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Abstract

Details

Public Morality and the Culture Wars: The Triple Divide
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80455-722-8

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 14 September 2023

Gunter Bombaerts

The purpose of this article is to summarize three Luhmannian critiques on morality, illustrate new roles for morality and add constructive interpretations.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to summarize three Luhmannian critiques on morality, illustrate new roles for morality and add constructive interpretations.

Design/methodology/approach

Luhmann has recently been described as downright negative toward morality, resulting in a refusal to use ethics as a sociologist, thus leading to a limited use of his theory in moral issues. A constructive interpretation could support a more functional use of morality in social system theory.

Findings

First, Luhmann signals that morality can no longer fulfill its integrative function in society but also that society has recourse to moral sensitivity. Second, Luhmann describes how anxiety is crucial in modern morality and indicates which role risk and danger could play. The author builds further on this and proposes the concept of “social system attention” that can provide answers to individual and organizational anxiety. The author proposes that institutionalized socialization can support an integrative morality. Third, Luhmann states that ethics today is nothing more than a utopia but also that the interdiction of moral self-exemption is an essential element. The author adds that a relational ontology for social systems theory can avoid ethics as utopia.

Practical implications

This article is a programmatic plea to further elaborate morality from a system theory perspective in which meaning is relationally positioned.

Originality/value

This article could potentially provide a more functional application of morality in social systems, thus leading to improvements of attempts of ethical decision-making. The originality of the approach lies in the interpretation of basic assumptions of Luhmann social system theory that are not core to his theory.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 52 no. 13
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 19 July 2023

Magnus Söderlund

Service robots are expected to become increasingly common, but the ways in which they can move around in an environment with humans, collect and store data about humans and share…

Abstract

Purpose

Service robots are expected to become increasingly common, but the ways in which they can move around in an environment with humans, collect and store data about humans and share such data produce a potential for privacy violations. In human-to-human contexts, such violations are transgression of norms to which humans typically react negatively. This study examines if similar reactions occur when the transgressor is a robot. The main dependent variable was the overall evaluation of the robot.

Design/methodology/approach

Service robot privacy violations were manipulated in a between-subjects experiment in which a human user interacted with an embodied humanoid robot in an office environment.

Findings

The results show that the robot's violations of human privacy attenuated the overall evaluation of the robot and that this effect was sequentially mediated by perceived robot morality and perceived robot humanness. Given that a similar reaction pattern would be expected when humans violate other humans' privacy, the present study offers evidence in support of the notion that humanlike non-humans can elicit responses similar to those elicited by real humans.

Practical implications

The results imply that designers of service robots and managers in firms using such robots for providing service to employees should be concerned with restricting the potential for robots' privacy violation activities if the goal is to increase the acceptance of service robots in the habitat of humans.

Originality/value

To date, few empirical studies have examined reactions to service robots that violate privacy norms.

Details

Journal of Service Theory and Practice, vol. 33 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2055-6225

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 19 February 2024

Neema Trivedi-Bateman and Victoria Gadd

The study aims to introduce The Compass Project (TCP), designed to determine whether strengthening morality and practicing emotion management can reduce youth antisocial attitudes…

Abstract

Purpose

The study aims to introduce The Compass Project (TCP), designed to determine whether strengthening morality and practicing emotion management can reduce youth antisocial attitudes and behaviours and increase prosocial attitudes and behaviours.The programme activities are informed by the existing evidence base and incorporate theoretical explanations of the mechanisms that link psychological moral and emotional traits and behaviour.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper will offer a description of the programme design and content, TCP 2022 pilot study and crucially, discuss the utility of delivering programmes like TCP in wider settings (schools, youth offending teams and other youth organisations). TCP is currently being delivered in UK schools as a multi-site, longitudinal, RCT design.

Findings

Participant feedback from TCP 2022 pilot study is used to illustrate the potential impact of TCP for young people in future. The authors identify five challenges faced by researchers conducting youth intervention studies: access, recruitment, continued attendance, nature of participation (enthusiasm, engagement and task-focus) and full participant completion of data measures.

Practical implications

This pioneering study offers a novel methodology to increase law-abiding moral attitudes and behaviours in young people. This paper adopts a forward-thinking and scientific approach to identify practical solutions to key challenges faced when delivering youth interventions and is relevant for youth practitioners and academics worldwide.

Social implications

TCP seeks to achieve improved youth attitudinal outcomes (such as law-aligned morality, empathy for others, measured decision-making and consideration of the consequences of action) and improved youth behavioural outcomes (such as improved quality of relationships with others, increased helping and prosocial behaviours, reduced antisocial behaviour and delinquency and reduced contact with criminal justice system-related organisations).

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, an evidence-based morality strengthening and emotion programme of this kind, closely aligned with a moral theory of rule-breaking, has not been developed before.

Details

Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice, vol. 10 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2056-3841

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Public Morality and the Culture Wars: The Triple Divide
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80455-722-8

Abstract

Details

Public Morality and the Culture Wars: The Triple Divide
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80455-722-8

Article
Publication date: 11 April 2023

Shailendra Kumar and Sanghamitra Choudhury

The widespread usage of artificial intelligence (AI) is prompting a number of ethical issues, including those involving concerns for fairness, surveillance, transparency…

Abstract

Purpose

The widespread usage of artificial intelligence (AI) is prompting a number of ethical issues, including those involving concerns for fairness, surveillance, transparency, neutrality and human rights. The purpose of this manuscript is to explore possibility of developing cognitive morality in AI systems.

Design/methodology/approach

This is explorative research. The manuscript investigates the likelihood of cognitive moral development in AI systems as well as potential pathways for such development. Concurrently, it proposes a novel idea for the characterization and development of ethically conscious and artificially intelligent robotic machines.

Findings

This manuscript explores the possibility of categorizing AI machines according to the level of cognitive morality they embody, and while doing so, it makes use of Lawrence Kohlberg's study related to cognitive moral development in humans. The manuscript further suggests that by providing appropriate inputs to AI machines in accordance with the proposed concept, humans may assist in the development of an ideal AI creature that would be morally more responsible and act as moral agents, capable of meeting the demands of morality.

Research limitations/implications

This manuscript has some restrictions because it focuses exclusively on Kohlberg's perspective. This theory is not flawless. Carol Gilligan, one of Kohlberg's former doctoral students, said that Kohlberg's proposal was unfair and sexist because it didn't take into account the views and experiences of women. Even if one follows the law, they may still be engaging in immoral behaviour, as Kohlberg argues, because laws and social norms are not perfect. This study makes it easier for future research in the field to look at how the ideas of people like Joao Freire and Carl Rogers can be used in AI systems.

Originality/value

It is an original research that derives inspiration from the cognitive moral development theory of American Professor named Lawrence Kohlberg. The authors present a fresh way of thinking about how to classify AI systems, which should make it easier to give robots cognitive morality.

Details

Technological Sustainability, vol. 2 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2754-1312

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 May 2023

Prianto Budi Saptono and Ismail Khozen

Even as governments worldwide take extraordinary measures and spend unprecedented amounts of their state budgets to combat COVID-19, tax compliance remains challenging. Therefore…

Abstract

Purpose

Even as governments worldwide take extraordinary measures and spend unprecedented amounts of their state budgets to combat COVID-19, tax compliance remains challenging. Therefore, this study employs previously identified predictors to investigate the factors that persuade individual taxpayers to comply with the law.

Design/methodology/approach

Individual taxpayers in Indonesia (N = 699) who had experienced COVID-19-related benefits were asked to assess the provided evaluation regarding the tax compliance intention and its determinants. The bootstrapping analysis was employed using smart partial least squares (SmartPLS) to test the hypotheses.

Findings

The results suggest that the perceived fiscal exchange, tax morality, tax fairness, tax complexity and the power of authority are significant determinants of tax compliance intention. This study also supports the indirect effects of numerous factors on tax compliance intention through the perceived fiscal exchange and tax morality. In practice, reminding taxpayers of how tax payments fund public services, improving taxpayer morale, increasing the perceived fairness of the tax system, streamlining the tax code and managing the effectiveness of tax administration could all lead to a greater intention to comply with the law.

Originality/value

In addition to highlighting the dynamics of tax compliance amid the unprecedented pandemic crisis, our findings also provide insight into the importance of perceived fiscal exchange and tax morality for achieving and sustaining planned behavior to comply with tax rules.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 43 no. 11/12
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Public Morality and the Culture Wars: The Triple Divide
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80455-722-8

Article
Publication date: 13 September 2023

Sigmund A. Wagner-Tsukamoto

This paper aims to offer a new history of management by tracing a religious dimension of scientific management. The thesis is that the good was foundational for bringing…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to offer a new history of management by tracing a religious dimension of scientific management. The thesis is that the good was foundational for bringing scientific management to success in Taylor’s native Quaker Philadelphia in the 1880s. The paper’s main contribution is to contrast the philosophical origins of Taylor’s ideas in scientific management to his native Quaker roots, and how Taylor, over time, into the 1910s, wrestled with this issue.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is situated in historical interpretivism and subjectivism, leaning on contextual and narrative research on religious morality.

Findings

Quaker morality prevented managerial opportunism at Taylor’s Midvale Steel in the 1880s. Conversely, by the 1900s and 1910s, interest conflicts between workers and managers escalated when scientific management moved out of its traditional cultural contexts of Quaker Philadelphia and spread across the USA. The historical implication is, already for Taylor’s time, that scientific management never was the “one-best way” of management.

Research limitations/implications

Future research needs to deepen and broaden research on scientific management when tracing the significance of religion and culture in management thought.

Practical implications

The paper has implications for modern studies of business morality by uncovering the practical relevance of religious business ethics at the outset of management studies.

Social implications

The historic emergence of scientific management points to a theory of institutional evolution and economic growth, when religiously grounded governance of the firm deinstitutionalized, and institutional economic governance, with different but superior economic advantages, progressed by the 1900s.

Originality/value

The paper suggests an alternative version of the intellectual heritage of management studies by tracing the legacy of Taylor’s Quakerism and how religious and cultural ideas contributed to the formation of science in management.

Details

Journal of Management History, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1751-1348

Keywords

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