Abuse of Ministerial Authority,Systemic Perjury,and Obstruction of Justice: Corruption in the Shadows of Organizational Practice

Organizational corruption has recently attracted considerable scholarly attention, especially since its devastating effects following recent major corporate scandals, the worldwide economic crisis of 2009, and the current European Union monetary crisis. This paper is based on the analysis of three distinct, yet contextually related, case studies in a European Union member state: (a) an incident of corruption by a minister in an adjudicative role, (b) widespread financial misreporting and perjury within an organization, and (c) abuse of due process and obstruction of justice by civil servants within a ministry. These cases serve to illustrate, for the first time, Aguilera and Vadera’s (in J Bus Ethics 77:431–449, 2008) framework of organizational corruption, which relates distinct types of a corrupter’s opportunity, motivation, and justification with the type of corruption present in the organization. Furthermore, the data suggest how the framework may be extended and reveal conceptual issues that require reconciliation. This study attempts such reconciliations and offers some suggestions on how the findings may be utilized by policy reformers or corruption controllers.     

Going Down the Slippery Slope of Legitimacy Lies in Early-Stage Ventures: The Role of Moral Disengagement

Journal of Business Ethics - Aristotle’s philosophical insights into ethics, wisdom and practice have drawn the attention of scholars. In the current professional context where ethics are...     

Machtkonzentrationen in der Marktwirtschaft und die Verwirklichung des Wettbewerbes

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Later is better: mobile phone ownership and child academic development,evidence from a longitudinal study

ABSTRACT

Digital technologies have become an increasingly prominent feature of children’s lives both within and outside educational environments (McCoy, Quail, and Smyth 2012. Influences on 9-Year-Olds’ Learning: Home, School and Community. Dublin: Department of Children and Youth Affairs). Despite considerable media debate, we have little robust evidence on the impact of technology use on children’s development, both academically and socially. Much of the literature in this area relies on small-scale cross-sectional studies. Using longitudinal data on 8500 9-year-old children in Ireland, we examine the influence of early mobile phone ownership on children’s performance in reading and maths between 9 and 13 years of age. Across both reading and maths domains, children who already report owning a phone by the age of nine fare less well in terms of their academic development as they move into adolescence. The measured effects are sizeable, implying about 4 percentile lower ranking on standardised tests for an average student. Our results are consistent with the idea that there may be significant educational costs arising from early mobile phone use by children. Parents and policymakers should consider whether the benefits of phone availability for children are sufficiently large to justify such costs. We suggest a range of direct and indirect cognitive effects that could help explain these results.