Search results

Background: Democratic societies thrive when citizens actively and critically engage with new ideas, developments and claims to truth. Not only can such practices result in more effective choice-making, but they can also lead to widespread support for progressive beliefs, such as social justice. Yet with western societies in the midst of environmental, social and political crises, it seems more pertinent than ever that citizens become “ideas-informed”.

Methods: Drawing on a survey of 1,000 voting age citizens in England, this paper aims to provide insight into the following: (1) the current “state of the nation” in terms of whether, and how, individuals keep themselves up to date with regards to new ideas, developments and claims to truth; (2) the impact of staying up to date on beliefs such as social justice; (3) the factors influencing people’s propensity to stay up to date, their support for value-related statements, as well as the strength of these influencing factors; and (4) clues as to how the extant “state of the nation” might be improved.

Results: Our findings indicate that many people do keep up to date, do so in a variety of ways, and also engage with ideas as mature critical consumers. There is also strong importance attached by most respondents to the values one would hope to see in a progressive and scientifically literate society. Yet, as we illustrate with our structural equation model, there are a number of problematic network and educational related factors which affect: (1) whether and how people stay up to date; and (2) the importance people ascribe to certain social values, irrespective of whether they stay up to date or not.

Conclusions: Suggestions for the types of social intervention that might foster “ideas-informed” democracies (such as improved dialogue) are presented, along with future research in this area.

Background: The concept of the ideas-informed society represents a desired situation in which: (1) citizens see value in staying up to date, and (2) citizens regularly keep themselves up to date by actively engaging with new ideas, developments and claims to truth, doing so both openly and critically. As a result, individuals become ever more knowledgeable, are better able to make good decisions, as well as find themselves in better position to re-align their values in response to new progressive norms and beliefs. Given these potential benefits, of primary interest are those who do not value staying up to date, nor attempt to do so.

Methods: With this systematic review we have sought to identify ways to consider how such “ideas refusers” might be switched-on to engaging with new ideas. We have done so by exploring: (1) the factors which act as barriers to and enablers of the actualisation of the ideas-informed society; (2) interventions/programmes and community-led activities developed to actualise the ideas-informed society; and (3) other non-empirically tested/verified suggestions for how the ideas-informed society might be actualised. Our findings derive from 25 research outputs (from a total of 631 originally identified) as well as examine case studies of “bottom-up” analogous activities.

Results: Our review highlights the presence of seemingly impactful approaches to enabling citizens to engage with new ideas, including science cafés and museum exhibitions. Other more bottom-up approaches include community-based events and festivals; social networks (and discussion within these networks) are also key to whether and how individuals engage with ideas, and the breadth of ideas they engage with.

Conclusions: We conclude by suggesting development and rigorous testing is now needed of interventions that seek to: (1) pique citizens’ curiosity; (2) establish connections to social networks and; (3) arm citizens with essential ideas-related dispositions.

This first chapter explores the basic foundation of corporate ethics: the human person in all its dignity and mystery, its corporeality and emotionality, and its cognitive and volitive capacities of moral development. Four fundamental characteristics of the human person, namely individuality, sociality, immanence, and transcendence, will be examined for their potential to understand, live, experience, and witness corporate ethics and morals. We explore the profound meaning and mystery of human personhood invoking several philosophies of the good and human dignity as exposed by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas in the West, by the doctrine of Dharma in the East as expounded by Gautama Buddha, Mahabharata, and Bhagavad Gita, and by Prophets Confucius and Tao, in the East. Several contemporary cases of great human personhood are analyzed: for example, Peace Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela from South Africa (1993) and Peace Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo from China (2017) – cases of human abuse that turned into triumphs of human dignity.

Background: The ideas-informed society represents a desired situation in which: (1) citizens see value in staying up to date, and; (2) citizens regularly keep themselves up to date by actively, openly and critically engaging with new ideas, developments and claims to truth. As a result, it is hoped citizens become increasingly knowledgeable, better able to make good decisions, and better positioned to support new progressive norms and beliefs. Yet despite these potential benefits, a substantive proportion of the population do not value staying up to date, nor attempt to do so.

Methods: With this research project we seek to identify whether the theoretical lens of anomie can account for why “ideas refusers” do not engage with ideas, as well as provide clues as to how they might be encouraged to do so. To explore the possible impacts of anomie on ideas-engagement we conducted four online focus groups, interviewing a purposive sample of ten individuals who previously indicated they were ideas refusers.

Results: Our findings identify eleven themes which seemingly account for why ideas refusers do not currently engage with ideas. Of these, ten are related to anomie, including themes which encapsulate feelings of frustration, anxiety, confusion and powerlessness regarding the complexities of modern society.

Conclusions: We also identify three areas of future focus that might help the ongoing development of the ideas-informed society. These are: (1) the more positive and relevant reporting of ideas; (2) supporting “healthy” face-to-face engagement with ideas; and (3) supporting effective ideas engagement through social media.

Self-determination theory (SDT), offers a theoretical framework for enhancing employee motivation and stimulating positive outcomes such as commitment, well-being and engagement, in organizations. This paper aims to investigate the application of SDT among leaders and delineate practical managerial approaches for supporting basic psychological needs in the workplace.

Participants were 51 leaders who had personally applied SDT with their own followers. Data were collected via free-listing method and analysed to extrapolate examples of SDT-application that are both practically salient and aligned to theoretic tenets of SDT.

The findings reveal how SDT is operationalized by leaders to support basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness in the workplace. The SDT-informed management strategies are discussed in relation to the literature and alongside case scenarios to illustrate approaches for integrating elements of SDT into day-to-day management activities.

Despite extensive literature support for SDT, very little empirical attention has been paid to examining how the theory is applied, interpreted and/or used by practitioners in real world settings. This research is the first to draw on the lived-experience of practitioners who have applied SDT, contributes previously unexplored strategies for supporting workers’ basic psychological needs and responds to calls for SDT research to identify a broader range of managerial behaviours that support employee motivation.

This paper aims to examine the employment effect of the minimum wage in Mauritius, a country that has recently introduced an economy-wide national minimum wage. As women have low labor force participation rate and higher unemployment rate compared to men, this study sheds light on the impact of the national minimum wage on male and female employment.

A conceptual framework based on the labor–leisure model of Blundell et al. (2007) incorporating the minimum wage as an important variable influencing the employment decision of the individual serves as the methodological backdrop of this paper. It applies the difference-in-difference estimation technique and uses micro data from the Continuous Multi-Purpose Household Survey for the period 2017–2019.

The results show that minimum wage has a significant negative impact on overall employment. With the imposition of the national minimum wage, the probability that an individual, currently earning less than the minimum wage, remains employed is 0.525 lower than that of a worker earning above the minimum wage level. Moreover, using sex-disaggregated data, the analysis demonstrates the negative employment effects of the minimum wage adversely impact women more than men.

This is a first attempt to estimate the effect of the newly introduced national minimum wage on employment in Mauritius. While the effects of a minimum wage vary across different segments of the economy, this study adopts a gender perspective by comparing the impact of the minimum wage on male and female employment.