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This paper aims to highlight the ethical implications of the adoption of Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), for humanity. It proposes a virtues approach to resolving ethical dilemmas.

The research is based on a review of the relevant literature and empirical evidence for how AI is impacting individuals and society. It uses a taxonomy of human attributes against which potential harms are evaluated.

The technologies of the 4IR are being adopted at a fast pace, posing numerous ethical dilemmas. This study finds that the adoption of these technologies, driven by an Enlightenment view of progress, is diminishing key aspects of humanity – moral agency, human relationships, cognitive acuity, freedom and privacy and the dignity of work. The impact of AI algorithms is also shown, in particular, is shown to be distorting the view of reality and threatening democracy, in part due to the asymmetry of power between Big Tech and users. To enable humanity to be masters of technology, rather than controlled by it, a virtues-based approach should be used to resolve ethical dilemmas, rather than utilitarian ethics.

Further investigation is required to provide more empirical evidence of the harms to humanity of some 4IR technologies cited, such as virtual and augmented reality, manipulative algorithms and toy robots on children and adults and the reality of re-skilling where jobs are lost through automation.

This paper provides a framework for evaluating the impact of some 4IR technologies of humanity and an approach to resolving ethical dilemmas.

Most of the concerns surrounding 4IR technologies, and in particular AI, tend to focus on human rights issues. This paper shows that there are other significant harms to what it means to be a human being from 4IR technologies that will have a profound impact on society if not adequately addressed.

The author is not aware of any other work that uses taxonomy of AI applications and their different impacts on humanity. The proposal to use virtues as a means to resolve ethical dilemmas is also novel in regard to AI.

This paper aims to investigate the role of showcasing a product with its cast shadow (formed in the ad’s background by the advertised product) on consumer product perceptions.

Three experimentally designed studies, incorporating two product categories, demonstrate the impact of visual presentation of a product with its shadow on consumer evaluations. A total of 203 participants (MTurkers, and student respondents at a southern university) provided data for these studies through questionnaires (online as well as paper-pencil formats).

Findings reveal that the presence of a product’s cast shadow in the ad frame increases its visual acuity, which in turn enhances its luxury perceptions. Downstream, a product shadow’s presence positively impacts its overall evaluations, through enhanced product luxury perceptions. Also, consumers with high Centrality of Visual Product Aesthetics (CVPA) demonstrate a stronger liking for such product presentations.

The current findings not only demonstrate the positive impact of product shadows on consumer perceptions, but also enrich the luxury and aesthetics literature streams.

Advertisers often subjectively use product shadows as stylistic tools in marketing communications. This research offers some practical guidelines to use shadows in fostering product luxury perceptions and better target aesthetically-sensitive consumers.

Advertising research suggests that visual styling and presentation of products significantly impacts consumer perceptions. However, the role of product shadows has not yet been empirically examined. This paper makes an attempt to test whether and how product shadows impact consumer perceptions.

Highlights the general inattention to human development in marketing research and practice, especially in research and marketing concerned with older consumers. Describes a new approach to marketing based on human development.

We outline a developmental view of OD, showing on empirical grounds that Argyris’ “theory in use” notion points to different levels of mental growth as underpinnings of “the program in brain/mind” that determines personal theories of organizational action. Employing the developmental structure/process tool (DSPT^TM), we explain the differences between two executives’ theory of action. We also analyze the dynamic of a six‐member team on developmental grounds. By way of close analysis, we show that theories of action are developmentally grounded, and are thus open both to maturation over the life span and to interventions like developmental coaching. We come to the conclusion that developmental assessment of executives and teams should become a vital part of in‐house development and of OD intervention.

The thinking of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza is gradually entering the field of social science. In this paper, we are particularly interested in applying his theory of affects to the analysis of passionate collective behaviours at work in the field of financial markets. The general hypothesis that underpins our work is the idea that, in a context of radical uncertainty about the future, the succession of common affect regimes translates into passionate sequences that determine investor behaviour and produce market dynamics. Using an analysis of the stock market cycles of Taffler, Bellotti, and Agarwal (2018), Taffler, Agarwal, and Wang (2019), we show that the Spinozist concept of common affects can help us to understand the mechanisms in the production of collective emotion and to account for the speculative dynamics at the origin of the great financial bubbles.

Empirically investigates, using a conjoint methodology, the importance weights given the attributes of quality for acute care hospital services. The study shows consumers evaluated the technical dimensions of nursing care, physician care, and outcome as more important than the accommodation functions of hospital care, and there are significant interactions among the technical dimensions. Both sets of dimensions were important and significant, but technical quality evaluations were not influenced by the perceived quality level of the affective attributes. The relative importance of these attributes were quite stable among various subgroups of past patients.

Disability as a consequential social characteristic has not drawn sociologists’ contemporary attention in the way that race, class, gender, and sexuality have. In order to understand why, it is instructive to analyze how disability has been framed since the inception of the American Sociological Society, now known as the American Sociological Association.

Our findings are based on an intensive, systematic, and comprehensive content analysis of 10 years of the Proceedings from the American Sociology Society’s Annual Meetings, 1906–1915.

Three key themes emerged from the content analysis of the proceedings of the first 10 years of the papers delivered at the Annual Meetings (1906–1915). First, people with disabilities were largely invisible in those papers. Second, influenced strongly by a social reform agenda which stressed progress and the powerful eugenics movement of the time, those early presenters who addressed people with disabilities in their papers vilified them. Third, their denigration was met largely with silence in the printed commentary which followed in the proceedings.

In order to understand the present limited attention to disability, researchers need to know the historical context.

Although there have been a number of thoughtful books, edited volumes and review essays exploring the history of the discipline of sociology, none of them have attended to the history of disability within the field. This paper contributes to that historical understanding.

This paper aims to investigate the impact that building design has upon the quality of life for residents of a care home who have dementia. To present a balanced perspective, carers within the care home also participate in the research.

A case study methodological approach was adopted using one care home, ten residents and five staff as a sample frame. During interviews conducted, participants were asked semi-structured questions on how building design features impact upon the quality of life of residents. Questions posed focussed upon key design principles that emerged from a detailed review of extant literature.

Building design for people with dementia must consider a complex array of features to provide a safe and habitable living space for residents and family members who visit. This living space must also be suitably utilitarian and provide a workable environment for staff. Hence, an appropriate balance between these two competing requirements must be attained, and often a tailor-made solution is required that fits the individual’s level of dementia. Three prominent areas that study participants expressed a desire for were a safe environment; support for wayfinding, orientation and navigation; and access to nature and the outdoors.

The work reports upon the rarely discussed issue of building design for people with dementia and could be used by policymakers and construction firms to enhance their knowledge capabilities in this area. The research concludes with direction for future research which should seek to provide more evidence-based research vis-a-vis perception enquiry and extend this seminal work to a larger sample of care homes or people with dementia living at home.