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An increasingly popular argument proposes that the problems in public schooling may be solved through stronger, more morally imaginative leadership. School administrators ought to set forth a vision growing out of this moral responsibility, and may be trained to utilise moral imagination in directing teachers and students towards certain moral visions. A critique of the argument is presented and alternative (and conflicting) meanings of “moral imagination” surveyed. Four models of moral imagination are located: as discovery; as moral authority; as faculty of mind, and as super science. It is argued that each of these conceptions has inherent difficulties. The logical relationship of these views is explored. The notion of “school leadership” is traced in the literature as it has been attached to “moral imagination”. The work of W. Greenfield is examined and a philosophy of school administration, with certain assumptions, regarding values and authority, that reveal key difficulties for the unfettered use of “moral imagination” in school administration, is found. It is concluded that “moral imagination” ought to be replaced with “critical imagination”, coupled with “democratic value deliberation” and by so doing a richer leadership will result, leading to the empowerment of teachers and a fuller serving of the public good.

Human dignity is a crucial concept in international and domestic human rights law. It is understood to be the foundation of human rights, and while we know what human rights are, the nature, content, and grounds of human dignity remain unclear. The aim of this chapter is to propose scientific grounds for human dignity. In this context, the author will explore contemporary evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, where it is claimed that human nature is constituted by tendencies to cooperate (Tomasello, 2009), or under a different formulation, by narrow altruism and imperfect prudence (Załuski, 2009). Evolutionary psychology holds that we have basic tendencies to cooperate with one another and to behave altruistically in order to achieve a common good. This means that our basic evolutionary default and scientifically proven mode of being are optimistic and can be labelled as morally good. The author argues that this human nature constitutes scientific grounds for human dignity. The author’s argument holds that since human dignity comprises the inherent worth of every human being, this positive moral fact about the scientifically understood human nature is human dignity. The author then present this issue within two broader philosophical frameworks of analytic philosophy – namely, naturalism (especially methodological naturalism) and metaphysical realism. Following this, the author contends that references to natural sciences in debates on the foundations of human dignity and human rights argue against the strongest objection to human rights – the objection of Western ethnocentrism.

Shares reflections and experiences on teaching a business ethics course to students of business over the past three years in the hope that wider debate about this aspect of management learning will establish its place in the business education curriculum. Considers the problems of teaching ethics in an occupation where there is no commonly accepted code of ethics. Discusses design, aims and objectives of a business ethics course and describes and reflects on aspects of the process and content of the course with a view to improving its practice in the future.

There has been an increase in the number of highly qualified management graduates specialized in finance from various esteemed universities in India, thus increasing the competition for finance job roles in the country. This, therefore, brings in the need for the employees or the prospective candidates to mold their soft skills so as to make them desirable by the companies and hence employable. The purpose of this paper is to provide a list of skills required by management graduates to become employable for finance job roles from the perspective of corporate executives. This list will enable prospective candidates to prepare themselves for a career in the field of finance.

The research was carried out through the collection of data from 117 finance professionals with a minimum work experience of 5 years with the help of structured questionnaires. This was then analyzed through factor analysis and the list of 15 factors was obtained.

A list of 15 essential factors was obtained through the analysis of the data. The essential skills included empathetic and judicious behavior, professional etiquette and employee well-being, ethical behavior, conflict management, change analysis and prediction; practicality and organizational presence of mind; social and moral presence of mind; self-confidence and effective written communication; effective interpersonal communication and employee value systems; responsibility and self-awareness; problem diagnosis and problem-solving; real-time work and activity experience; professional development and advancement; technology rationalization and effective information generation. The findings also included that a candidate should be able to effectively present crucial information and should possess practical advisory skills.

The study will be highly beneficial for management graduates who have specialized in finance to secure finance job roles in India. This paper will enable the students to prepare themselves in the essential soft skills required for these job roles apart from technical knowledge and hard skills.

While a relationship between accountability and ethics has long been assumed and debated in Public Administration, the nature of that relationship has not been examined or clearly articulated. This article makes such an effort by positing four major forms of accountability (answerability, blameworthiness, liability and attributability) and focusing on the ethical strategies developed in response to each of these forms

The authors suggest that the research-to-practice gap, such as that found in evidence-based management, is due in part to a lack of attention to embodied knowledge. The recommendation is for change agents to bring attention to embodied knowing when implementing change based on research. The purpose of the paper is to address the research-to-practice gap.

This is a conceptual paper that considers limitations of the predominant approach to considering the research-to-practice gap. The literature on phenomenology, feminist theory, and learning theory form the basis for exploring these challenges as well as possible solutions for transcending the research-to-practice gap.

Strategic opportunities for introducing increased corporeal understanding are advanced. The suggestions address the research-to-practice gap at three critical stages of research-based change initiatives. These include making embodied knowledge integral to change initiatives in framing research, reducing resistance, and increasing acceptance. Among the specific strategies discussed are attending to tacit knowledge when considering the change, embracing the embrained body including attending to kinesthetic resistance and starting with the body to increase acceptance when implementing change.

There has been very little previous attention to the corporeal in management research and practice, including in the organizational change literature. This paper not only increases this discussion significantly but also provides suggestions for how to move forward in practice.

Prosociality is considered important in the study of offenders and associated cognitive skills: theory of mind, empathic understanding and moral reasoning, are said to enable self-control and reduce the risk of offending behaviours. Previous research has made associations between these skills and executive functioning; however, research into a link between them, in an offending population, is limited. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

To further understand the practicalities of this, the present study considered the predictive abilities of the constructs believed to underpin executive functioning: working memory, cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control, in relation to theory of mind, empathic understanding and moral reasoning. In total, 200 male and female offenders completed measures in all six constructs.

Using path analysis working memory was demonstrated to be predictive of theory of mind and empathic understanding, cognitive flexibility was found to be predictive of theory of mind, and inhibitory control was found to be predictive of theory of mind, empathic understanding and moral reasoning.

The study focussed on offenders serving a custodial sentence of six months or less and did not differentiate between crime categories or take into consideration the socio-environmental backgrounds or ethnicity. Therefore, considering these things could further establish the generalisability of the current findings. It is noted that the more focussed the intervention is to the specific needs of an offender, the greater the impact will be. Therefore, pre-screening tests for the constructs discussed may be able to more accurately assess an offenders’ suitability for a programme, or indeed tailor it to meet the specific needs of that person.

These findings may enable practitioners to more accurately assess offenders’ suitability for interventions aimed at reducing offending behaviours by improving levels of prosociality and develop more focussed programmes to meet the specific needs of individual offenders to reduce re-offending.

As recommended in the study, a more tailored approach to offender rehabilitation may be a potential aid to reducing levels of recidivism.

The present study adds to the literature as it is the first to consider whether the constructs of executive functioning can predict levels of theory of mind, empathic understanding and moral reasoning and so provide a more accurate method in assessing the cognitive abilities of offenders prior to participation in rehabilitative interventions.

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.

Purpose – Due to an absence of dialogue between sociology and the neurosciences, the scientific study of morality largely ignores cultural and structural influences. This chapter offers a synthetic approach integrating these separate disciplines to aid a more complete understanding of morality.

Design/methodology/approach – This chapter reviews morality's bonding (a sense of groupness and belonging) and bounding (reproducing and reinforcing group boundaries) qualities across disciplines, and proposes three provisional principles to systematize an interdisciplinary model of morality. We then offer a preliminary illustration of how this model might be operationalized with functional MRI data.

Findings – Our proposed principles (as exemplified by our illustrative example) suggest that the sociology-neurology gap in understanding the domain of morality might shrink through an engagement with the underlying neural mechanisms that encompass issues of empathy, racial attitudes, and identity as potential platforms opening up a more “social” neuroscience.

Research limitations/implications – This chapter provides a starting-point for further research incorporating biological mechanisms into sociological theories in the area of morality. The illustrative case study should be replicated in a larger sample and/or in additional studies with different social groups.

Practical implications – This chapter is a useful source of information for sociologists seeking to find out more about the intersection of neuroscience and sociology as well as the neural dynamics of morality.

Originality/value – This chapter presents an introduction to an integrative approach recognizing our biological capacities for a socially constructed morality and the interaction between society and the mind. It includes one of the first sociologically oriented fMRI studies, offering avenues for new ways to bridge research disciplines.

This paper aims to clarify an important nuance by proposing that people attribute human mind to brands on two distinct dimensions: think and feel.

Eight studies were conducted to first develop and validate the 14-item Brand Anthropomorphism Questionnaire, and then to investigate how the two subscales, think or feel dimensions, influence consumer moral judgment of brands.

This research developed a 14-item Brand Anthropomorphism Questionnaire with two subscales, which are psychometrically sound and show discriminant validity with regard to existing brand constructs. Furthermore, think or feel brand anthropomorphism dimensions can predict consumers’ moral judgment of brands.

The present research offers preliminary evidence about the value of distinguishing between think brand and feel brand in consumer moral judgment. Further research could investigate other potential impact of the two dimensions, and possible antecedents of think/feel dimensions.

Managers can use the scale for assessment, planning, decision-making and tracking purposes. In addition, in the event of brand scandal or brand social responsibility activities, public-relations efforts can use the findings to earn or regain the trust of consumers, as this research demonstrates that marketers can shape (tailor) the feel or think dimensions of brand perception to change consumers’ moral judgment of the brands.

This research makes theoretical contribution to the brand anthropomorphism literature by differentiating the two dimensions and exploring the influence of anthropomorphism of consumer moral judgment.