the handling of the pandemic, which has effected lockdowns, social behaviour measures, business closures, and others; and concerns the recording (...) and reporting of disease mortality. To clarify a point that has caused much controversy and anger in the public debate, the first part of the present article discusses the very fundamentals underlying the issue of causative attribution with regards to mortality, lays out the foundations of the statistical means of mortality estimation, and concretizes these by analysing the recording and reporting practices adopted in England and their widespread misrepresentations. The second part of the article is empirical in nature. I present data and an analysis of how COVID-19 mortality has been reported in the mainstream media in the UK and the USA, including a comparative analysis both across the two countries as well as across different media outlets. The findings clearly demonstrate a uniform and worrying lack of understanding of the relevant technical subject matter by the media in both countries. Of particular interest is the finding that with a remarkable regularity (????>0.998), the greater the number of articles a media outlet has published on COVID-19 mortality, the greater the proportion of its articles misrepresented the disease mortality figures. (shrink)

How should we theorize about the social world? How can we integrate theories, models and approaches from seemingly incompatible disciplines? Does theory affect social reality? This state-of-the-art collection addresses contemporary methodological questions and interdisciplinary developments in the philosophy of social science. Facilitating a mutually enriching dialogue, chapters by leading social scientists are followed by critical evaluations from philosophers of social science. This exchange showcases recent major theoretical and methodological breakthroughs and challenges in the social sciences, as well as (...) fruitful ways in which the analytic tools developed in philosophy of science can be applied to understand these advancements. The volume covers a diverse range of principles, methods, innovations and applications, including scientific and methodological pluralism, performativity of theories, causal inferences and applications of social science to policy and business. Taking a practice-orientated and interactive approach, it offers a new philosophy of social science grounded in and relevant to the emerging social science practice. (shrink)

Philosophy has a dirty little secret and it is this: a whole lot of philosophers have swallowed the mechanistic billiard ball deterministic view of human action—presumably because philosophy assumes that science demands it, and/or because modern attempts to articulate in what free will consists seem incoherent. This below-the-surface-purely-academic commitment to mechanistic determinism is a dirty little secret because an honest public commitment would render virtually all that is taught in philosophy departments incomprehensible. Can “lovers of wisdom” really continue to (...) tolerate such a heavy burden of hypocrisy? For it is maximally hypocritical, is it not, to teach ethics, or existentialism, or political philosophy, or critical thinking, or indeed to teach anything at all if one views the bodies of humans as entities determined by forces that are describable entirely under the auspices of physical/chemical laws. The only option, it would seem, to avoid such hypocrisy is to go out of business. After all, either base metal can be turned into gold, or it cannot. We found out long ago that it cannot, and so alchemy was rightly banished into the dustbin of history. Likewise, either philosophy can enhance the wisdom quotient of its disciples as its name implies, and thus override billiard ball mechanics, or it cannot. And if it cannot, it deserves to follow alchemy to an ignominious end. (shrink)

Using a triangulation of three methods, we devise a framework for the acquisition of the resources vital for the start-up of a business in South Africa. Against the backdrop of the fact that numerous challenges prohibit African immigrants from starting a business, let alone growing the business, we set out to investigate how those who succeed acquired the necessary resources. Within the quantitative paradigm, the survey questionnaire was used to collect and analyze the data. To complement the (...) quantitative approach, personal interviews and focus groups were utilised as the methods within the qualitative approach paradigm. The research revealed that an African immigrant entrepreneur is most likely to be a male between the ages of 19 and 41 who has been forced to immigrate by political circumstances. Once in South Africa, limited job opportunities forced these immigrants into starting up a business. In order of importance, financial, informational, human and physical, resources were identified as being critical for the start-up a business. With respect to the acquisition of resources, African immigrant entrepreneurs unwillingly made use of personal savings to finance their businesses during the start-up phase of the business. Financial resource played a double role in that it determined the main sources of physical resources used. From a human resource perspective, African immigrant entrepreneurs preferred employing South Africans during the start-up phase of the business, and the reverse was true during the growth phase. To a limited extent family labour was involved at both the start-up as well as the operation phases of the business; with formal education and prior experience playing an indirect role as far as the human resources mixed were concerned. In terms of information, African immigrant entrepreneurs made use of two primary sources of information namely; their ethnic networks and friends from somewhere else. -/- . (shrink)

There is a need for enterprises to incorporate information on the environment into decision making and to take action on ecological restoration. Within academia, a comprehensive understanding of the impacts on how business can serve sustainability transformation is still lacking as diverging holistic approaches and reductive approaches cloud academic thinking. The authors take a science-policy interface perspective to cover the role of cognitive proximity, matching and coordination of scientific knowledge from diverse stakeholders for effective policy making and implementation. (...) We show through a literature review that temporal and spatial scales, soil and land degradation, institutions and ecosystem, and the role of human behavior and narrative are not adequately emphasized in sustainability research. A scale-based picture, focusing on landscapes, institutions and practices is proposed which can be used to align diverse fields by acting as “bridge” for improved science policy interface and decision making, facilitated through cognitive proximity, matching, and coordination. A case study on a business association from South India is used to demonstrate the scales based approach in practice. A scale-based approach can play a key role in connecting human behaviour, a social science thematic topic, with ecosystems, a natural science thematic topic. (shrink)

The paper investigates the relationship between political oratory and literature in Romania during the second part of the 19th century. Extending the theories of Jacques Rancière, Fredric Jameson, Slavoj Žižec, and Leonidas Donskis, I analyze the relationship between politics and literature by comparing a set of illustrative speeches delivered by Take Ionescu and P. P. Carp, who distinguished themselves as brilliant political orators and also as personalities who gave up literature in order to assume a political career. My main goal (...) is to determine how much of one’s appetite for aesthetic autonomy turns into mere appetite for political autonomy, and thus for dissent and dissidence. Both examples chosen for illustration brought me to the conclusion that prior literary habits and practices into a politician’s public career can determine his/her ways of legitimizing party-switches or volatile doctrinarian attitudes. (shrink)

Robert Solomon has presented a version of business ethics in terms of virtues theory. It is a good thing that business ethics should be understood in terms of virtues theory, but the account that Solomon gives is seriously misleading in important respects. "A virtue is a pervasive trait of character that allows one to 'fit into' a particular society and to excel in it," he says. This is something that we might query: what a society will recognize as (...) a virtue might well be what fits that formula, but sometimes we shall want to recognize as a virtue what enabled somebody to stand out against his or her society and change it, and shall want to say that those traits that enable somebody to fit happily into (say) a slave society are vices rather than virtues. That is to say, a society's recognition of virtues, its application of virtues theory in picking out various character traits as valuable, will depend on other judgments common in that society, and we might well differ from that society in those judgments. (shrink)

Aim: This study determined the relationship between the assessed conflict management and communication styles of the university leaders of Guangdong Business and Technology University in China towards a leadership development training program. -/- Methodology: This study adopted a descriptive quantitative- comparative- correlational research design. It was conducted during the second semester of school year 2021-2022. The data gathered were collated and treated using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences or SPSS software. -/- Results: Based on the results, the most (...) evident conflict management styles of the university leaders are the compromising, and collaborating styles which ranked first and second respectively among the five identified management styles. It can also be noticed that avoiding and accommodating styles were evident among the university leaders as assessed by the teachers, while competing style was given the lowest assessment by the respondents. An over-all mean values of 3.50 shows that the conflict management style of the university leaders is evident as perceived by the teacher respondents. -/- Conclusion: Compromising and collaborating styles of conflict management are the most evident styles among the university leaders. Older teachers have seen avoiding style of conflict management more evident in their university leaders, while least evident in the eyes of the younger ones. Aggressive communication style was most evident among the university leaders while passive style was the least as observed by the teachers. Older teachers have seen their leaders to be more assertive than how the younger ones have seen them. The way the educational leaders handle conflict management is affected by the way how they communicate with their subordinates. It can also be said that effective communication style is a factor in managing and solving conflicts in the workplace. (shrink)

This research aims to identify the use of decision support systems as an entry point for operations of re-engineering in the Palestinian universities in Gaza Strip. The researchers used the method of questionnaire to collect data, and the researchers used a sample stratified random way, were (350) questionnaire distributed on the research sample and (312) questionnaire were collected back (89.1%). The study results showed that the most important ones are: there exists statistically significant impact at the level of significance (α (...) ≤ 0.05) for physical requirements, human requirements. technical requirements and regulatory requirements. The results showed also, the presence of statistically significant differences between the averages of the study sample estimates on the use of decision support systems as an entry point for operations of re-engineering in the Palestinian universities in Gaza Strip due to the variable sex in favor of males requirements. Furthermore, the results showed the existence of differences to the variable name of the university and each area of study for the benefit of the Islamic University then Al-Azhar University and then Al-Aqsa University. The study also concluded a series of recommendations including: encourage Palestinian universities in Gaza Strip, which are planning to re-engine Information Systems to start implementing the programs in the radical change as soon as possible. The need for the Palestinian universities in Gaza Strip, to develop the infrastructure for information technology in general, and decision support systems, in particular, when doing re-engineering operations. And the need for a separate unit of decision support systems and organizational structure to allow information to flow seamlessly between colleges and various departments and divisions. And investment of available information in building the capacities of integration techniques, in order to enable them to continue with the re-engineering of Information Systems. (shrink)

Biodiversity science is in a pivotal period when diverse groups of actors—including researchers, businesses, national governments, and Indigenous Peoples—are negotiating wide-ranging norms for governing and managing biodiversity data in digital repositories. These repositories, often called biodiversity data portals, are a type of organization for which governance can address or perpetuate the colonial history of biodiversity science and current inequities. Researchers and Indigenous Peoples are developing and implementing new strategies to examine and change assumptions about which agents should count (...) as salient participants in scientific projects, especially in projects that build and manage large digital data portals. Two notable efforts are the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and CARE (Collective benefit, Authority, Responsibility, Ethics) Principles for scientific data management and governance. To characterize how these principles influence the governance of biodiversity data portals, we develop an account of fit-for-use data that makes explicit its social as well as technical conditions in relation to agents and purposes. The FAIR Principles, already widely adopted by biodiversity researchers, prioritize machine agents and efficient computation, while the CARE Principles prioritize Indigenous Peoples and their data sovereignty. Both illustrate the potency of an emerging general strategy by which groups of actors craft and implement governance principles for data fitness-of-use to change assumptions about who are salient participants in data science. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Drawing upon John Rawls's framework inThe Law of Peoples,this paper argues that MNEs have a responsibility to promote well-ordered social and political institutions in host countries that lack them. This responsibility is grounded in a negative duty not to cause harm. In addition to addressing the objection that promoting well-ordered institutions represents unjustified interference by MNEs, the paper provides guidance for managers of MNEs operating in host countries that lack just institutions. The paper argues for understanding corporate responsibility in relation (...) to the specific institutional environment in which MNEs operate. (shrink)

Recently a number of scientists have proposed substantial changes to the practice of climate modeling, though they disagree over what those changes should be. We provide an overview and critical examination of three leading proposals: the unified approach, the hierarchy approach and the pluralist approach. The unified approach calls for an accelerated development of high-resolution models within a seamless prediction framework. The hierarchy approach calls for more attention to the development and systematic study of hierarchies of related models, with the (...) aim of advancing understanding. The pluralist approach calls for greater diversity in modeling efforts, including, on some of its variants, more attention to empirical modeling. After identifying some of the scientific and institutional challenges faced by these proposals, we consider their expected gains and costs, relative to a business-as-usual modeling scenario.We find the proposals to be complementary, having valuable synergies. But since resource limitations make it unlikely that all three will be pursued, we offer some reflections on more limited changes in climate modeling that seem well within reach and that can be expected to yield substantial benefits. (shrink)

Bad philosophy is responsible for the climate and nature crises, and other global problems too that threaten our future. That sounds mad, but it is true. A philosophy of science, or of theatre or life is a view about what are, or ought to be, the aims and methods of science, theatre or life. It is in this entirely legitimate sense of “philosophy” that bad philosophy is responsible for the crises we face. First, and in a blatantly obvious (...) way, those institutions, organizations, corporations, businesses, endeavours, and activities of humanity that cause the crises and global problems we face, do so because of the aims they pursue (profit perhaps, or power, or heat and light for homes), and the methods adopted in pursuit of those aims – the philosophy in other words, built into the institution, organization, business, human activities, or whatever it may be. It is the philosophy of these institutions, organizations and activities that we need to change to put a stop to, or at least lessen the severity of, the crises we face, the global problems that confront us, above all the climate and nature crises. One institution has an especially crucial role in this respect: our universities. They are dominated in a multitude of ways by a particularly disastrous philosophy, a philosophy of inquiry which may be called knowledge-inquiry. This holds that the basic aim of the university is to acquire and apply knowledge. First, knowledge is to be acquired; once acquired, it can be applied to help solve social problems. But this philosophy of knowledge-inquiry is an intellectual disaster. As a result, universities are, in devastating and almost entirely unrecognized ways, humanitarian disasters too. Judged from the standpoint of helping to promote human welfare, the university shaped by the philosophy of knowledge-inquiry violates THREE of the four most elementary rules of rational problem solving conceivable in a wholesale, structural fashion, and it is this gross, wholesale, structural irrationality of the university, unnoticed by all but a few scientists and scholars, that is in part responsible for the creation of our grave global problems, and our current incapacity to learn how to solve them. The pursuit of knowledge, conducted in universities, within the framework of knowledge-inquiry over the decades and centuries, has produced much of great benefit to humanity. It has made the modern world possible. It has led to modern power production, modern industry and armaments, modern agriculture, modern hygiene and medicine, modern travel and communications, and the internet. But these very successes have also created many of our most serious current global problems: the climate crisis; the destruction of natural habitats, the catastrophic loss of wild life, and impending mass extinction of species (the nature crisis); the lethal character of modern war; the impact on the natural world of the rapid growth of the human population; the menace posed by nuclear weapons; pollution of earth, sea and air; threats to democracy caused in part by the internet and social media. All these grave global problems have been made possible by modern science and technology, pursued largely in universities within the framework of knowledge-inquiry. Nevertheless, it is not science and technology as such that are the problem, but science pursued in a way that is dissociated from a more fundamental task of the university to help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, so that progress may be made to a better world. Science and technology, pursued within the framework of knowledge-inquiry, create for some of us the power to act, but not the power to act wisely – not the power to learn how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways. For that, we need our institutions of learning, above all our universities, to take as their primary task to help humanity learn how to do it. In order to do that, the philosophy of inquiry put into practice by universities needs to be dramatically transformed. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in the overall aims and methods of academic inquiry – a revolution in the philosophy of the university, all around the world, wherever possible, so that the basic aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom, construed to be the capacity, active endeavour, and perhaps desire, to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom in this sense including knowledge, understanding and technological know-how, but much else besides, methods being dramatically modified too so as to help achieve the new academic aim. The basic task of the university would be, not to solve problems of knowledge, but rather to help people in the social world beyond the university to resolve conflicts and problems of living so that what is of value in life may be realized by everyone, insofar as that is possible. The pursuit of knowledge would be vital, but not intellectually fundamental. The intellectual and institutional revolution we so urgently need in our universities would affect every discipline and aspect of the university; it would dramatically affect both research and education, and the whole way the university is related to the rest of the social world. The revolution, from knowledge-inquiry to wisdom-inquiry would dramatically enhance the intellectual integrity and rationality of natural science, social inquiry, the humanities and technology, the character of these disciplines and the relationships they have with one another. University education throughout the university would be dramatically improved. And academic inquiry as a whole would do what, on the whole, it fails to do at present: it would help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational and, as a result, increasingly successful ways, progress at last being made to a genuinely good, civilized world – a world in which there is peace, justice, liberal democracy, individual freedom, education, reasonable equality, sustainable prosperity and worthwhile opportunities in life, all of these for everyone, insofar as this is possible. Why, it may be asked, has academic philosophy not noticed that we urgently need to transform the current bad philosophy of inquiry of knowledge-inquiry into the far more intellectually rigorous and humanly valuable philosophy of wisdom-inquiry, so that we can begin to do what so far we have failed to do so lamentably: learn how to avoid impending disasters, and even make progress to a better world, something that seems at present almost unthinkable given the horrors of war, poverty, political enslavement of the 20th century, and the horrors of this century so far too? The answer is that academic philosophy is in a particularly pitiful state, as philosophers themselves, are just beginning to realize and lament. That is why academic philosophers are blind to the intellectual and humanitarian disaster of the bad philosophy that dominates universities today, and inconceivable to them to them that they might have, as a disciplinary task, to ensure academic inquiry implements a good philosophy of inquiry, and advocate and argue for change if it does not. Once upon a time, in Europe at least, philosophy was an intellectual power in the world. In the 17th century it created modern science which massively increased and improved our knowledge and understanding of the world, which in turn led to the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, and the modern world. Philosophy was once so intellectually powerful and influential that it changed the course of history. But philosophy also made in the past three disastrous intellectual blunders: the post-Cartesian blunder, the post-Newtonian blunder, and the Enlightenment blunder. Never acknowledged and corrected by subsequent philosophy right down to the present, these unrecognized intellectual blunders rendered academic philosophy the esoteric, pathetic, and powerless discipline it is today, so that throughout the last century and, so far, throughout this one, academic philosophy has remained blind to the intellectual disaster of knowledge-inquiry, and thus failed entirely to take up its proper disciplinary task of warning fellow academics of the structural irrationality of the philosophy that prevails in the university, and of proposing what steps need to be taken to put things right. Instead of performing such an urgently needed philosophical task, so-called analytic philosophy was reduced to analysing the meaning of words. Since then, there has been hardly any discernible improvement, even if analysis of concepts no longer dominates the scene. Bad academic philosophy is indeed responsible for intellectual and humanitarian failures of the university. What the three past intellectual blunders of philosophy are, why their persistence so dramatically reduces academic philosophy to a triviality, and why, furthermore, this results in the failure of scientists and scholars to see what is so blatantly bad about the philosophy prevailing in universities around the world – the failure to see what so urgently needs to be done to put right what has been wrong for so long: all this is made clear in this book. A new kind of philosophy emerges during the course of the argument, critical fundamentalism, which has as its task to keep alive imaginative and critical – that is rational – thinking about our fundamental problem: How can our human world, the world we experience and live in – the world of living things, people, consciousness, free will, meaning and value – how can all of this exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe? That problem encompasses all others of life, science and thought. Critical fundamentalism tries to improve answers to aspects of this problem; but it also seeks to encourage everyone to think about the problem, from time to time, and think about how it interacts, in both directions, with more urgent particular and specialized problems of life and thought. Critical fundamentalism sets out to help improve bad philosophy wherever it is to be found: in social, political, commercial, legal, financial, and international life; and especially in academia, in institutions of learning, so that they become devoted to enhancing the capacity of people to learn how to achieve what is of genuine value in this brief life of a few decades if we are fortunate. Critical fundamentalism does everything it can to bring about the revolution in our universities we so urgently need. If taken up by mainstream philosophy, it might really have an impact, and begin to transform universities for the better, in both intellectual and humanitarian terms, and thus, enable humanity to learn how, after the grim failures and horrors of the last century and this one, to make progress to a better world. -/- . (shrink)

Basic abstraction principles are reached through ontology, which was traditionally conceived as a depiction of the world itself. Ontology is also described using conceptual modeling (CM) that defines fundamental concepts of reality. CM is one of the central activities in computer science, especially as it is mainly used in software engineering as an intermediate artifact for system construction. To achieve such a goal, we propose Stoic CM (SCM) as a description of what a system must do functionally with minimal (...) ambiguity. As a case study, we apply SCM to investigate the ontology of BPMN (business process modeling notation). Such an undertaking would demonstrate SCM notions and simultaneously may offer a viable ontological foundation for BPMN. SCM defines the being of things and actions in reality based on Stoic notions of existence and subsistence. It has two levels of specification: (1) a subsistence static model where things and actions subsist and (2) an existence dynamic model where things and actions exist in time. From the Stoic ontological point of view, while a thing existing has a clear denotation, subsistence indicates the thing is “being there,” but it is inactive (does not participate in an event). We apply SCM to BPMN processes that involve buying a new car with many notions, such as activity, task, event, and message. The result indicates that SCM produces a tighter representation of reality, thus providing the necessary description of the part in the application world to be used as requirements for developing the software system. (shrink)

This collection of articles was written over the last 10 years and edited to bring them up to date (2017). The copyright page has the date of the edition and new editions will be noted there as I edit old articles or add new ones. All the articles are about human behavior (as are all articles by anyone about anything), and so about the limitations of having a recent monkey ancestry (8 million years or much less depending on viewpoint) and (...) manifest words and deeds within the framework of our innate psychology as presented in the table of intentionality. As famous evolutionist Richard Leakey says, it is critical to keep in mind not that we evolved from apes, but that in every important way, we are apes. If everyone was given a real understanding of this (i.e., of human ecology and psychology to actually give them some control over themselves), maybe civilization would have a chance. As things are however the leaders of society have no more grasp of things than their constituents and so collapse into anarchy is inevitable. The first group of articles attempts to give some insight into how we behave that is reasonably free of the theoretical delusions that are universal. In the next group, I show how these insights apply by reviewing some books in philosophy and psychology. Next I review books on science and religion and finally provide reviews and articles showing how understanding of both science and philosophy gives insight into the tragic delusions destroying the world. People believe that society can be saved by science, religion and politics, so I provide some suggestions as to why this is unlikely via short articles and reviews of recent books by well-known writers. It is critical to understand why we behave as we do and so the first section presents articles that try to describe (not explain as Wittgenstein insisted) behavior. I start with a brief review of the logical structure of rationality, which provides some heuristics for the description of language (mind, rationality, personality) and gives some suggestions as to how this relates to the evolution of social behavior. This centers around the two writers I have found the most important in this regard, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle, whose ideas I combine and extend within the dual system (two ii systems of thought) framework that has proven so useful in recent thinking and reasoning research. As I note, there is in my view essentially complete overlap between philosophy, in the strict sense of the enduring questions that concern the academic discipline, and the descriptive psychology of higher order thought (behavior). Once one has grasped Wittgenstein’s insight that there is only the issue of how the language game is to be played, one determines the Conditions of Satisfaction (what makes a statement true or satisfied etc.) and that is the end of the discussion. Since philosophical problems are the result of our innate psychology, or as Wittgenstein put it, due to the lack of perspicuity of language, they run throughout human discourse and behavior, so there is endless need for philosophical analysis, not only in the ‘human sciences’ of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, history, literature, religion, etc., but in the ‘hard sciences’ of physics, mathematics, and biology. It is universal to mix the language game questions with the real scientific ones as to what the empirical facts are. Scientism is ever present and the master has laid it before us long ago, i.e., Wittgenstein (hereafter W) beginning with the Blue and Brown Books in the early 1930’s. "Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics and leads the philosopher into complete darkness." (BBB p18) The key to everything about us is biology, and it is obliviousness to it that leads millions of smart educated people like Obama, Chomsky, Clinton and the Pope to espouse suicidal utopian ideals that inexorably lead straight to Hell on Earth. As W noted, it is what is always before our eyes that is the hardest to see. We live in the world of conscious deliberative linguistic System 2, but it is unconscious, automatic reflexive System 1 that rules. This is the source of the universal blindness described by Searle’s The Phenomenological Illusion (TPI), Pinker’s Blank Slate and Tooby and Cosmides’ Standard Social Science Model. The astute may wonder why we cannot see System 1 at work, but it is clearly counterproductive for an animal to be thinking about or second guessing every action, and in any case, there is no time for the slow, massively integrated System 2 to be involved in the constant stream of split second ‘decisions’ we must make. As W noted, our ‘thoughts’ (T1 or the ‘thoughts’ of System 1) must lead directly to actions. iii It is my contention that the table of intentionality (rationality, mind, thought, language, personality etc.) that features prominently here describes more or less accurately, or at least serves as an heuristic for, how we think and behave, and so it encompasses not merely philosophy and psychology, but everything else (history, literature, mathematics, politics etc.). Note especially that intentionality and rationality as I (along with Searle, Wittgenstein and others) view it, includes both conscious deliberative System 2 and unconscious automated System 1 actions or reflexes. Thus, all the articles, like all behavior, are intimately connected if one knows how to look at them. As I note, The Phenomenological Illusion (oblivion to our automated System 1) is universal and extends not merely throughout philosophy but throughout life. I am sure that Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg and the Pope would be incredulous if told that they suffer from the same problem as Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, (or that that they differ only in degree from drug and sex addicts in being motivated by stimulation of their frontal cortices by the delivery of dopamine (and over 100 other chemicals) via the ventral tegmentum and the nucleus accumbens), but it’s clearly true. While the phenomenologists only wasted a lot of people’s time, they are wasting the earth and their descendant’s futures. Many of the articles describe the ‘digital delusions’, which confuse the language games of System 2 with the automatisms of System 1, and so cannot distinguish biological machines (i.e., people) from other kinds of machines (i.e., computers). The ‘reductionist’ claim is that one can ‘explain’ behavior at a ‘lower’ level, but what actually happens is that one does not explain human behavior but a ‘stand in’ for it. Hence the title of Searle’s classic review of Dennett’s book (“Consciousness Explained”)— “Consciousness Explained Away”. In most contexts ‘reduction’ of higher level emergent behavior to brain functions, biochemistry, or physics is incoherent. Also for ‘reduction’ of chemistry or physics, the path is blocked by chaos and uncertainty. Anything can be ‘represented’ by equations, but when they ‘represent’ higher order behavior, it is not clear (and cannot be made clear) what the ‘results’ mean. Reductionist metaphysics is a joke, but most scientists and philosophers lack the appropriate sense of humor. Other digital delusions are that we will be saved from the pure evil (selfishness) of System 1 by computers/AI/robotics/ nanotech/genetic engineering created by System 2. The No Free Lunch principal tells us there will be serious and possibly fatal consequences. The adventurous may regard this principle as a higher order emergent expression of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Hi-tech enthusiasts hugely underestimate the problems iv resulting from unrestrained motherhood, and of course it is neither profitable nor politically correct (and now with third world supremacism dominant, not even possible) to be honest about it. The last section describes various versions of the ‘altruism delusion’ that we are selected for cooperation, and that the euphonious ideals of Democracy, Diversity and Equality will lead us into utopia, if we just manage things correctly (the possibility of politics). Again, the No Free Lunch Principle ought to warn us it cannot be true, and we see throughout history and all over the contemporary world, that without strict controls, selfishness and stupidity gain the upper hand and soon destroy any nation that embraces it. In addition, the monkey mind steeply discounts the future, and so we cooperate in selling our descendant’s heritage for temporary comforts, greatly exacerbating the problems. I describe versions of this delusion (i.e., that we are basically ‘friendly’ if just given a chance) as it appears in some recent books on sociology/biology/economics. I end with an essay on the great tragedy playing out in America and the world, which can be seen as a direct result of our evolved psychology manifested as the inexorable machinations of System 1. Our psychology, eminently adaptive and eugenic on the plains of Africa from ca. 6 million years ago, when we split from chimpanzees, to ca. 50,000 years ago, when many of our ancestors left Africa (i.e., in the EEA or Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation), is now maladaptive and dysgenic and the source of our Suicidal Utopian Delusions. So, like all discussions of behavior (philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology, anthropology, politics, law, literature, history, economics, soccer strategies, business meetings, etc.), this book is about evolutionary strategies, selfish genes and inclusive fitness (kin selection). Many accept the delusion that we are selected for cooperation with people generally (group selection or altruism) and not just our immediate relatives (kin selection or inclusive fitness), so I spend some time in the essays of the last section demolishing this fantasy. One thing rarely mentioned by the group selectionists is the fact that, even were ‘group selection’ possible, selfishness is at least as likely (probably far more likely in most contexts) to be group selected for as altruism. Just try to find examples of true altruism in nature –the fact that we can’t (which we know is not possible if we understand evolution) tells us that its apparent presence in humans is an artefact of modern life concealing the facts, and that it can no more be selected for than the tendency to suicide (which in fact it is). One does not really need science or mathematics to grasp this – it is crushingly obvious that an v organism cannot be selected for behavior that decreases the frequency of its own genes in the next generation. One might also benefit from considering a phenomenon never (in my experience) mentioned by group selectionists -- cancer. No group has as much in common as the (originally) genetically identical cells in our own bodies-a 100 trillion cell clone-- but we are all born with thousands and perhaps millions of cells that have already taken the first step on the path to cancer and generate millions to billions of cancer cells in our life. If we did not die of other things first, we (and perhaps all multicellular organisms) would all die of cancer. Only a massive and hugely complex mechanism built into our genome that represses or derepresses trillions of genes in trillions of cells, and kills and creates billions of cells a second, keeps the majority of us alive long enough to reproduce. One might take this to imply that a just, democratic and enduring society for any kind of entity on any planet in any universe is only a dream, and that no being or power could make it otherwise. It is not only ‘the laws’ of physics that are universal and inescapable, or perhaps we should say that inclusive fitness is a law of physics. The great mystic Osho said that the separation of God and Heaven from Earth and Humankind was the most evil idea that ever entered the Human mind. In the 20th century an even more evil notion arose—that humans are born with rights, rather than having to earn privileges. Thus, every day the population increases by 200,000, who must be provided with resources to grow and space to live, and who soon produce another 200,000 etc. And one almost never hears it noted that what they receive must be taken from those already alive. Their lives diminish those already here in both major obvious and countless subtle ways. Every new baby destroys the earth from the moment of conception. There cannot be human rights without human wrongs. It cannot be more obvious, but one will never see the streets full of protesters against motherhood. America and the world are in the process of collapse from excessive population growth, most of it for the last century and now all of it due to 3rd world people. Consumption of resources and the addition of 4 billion more ca. 2100 will collapse industrial civilization and bring about starvation, disease, violence and war on a staggering scale. The earth loses about 2% of it’s topsoil every year, so as it nears 2100, most of it’s food growing capacity will be gone. Billions will die and nuclear war is all but certain. In America, this is being hugely accelerated by massive immigration and immigrant reproduction, combined with abuses made possible by democracy. Depraved human nature inexorably turns the dream of democracy and diversity into a vi nightmare of crime and poverty. China will continue to overwhelm America and the world, as long as it maintains the dictatorship which limits selfishness. The root cause of collapse is the inability of our innate psychology to adapt to the modern world, which leads people to treat unrelated persons as though they had common interests. This, plus ignorance of basic biology and psychology, leads to the social engineering delusions of the partially educated who control democratic societies. Few understand that if you help one person you harm someone else—there is no free lunch and every single item anyone consumes destroys the earth beyond repair. Consequently, social policies everywhere are unsustainable and one by one all societies without stringent controls on selfishness will collapse into anarchy or dictatorship. Without dramatic and immediate changes, there is no hope for preventing the collapse of America, or any country that follows a democratic system. The popular notions supported by the Democratic Party and Third World Supremacists are that Democracy, Diversity, Equality and Social Justice will produce a Utopia in America and the world, but it is clear as crystal that they unavoidably foster selfishness and divisiveness and are producing collapse. Hence my concluding essay “Suicide by Democracy”. The most basic facts, almost never mentioned, are that there are not enough resources in America or the world to lift a significant percentage of the poor out of poverty and keep them there. Even the attempt to do this is already bankrupting America and destroying the world. The earth’s capacity to produce food decreases daily, as does our genetic quality. And now, as always, by far the greatest enemy of the poor is other poor and not the rich. -/- My writings are available as paperbacks and Kindles on Amazon. -/- Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) ASIN B071HVC7YP. -/- The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) ASIN B071P1RP1B. -/- Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) 2nd printing with corrections (Feb 2018) ASIN B0711R5LGX -/- Suicide by Democracy: an Obituary for America and the World (2018) ASIN B07CQVWV9C -/- . (shrink)

Individuals with high self-concept will likely have high life satisfaction, they easily get adjusted to life, and they communicate their feeling more appropriately. However, it was not certain whether self-concept would decline or improve as individuals age, or whether self-concept would vary between genders and ethnic groups. To prove, a study was carried out to compare the self-concept of college students in an Asian context. The inquiry utilized the cross-sectional design in finding out significant differences in the self-concept of participants (...) in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity. A 22-item questionnaire was adapted and administered to 222 Bachelor of Public Administration and Bachelor of Science in Business Administration students from the satellite campus of Bukidnon State University in the Philippines. Initially, a sample was randomly drawn from the population. During the actual data collection, the researchers had difficulty getting the responses from the randomly selected individuals due to internet connection and it was done amidst a pandemic. Instead, it took all responses from those who were available, have access to the internet, and could accomplish the google forms. The data were analyzed using Mean, Standard Deviation, T-test for independent sample, ANOVA and Post Hoc test. The results revealed that college students at the locale have a high level of self-concept in self-fulfilment, emotional adjustment, and honesty. Yet, they only had a moderate level of self-concept in autonomy. Further, there were significant differences in college students’ autonomy and honesty in terms of age and gender. Furthermore, there were significant differences in their emotional adjustment and self-fulfilment as to their ethnicity. The results have implications for instruction, administration, guidance services, and future research. (shrink)

Citation:Christodoulou, Marina. “Technopolis as the Technologised Kingdom of God. Fun as Technology, Technology as Religion in the 21st Century. God sive Fun.” Cahiers d'études germaniques N° 74, 2018. La religion au XXIe siècle - Perpectives et enjeux de la discussion autour d'une société post-séculière. Études reunites par Sébastian Hüsch et Max Marcuzzi, 119-132. -/- -------- -/- Neil Postman starts his book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1993)1 with a quote from Paul Goodman’s New Reformation: “Whether or not it (...) draws on new scientific research, technology is a branch of moral philosophy, not of science.” (Postman 1993: motto; Goodman 2010: 40). I would extend Postman’s Technopoly to Technopolis, to give it more of a presence in time and space. Hence, I will use the term Technopoly when I am referring to Postman; the term Technopolis is my own. -/- In his book From Faith to Fun: The Secularisation of Humour, Russel Heddendorf argues that humour is a technology (Heddendorf 2009: 32-34), as it is understood and theorized by Neil Postman in Technopoly. Russel Heddendorf also argues that “Technopoly” is a term correlated with Wittgenstein’s use of the term “worldview” (Weltanschauung) (Heddendorf 2009: 11). -/- I would like to draw on these thoughts to propose that Technopoly (or Technopolis) could be the secularized Kingdom of God, namely that Technology is the Religion of the 21st century, and that Fun is a paradigm of such a Technology / Technique. God is yet another technique or Technology of and in Technopoly. -/- The godless individual in the 21st century, I will argue, is as much a believer as the faithful in the Sacred Religion (term used in opposition to Secular or rather Technological or Technologized Religion, which is Fun). He believes in Fun (as a post-modern form of pleasure), as much as the believer believes, or more accurately, believed in God. In the 21st century, the faithful in Sacred Religion believes in a fun God, as opposed to the serious God of the past. Fun is turning into the Technologized Religion for all; for the faithful in Godly / Sacred Religion, as well for as the unfaithful. Fun (pleasure, humour) is the definitive qualia of 21st century pleasure. The mechanics of Fun make it absolutely functional for controlling people; as Aldous Huxley wrote in Brave New World, people “are controlled by inflicting pleasure” (cited in Heddendorf 2009: 158). Now, indulging in pleasure is having Fun. In the 21st century, nobody is unfaithful, nobody disputes God, because God has been manufactured into Fun. We are living in the most religious century of all. -/- The commodity of God, now inextricably blended into work and leisure ethics and culture, is as unavoidable as survival. You don’t work, you don’t survive, you don’t exist. You work, you are entitled to leisure, or free time – the time (“busy-time”) when you are busy is work. The free time of leisure (“fun-time”) is a time for fun (pleasure). The time dedicated to Fun is culturally (capitalistically) pre-defined; no moment is actually free, each moment that is sold as free is to be bought with Work Time tokens –which is money. Believe is Enjoy. Happiness, achieved through pleasure, and pleasure through Fun, and Life as Play, is the recipe for Teleology in the 21st century. -/- The Technological God (Fun), as the Sacred God before him, is sovereignty’s technique or a social “mode of release”: demonstrations, marches, petitions, freedom of speech, citizen and human rights vindications, are “modes of release”, so that the next day, feeling relieved and released that you are working for a better life and a better world, you can wake up cheerfully to walk to your workplace, feeling it will change because of your marching, or your petition, or your speech, or the mass you attended, or the prayer you said yesterday. Thus life continues unchanging, through postponing hope; the tension of the tragedy is always released (lysis) in catharsis: refreshment for the next day of work. Art, especially cinema, (namely, simulated life) follows the same cathartic principles as real life. Thus, you can keep coping, and hoping in the meantime is of much help. Religion, Art, Science, Therapy, and Technology are all technologies used to market life, sell it or lend it, and humans are buying it back. Fun is free to produce, and expensive to buy. (shrink)

The article is aimed at studying environmental responsibility of multinational enterprises in electronics and IT sectors. The main aspects of environmental policy of global business enterprises have been systematized, their characteristics for such high-tech market leaders as Alphabet Inc, IBM and Intel Corporation have been given. Corporate policies have been analyzed and compared in three aspects of environmental activity of the companies selected for this study: waste recycling, energy use and environmental impact. The results of the analysis of eco-responsible (...) companies’ practices show that each company forms management style and tools by implementing environmental responsibility, but none of them has managed to hold higher positions in the ranking of business environmental responsibility. Reserves for activating eco-oriented companies’ policy in IT sector have been identified. (shrink)

How a senior researcher from a developing country can build an organic academic enterprise. Drawing from childhood experience with nature, past works with the business sector, and philosophy of data-driven research, the essay presents a compelling case of letting young graduates work on big database-building projects: one on Vietnamese social sciences; the other is more than 80 years of the pioneer science in Vietnam—mathematics. Two national databases have enabled meaningful data-driven interactions with scientific policymakers.

Modern business conditions require from economic entities to use appropriate methodological tools for assessing their activities. In economics science a fairly significant set of approaches, methods and techniques are now known that positively contribute to solving problems regarding ensure of competitiveness the economic entities. However, active influence of the internal and external environment on their activities, as well as the specificity of economic management the economic entities, requires the use of more effective methodological tools that can identify threats (...) of the external environment and explore the strengths of activity the economic entities. (shrink)

It is well established that a number of factors contribute disproportionately to the failure of Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) in most economies. This paper examined the contribution of managerial and financial factors to the failure of MSEs in the context of Angola. The paper adopted a positivist theoretical perspective, by utilizing the questionnaire as the primary data collection instrument within the quantitative research technique. Data was collectedfrom108 small business owners and managers with business failure experiences, approached through (...) snowballing sampling technique. The data was analysed with the aid of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) program. The results ascertain that, insufficient knowledge in the domain of business systems, insufficient skills in the domain of financial accounting and negligence to plan and control business resources, by the small business owners and managers were among the factors that contributed to small enterprise failure in Angola. This reports the lack of institutions actively promoting entrepreneurship for knowledge and skills development and the absence of successful entrepreneurial role models, business mentors or coaches for entrepreneurial capacity building. (shrink)

This study aimed to examine the challenges encountered by science teachers in implementing modular distance learning and the coping strategies they employed to address these challenges. Using a mixed-method research approach, data were collected through a survey of thirty-eight Junior High School science teachers in Mandaon District in Masbate, Philippines. Findings revealed that the implementation of modular distance learning presented various challenges, including technical problems, distribution and retrieval difficulties, student utilization issues, and unreliable assessment results. To cope with (...) these challenges, teachers employed various strategies, including attending ICT training, asking for technical assistance, developing income-generating projects, and utilizing differentiated instruction and targeted assessments. The study also highlights the need for more parental involvement, adequate funding for schools, clear instructions and guidance to students, and proper monitoring of student performance. Overall, the study suggests that with effective implementation and support, modular distance learning can be an effective mode of instruction, particularly during times of crisis. (shrink)

My topic is the materialist appropriation of empiricism – as conveyed in the ‘minimal credo’ nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu (which interestingly is not just a phrase repeated from Hobbes and Locke to Diderot, but is also a medical phrase, used by Harvey, Mandeville and others). That is, canonical empiricists like Locke go out of their way to state that their project to investigate and articulate the ‘logic of ideas’ is not a scientific project: “I shall (...) not at present meddle with the Physical consideration of the Mind” (Essay, I.i.2, in Locke 1975; which Kant gets exactly wrong in his reading of Locke, in the Preface to the A edition of the first Critique). Indeed, I have suggested elsewhere, contrary to a prevalent reading of Locke, that the Essay is not the extension to the study of the mind of the methods of natural philosophy; that he is actually not the “underlabourer” of Newton and Boyle he claims politely to be in the Epistle to the Reader (Wolfe and Salter 2009, Wolfe 2010). Rather, Locke says quite directly if we pay heed to such passages, “Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our Conduct” (Essay, I.i.6). There would be more to say here about what this implies for our understanding of empiricism (see Norton 1981 and Gaukroger 2005), but instead I shall focus on a different aspect of this episode: how a non-naturalistic claim which falls under what we now call epistemology (a claim about the senses as the source of knowledge) becomes an ontology – materialism. That is, how an empiricist claim could shift from being about the sources of knowledge to being about the nature of reality (and/or the mind, in which case it needs, as David Hartley saw and Denis Diderot proclaimed more overtly, an account of the relation between mental processes and the brain). (David Armstrong, for one, denied that there could be an identification between empiricism and materialism on this point: eighteenth-century history of science seems to prove him wrong: see Armstrong 1968 and 1978.) Put differently, I want to examine the shift from the logic of ideas in the seventeenth century (Locke) to an eighteenth-century focus on what kind of ‘world’ the senses give us (Condillac), to an assertion that there is only one substance in the universe (Diderot, giving a materialist cast to Spinozism), and that we need an account of the material substrate of mental life. This is neither a ‘scientific empiricism’ nor a linear developmental process from philosophical empiricism to natural science, but something else again: the unpredictable emergence of an ontology on empiricist grounds. (shrink)

The high failure rate of new small enterprises in Angola calls to attention the fact that they are not equipped enough to meet the challenges of sustainable economic growth, equitable distribution of wealth and job creation. The worrying impact on the Angolan landscape, as a consequence, has had economists scrambling for solutions in recent years. Moving from on the assumption that the current business climate has been a contributing factor, this paper attempts to examine the role of external environmental (...) factors in the context of Angola. Adopting a quantitative approach, the questionnaire was utilized as the primary data collection tool with snowballing as the sampling technique. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software delivered a result to the quantitative data that indicate a severe lack of economic support and availability of fundamental business resources such as raw material, skilled people and finance, and rigid policy-making regulations. The doomed-to-fail death knell to the Angolan small business comes in the form of a high level of corruption and theft in the country. (shrink)

The aim of the research is to study the impact of digitalization and strategic flexibility on the development of innovative business development strategies of modern companies. Digitalization is closely intertwined with strategic flexibility, forming opportunities for the introduction of new technologies and serving as the basis for business development. This ensures faster identification of problems and modification of resource requirements due to timely response to changes in the external business environment and breaks the relevance of further research (...) towards the implementation of the research goal. Analysis of the content of scientific works of scientists revealed insufficient attention to the study of the relationship between digitalization and strategic flexibility as the basis for solving strategic tasks of business development. The feasibility of digital transformations in the field of strategic management is determined in the work. The conceptual relationships of digitalization, strategic flexibility and business development are disclosed. The purpose of Business Model Canvas for business development is summarized. The matrix of choosing innovative strategies for business development has been proposed, taking into account the digitalization trajectory and the level of business flexibility, which will ensure its sustainable development in the future. (shrink)

Do you understand anything about the daily life of scientists? What are their daily thoughts and observations about the world like? How do they form their research ideas? What do they think about the practical applications of their research and those of their colleagues in general? Well, here, the book titled “Meandering Sobriety” by author Vuong Quan Hoang - an interdisciplinary researcher in economics and social sciences - available for sale on Amazon, will somewhat help you answer the above questions.

Responsible innovation (RI), also termed Responsible Research and Innovation, has emerged due to increasing concern over how to integrate ethical and societal values into research and innovation policy and governance (Von Schomberg 2013), in response to questioning of the societal role of science as well as populist resurgence in some countries (Long and Blok 2017a). Within a RI approach, innovators must consider three dimensions of responsibility, including the dimensions of (1) ‘avoiding harm’ to people and the planet, (2) ‘doing (...) good’ through the offering of innovations that foster sustainable development, and (3) the development of facilitative global governance schemes (Voegtlin and Scherer 2017). (shrink)

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are a new, rapidly-growing class of organizations governed by smart contracts. Here we describe how researchers can contribute to the emerging science of DAOs and other digitally-constituted organizations. From granular privacy primitives to mechanism designs to model laws, we identify high-impact problems in the DAO ecosystem where existing gaps might be tackled through a new data set or by applying tools and ideas from existing research fields such as political science, computer science, economics, (...) law, and organizational science. Our recommendations encompass exciting research questions as well as promising business opportunities. We call on the wider research community to join the global effort to invent the next generation of organizations. (shrink)

Ever since Socrates, philosophers have been in the business of asking ques- tions of the type “What is X?” The point has not always been to actually find out what X is, but rather to explore how we think about X, to bring up to the surface wrong ways of thinking about it, and hopefully in the process to achieve an increasingly better understanding of the matter at hand. In the early part of the twentieth century one of the (...) most ambitious philosophers of sci- ence, Karl Popper, asked that very question in the specific case in which X = science. Popper termed this the “demarcation problem,” the quest for what distinguishes science from nonscience and pseudoscience (and, presumably, also the latter two from each other). (shrink)

To go on in the business of living, man needs a basic certainty. This is what I interpret as metaphysics. A prerequisite for making metaphysics is that you have some understanding of Biography of Philosophy. On the other hand, life is not a pre-given entity; it depends on what you do out it. This is the action directed aspects of life. In short, what I am arguing for is that the human being itself is the foundation for every story (...) we tell and re-tell about what we have done, and what we are doing in review of our plans and project for the future. (shrink)

This essay reviews the recently released Handbook of Philosophy of Management, using it as a jumping off point to explore some potential confusions in contemporary philosophy of management. The handbook itself, comprising 58 articles and some 1,000 pages, is a milestone for the field. At the same time, it brings a few problems into sharp relief. I argue for more clarity about the distinction between the philosophy of management and the philosophy of management research. I make the case that logic (...) as a de facto method for conducting inquiry may or may not be useful, while logic as a de jure standard for evaluating its conclusions is indispensable. I develop the view that neither management nor management studies is properly considered a science, or even an applied science. I contend that the seminal contributions of Alasdair MacIntyre are unjustly neglected by the field. And I advance the thesis that perhaps the leading issue for the philosophy of management today is the question of the purpose of management, pointing in some suggested directions for answering the question. (shrink)

In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increasingly delegated to algorithms, which may advise, if not decide, about how data should be interpreted and what actions should be taken as a result. More and more often, algorithms mediate social processes, business transactions, governmental decisions, and how we perceive, understand, and interact among ourselves and with the environment. Gaps between the design and operation of algorithms and our understanding of their ethical implications can have severe (...) consequences affecting individuals as well as groups and whole societies. This paper makes three contributions to clarify the ethical importance of algorithmic mediation. It provides a prescriptive map to organise the debate. It reviews the current discussion of ethical aspects of algorithms. And it assesses the available literature in order to identify areas requiring further work to develop the ethics of algorithms. (shrink)

Aim: Underscoring the xenophobic violence that has befallen African immigrants in South Africa in the recent past is the perception held in certain quarters that African immigrants take away entrepreneurial opportunities among others from the Natives. This paper sought to determine how African immigrant entrepreneurs identify business opportunities in South Africa in tandem with what South African entrepreneurs could learn from African immigrants. -/- Method: The paper was based on quantitative data from 220 participants collected by way of a (...) semi-structured questionnaire. As such, the study benefited from the qualitative insights associated with the use open-ended questions in the questionnaire. The data was analyzed using version 24 of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software. -/- Results: suggest that African immigrants uncover entrepreneurial opportunities through: startup partners, previous employment, families, through ethnic networks, prior knowledge of the market need, prior knowledge of how to serve the market and prior knowledge of the challenges serving the market. Value/Contribution: this study is premised on the fact that no previous study has attempted to investigate how immigrants identify business opportunities, in tandem with what South African entrepreneurs could learn from African immigrants. -/- Implications: Considering the close parallel between African immigrants and the indigenous black South Africans, it is to be hoped that the study would be of interest to the latter in particular, policy makers and academics in general. (shrink)

The 21st century imposed many challenges on mankind, among them there is a very important problem of entrepreneurial leadership transformation. Entrepreneurship gradual modification under the pressure of factors of innovation, informatization of the environment and the need for socialization of the relations between businessmen and society has led to the need of new understanding of leadership positions. The purpose of this scientific research is to substantiate the style of entrepreneurial leadership, which will become dominant in the 21st century. Analyzing and (...) systematizing the scientific works of many modern scholars by the methods of theoretical synthesis, analysis and synthesis, we have solved the problems of entrepreneurial leadership transformation. The use of the historical and logical method has revealed the relationship between the entrepreneurial leadership development and entrepreneurial types. The study found that the global business environment requires new leaders, whose key competences will meet the needs of society, educational space, ethical requirements, etc. Studying the similarities and differences of various leadership styles has become the basis for the allocation of a new style – the leadership of conscious influence, the main characteristics of which are given in this research. In order to achieve the goals, set by the leader-entrepreneur, it is proposed to systematize the leadership opportunities on tactical and strategic, the factors of influence on their realization in the future are generalized. By the method of scientific and theoretical prediction the portrait of an entrepreneur in a global perspective has been formed. Prospects for further research in this area are the development of a methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of business leaders' actions and systematization of ways to increase their effectiveness in the future. (shrink)