Communication Rights in a Divided World

This article explores the implications of advances in communication technology for communication rights and the political, economic, and cultural challenges at global, national, and local levels. It argues that digital transformation cannot be left to market forces or to a benign vision of a world in which all governments are sufficiently liberal minded to permit dissent and peaceful revolution. Rather, digital transformation needs to be driven by the needs of peoples and communities who help construct communication and information ecosystems that are firmly rooted in principles of justice, freedom, equality, and mutual solidarity. To that extent, people and communities must be enabled to reach their own consensuses around their needs and what should be done, and they must be regularly and constructively consulted by those charged with implementing, regulating, and monitoring such ecosystems.     

ETHICAL SELF-MAKING,MORAL EXPERIMENTATION,AND HUMANITARIAN ENCOUNTER: Interdisciplinary Engagement with the Anthropology of Ethics

The interdisciplinary group of authors featured in this focus issue contribute to conversations at the intersection of anthropology and ethics by exploring ethical self-making and moral experimentation among faith-based actors in a range of humanitarian settings. Kari Henquinet describes the genealogies of American evangelical humanitarianism by focusing on the ethical self-formation of early World Vision leaders. Rachel Schneider and Sara Williams each explore practices by which relatively privileged individuals seek to cultivate virtue by engaging with those on the margins, in poor, urban neighborhoods in South Africa, and through packaged tours in Israel/Palestine, respectively. Sarah Tobin describes projects of Islamic self-making among displaced refugee women in Jordan. Although they examine a wide range of subjects and settings, they explore a common set of themes, two of which I discuss here: moral experimentation, and engagements with suffering, poverty, and inequality.     

Discouraging unethicality versus encouraging ethicality: Unraveling the differential effects of prevention‐ and promotion‐focused ethical leadership

Theory on the impact of ethical leadership has traditionally been based on a deontological approach to morality. Underlying this perspective is the assumption that all leader behaviors that encourage “normatively appropriate conduct” will influence followers in a similar fashion. Put differently, the current consensus seems to suggest that actions that focus on preventing unethical behavior—attending to “the wrong”—will have the same impact as actions that focus on promoting ethical behavior—attending to “the right.” Taking a within‐person approach, we draw upon social exchange theory to challenge this consensus and build theory that suggests a follower's felt trust from their leader will be differentially impacted by prevention‐ versus promotion‐focused ethical leadership. We also explore how these different types of ethical leadership may indirectly, through felt trust, impact citizenship behavior and counterproductive work behavior. Finally, we consider how the role of the “moral manager” may interact with the “moral person” by identifying leader moral hypocrisy as an important between‐person moderator of these effects. Given the importance of ethical decision‐making in organizations and the calls for increased ethical leadership, our findings have important implications for both theory and practice.     

Distributed learning: Educating and assessing extended cognitive systems

Extended and distributed cognition theories argue that human cognitive systems sometimes include non-biological objects. On these views, the physical supervenience base of cognitive systems is thus not the biological brain or even the embodied organism, but an organism-plus-artifacts. In this paper, we provide a novel account of the implications of these views for learning, education, and assessment. We start by conceptualizing how we learn to assemble extended cognitive systems by internalizing cultural norms and practices. Having a better grip on how extended cognitive systems are assembled, we focus on the question: If our cognition extends, how should we educate and assess such extended cognitive systems? We suggest various ways to minimize possible negative effects of extending one’s cognition and to efficiently find and organize (online) information by adopting a virtue epistemology approach. Educational and assessment implications are foregrounded, particularly in the case of Danish students’ use of the internet during exams.     

Pharmaceutical companies and access to medicines – social integration and ethical CSR resolution of a global public choice problem

This article argues that effective corporate social responsibility (CSR) of multinational pharmaceutical companies in developing countries should reflect context, opportunity, proximity, time and impact in accordance with the social integration and ethical approaches to CSR. It proposes a CSR model expressed as CSR=COPTI+SI+E, which acknowledges access-to-medicines as a matter in the global public domain, a public choice problem and a moral responsibility issue for multinational pharmaceutical companies. This model recognises the globalisation of the principle of humanity in communities of place and communities of interest as highlighted by the Global Economic Ethic Manifesto 2009 as an integral part of the responsibilities of multinational pharmaceutical companies. The model reflects a global application of the concept of disadvantaged consumer already known to some national laws. The article suggests an access-to-medicines CSR framework for pharmaceutical companies which may include pricing, patents, testing and clinical trials, research and development, joint public private initiative and appropriate use of drugs.     

Intercultural Model of Ethical Decision Making: Addressing Worldview Dilemmas in School Counseling

The role of school counselors has expanded and deepened over the past few decades, just as the K–12 student population has become more diversified. Professional school counselors regularly encounter ethical dilemmas related to the intersection of their transformed role and students' needs. School counselors, therefore, need assistance and support to develop the skills and problem‐solving strategies to effectively, ethically, and respectfully negotiate these dilemmas. The authors propose the Intercultural Model of Ethical Decision Making as a practical, user‐friendly tool to help school counselors meet these complex challenges.     

Influencing the salesforce through perceived ethical leadership: the role of salesforce socialization and person–organization fit on salesperson ethics and performance

With today's emphasis on building strong customer relationships in the business-to-business sales environment, appropriate leadership is necessary to instill ethical and provide the proper guidance among employees to ensure ethical decision-making and improve sales performance. This research examines the role of perceived ethical leadership as it relates to both formal and informal marketing control mechanisms (i.e. salesforce socialization) that influence person–organization fit, and how this fit relates to salesperson unethical intent and performance. Results from a study of 408 business-to-business salespeople suggest that perceived ethical leadership both directly, and indirectly via salesforce socialization, affects salesperson ethical values person–organization fit, which in turn affects salesperson performance. Based on these findings, both theoretical and managerial implications are provided, as well as directions for future research.     

Can Perceptions of Supervisor-Related Ethical Climate Influence How High-Impression Managers Admit Past Unethical Behavior?

In this study, we investigated how the perceptions of ethical climate as it relates to supervisor behavior and impression management are related to admission of past unethical behavior in a sample of Canadian Army personnel. We expected that among respondents who perceive less ethical supervisor-related climate, the relationship between Impression Management (IM) and the admission of past unethical behavior should be significant and positive. In contrast, among respondents who perceive a more ethical supervisor-related climate, the relationship between IM and self-report past unethical behavior should be weak or nonsignificant, and the frequency of admission of past unethical behavior should be low. Although moderation occurred, it was not as hypothesized. IM predicted admission of having obeyed, or witnessed others obey an unlawful command when perceptions of supervisor-related ethical climate were low, and not when perceptions of supervisor-related ethical climate were high. However, higher (vs. lower) impression managers admitted less past unethical behavior, regardless of their perceptions of supervisor-related ethical climate. These results suggest that high impression managers do not admit to having obeyed or witnessed others obey an unlawful command in the past, regardless of their perceptions of the ethical climate as it relates to supervisor behavior.     

Theoretical Paradox and Practical Dilemma

Emmanuel Levinas sets up alterity as a fundamental ontological category, irreducible to being and nothingess. There are two difficulties in understanding this ontological alterity. On the one hand, Levinas formulates it with negative terms – infinition, abstraction, ab‐solutenes, trace of a past that has never been present. On the other hand, Levinas invokes the notions of the superlative, the Good, and God. These notions are very difficult to separate from the notion of a redoubling of the positivity by which the things of the world are posited in their own subsistent being. The quasi‐concepts with which Levinas has thematized the alterity of the others who face us in an ontological sphere of infinition, absoluteness, and abstractness have determined negatively what he envisions as beyond negativity and positivity. They reduce the determinateness of the wants and needs of another, and reduce the otherness of one other from other others. In addition, the positivism with which Levinas eliminates the imperatives with which the elements summon us and the material imperatives with which the things put demands on us effaces the phenomenality of the other whose want and needs are inscribed on the susceptibility and vulnerability of his surfaces of skin.