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A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Details a method for uncovering the direct and indirect influences of human values on consumer decisions. The procedure is quantitative, uses large samples and employs widely known statistical techniques such as correlations, regression and (optionally) factor analysis. Uses a study of Toyota Corolla as an example. Describes the four steps involved: development of the questionnaire; administration to sample of market; assessment of general preferences; and assessing the extent to which individuals in the sample apply their human values directly or indirectly when forming product preference. The main marketing strategies for which this method can yield useful information are: solidifying consumers’ current perceptions and evaluations of the product; and changing consumer perceptions of the product. Implications for marketing professionals are discussed.

The critical dimension and the one that can unify knowledge through systemic interrelationships, is unification of the purely a priori with the purely a posteriori parts of total reality into a congruous whole. This is a circular cause and effect interrelationship between premises. The emerging kind of world view may also be substantively called the epistemic‐ontic circular causation and continuity model of unified reality. The essence of this order is to ground philosophy of science in both the natural and social sciences, in a perpetually interactive and integrative mould of deriving, evolving and enhancing or revising change. Knowledge is then defined as the output of every such interaction. Interaction arises first from purely epistemological roots to form ontological reality. This is the passage from the a priori to the a posteriori realms in the traditions of Kant and Heidegger. Conversely, the passage from the a posteriori to a priori reality is the approach to knowledge in the natural sciences proferred by Cartesian meditations, David Hume, A.N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, as examples. Yet the continuity and renewal of knowledge by interaction and integration of these two premises are not rooted in the philosophy of western science. Husserl tried for it through his critique of western civilization and philosophical methods in the Crisis of Western Civilization. The unified field theory of Relativity‐Quantum physics is being tried for. A theory of everything has been imagined. Yet after all is done, scientific research program remains in a limbo. Unification of knowledge appears to be methodologically impossible in occidental philosophy of science.

The present studies provide support for a functional approach to instrumental and terminal values and the value‐attitude‐behaviour system. Study 1 surveyed individuals’ human values, the type of meaning to which they prefer to attend in products (i.e. utilitarian or symbolic), and how they choose to evaluate the products (i.e. a piecemeal or affective judgement). The study found that individuals who favoured instrumental to terminal human values showed a predisposition to attend to the utilitarian meanings of products and make piecemeal judgements. In contrast, individuals who favoured terminal over instrumental values preferred symbolic meanings, affective judgements, and human values in general. Study 2 found that individuals who favoured instrumental to terminal values had stronger instrumental attitudes towards cars and sun‐glasses. The results suggest that: psychological functions are not limited to attitudes or human values but span the breadth of the value‐attitude‐behaviour system; that two such psychological functions are instrumental and expressive; and that instrumental and terminal values serve instrumental and expressive functions, respectively.

This paper sets out to present a comparative study of the core values of 16 excellence models vis‐à‐vis human values enshrined in ancient religious philosophies and identified by social scientists as a spiritual way of working.

Contemporary excellence models (EMs) are considered as role models to attain success, and thus it is appropriate to review the effectiveness of their core values. The core values of 16 EMs are identified through a literature review and are studied comparatively. Further, common human values enshrined in various religious philosophies and also advocated by research as success strategies are identified for the comparative study.

The paper identifies and compares the core values of 16 contemporary excellence models. By and large, the focus of core values in EMs is similar. However, the Deming Prize has a uniqueness and different focus in comparison with other models. Some of the common values are customer focus, continuous learning, innovation and improvement, employee involvement and development, partnership development, systems, process‐based management, agility, and social responsibility. Human values emphasise the purity of the means and their adoption enhances stakeholders' loyalty. Core values will become more effective if they emanate from human values.

The comparative study provides a new perspective for the integration of business values of EMs with human values. It may be useful for the custodians, the GEM council, researchers and practitioners to enhance their understanding of values and their impact in enhancing sustainable growth and prosperity.

The study is expected to help in a review of national business excellence strategies worldwide. The integration of excellence models with human values by model custodians and corporate leadership will lead to an exponential growth in business and prosperity for all stakeholders.

The study is a part of original research work at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India by the author after long experience in the implementation of excellence initiatives in industry. The paper is one of the few comprehensive studies of excellence models and focuses on the integration of learning to attain sustainable growth and prosperity in a competitive environment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine differences between thermal insulation calculated by a global and a serial method using a thermal manikin, in comparison with human trials.

A total of 150 single garments and 38 clothing ensembles were assessed using the manikin; 26 seasonal clothing ensembles were selected for human trials.

The results showed that total insulation of single garments was 16 percent higher in the serial method than in the global method. The difference was higher in garments with smaller covering area per unit garment mass (e.g. winter garments). For seasonal clothing ensembles, the serial values were 39.2 percent (0.18 clo) for spring/fall wear, 62.6 percent (0.15 clo) for summer wear and for winter wear 64.8 percent (0.69 clo) greater than the global values. The clothing insulation by the global method was systemically lower in all 26 seasonal ensembles than values by human trials, which suggests that the values by the global calculation can be more accurately corrected with human testing data.

The paper shows that values by the serial calculation were lower in spring/fall and summer ensembles but greater in winter garments than values collated by human trials. It suggests that the serial values had a lower validity when compared with thermal insulation values collated from human trials.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a scale to measure the level of cyber human values based on the behaviors of social media users in cyberspace.

The paper is based on a scale-development process by following a systematic approach. First, the current scales were examined; following this, focus group interviews were held; next, an item pool was formed; and the validity and reliability of the items were tested. The validity and reliability studies of the scale were conducted with 1,495 social media users. An application on Facebook was used to collect the data.

As a result of the validity study, 25 items under five factors were obtained. These factors were being peaceful, truth, solidarity, respect and tolerance. The items obtained were capable of discriminating the individuals in terms of the features to be measured by the scale. In addition, the scale was confirmed to measure correctly the structure obtained in line with the fit indices. The internal consistency coefficient of the scale was 0.90 and split-half reliability coefficient was 0.88.

The sample has several limitations. Most of the participants were male and the data were collected on social media. Thus, to enhance the validity and reliability of the scale, further in-depth qualitative and cross-cultural studies should be examined.

This study could provide convenience for practitioners about how to diagnose the cyber human values of the internet users in cyberspace.

It was concluded that this scale was valid, reliable and beneficial to measure social media users’ levels of cyber human values.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of narratives in biodiversity reports as a mechanism to raise the awareness of biodiversity’s importance. By classifying biodiversity narratives into 14 categories of biodiversity values this paper investigates whether the explanations for biodiversity conservation used by UK local councils are line with shallow, intermediate or deep philosophies.

This study used content analysis to examine the disclosures on biodiversity’s importance in the biodiversity action plans published by UK local councils. The narratives were first identified and then allocated into 14 categories of biodiversity value. Then, they were ascribed to either shallow (resource conservation, human welfare ecology and preservationism), intermediate (environmental stewardship and moral extensionism) or deep philosophies.

UK local councils explained biodiversity’s importance mainly in terms of its instrumental value, in line with shallow philosophies such as human welfare ecology and resource conservation. UK local councils sought to raise awareness of biodiversity’ importance by highlighting values that are important for the stakeholders that are able to contribute towards biodiversity conservation such as landowners, residents, visitors, business and industries. The authors also found that local councils’ biodiversity strategies were strongly influenced by 2010, the International Year of Biodiversity.

This paper is one of the few accounting studies that engages with the literature on environmental ethics to investigate biodiversity. In line with stakeholder theory, it indicates that explanations on biodiversity’s importance based on anthropocentric philosophies are considered more effective in informing those stakeholders whose behaviour needs to be changed to improve biodiversity conservation.