This study draws on deontic justice theory to examine an unexplored socioemotional micro-foundation of corporate social responsibility (CSR), namely anticipated guilt, in an effort to improve our understanding of employees’ moral reactions to their organization’s CSR. We empirically investigate whether environmental CSR induces anticipated guilt (i.e., concerns about future guilt for not contributing to organizational CSR) leading to organizational environmental citizenship behavior. We also consider two boundary conditions related to the social nature of anticipated guilt: line (...) manager support for the environment and negative environmental group norms. To test our hypotheses, we analyzed data from a convenience sample of 503 managers working in Mexican organizations, using Latent Moderated Structural equation modeling. Overall, our results support the deontic argument that employees care about CSR because CSR embodies moral concerns. Specifically, our findings show that efforts to avoid a guilty conscience increase when the line manager provides increased resources and control to act for the environment, and when group members do not care for the environment, suggesting that employees feel they have to compensate for their group’s moral failure. (shrink)

Abstract: This study aimed to identify the behavior of organizational citizenship in Palestinian Police Force between reality and expectations, and this study comes to study the reality of human resources and their organizational behavior in the police apparatus, which is the largest security services operating in Gaza Strip, so it is expected that this study will contribute to improving this This aspect will be reflected positively on serving the country and the citizen and achieving security (...) and safety for them. The study relied on the descriptive and analytical approach, using the questionnaire, and targeting a stratified random sample of (400) officers, who hold the rank of captain and above, from the study population of 1550 officers, and the study tool was distributed to the sample members in all departments and governorates Police in Gaza Strip. (353) questionnaires were retrieved, with a recovery rate of (88.3%), and they were analyzed using (SPSS) software. The study found that the organizational citizenship behavior was largely due to all its components. The study also showed that there are statistically significant differences between the respondents ’average response towards the organizational citizenship behavior due to the variables (type of administration, age group, job title, military rank, and years of service). The study recommended taking into account the interests of employees when making decisions and involving them in formulating them, explaining their justifications, and finally, the study recommended that organizational citizenship behavior be considered an organizational value that the police seek, and to create an organizational climate in which a sense of justice prevails, given its prominent role in stability, calm and discipline at work Thus, the elevation of the police institution and the achievement of its desired goals. (shrink)

The objective of this longitudinal study is to analyze the intrinsic drivers and values underlying managers’ organizational citizenship behaviors for the environment from a developmental psychology perspective based on measuring the stages of consciousness that shape the meaning-making systems of individuals. At time 1, the stages of consciousness of 138 managers were qualitatively assessed using the Leader Development Profile test. At time 2, a quantitative survey measured the environmental beliefs and OCBEs of these managers. The links between (...) stages of consciousness, environmental beliefs, and OCBEs were analyzed using hierarchical regressions. The main findings show that managers’ stages of consciousness positively influence two types of OCBEs, namely eco-initiatives and eco-helping, while environmental beliefs influence eco-helping and eco-civic engagement but do not appear to be connected with the stage of consciousness development. This paper first contributes to the literature on corporate greening by shedding more light on the aspects of behavioral and developmental psychology that underlie environmental leadership. Second, it bridges the gap between theories that have developed separately by showing the interconnectedness between the managers’ stage of consciousness and the more concrete environmental behaviors in the workplace that could have emulative effects throughout the organization. (shrink)

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to establish how academic employees in technical, vocational education and training (TVET) College perceive the effects of psychological contract breach (PCB) in relations to job involvement and citizenship behaviour. Quantitative exploratory research design and a survey instrument were used to collect 170 samples from academic employees in a TVET College to share their perceptions of PCB. The findings confirm a significant (P-value .006) relationship between PCB and job involvement. There is a strong (...) indication that PCB has an effect on job involvement. The findings also revealed that there is a relationship between PCB and organisational citizenship behaviour. However, it is not significant since the (P-value was .119) in the regression analysis. These results are a consequence of academics not feeling a significant PCB, which might have explained better the relationship between PCB and organisational citizenship behaviour. Significantly, the paper established TVET College academics has a stable employer-employee relationship since there is minimal PCB. (shrink)

Background: Liver cancer is one of the malignant tumors worldwide, while the prevention and control situation is grim at present, and the diffusion of its early screening technology still faces some challenges. This study aims to investigate the influencing mechanism of perceived ease of use, organizational support mechanism, and industry competitive pressure on hepatic early screening technologies use by physicians, so as to promote the wider use of corresponding technologies. -/- Methods: Under the theoretical guidance of technology-organization-environment framework (...) and mindsponge theory, this study took hepatic contrast-enhanced ultrasound as an example, and conducted a cross-sectional questionnaire by randomly selecting physicians from Fujian and Jiangxi provinces in China with a high and low incidence of liver cancer, respectively. Structural equation modeling was used to determine the correlation among perceived ease of use, organizational support mechanism, and industry competitive pressure, as well as their impact on the physicians’ behavior toward contrast-enhanced ultrasound use. -/- Results: The hypothesis model fits well with the data (χ2/df = 1.863, GFI = 0.937, AGFI = 0.908, RMSEA = 0.054, NFI = 0.959, IFI = 0.980, CFI = 0.980). Under technology-organization-environment framework, the perceived ease of use (β = 0.171, p < 0.05), organizational support mechanism (β = 0.423, p < 0.01), industry competitive pressure (β = 0.159, p < 0.05) significantly influenced physicians’ use of hepatic contrast-enhanced ultrasound. Besides, perceived ease of use and organizational support mechanism (β = 0.216, p < 0.01), perceived ease of use and industry competitive pressure (β = 0.671, p < 0.01), organizational support mechanism and industry competitive pressure (β = 0.330, p < 0.01) were all associated significantly. -/- Conclusion: From the lens of information processing (mindsponge theory) and technology-organization-environment framework, this study clarified the social and psychological influencing mechanism of perceived ease of use, organizational support mechanism, and industry competitive pressure on physicians’ use of hepatic contrast-enhanced ultrasound. The results will directly propose recommendations for expanding hepatic contrast-enhanced ultrasound utilization and indirectly promoting other appropriate and effective health technologies diffusion within the integrated health system. (shrink)

Job burnout, organizational commitment, and work environment continue to be important areas of research to be studied in the realm of company employment and employee retention. Job burnout is the state of physical and emotional exhaustion and perceiving one’s profession as dull or overwhelming. Meanwhile, organizational commitment refers to the company’s attitude towards the organization and their employees, encompassing loyalty, moral responsibility, and their willingness to work. And lastly, work environment provides opportunities for employees to establish (...) connections, develop skills, and maximize their full potential in performing tasks. For the current study, researchers utilized descriptive-correlational research design to investigate the influence of Work Environment towards the job burnout and organizational commitment of BPO agents in selected companies in Bulacan, Philippines. Hence, Danish Psychosocial Work Environment Questionnaire (DPQ), Maslach Burnout Inventory - General Survey (MBI-GS), and the Three-Dimensional Model of Organizational Commitment Scale (ACS, NCS, CCS) were employed to properly assess the study's objectives. Multiple Linear Regression Analysis was performed to analyze the collected data. Based on the analysis, findings show that work environment has no significant influence on the job burnout and organizational commitment of BPO Agents. Furthermore, the results of this study were thoroughly evaluated, leading to an in-depth discussion. Based on the findings, recommendations were made to benefit the stakeholders of the study and contributeto the existing body of knowledge. (shrink)

Extant research suggests that individuals employ traditional moral heuristics to support their observed altruistic behavior; yet findings have largely been limited to inductive extrapolation and rely on relatively few traditional frames in so doing, namely, deontology in organizational behavior and virtue theory in law and economics. Given that these and competing moral frames such as utilitarianism can manifest as identical behavior, we develop a moral framing instrument—the Philosophical Moral-Framing Measure (PMFM)—to expand and distinguish traditional frames associated (...) and disassociated with observed altruistic behavior. The validation of our instrument based on 1015 subjects in 3 separate real stakes scenarios indicates that heuristic forms of deontology, virtue-theory, and utilitarianism are strongly related to such behavior, and that egoism is an inhibitor. It also suggests that deontic and virtue-theoretical frames may be commonly perceived as intertwined and opens the door for new research on self-abnegation, namely, a perceived moral obligation toward suffering and self-denial. These findings hold the potential to inform ongoing conversations regarding organizational citizenship and moral crowding out, namely, how financial incentives can undermine altruistic behavior. (shrink)

Purpose – Although there have been several studies on corporate justice and employee ethical behavior, little is known about the conditions in which this link develops. The purpose of this study is to investigate the direct effect of organizational justice and moral attentiveness toward employee ethical behavior. Importantly, this study also considers the moderating role of moral attentiveness on the links between organizational justice and employee ethical behavior. -/- Design/methodology/approach – The data was collected (...) from 350 employees who were assessed directly to supervisors in 12 manufacturing companies placed in Malaysia, operated full-time, and had regular interaction with their direct supervisors. In particular, using two-wave survey data obtained from 270 employees working in the manufacturing industry in Malaysia. -/- Findings – Results showed that organizational justice and moral attentiveness positively impact the employee ethical behavior as predicted. New to the literature, findings disclose that moral attentiveness strengthens this relationship. Importantly, the positive impact of organizational justice is sharply positive under high than low moral attentive employees and ceases to be significant among low morally attentive personnel. -/- Research limitations/implications – This research focused on the notion of ethics and how important it is for society. The principles, norms and ideals that guide an individual’s behavior are referred to as ethics. Because the authors need to be treated with dignity as human beings, ethical behavior is essential in society. -/- Practical implications – The findings of this study send a clear signal to managers that “failing to ensure that their employees perceive organizational justice” may undermine every effort made by them to improve their organizations’ ethical quality. Importantly, the findings emphasize the role of moral attentiveness in improving the ethical behavior of employees both directly and by strengthening the effectiveness of organizational justice to impact such a behavior positively. So, given the advantages of moral attentiveness in terms of improving employee ethical conduct, businesses should make every effort to hire and choose people who meet this requirement because it is not easy to spot this personality trait. Human resource managers may assess candidates’ moral attentiveness using a range of methods such as group debate, an in-basket exercise, organized interviews and business games that concentrate on specific ethical concerns. -/- Social implications – This research focused on the notion of ethics and how important it is for society. The principles, norms and ideals that guide an individual’s behavior are referred to as ethics. Because the authors need to be treated with dignity as human beings, ethical behavior is essential in society. (shrink)

This paper introduces a body of research on Organizational Behavior and Industrial/organizational Psychology that expands the range of empirical evidence relevant to the ongoing character-situation debate. This body of research, mostly neglected by moral philosophers, provides important insights to move the debate forward. First, the OB/io scholarship provides empirical evidence to show that social environments like organizations have significant power to shape the character traits of their members. This scholarship also describes some of the mechanisms through which (...) this process of reshaping character takes place. Second, the character-situation debate has narrowly focused on situational influences that affect behavior episodically and haphazardly. The OB/io research, however, highlights the importance of distinguishing such situational influences from influences that, like organizational influences, shape our character traits because they are continuous and coordinated. Third, the OB/io literature suggests that most individuals display character traits that, while local to the organization, can be consistent across situations. This puts pressure on the accounts of character proposed by traditional virtue ethics and situationism and provides empirical support to interactionist models based on cognitive-affective processing system theories of personality. Finally, the OB/io literature raises important challenges to the possibility of achieving virtue, provides valuable and untapped resources to cultivate character, and suggests new avenues of normative and empirical research. (shrink)

E-learning has taken it full fudged emergence with regards to Covid Scenario. Also, the lockdown of schools and playgrounds, the restriction of outdoor activities, physical and social isolation leads to the behavioural change among school children. Students are more attached to their schools, teachers and friends. But Covid 19 has changed the entire situation changed and they were held in their home itself. Students were not able to meet their friends and teachers, they especially miss their school and class (...) class='Hi'>environment. It is to be noted that maintaining social isolation and following “Stay at Home” plays a very high impact among school students. Also, the lockdown created for families and children sit inside their homes. Which ,We cannot leave children’s education as it is. In order to continue their education, Indian Government has taken many efforts .Even schools are doing their best to bridge the gap between teachers and students by providing online education because of the absence of regular classroom education. Because of the introduction of online class by schools, on the one side students are not missing the education, on the other side students and parents faces a lot of problems (Physical and mental. It also puts them at the risk of unsupervised access to websites and other unwanted sites in internet. (shrink)

[This paper is written in Czech.] The aim of this article is to briefly introduce and critically analyze the dialogue between phenomenology and contemporary theories of embodied cognition in relation to the study of affectivity. The author explains how these theoretical approaches interpret the dynamic relationship between affective experiences on the one hand and bodily behavior and intersubjectively observable processes taking place in the environment on the other. He first summarizes the positions of Joel Krueger and Giovanna Colombetti, (...) who draw on the theories of extended cognition and enactivism, and then compares them with Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach. In this way, there are found to be inconsistencies in Krueger’s and Colombetti’s approaches, whose resolution, in the author’s opinion, requires the working out of a rigorously “relational” interpretation of affectivity. From this point of view, affectivity is not understood as an internal phenomenon causally linked to external material factors, but strictly as a dynamic relationship between a sense-making agent and his or her meaningful environment. (shrink)

Abstract: Purpose - This study aimed to analyze the relationship between the determinants of organizational justice and their relationship to conscientious behavior from the point of view of officers working in the Palestinian police in Gaza Strip. Methodology - The study relied on the descriptive and analytical approach, using the questionnaire, targeting a stratified random sample of (400) officers, who hold the rank of captain and above, from the study population of 1550 officers. The study tool was distributed (...) among the sample members in all departments and governorates. Police in Gaza Strip. (353) questionnaires were retrieved, with a recovery rate of (88.3%). Findings - The existence of a positive correlation between the determinants of organizational justice and the behavior of conscience, and the existence of organizational justice in general in a medium degree and the order of its determinants is as follows: fairness of dealings and to a large degree, followed by fairness of procedures and a medium degree, and finally distribution fairness was to a small degree, while the behavior of conscience awareness came to a large extent. Significance - The existence of statistically significant differences between the respondents' averages of responding to the searched relationship due to the variables (type of administration, age group, job title, military rank, years of service). Recommendations - Work to take into account the fairness of distribution by providing adequate and fair salaries, granting bonuses for the additional efforts exerted, and budgeting in the distribution of duties and job burdens, as well as recommending attention to the interests of employees when making decisions and involving them in formulating them, explaining their justifications, and creating an organizational climate dominated by a sense of justice. (shrink)

A crucial socio-political challenge for our age is how to rede!ne or extend group membership in such a way that it adequately responds to phenomena related to globalization like the prevalence of migration, the transformation of family and social networks, and changes in the position of the nation state. Two centuries ago Immanuel Kant assumed that international connectedness between humans would inevitably lead to the realization of world citizen rights. Nonetheless, globalization does not just foster cosmopolitanism but simultaneously yields the (...) development of new group boundaries. Group membership is indeed a fundamental issue in political processes, for: “the primary good that we distribute to one another is membership in some human community” – it is within the political community that power is being shared and, if possible, held back from non-members. In sum, it is appropriate to consider group membership a fundamental ingredient of politics and political theory. How group boundaries are drawn is then of only secondary importance. Indeed, Schmitt famously declared that “[e]very religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it is suffciently strong to group human beings e#ectively according to friend and enemy”. Even though Schmitt’s idea of politics as being constituted by such antithetical groupings is debatable, it is plausible to consider politics among other things as a way of handling intergroup di#erences. Obviously, some of the group-constituting factors are more easily discernable from one’s appearance than others, like race, ethnicity, or gender. As a result, factors like skin color or sexual orientation sometimes carry much political weight even though individuals would rather con!ne these to their private lives and individual identity. Given the potential tension between the political reality of particular groupmembership defnitions and the – individual and political – struggles against those definitions and corresponding attitudes, citizenship and civic behavior becomes a complex issue. As Kymlicka points out, it implies for citizens an additional obligation to non-discrimination regarding those groups: “[t]his extension of non-discrimination from government to civil society is not just a shift in the scale of liberal norms, it also involves a radical extension in the obligations of liberal citizenship”. Unfortunately, empirical research suggests that political intolerance towards other groups “may be the more natural and ‘easy’ position to hold”. Indeed, since development of a virtue of civility or decency regarding other groups is not easy, as it often runs against deeply engrained stereotypes and prejudices, political care for matters like education is justified. Separate schools, for example, may erode children’s motivation to act as citizens, erode their capacity for it and!nally diminish their opportunities to experience transcending their particular group membership and behave as decent citizens. This chapter outlines a possible explanation for such consequences. That explanation will be found to be interdisciplinary in nature, combining insights from political theory and cognitive neuroscience. In doing so, it does not focus on collective action, even though that is a usual focus for political studies. For example, results pertaining to collective political action have demonstrated that the relation between attitudes and overt voting behavior or political participation is not as direct and strong as was hoped for. Several conditions, including the individual’s experiences, self-interest, and relevant social norms, turned out to interfere in the link between his or her attitude and behavior. Important as collective action is, this chapter is concerned with direct interaction between agents and the in$uence of group membership on such interaction – in particular joint action. Although politics does include many forms of action that require no such physical interaction, such physical interaction between individuals remains fundamental to politics – this is the reason why separate schooling may eventually undermine the citizenship of its isolated pupils. This chapter will focus on joint action, de!ned as: “any form of social interaction whereby two or more individuals coordinate their actions in space and time to bring about a change in the environment”. Cognitive neuroscienti!c evidence demonstrates that for such joint action to succeed, the agents have to integrate the actions and expected actions of the other person in their own action plans at several levels of speci!city. Although neuroscienti!c research is necessarily limited to simple forms of action, this concurs with a philosophical analysis of joint action, which I will discuss below. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to move from the foreign dominated to the self-dominated by encouraging people to draw their own conclusions with the help of own rational consideration. Here a room as an environment that is encouraging innovation, which can be denoted as “Innovation Lab”, and making processes as can be regarded as “Smart Lab” is an essential base. The question related to this generalized self-organizational learning method investigated in our paper is how a UVC, which (...) is a room that connects people from different physical places to one synchronous and virtual perceivable place, which is built on these preconditions, can be operated both resource and learning-efficient for both the course participants and the educational organization. A practical approach of implementing a virtual classroom concept, including informative tutorial-feedback, is developed conceptually that also accounts for and implements the results of reinforcement machine-learning methods in AI applications. The difference that makes the difference is gained by reimplementing the AI tools in an AI instrument, in a “Smart Lab” environment and that in the teaching environment. By means of this, a cascaded feedback-loop system is informally installed, which gains feedback at different levels of abstraction. By this learning on each stage, in a collaborative and together decentralized and sequential fashion takes place, as the selforganizational implementations lead implicitly, also by means of the in the course implemented tools, to increasingly self-control. As such in the course, a tool is implemented, as generalizations by means of reinforcement learnings are to be emergently foreseen by this method, which goes beyond the tools, that have already been implemented before. This AI-enhanced learning coevolution shall then, predictively, as well increase the potential of the course participants as the educational organization according to the Wittgensteinean parable: A ladder leading into a selfly-organized future. (shrink)

Theoretical accounts of development exhibit several internal tensions and face multiple challenges. They span from the problem of the identification of the temporal boundaries of development (beginning and end) to the characterization of the distinctive type of change involved compared to other biological processes. They include questions such as the role to ascribe to the environment or what types of biological systems can undergo development and whether they should include colonies or even ecosystems. In this chapter we discuss these (...) conceptual issues, and we argue that adopting an organizational approach may help solve or clarify them. -/- While development is usually identified with the achievement of an adult form with the capability to reproduce and therefore maintain a lineage, adopting the organizational approach may provide a different strategy, which focuses also on the maintenance of the current organization of the organism. By doing so an organizational approach favors a switch in perspective which consists in analyzing how organisms maintain their viability at each moment of development rather than considering them as going through intermediate stages of a process directed toward a specific goal state. This developmental dimension of biological organization has yet to be given a general and detailed analysis within the organizational theoretical perspective, apart from some preliminary attempts. How a biological organization is maintained through a series of radical organizational changes and what these changes are issues that still require clarification. In this chapter we offer the beginnings of such an analysis of developmental transitions, understood as changes in functionality brought forth by regulatory mechanisms in the context of the continued maintenance of organizational viability at every step. (shrink)

Building on existing forms of critical, cultural, biopolitical, and sociopolitical posthumanism, in this text a new framework is developed for understanding and guiding the forces of technologization and posthumanization that are reshaping contemporary organizations. This ‘organizational posthumanism’ is an approach to analyzing, creating, and managing organizations that employs a post-dualistic and post-anthropocentric perspective and which recognizes that emerging technologies will increasingly transform the kinds of members, structures, systems, processes, physical and virtual spaces, and external ecosystems that are available for (...) organizations to utilize. It is argued that this posthumanizing technologization of organizations will especially be driven by developments in three areas: 1) technologies for human augmentation and enhancement, including many forms of neuroprosthetics and genetic engineering; 2) technologies for synthetic agency, including robotics, artificial intelligence, and artificial life; and 3) technologies for digital-physical ecosystems and networks that create the environments within which and infrastructure through which human and artificial agents will interact. -/- Drawing on a typology of contemporary posthumanism, organizational posthumanism is shown to be a hybrid form of posthumanism that combines both analytic, synthetic, theoretical, and practical elements. Like analytic forms of posthumanism, organizational posthumanism recognizes the extent to which posthumanization has already transformed businesses and other organizations; it thus occupies itself with understanding organizations as they exist today and developing strategies and best practices for responding to the forces of posthumanization. On the other hand, like synthetic forms of posthumanism, organizational posthumanism anticipates the fact that intensifying and accelerating processes of posthumanization will create future realities quite different from those seen today; it thus attempts to develop conceptual schemas to account for such potential developments, both as a means of expanding our theoretical knowledge of organizations and of enhancing the ability of contemporary organizational stakeholders to conduct strategic planning for a radically posthumanized long-term future. (shrink)

Purpose – With the growing demand for ethical standards in the prevailing business environment, ethical leadership has been under increasingly more focus. Based on the social exchange theory and social learning theory, this study scrutinized the impact of ethical leadership on the presentation of ethical conduct by employees through the ethical climate. Notably, this study scrutinized the moderating function of the person organization fit (P-O fit) in relation to ethical climate and the ethical conduct of employees. -/- Design/methodology/approach – (...) To evaluate the research hypotheses, two-wave data were collected from 295 individuals who are currently employed in various Iraqi organizations (i.e. manufacturing, medical, and insurance industries). -/- Findings – In line with the hypotheses, the outcomes from a sample of 295 workers working in different Iraqi entities exhibited a positive relationship between the ethical behavior of leaders and the ethical conduct of employees in the ethical climate. Moreover, it was observed that the P-O fit of employees moderated the relationship between ethical climate and the ethical conduct of employees such that the relationship was more robust for those with a high P-O fit in comparison to those with a low P-O fit. -/- Research limitations/implications – The primary limitation of this study is in the data, which was obtained from a single source. Although the study conducted two surveys and utilized a mediation and moderation variables model that was less likely to be influenced by common method bias (CMB) (Podsakoff et al., 2012), one cannot completely rule out CMB. Apart from the potential effects of the CMB, the consistency of the empirical findings could have also been compromised since self-reported data were utilized in measuring ethical behavior, which can be a very complex and sensitive issue. For this reason, the social desirability response bias cannot be ruled out completely. When possible, future studies must gather data from multiple sources. Furthermore, supervisors must evaluate the ethical behavior of employees. Another limitation was that the findings of this study were based on a sample in a Middle Eastern cultural context such as in Iraq. Perhaps, the particular cultural features of this context, which encompassed, among other things, strong adherence to religious values (Moaddel, 2010), could have influenced the findings of this study. It is true that the effects of differences (P–O fit) are highly likely to replicate across cultural contexts (Triandis et al., 1988). However, it can be seen that further studies are needed to evaluate the context-sensitivity of these findings (Whetten, 2009) by analyzing other cultures, where the importance of religiosity is on the decline (i.e. in Western countries, Ribberink et al., 2018) or where the cultural features are very much different from those that apply to Iraq. Lastly, other external factors were not taken into account by this study as it tried to explain ethical behavior. Ethics is a highly complex subject and is influenced by numerous variables at the organizational, individual, and external environment levels. Thus, caution must be observed when making inferences from the present study which, to a certain degree, offered a simplified version of ethical behavior by concentrating on a few variables such as the Arab culture’s traditional ideology, which dominates even science (Abu Khalil, 1992). In addition, there are political conflicts in the Middle Eastern cultural context such as what is happening in Iraq (Harff, 2018). Thus, it is important to include such aspects in future researches. -/- Practical implications – In terms of management, the findings send a clear signal to those in the upper echelon that, without ignoring the issue of ethics in organizations, employees are a critical aspect to be taken into account to encourage ethical behavior at the workplace. This study has important practical implications. First, this study determined that ethical leadership (here, of the supervisors) positively influences the behavior of subordinates (refers to the supervisors here); this, in turn, further improves the ethical behavior of employees. It is vital that managers or supervisors are motivated to practice ethical leadership because they directly influence the employees. It has been suggested that top managers, especially chief executive officers, have the ability to shape the ethical climate, which also influences the ethical behavior of employees further. This study offered several feasible ways that managers can apply to achieve that. In particular, top managers may utilize the ethical climate as a way of communicating the ethical values that they have to their subordinates, thereby serving as a motivation for the subordinates to adopt ethical behavior. It was also suggested by this study that ethical climate and the P–O fit may, to some degree, substitute each other as they influence the ethical behavior of employees. Therefore, firms that were identified to have a low level of ethical standards, practices, and policies, at least from the employees’ perspective, are better poised to conduct ethical issues in order to construct the ethical behavior of their subordinates. More importantly, it is highly essential that the value congruence between an organization and its followers be considered. -/- Social implications – This study highlighted the notion of ethics and how it’s essential for society. Ethics refers to the norms, standards, and values that direct the behavior of an individual. Ethical behavior is vital in society because we need to be treated with respect as human beings. -/- Originality/value – This study responds to recent calls for more research to identify factors that may strengthen or mitigate the influence of ethical behavior in the workplace such as ethical leadership, ethical climate, and Person–Organization. (shrink)

Abstract: This study aimed to analyze the relationship between the determinants of organizational justice and altruistic behavior from the point of view of the police officers in Gaza Strip. The study relied on the descriptive and analytical approach, using the questionnaire, and targeting a stratified random sample of (400) officers, who hold the rank of captain and above, from the study population of 1550 officers, and the study tool was distributed to the sample members in all departments and (...) governorates Police in Gaza Strip. (353) questionnaires were retrieved, with a recovery rate of (88.3%). The study found the existence of a positive correlation between the determinants of organizational justice and altruistic behavior, and the study also found the existence of organizational justice in general in a moderate degree and the order of its determinants was as follows: fairness of dealings and to a large degree, followed by fairness of procedures and a medium degree, and finally, distribution fairness was to a small degree, as for altruistic behavior. It came to a large extent. There are statistically significant differences between the respondents ’average response to the researched relationship due to the variables (Type Of Administration, Age Group, Job Title, Military Rank, and Years of Service). Taking into account the fairness of distribution by providing appropriate and fair salaries, granting bonuses for the additional efforts exerted, and budgeting in the distribution of duties and job burdens, and paying attention to the interests of employees when making decisions and involving them in formulating them, explaining their justifications, and considering altruistic behavior as a value, and the creation of an organizational climate dominated by a sense of justice, because of its prominent role in stability, calm and discipline at work, and thus the elevation of the police institution and the achievement of its desired goals. (shrink)

We reflect on the nature of corporate codes of conduct is this article. Based on John Austin’s speech act theory, four characteristics of a performative concept of corporate codes will be introduced: 1) the existential self-performative of the firm identity, 2) which is demanded by and responsive to their stakeholders; 3) Because corporate codes are structurally threatened by the possibility of failure, 4) embracing the code not only consists in actual corporate responsible behaviour in light of the code, but in (...) the incessant recapturing of the code in the struggle of firms against the possible incongruence between their ethical principles and their actual responsible behaviour. A performative concept of corporate codes helps to bridge classical dichotomies like individualist versus collectivist approaches of moral agency and restrictive versus empowering ethics, and opens a new perspective on the interaction between individual ethical behaviour and the corporate institutionalisation of codes. (shrink)

This study examines the impact of Islamic Work Ethic on organizational citizenship behaviors and knowledge-sharing behaviors among university employees in Pakistan. A total of 215 respondents from public sector educational institutions participated in this research. The findings suggest that IWE has a positive effect on OCBs. In other words, individuals with high IWE demonstrate more citizenship behaviors than those with low IWE. The findings also suggest a positive effect of IWE on KSBs. Individuals with high IWE exhibit (...) more KSBs than those with low IWE. The paper also discusses the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. (shrink)

Products made from animal fur and skin have been a major part of human civilization. However, in modern society, the unsustainable consumption of these products – often considered luxury goods – has many negative environmental impacts. This study explores how people’s perceptions of biodiversity affect their attitudes and behaviors toward consumption. To investigate the information process deeper, we add the moderation of beliefs about biodiversity loss. Following the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics, we use mindsponge-based reasoning for constructing conceptual (...) models and employ Bayesian analysis aided by Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms on a dataset of 535 Vietnamese urban residents. The results show that people’s preference for using products made from animal skin/fur is negatively associated with perceived consequences of biodiversity loss when they believe biodiversity loss is real and a major problem. In contrast, if urban residents believe biodiversity loss is unreal or not a significant issue, the association between perceived consequences of biodiversity loss and personal preference happens in the opposite direction. The same effects of biodiversity loss perception on people’s possession of skin/fur products was not found, indicating a more complex information process on behaviors compared to attitudes. Nevertheless, in the scenario that people believe biodiversity loss is not a significant issue, the higher the perceived consequences of biodiversity loss are, the greater number of animal-based products they likely own. Our results suggest that policymakers should not neglect the factor of personal belief besides knowledge and awareness in environmental campaigns. (shrink)

Products made from animal fur and skin have been a major part of human civilization. However, in modern society, the unsustainable consumption of these products – often considered luxury goods – has many negative environmental impacts. This study explores how people’s perceptions of biodiversity affect their attitudes and behaviors toward consumption. To investigate the information process deeper, we add the moderation of beliefs about biodiversity loss. Following the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics, we use mindsponge-based reasoning for constructing conceptual (...) models and employ Bayesian analysis aided by Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms on a dataset of 535 Vietnamese urban residents. The results show that people’s preference for using products made from animal skin/fur is negatively associated with perceived consequences of biodiversity loss when they believe biodiversity loss is real and a major problem. In contrast, if urban residents believe biodiversity loss is unreal or not a significant issue, the association between perceived consequences of biodiversity loss and personal preference happens in the opposite direction. The same effects of biodiversity loss perception on people’s possession of skin/fur products was not found, indicating a more complex information process on behaviors compared to attitudes. Nevertheless, in the scenario that people believe biodiversity loss is not a significant issue, the higher the perceived consequences of biodiversity loss are, the greater number of animal-based products they likely own. Our results suggest that policymakers should not neglect the factor of personal belief besides knowledge and awareness in environmental campaigns. (shrink)

Scholars in the field of environmental and animal ethics have propounded theories that outline what, in their view, ought to constitute an ethical relationship between humans and the environment and humans and nonhuman animals respectively. In the field of animal ethics, the contributions by Western scholars to theorize a body of animal ethics, either as an ethic in its own right or as a branch of the broader field of environmental ethics is clearly seen. Consequently, there are, notably, two (...) main schools of thought in the field of animal ethics. These are the ‘welfarist’ and the ‘rightist’ approaches (Regan, 2006; Owoseni & Olatoye, 2014). Unfortunately, a clearly concerted effort to theorize on animal ethics from an African perspective is at the minimal, although there is a lot written in African environmental ethics, broadly construed. It is within this context that this study locates an African animal ethic within the two main theories in the global animal ethics debate, using traditional Akan ontology and ethics particularly, those that speak to their relationship with the environment and, especially animals. Thus, using Akan ontological worldview and ethics as foundational sources, alongside learned principles from the emerging theories in African environmental ethics, the study seeks to find the place of Akan animal ethics within the rightist and welfarist debates. (shrink)

A startling amount of intelligent activity can be controlled without reasoning or thought. By tuning the perceptual system to task relevant properties a creature can cope with relatively sophisticated environments without concepts. There is a limit, however, to how far a creature without concepts can go. Rod Brooks, like many ecologically oriented scientists, argues that the vast majority of intelligent behaviour is concept-free. To evaluate this position I consider what special benefits accrue to concept-using creatures. Concepts are either necessary for (...) certain types of perception, learning, and control, or they make those processes computationally simpler. Once a creature has concepts its capacities are vastly multiplied. (shrink)

The study assessed the conceptual understanding and attitude toward fractions of teacher education students in a socio-constructivist learning environment. Specifically, it determined the students’ level of conceptual understanding before and after instruction; verified the types of conceptual changes that occurred; and ascertained the attitude of students toward fractions before and after instruction and its relationship to their levels of understanding. Descriptive-correlational research method was used. Socio-constructivist context-based teaching method was employed to introduce the concept of fractions. Achievement (...) tests and interviews were administered to determine the students’ level of conceptual understanding. Conceptual analysis based on Jensen and Finley’s (1995) method with Tiberghien’s (1994) classification of changes was utilized to describe students’ conceptual understanding and conceptual changes. In order to determine their attitude on fractions, students were asked to answer the socio-constructivist attitude questionnaire. The level of conceptual understanding of teacher education students in fraction was functional misconception and partial understanding before and after instruction, respectively. The type of conceptual change that occurred among teacher education students was change for the better. Socio-constructivist learning more likely to improve students’ attitudes toward fractions; promoted prosocial behavior among students; and tend to increase students’ activeness in the classroom activities as evidenced. (shrink)

Recent advances in neuroimaging technologies have rendered multimodal analysis of operators’ cognitive processes in complex task settings and environments increasingly more practical. In this exploratory study, we utilized optical brain imaging and mobile eye tracking technologies to investigate the behavioral and neurophysiological differences among expert and novice operators while they operated a human-machine interface in normal and adverse conditions. In congruence with related work, we observed that experts tended to have lower prefrontal oxygenation and exhibit gaze patterns that are better (...) aligned with the optimal task sequence with shorter fixation durations as compared to novices. These trends reached statistical significance only in the adverse condition where the operators were prompted with an unexpected error message. Comparisons between hemodynamic and gaze measures before and after the error message indicated that experts’ neurophysiological response to the error involved a systematic increase in bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activity accompanied with an increase in fixation durations, which suggests a shift in their attentional state, possibly from routine process execution to problem detection and resolution. The novices’ response was not as strong as that of experts, including a slight increase only in the left dlPFC with a decreasing trend in fixation durations, which is indicative of visual search behavior for possible cues to make sense of the unanticipated situation. A linear discriminant analysis model capitalizing on the covariance structure among hemodynamic and eye movement measures could distinguish experts from novices with 91% accuracy. Despite the small sample size, the performance of the linear discriminant analysis combining eye fixation and dorsolateral oxygenation measures before and after an unexpected event suggests that multimodal approaches may be fruitful for distinguishing novice and expert performance in similar neuroergonomic applications in the field. (shrink)

This paper examines some of the methods animals and humans have of adapting their environment. Because there are limits on how many different tasks a creature can be designed to do well in, creatures with the capacity to redesign their environments have an adaptive advantage over those who can only passively adapt to existing environmental structures. To clarify environmental redesign I rely on the formal notion of a task environment as a directed graph where the nodes are states (...) and the links are actions. One natural form of redesign is to change the topology of this graph structure so as to increase the likelihood of task success or to reduce its expected cost, measured in physical terms. This may be done by eliminating initial states hence eliminating choice points; by changing the action repertoire; by changing the consequence function; and lastly, by adding choice points. Another major method for adapting the environment is to change its cognitive congeniality. Such changes leave the state space formally intact but reduce the number and cost of mental operations needed for task success; they reliably increase the speed, accuracy or robustness of performance. The last section of the paper describes several of these epistemic or complementary actions found in human performance. (shrink)

Today’s organizations are operating in a highly competitive and changing environment ‎that ‎pushes them to adapt their organizational structures to such ‎environments continuously. ‎However, the ethical behavior of employees is considered a bridge to the organization’s success ‎, driven by positive beliefs. This study's purpose of examining the psychological and ethical ‎beliefs' that influence employees' behavior at the workplace through a literature review. This ‎paper uses two terms: "ethical beliefs” and “psychological beliefs.” They both ‎are different (...) but can significantly influence the behavior of employees. Positive psychological and ‎strong ethical beliefs drive ethical behaviors at the workplace, such as honesty, accountability, ‎fairness, responsibility, trust, and integrity, which lead to better performance, a productive team, and ‎positivity in the workplace. It helps to develop a professional relationship with employees, ‎effective communication, accountability, and professionalism at work. While negative ‎psychological and weak ethical beliefs drive unethical behavior, including taking credit for other ‎hard work, abuse, verbal harassment, violence, lack of ambitions and professionalism, theft, ‎corrupt practices, etc. Finally, the arguments demonstrate that some ethical beliefs are perceived ‎to be more objective and appropriate than psychological beliefs. The ethical beliefs of workers ‎considered more formal than psychological beliefs. ‎. (shrink)

Grasping the identity of hybrids, that is beings which cross the binarism of nature and technology (e.g. genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), syn-bio inventions, biomimetic projects), is problematic since it is still guided by self-evident dualistic categories, either as artefacts or as natural entities. To move beyond the limitations of such a one-sided understanding of hybrids, we suggest turning towards the categories of affordances and the juxtaposition of needs and patterns of proper use, as inspired by the Heideggerian version of phenomenology. Drawing (...) upon selected concepts by Heidegger, we argue that hybrids can be conceptualised as a regenerative design and use to serve the planet. We argue that the ideal type of non-exploitative account of hybrids consists of the adaptive approach to the environment, which does not, however, exclude the possibility of designing and constructing new beings. We also point out that hybrids undermine the divide of being destructive/regenerative which marks the boundaries of nature and technology. (shrink)

Abstract- Performance is the primary function of human resource management and it becomes life line of an organizational success. The performance gap is extremely highly detrimental towards an organizational success. Prevailing study is concerned with the affecting factors of teachers’ performance in which administrative bureaucratization, unequal provision of opportunities, social status and incentives gap loss the vitality and tempo of performance in classroom atmosphere. Emergence of complexities in teachers’ life allow to a complex instructional approach that gives birth (...) to a problematic classroom and breach the center of attention and rejects a sound learning environment. The exiting study is concerned with an investigation of teachers hampering antecedents to lower down their performance by an empirical means on the basis of survey research and quantitative approach. In data collection 350 questionnaires were distributed and respondents’ feedback remained 243 (69.4%) and population was investigated on the basis of affecting antecedents towards teachers’ performance at middle and higher secondary level and random sampling technique was applied. Five points Likert scale tool was used to collect the data and analysis was carried out via SPSS version 24. Lowering performance hampers the education transmission to coming generation and it results to professional dissatisfaction and unfriendliness to class room environment. The reflexive attitudes of teacher relate to boredom, monotony and ineffective delivery of teaching objectives and scarcity of interest prevail and feelings like deprivation to students and coworkers to become a reason to discontent and discomfort towards the organization. (shrink)

Recent advances in neuroimaging technologies have rendered multimodal analysis of operators’ cognitive processes in complex task settings and environments increasingly more practical. In this exploratory study, we utilized optical brain imaging and mobile eye tracking technologies to investigate the behavioral and neurophysiological differences among expert and novice operators while they operated a human-machine interface in normal and adverse conditions. In congruence with related work, we observed that experts tended to have lower prefrontal oxygenation and exhibit gaze patterns that are better (...) aligned with the optimal task sequence with shorter fixation durations as compared to novices. These trends reached statistical significance only in the adverse condition where the operators were prompted with an unexpected error message. Comparisons between hemodynamic and gaze measures before and after the error message indicated that experts’ neurophysiological response to the error involved a systematic increase in bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activity accompanied with an increase in fixation durations, which suggests a shift in their attentional state, possibly from routine process execution to problem detection and resolution. The novices’ response was not as strong as that of experts, including a slight increase only in the left dlPFC with a decreasing trend in fixation durations, which is indicative of visual search behavior for possible cues to make sense of the unanticipated situation. A linear discriminant analysis model capitalizing on the covariance structure among hemodynamic and eye movement measures could distinguish experts from novices with 91% accuracy. Despite the small sample size, the performance of the linear discriminant analysis combining eye fixation and dorsolateral oxygenation measures before and after an unexpected event suggests that multimodal approaches may be fruitful for distinguishing novice and expert performance in similar neuroergonomic applications in the field. (shrink)

The adolescence is an important period in which one's character, behaviour, habits, and future lifestyles are developed. Influence of peer is more than the influence of adults, parents, and teachers in this period. Therefore, this research paper aims to explore the potential impact of infatuation and romantic relation to learning behaviour of school-going adolescents. Total of 108 adolescent students were surveyed using the questionnaire method. Both the primary and secondary data are used in this study and it is descriptive in (...) nature. Result highlights that a majority of the respondents have experienced distraction, stress, and low academic performance due to infatuation and romantic relationship. It has a negative impact on learning behaviour among adolescents undergoing infatuation or romantic relation. It is recommended that creation of awareness among teachers and parents in the school and home to provide appropriate support and care to the adolescents is essential. A flexible environment in the school and home must be created to make the adolescents develop positive behaviour towards learning. (shrink)

The approach to the study the role of strategic alliances in the conditions of digital business transformations has been further developed in the article. In the course of a critical analysis of the content of scientific publications of modern scientists who studied the behavior, peculiarities of activity and the meaning of strategic alliances, it was established that the role of strategic alliances in the conditions of digital transformations does not disappear, but brings new advantages, requiring the maximization of returns (...) from more dynamic partnership relations, which requires more in-depth study of such benefits. Dynamics analysis of the number of concluded agreements in the field of strategic partnership in the period of 2014-2023 demonstrates their increase starting from 2017, which led to the activation of digital business transformations. In the course of research, it was determined that the role of strategic alliances in the conditions of digital business transformations is to ensure strategic flexibility under the conditions of continuity of digital transformations, improve competitive positions on the market, increase their innovativeness and efficiency, improve organizational stability and the ability of companies to learn, create opportunities for obtaining synergistic effect. It develops the ability of companies to proactively manage changes, contributes to the joint solution of strategic tasks and goals of partner companies, provides significantly greater opportunities for the development of innovative processes through the development and implementation of new methods and forms of work, new solutions in economic sectors, innovations in management, contributes to survival in market competitive environment and is an important competitive imperative to ensure overall long-term digital transformation. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper, I try to clear the ground from frequent misconceptions about the relationship between fact and value by examining some uses of the adjective “natural” in ethical controversies. Such uses bear evidence to our “natural” tendency to regard nature (considered in a descriptive sense, as the complex of physical and biological regularities) as the source of ethical norms. I then try to account for the origin of this tendency by offering three related explanations, the (...) most important of which regards it as the outcome of an adaptation: if any behaviour that favours our equilibrium with the environment is potentially adaptive, nothing can be more effective for this goal than developing an attitude toward the natural world that regards it as a dispenser of sacred norms that must be invariably respected. By referring to the Aristotelian notion of human flourishing illustrated in the first part of the paper, in the second I discuss some ethical problems raised by mini-chips implantable under in our bodies. I conclude by defending the potential beneficial effects of such new technological instruments. (shrink)

Students during the distance education were experiencing solitude and depression in their studies due to no social interaction which led to psychological suffering. In this article, college students' attitudes toward statistics learning were investigated, and its predictors by statistical modeling. Secondary data was extracted from a current study from the literature, summarized using descriptive statistics, and presented in tabular form. As for modeling the predictors of students' attitudes in learning statistics, it was done through multiple linear regression via the (...) ordinary least square (OLS) approach. The finding of statistical calculations revealed that, on average, students possess a "neutral attitude" towards learning statistics online. This suggests that students do not show active involvement and positive engagement in the classroom environment due to some challenges they have encountered during online learning. The regression model I revealed that students who are using mobile phones, fewer study hours in statistics, and intimate relationships with teachers are the significant factors of positive attitude in learning. On the other hand, regression model II showed that low internet signal and low mental health are significant determinants of positive behavior in learning statistics online. Conclusively, students who have suitable gadgets for online learning and with good vibes with their teachers have good performance in class even if they study less, however, effective. Moreover, students with less distraction on social media and with mental stress, tend to deviate their attention in studying their lessons in statistics which positively increases their learning attitude and well-being. (shrink)

What experimental game theorists may have demonstrated is not that people are systematically irrational but that human rationality is heavily scaffolded. Remove the scaffolding, and we do not do very well. People are able to get on because they “offload” an enormous amount of practical reasoning onto their environment. As a result, when they are put in novel or unfamiliar environments, they perform very poorly, even on apparently simple tasks. -/- This observation is supported by recent empirically informed shifts (...) in philosophy of mind toward a view of cognition as (to cite the current slogan) “embodied, embedded, enactive, extended.” Andy Clark and others have made a very plausible case for the idea that a proper assessment of human cognitive competence must include environmental components. To limit our attention to what lies within the skin-skull boundary is, in effect, to miss the big story on human rationality. Insofar as we are rational, it is often because of our ingenuity at developing “work-arounds” to the glitches in the fast-and-frugal heuristic problem-solving capabilities that natural selection has equipped us with. And these work-arounds often involve a detour through the environment (so-called offloading of cognitive burdens). -/- When it comes to practical rationality, things are no different. Yet in many discussions of “the will,” there is still a tendency to put too much emphasis on what goes on inside the agent’s head. Our objective in this chapter is to articulate this conception of “the extended will” more clearly, using the strategies that people employ to overcome procrastination for the central set of examples. Procrastination, in our view, constitutes a particular type of self-control problem, one that is particularly amenable to philosophical reflection, not only because of the high volume of psychological research on the subject but also because of the large quantity of “self-help” literature in circulationa literature that provides an invaluable perspective on the everyday strategies that people use in order to defeat (or, better yet, circumvent) this type of self-defeating behavior pattern. In general, what we find is that the internalist bias that permeates discussions of the will gives rise to a set of practical recommendations that overemphasize changing the way one thinks about a task, while ignoring the much richer set of strategies that are available in the realm of environmental scaffolding. In the concluding section, we highlight some of the policy implications of this, particularly regarding social trends involving the dismantling of support structures. (shrink)

Architecture often relies on mathematical models, if only to anticipate the physical behavior of structures. Accordingly, mathematical modeling serves to find an optimal form given certain constraints, constraints themselves translated into a language which must be homogeneous to that of the model in order for resolution to be possible. Traditional modeling tied to design and architecture thus appears linked to a topdown vision of creation, of the modernist, voluntarist and uniformly normative type, because usually (mono)functionalist. One available instrument of (...) calculation/representation/prescription orders this conception of architecture: indeed the search for an optimal solution through mathematical calculation of a model itself mathematical, thus homogeneous and simple, is only possible when one or two functions or functional constraints are formulated, never more, and this, on a global level, therefore starting from a unique and homogenizing viewpoint. It is essential to grasp that, even applied to material and its properties or towards a particular esthetic or functional dimension, this viewpoint is thus abstractive and generalizing: disregarding singularity of context, insertion and relationship to the environment or local, social behavior. It leaves aside functional specificity and heterogeneousness – re-contextualized each time – of functions that the object or edifice are required to fulfill and optimize under diverse constraints, in their different parts. The computational turning point today’s digital design and computational architecture embody modifies these instrumental, original prescriptions, rendering them more flexible. Perhaps in light of this turnabout we should retrospectively interpret 20th century calls for modernism, functionalism and even biomorphism as being just as many ex post rationalizations in respect to techniques of strongly prescriptive modeling since our only instrument is a monolithic language, and so being, incites a top-down conception, (naturally weakly reactive to contexts), including forms whose overall appearance resembles in fine a living form. In order to liberate oneself from this and despite everything, emerge as its initiators, one has constructed from ideology and philosophy (of object, habitat, the urban) ex post, even while it is the instrument of modeling and conception that largely determines, normalizes and dictates ex ante, the possibilities and limitations of the creation of forms and living experiments4 in a given time. (shrink)

The study aimed to study the reality of applying standards of administrative excellence in major hospitals in the southern governorates of Palestine. The research was applied to all employees working in hospitals: (Al-Shifa Medical Complex, the Indonesian Hospital, and the European Gaza Hospital). The study sample consisted of (320) employees, as the researchers prepared A questionnaire to achieve the purpose of the study on the reality of administrative excellence (leading change, applying continuous improvement strategy, achieving efficiency, orienting customers (beneficiaries), and (...) spreading organizational culture. The most important findings of the researchers were the multiplicity of approaches used to achieve administrative excellence, such as the European model of excellence, the American model of excellence, and the Japanese model of excellence. Administrative excellence based on human resources. The study recommended taking advantage of different experiences in leading change, developing policies that support orientation towards beneficiaries, and establishing an organizational culture that supports administrative excellence, and that organizational culture shows interest in social and national responsibility because of its impact on the behavior of employees in general. (shrink)

This paper seeks to examine the thought of philosophers about the influence of the environment on humans' physical, mental and moral habits, as well as how these philosophers used this influence to categorise individuals according to their habitat. As such this research begins with Herodotus and Hippocrates, and briefly discusses Plato, Aristotle, and seven medieval philosophers belonging to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions (Al-Kindi, Eriugena, Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Tufail, Averroes, and Moses Maimonides). Also, this study investigates Montesquieu from (...) the seventh century, eight modern thinkers from the 19th through the 21st centuries, determinism (Carl Ritter, Ellen Churchill Semple, and Ellsworth Huntington), geography of possibilism (Vidal de Blacche, Lucian Febwer, and Cari Sauer), bioregionalism (Richard Evanoff), and meteorology (Frederik Nebeker). Lastly, this study concludes that all aforementioned 19th philosophers agreed that the environment influences human behaviour and physical condition. -/- . (shrink)

Authenticity is often defined as the extent to which people feel that they know and express their true selves. Research in the psychological sciences suggests that people view true selves as more morally good than bad and that this “virtuous” true self may be a central component of authenticity. In fact, there may be reasons to suspect that authenticity serves as a cue that one’s behaviors are virtuous, and feelings of authenticity may help sustain virtuous actions. However, in previous research, (...) operationalizations of virtue may not clearly capture virtue as virtue theorists might recognize it. The possibility that feelings of authenticity keep people oriented toward virtuous activities is compatible with theorizing, but the precise ways that it might do so has not received direct conceptual or empirical scrutiny. We propose an interdisciplinary hypothesis of how feelings of authenticity could function to serve as a feedback mechanism for virtuous behavior. Feelings of authenticity could play a role in sustaining motivation to engage in virtuous activity insofar as the experience of subjective authenticity encourages one to approach that activity or environment in the future. Furthermore, virtuous behavior incorporates a few key elements that are predictive of experiencing subjective authenticity. We review emerging research that offers initial support for the idea that authenticity may guide sustained and virtuous civic action and develop a theoretical framework that positions authenticity as integral to sustained virtuous behavior. (shrink)

Abstract: Pakistan has been affected by the outbreak of COVID-19 and government took effective initiatives to deal the prevailing situation in a possible means. Likely, in the education sector government adopted online learning process across the country and adapted the electronic learning environment in order to seize the spread the pandemic. This study investigates the perception of students regarding their adoption of digital assessment during COVID-19 outbreak to evaluate their educational activities. Digital assessment is also considered as electronic assessment (...) in which students educational evaluation is materialized to encircle the online examination, assignment submission, and calculation of candidate's study progress. The aim of this study is to provide an empirical investigation of online via discovering the intentional approach of electronic learning users in Pakistan during COVID-19 outbreak. The interpretation of the questionnaires of student and teachers is based on the data that has been collected from the public universities in Sindh. For investigating users of digital assessment behavioral determinants were applied in which (PEOU, PU, SI and OA) measured with and intention to use digital assessment (ITDA) and proposed determinants users intention during the outbreak of the pandemic. The prevailing survey study follows the conceptual proposed framework model that assists to investigate the users' perception towards students' online assessment. For the data analysis 413 questionnaires were distributed and 286 respondents feedback restored by filling the research items online means. Moreover, SPSS version 24 was adopted and hypothesis tested through egressions and correlations. The research is confined to higher education and online learning system in Pakistan needs to be examined at higher secondary and country level. (shrink)

For a while, life and environment have been regarded as two separate subjects, but recently life and environment are to be seen as different aspects of one single theme. There are able philosophers who maintain the connection of the two but Seokheon Ham is believed to present a more coherent case. To him, integration is not merely a property which is unifying various elements, but it has a deep ontological structure seen in his utterance “there is not a (...) thing in the world which does not have a reason to exist”. He is providing a model of deep integration by equivalently linking life and sense. And he offers apparent arguments of oneness as integration of animates and inanimates, seeds as an example of integration of sense and life, and suffering as a historical integration. But Ham’s arguments will be strengthened by philosophizing the notion of integration. Fortunately, I would suggest that the clue is found in the conception of integration of Zhungyong. I will take the major thrust of the book to be five theses: (1) integration of a thing is the capacity to realize its embedded objective in its interactions with all other things; (2) ‘mind’ denotes the capacity of humans as well as the capacity of all other entities: (3) integration is a capacity not only of humans but also of all other entities; (4) if the evolution demonstrates the history of species as the fittest, then the history expresses the evolution of life forms of intelligence and justice; (5) integration of an entity is a disposition to realize its embedded objective in the context of its interconnections with all others at a particular time and place. The ontology of integration I am submitting may be shown to be an alternative to traditional physicalism. The integrational ontology may be seen as virtuous in that it is coherent with the informational view of the contemporary culture and with the caring need for those who suffer. (shrink)

Educated people everywhere now acknowledge that ecological destruction is threatening the future of civilization. While philosophers have concerned themselves with environmental problems, they appear to offer little to deal with this crisis. Despite this, I will argue that philosophy, and ethics, are absolutely crucial to overcoming this crisis. Philosophy has to recover its grand ambitions to achieve a comprehensive understanding of nature and the place of humanity within it, and ethics needs to be centrally concerned with the virtues required to (...) create and then sustain economic, social and political formations that augment the life of ecological communities. Achieving these ends will involve reviving speculative philosophy and its quest to forge a synthesis of natural philosophy, history and art to enable humanity to redefine its place in the world, both collectively and as individuals, in very practical ways. Such a synthesis is required to oppose the corrosion of democracy and to revive the virtues of citizenship and the sense of responsibility citizenship entails, but more fundamentally and intimately related to such citizenship, to oppose managerialism and the proletarianization of the workforce and to revive workmanship and professionalism as the foundations of not only economic life, but social and political life. (shrink)

The perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson embraces a radically externalistic view of mind and action. We have, for Gibson, not a Cartesian mind or soul, with its interior theater of contents and the consequent problem of explaining how this mind or soul and its psychological environment can succeed in grasping physical objects external to itself. Rather, we have a perceiving, acting organism, whose perceptions and actions are always already tuned to the parts and moments, the things and surfaces, of (...) its external environment. We describe how on this basis Gibson sought to develop a realist science of environments which will be ‘consistent with physics, mechanics, optics, acoustics, and chemistry’. (shrink)

It is a matter of fact that Europe is facing more and more crucial challenges regarding health and social care due to the demographic change and the current economic context. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has stressed this situation even further, thus highlighting the need for taking action. Active and Assisted Living technologies come as a viable approach to help facing these challenges, thanks to the high potential they have in enabling remote care and support. Broadly speaking, AAL can be referred (...) to as the use of innovative and advanced Information and Communication Technologies to create supportive, inclusive and empowering applications and environments that enable older, impaired or frail people to live independently and stay active longer in society. AAL capitalizes on the growing pervasiveness and effectiveness of sensing and computing facilities to supply the persons in need with smart assistance, by responding to their necessities of autonomy, independence, comfort, security and safety. The application scenarios addressed by AAL are complex, due to the inherent heterogeneity of the end-user population, their living arrangements, and their physical conditions or impairment. Despite aiming at diverse goals, AAL systems should share some common characteristics. They are designed to provide support in daily life in an invisible, unobtrusive and user-friendly manner. Moreover, they are conceived to be intelligent, to be able to learn and adapt to the requirements and requests of the assisted people, and to synchronise with their specific needs. Nevertheless, to ensure the uptake of AAL in society, potential users must be willing to use AAL applications and to integrate them in their daily environments and lives. In this respect, video- and audio-based AAL applications have several advantages, in terms of unobtrusiveness and information richness. Indeed, cameras and microphones are far less obtrusive with respect to the hindrance other wearable sensors may cause to one’s activities. In addition, a single camera placed in a room can record most of the activities performed in the room, thus replacing many other non-visual sensors. Currently, video-based applications are effective in recognising and monitoring the activities, the movements, and the overall conditions of the assisted individuals as well as to assess their vital parameters. Similarly, audio sensors have the potential to become one of the most important modalities for interaction with AAL systems, as they can have a large range of sensing, do not require physical presence at a particular location and are physically intangible. Moreover, relevant information about individuals’ activities and health status can derive from processing audio signals. Nevertheless, as the other side of the coin, cameras and microphones are often perceived as the most intrusive technologies from the viewpoint of the privacy of the monitored individuals. This is due to the richness of the information these technologies convey and the intimate setting where they may be deployed. Solutions able to ensure privacy preservation by context and by design, as well as to ensure high legal and ethical standards are in high demand. After the review of the current state of play and the discussion in GoodBrother, we may claim that the first solutions in this direction are starting to appear in the literature. A multidisciplinary debate among experts and stakeholders is paving the way towards AAL ensuring ergonomics, usability, acceptance and privacy preservation. The DIANA, PAAL, and VisuAAL projects are examples of this fresh approach. This report provides the reader with a review of the most recent advances in audio- and video-based monitoring technologies for AAL. It has been drafted as a collective effort of WG3 to supply an introduction to AAL, its evolution over time and its main functional and technological underpinnings. In this respect, the report contributes to the field with the outline of a new generation of ethical-aware AAL technologies and a proposal for a novel comprehensive taxonomy of AAL systems and applications. Moreover, the report allows non-technical readers to gather an overview of the main components of an AAL system and how these function and interact with the end-users. The report illustrates the state of the art of the most successful AAL applications and functions based on audio and video data, namely lifelogging and self-monitoring, remote monitoring of vital signs, emotional state recognition, food intake monitoring, activity and behaviour recognition, activity and personal assistance, gesture recognition, fall detection and prevention, mobility assessment and frailty recognition, and cognitive and motor rehabilitation. For these application scenarios, the report illustrates the state of play in terms of scientific advances, available products and research project. The open challenges are also highlighted. The report ends with an overview of the challenges, the hindrances and the opportunities posed by the uptake in real world settings of AAL technologies. In this respect, the report illustrates the current procedural and technological approaches to cope with acceptability, usability and trust in the AAL technology, by surveying strategies and approaches to co-design, to privacy preservation in video and audio data, to transparency and explainability in data processing, and to data transmission and communication. User acceptance and ethical considerations are also debated. Finally, the potentials coming from the silver economy are overviewed. (shrink)

While practical efforts in the field of artificial intelligence grow exponentially, the truly scientific and mathematically exact understanding of the underlying phenomena of intelligence and consciousness is still missing in the conventional science framework. The inevitably dominating empirical, trial-and-error approach has vanishing efficiency for those extremely complicated phenomena, ending up in fundamentally limited imitations of intelligent behaviour. We provide the first-principle analysis of unreduced many-body interaction process in the brain revealing its qualitatively new features, which give rise to rigorously defined (...) chaotic, noncomputable, intelligent and conscious behaviour. Based on the obtained universal concepts of unreduced dynamic complexity, intelligence and consciousness, we derive the universal laws of intelligence applicable to any kind of intelligent system interacting with the environment. We finally show why and how these fundamentally substantiated and therefore practically efficient laws of intelligent system dynamics are indispensable for correct AI design and training, which is urgently needed in this time of critical global change towards the truly sustainable development. (shrink)

Understanding everyday behavior relies heavily upon understanding our ability to improvise, how we are able to continuously anticipate and adapt in order to coordinate with our environment and others. Here we consider the ability of musicians to improvise, where they must spontaneously coordinate their actions with co-performers in order to produce novel musical expressions. Investigations of this behavior have traditionally focused on describing the organization of cognitive structures. The focus, here, however, is on the ability of the (...) time-evolving patterns of inter-musician movement coordination as revealed by the mathematical tools of complex dynamical systems to provide a new understanding of what potentiates the novelty of spontaneous musical action. We demonstrate this approach through the application of cross wavelet spectral analysis, which isolates the strength and patterning of the behavioral coordination that occurs between improvising musicians across a range of nested time-scales. Revealing the sophistication of the previously unexplored dynamics of movement coordination between improvising musicians is an important step towards understanding how creative musical expressions emerge from the spontaneous coordination of multiple musical bodies. (shrink)

Organismic agency is often understood as the capacity to produce goal-directed behavior. This paper proposes a new way of modelling agency, namely as a naturalized deliberation. Deliberative action is not directed towards a particular goal, but involves a process of weighing multiple goals and a choice for a particular combination of these. The underlying causal model is symmetry breaking, where the organism breaks symmetries present in the selective environment. Deliberation is illustrated though the phenomena of mate choice and (...) bacterial chemotaxis. (shrink)

In this context, the study explored the relationship between organizational climate and employee innovative work behaviour among food manufacturing industries in Malaysia. The study is a descriptive correlational survey research design where data is sourced out from a total of randomly sampled 260 employees. Results revealed that a favourable organizational climate on innovation, proactivity, and risk-taking is prevailing among the companies. A very high level of innovative work behaviour is emanating among the employees on idea exploration, generation, championing, (...) and implementation. Test of differences showed that employee gender, position, unit, and years of service spelt significant differences in the perception of the employees on organizational climate and innovative work behaviour. A meaningful relationship surfaced between organizational climate and employee innovative work behaviour, suggesting that for food manufacturing industries to sustain innovative and competitive advantages, there is a need to promote a nurturing and encouraging entrepreneurial organizational climate. Finally, a congruency among the domains of organizational climate and employee innovative work behaviour emerged. It suggests that when higher positive organizational climate surfaces, the more likely the employee's manifest innovation work behaviour. This study addressed the gap by providing organizational climate and employee innovative work behaviour among food manufacturing industries in Malaysia. (shrink)

Today, there are many natural sciences, one of which is physics, but there is no science in the sense of a Theory of Nature. In our everyday life, the opinion is rightly held that there is only one nature, but whether this opinion stands up to reflection is questionable. When we apply the speculation that Aristotle developed in Metaphysics Λ to his Physics, we will see, that Aristotle has developed a Theory of Nature that consists in posing the question of (...) the being of the natural being (Frage nach dem Sein des Naturseienden). The standardinterpretation wants us to believe that Aristotle founded a substance metaphysics with a corresponding theology, and that he practised natural science. But, our hermeneutical situation could lead us to an "Aristotle today" and free us from old beliefs so that we, like Thomas Aquinas and others, could learn from a contemporary Aristotle as an immediate interlocutor. One of the learning points, for example, would be that questions are more crucial than new assertions, even if they are sophisticated, and that unassertive thinking (unbehauptendes Denken) in a topical attitude can lead us to insight into the multiplicity of worlds. This insight would have immediate consequences for our behaviour towards our co-inhabitants of our planet and towards our environment. (shrink)