Reflections on Citizens' Juries: the case of the Citizens' Jury on genetic testing for common disorders

Citizens' Juries are a relatively innovative way of involving ordinary members of the public in decision‐making processes. Participants in Wales' first Citizen Jury reflect on their experiences, and some observers give their view about Citizens' Juries as a method of involving the public in policy making.     

The Influence of Interorganizational Collaboration on Logic Conciliation and Tensions Within Hybrid Organizations: Insights from Social Enterprise–Corporate Collaborations

Advertising is a booming activity both in the physical realm and on the Internet. Online advertising is growing and is subject to legal standards, although some self-imposed ethical standards for the industry are needed. This has been called self-regulation. This article examines the important role that self-regulation (in the form of ethical standards) can play in addressing advertising that uses degrading and discriminatory images of women that compromise their dignity. Sexist advertising is a reification of women—stereotypes and sexist social models—that do not convey a realistic image of a woman’s abilities and potential. This article analyzes specific decisions on the subject issued by the Jury of the Spanish Association for the Self-Regulation of Commercial Communication. The Jury’s decisions are based on a code of ethics. The technical expertise and impartiality manifested in its decisions have produced a high degree of credibility and confidence in the organization.

     

An Overview of Public Consultation Mechanisms Developed to Address the Ethical and Social Issues Raised by Biotechnology

Biotechnology, whether applied to plants, animals, or humans is a rapidly expanding industry. Citizens, often organized in groups or organizations, wish to express their views and even to participate in the decision-making process that authorized to the marketing of new biotechnology derived products. In order to allow participation of the public in the debate on the ethical and social issues raised by biotechnology, it is important to select appropriate consultation mechanisms. Much may be learned from the experiences and mechanisms used in various countries.Part I of this report surveys various institutional models for public consultation activities. Part II then reviews various mechanisms used to address ethical and social issues with public participation and Part III highlights the strengths and weaknesses of these mechanisms in a Canadian context.     

Incommensurate paradigms? Bridging the divide between technocrats and the lay public in health care planning: recent experience from Wales

The pressure on the UK National Health Service (NHS) to increase public involvement in the planning of future services has never been greater. Politicians and others argue that ‘lay wisdom’ has much to contribute, and that such involvement is essential if public confidence in the service is to be maintained. Many managers and clinicians, however, operating within an essentially technocratic paradigm, remain unconvinced. Their views are often reinforced by a lack of experience of methods for public involvement that can meet the many practical difficulties involved. Using Arnstein’s ‘ladder of citizen participation’, this paper describes the principal nuances of these two paradigms, explores the nature of the conflict between them, and assesses the extent to which they are really incommensurate. It then briefly describes some of the key methodological principles emerging from public involvement work in parts of the NHS in Wales, and assesses their potential to bridge the divide between the paradigms.     

How Friedman’s View on Individual Freedom Relates to Stakeholder Theory and Social Contract Theory

This article explores the concept of blame in organizations. Existing work suggests that ‘no-blame’ approaches (or cultures) may be conducive to organizational learning and may foster innovation. However, both the apparently strong public appetite for blaming, and research into no-blame approaches, suggest that wider application of ‘no-blame’ in organizations may not be straightforward. The article explores the contribution of the rich philosophical literature on blame to this debate, and considers the implications of philosophical ideas for the no-blame idea. In doing so, it identifies conceptual and practical issues, sheds light on why the benefits of ‘no-blame’ may be difficult to realize, and offers the basis for an alternative approach. The article also contributes by providing foundations for future research, and identifies some fruitful lines of enquiry.     

Discussion of “An Examination of the U.S. Public Accounting Profession’s Public Interest Discourse and Actions in Federal Policy Making”

The history of the public accounting profession is filled with perceived crises in professionalism. Baudot et al. (An examination of the U.S. public accounting profession’s public interest discourse and actions in federal policy making, 2015) focus on the post Sarbanes–Oxley period, highlighting how the advocacy efforts of the public accounting profession directed toward financial regulation represent the most recent of crises. This study makes an important contribution to the literature because it illustrates the inherent challenges faced by a regulatory structure that requires private interests to act in the public good. The purpose of this commentary is to provide a historical and institutional context for the study’s findings, to assess the current state of research, and to offer suggestions for future research.     

Information,individual errors,and collective performance: Empirical evidence on the Condorcet Jury Theorem

The Condorcet Jury Theorem implies that the collective performance of a group, in arriving at a “correct” judgment on the basis of majority or plurality rule, will be superior to the average performance of individual members of the group, if certain apparently plausible conditions hold. Variants of the Jury Theorem are reviewed, particularly including the politically relevant variant that allows for conflicting interests within the group. We then examine two kinds of empirical data. First, we compare individual and collective performance in a large number of multiple-choice tests, and we find that collective performance invariably and substantially exceeds average individual performance. Second, we analyze American National Election Study data to create dichotomous-choice tests concerning positions of candidates on a variety of political issues; Condorcet-like effects are again evident. Finally, continuing to use NES data, we construct, on each political issue, a simulated referendum (direct voting on the issue) and election (indirect voting on the issue by voting for candidates on the basis of their perceived positions on the issue), and we compare the two results. Despite high rates of individual error, electoral error is quite small, and collective performance is fairly high, providing evidence of Condorcet-like effects in situations of conflicting preferences.     

Using social and consumer values to predict market‐place behaviour: questions of congruency

Social values and consumption values, although intricately linked, are not exactly the same. Nonetheless, marketers contend that the central premise of social value monitoring is that, if one understands people’s values, one can better predict how they will behave in the market‐place. This paper challenges this assumption because policy analysts and industries are relying on both the consumer and social value profiles at a time when society and the market‐place are undergoing a profound transition. Using Canada as a case study, the general societal values of consumers identified by pollsters are discussed relative to nine consumer values espoused by marketers. This comparative analysis suggests that many of Canadians’ alleged consumer values seem to be in direct conflict with their espoused social values. This conclusion implies that the validity of using social values as a proxy variable or predictor for consumer values needs to be examined by researchers and policy analysts. Also, future dialogue needs to occur about adhering to the convention of monitoring social and consumer values using public opinion polls while not marrying this process with public judgement dialogues. Finally, other countries are urged to examine the situation in their market‐place so as to facilitate cross‐cultural comparative analysis of consumer market‐place values.     

中国加入GPA谈判国有企业纳入标准的探讨

中国在加入GPA谈判时提交的第七份出价清单中新增了16家国有企业,但此次出价仍未得到其他参加方的认可。政府采购的国有企业开放范围一直是GPA谈判的难点之一,因此明确GPA下国有企业的纳入标准成为中国后续谈判的关键。由于GPA文本对此并未明确规定,故实践中采用互惠谈判机制来确定参加方国有企业的具体范围。但此机制缺乏考虑发展中国家利益,因此建议中国要推动互惠谈判机制的改变与调整,仅将部分公益类、垄断性国有企业纳入GPA。同时,明确政府采购中“为政府目的”标准的理解,排除GPA对商业类、竞争性国有企业一般性质采购活动的约束。     

CSR Disclosure Items Used as Fairness Heuristics in the Investment Decision

The growth in demand for corporate social responsibility (CSR) information raises the question of how various CSR disclosure items are used by investors, an important stakeholder group driven by instrumental, moral, and relational motives. Prior research examines the instrumental motive to maximize individual shareholder wealth and the moral motive to actualize personal stewardship interests. We contribute to the literature by examining investors’ relational motive to realize positive stakeholder relationships within and between organizations and communities. The relational motive arises when investors look at a company’s treatment of other stakeholder groups as a heuristic to form a perception of how fairly they will also be treated by that company in the future, and thus invest in the company they perceive as fair. Fair treatment in the future matters to the investor who purchases stock from the company or via the capital markets in exchange for becoming a shareholder and thus a residual claimant of the company. As such, the investor expects future cash flows from holding and/or reselling the stock and expects to be treated fairly by the company in the future. We propose that investors, use as a fairness heuristic, CSR disclosure items—CSR investment level or CSR assurance—that represent the company’s commitment to its stakeholders, and that the resulting fairness perception affects the extent to which the CSR disclosure items influence their investment decision. Using responses from 113 investors in an online experiment, we find that fairness perceptions are higher when CSR investment is above (versus below) the industry average, and that fairness perceptions partially mediate the impact of the CSR investment level on investment amount allocations. We do not find that the presence (versus absence) of CSR assurance is used by investors as a fairness heuristic. Our results are robust to controlling for preferences for financial performance and hence investors’ instrumental motive, and to controlling for individual environmental attitudes, and hence investors’ moral motive. Implications for future research and public policy are discussed.     

Product attributes,consumer benefits and public approval of genetically modified foods

The use of biotechnology in food production has generated considerable debate involving the benefits and risks associated with its use. Consumer acceptance of genetically modified foods is a critical factor that will affect the future of this technology. Using data from a national survey, this study examines how public acceptance of food biotechnology is related to consumers’ socioeconomic and value attributes as well as the benefits associated with the use of this technology. Empirical results suggest that consumer acceptance of food biotechnology increases considerably when the use of this technology brings tangible benefits for the public. Consumers with different socioeconomic and demographic attributes have diverging views of food biotechnology only when its use brings specific benefits to them. When the use of genetic technology confers no additional benefit, public attitudes towards genetically modified foods are driven primarily by their scientific knowledge, views of scientists and corporations associated with biotechnology as well as public trust and confidence in government.     

Service Sector Development in the Netherlands: A Vision of the Post-Industrial Future?

With the decline in manufacturing employment the term ‘post- industrial society’, although not exactly entering the everyday vernacular, is one that is increasingly used widely to describe economically developed nations such as The Netherlands. This article looks at the framework for the post-industrial society developed by the American social theorist Daniel Bell and applies it to service sector developments in The Netherlands, with a particular concentration on the public sector. It is found that service sector developments in The Netherlands may not be in accord with Bell's vision of our post-industrial future.     

Private Regulatory Fragmentation as Public Policy: Governing Canada’s Mining Industry

This paper addresses recent calls to study the role of the state in private regulation. Integrating current scholarship on the state as a catalyst of private regulatory regimes with prior literature on regulatory failure and self-regulation, it identifies and problematizes unsettled assumptions used as a starting point by this growing body of research. The case study traces the evolution of public debates and the interaction of different regulatory initiatives dealing with corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues in Canada’s mining industry. Findings reveal the conditions under which the state is more likely to encourage firm-level, fragmented initiatives than facilitate and promote industry-wide regulatory strengthening and consolidation. I discuss the need for greater analytical precision regarding the variation in regulatory policy preferences across time and branches of government and the interaction between public and private regulatory initiatives. The conclusion outlines suggested areas for future research as well as the likely outcome of Canada’s current CSR policy framework.     

Accountability and the public benefit corporation

Can benefit corporations be held accountable for delivering requisite public goods? An oft-cited criticism is that they cannot, but little empirical research exists to support that claim. Based on an in-depth case study of the oldest corporation to amend its governing documents as a public benefit corporation (PBC) under Delaware law, this article suggests that a company can be held accountable for delivering requisite public goods when external mechanisms are accompanied by an organization’s internal commitment to self-awareness, learning, and measurement. In the case in question, the company established a three-pillar structure focused on professional engagement, community support, and charitable giving built on a 6-year-old sustainability initiative, accompanied by an adaptive learning culture, and driven by top-down and bottom-up efforts. Current challenges include measuring impact and branding the PBC to grow the company’s business.     

The Business Ethic in Public Sector Catering

Consecutive Conservative governments since 1979 have emphasised the need for greater cost-efficiency in the provision of public services. This article places recent developments in public sector catering in this wider context. It considers the manner in which government policy towards public sector catering has affected organisational and technical change in this area, and how this has led to changes in the roles, styles, strategies and control of catering managers. The article also outlines the effects of change on staff. In conclusion the article argues that management in the public sector are increasingly likely to act according to a business ethic’, rather than a ‘public service ethic’.     

Corporations and Citizenship Arenas in the Age of Social Media

Little attention has been paid to the importance of social media in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature. This deficit is redressed in the present paper through utilizing the notion of ‘citizenship arenas’ to identify three dynamics in social media-augmented corporate–society relations. First, we note that social media-augmented ‘corporate arenas of citizenship’ are constructed by individual corporations in an effort to address CSR issues of specific importance thereto, and are populated by individual citizens as well as (functional/formally organized) stakeholders. Second, we highlight that, within social media-augmented ‘public arenas of citizenship’, individual citizens are empowered, relative to corporations and their (functional/formally organized) stakeholders, when it comes to creating, debating, and publicizing, CSR-relevant issues. Third, we posit that information and communication technology corporations possess specific, and potentially very important, capacities, when it comes to creating, or helping construct, public arenas of citizenship from within which individual citizens can influence their broader political–economic environment. Following this, we discuss how social media can contribute to ‘dysfunctions’ as well as ‘progressions’ in corporate–society relations, and conclude with a number of suggestions for future research.     

Anmerkungen zu „Der Vorsorge-Albtraum“ von Carl Christian von Weizsäcker

Weizsäcker suggests that maintenance or even an increase in the current level of government debt is necessary to provide people with opportunities to save for the future. However, there are several politico-economic reasons for a reduction of public debt. Moreover, if people start to doubt the sustainability of an increasing percentage of public debt, a vicious circle can lead to a debt crisis, which would threaten the country’s political and economic stability. Public debt is not a burden for later generations when the rate of interest is below the rate of growth. Public debt may cause problems for the economy, but the absence of public debt also causes problems. Germany raised substantial implicit public debt by providing guarantees for the public debt of other euro countries, but if Germany had let the euro collapse, the “new Deutsche Mark” would have caused a severe defl ation, which also would have led to increased public debt. The new era of the “provision nightmare” requires a “new thinking” concerning public debt. Whenever the capital market adopts this new thinking, it will develop instruments to stabilise the economy even at high levels of public debt.     

An Examination of the U.S. Public Accounting Profession’s Public Interest Discourse and Actions in Federal Policy Making

Participation in the political process by the United States public accounting profession often blurs the role of the profession as advocates for the public interest with its role as advocates for its own private interests. In this study, we draw from prior theoretical and empirical work to investigate recent federal political activities of the public accounting profession to shed light on these sometimes contradictory roles. In particular, we investigate ten contemporary regulatory issues of interest to the AICPA. We analyze 36 AICPA legislative advocacy letters related to these issues that were provided to federal policy makers. In addition, we analyze the public accounting profession’s federal lobbying reports that were submitted during this same time period. The analysis allows us to assess the public interest discourse present in the AICPA legislative letters as well as the extent of political action taken by the profession related to these issues based on the profession’s lobbying efforts. Our analyses (1) demonstrate that the profession’s discourse and actions often reflect both public and private interest motivations, (2) allow us to categorize the profession’s advocacy efforts as arising from specific motivations, and (3) show that the profession’s public interest arguments used to advocate for their policy positions change depending upon the specific legislative issue being considered.     

Health Belief Model and Healthy Consumption: Toward an Integrated Model

Consumers have evolved from scavengers of necessity to scavengers of excess. Citizens of industrialized countries have little survival motivation to forage for food, yet a dominance of food cues in the environment exacerbates eating control. As a result, behavioral strategies are needed to mediate these negative effects. However, healthful consumption likelihood has been an extremely elusive measure to predict. Most studies are able to show only an incremental amount of variance explained in consumers’ behavioral intentions. Moreover, generalizability is often limited to college student data. In response, the present research uses structural equation modeling methods to investigate the complexity of this domain. The results from a representative panel of U.S. adult consumers show that motivation, social support, and food features all have significant effects on healthful consumption likelihood. Finally, several of these effects are mediated by the importance of healthy eating and convenience barriers. The final structural model explains 58% of the variance in healthy eating—a significant contribution to extant research.     

家族企业社会责任与企业绩效:内部能力与外部关系的调节效应

文章利用浙江和重庆两地351家家族企业调查数据,在将家族企业社会责任区分为内部人责任、外部人责任和公共责任的基础上,实证检验了家族企业社会责任与企业绩效关系及内部能力和外部关系的调节效应.结果显示:第一,高内部能力(制造能力、吸收能力)家族企业内部人责任对绩效的影响更大;高吸收能力家族企业公共责任对绩效的影响更小;具有丰富外部关系(高密度、大范围关系网络)家族企业外部人责任对绩效的影响更大.第二,高内部能力家族企业中,内部人责任对绩效有显著的正向影响,公共责任对绩效有显著的负向影响.低吸收能力家族企业中,内部人责任对绩效有显著的负向影响;具有低密度关系网络家族企业中,内部人责任对绩效有显著的正向影响,公共责任对绩效有显著的负向影响;具有大范围关系网络家族企业中,公共责任对绩效有显著的负向影响.