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This study aims to develop an in-depth understanding of the underlying dynamics of an emergent shared information practice within a Facebook group, and the resources the group develops to sustain this practice.

In-depth semi-structured interviews were carried out with twenty members from the group. The findings are based on comparative analysis combined with narrative analysis and were interpreted using theories of situated learning and Community of Practice.

The study shows that although members of this multicultural mothers group endorsed different, sometimes opposing parenting practices, the group had to find common ground when sharing information. Managing these challenges was key to maintaining the group as an open information resource for all members. The group produced a shared repertoire of resources to maintain its activities, including norms, rules, shared understandings, and various monitoring activities. The shared online practice developed by the community is conceptualised in this article as an information practice requiring shared, community-specific understandings of what, when, and how information can or should be sought or shared in ways that are valued in this specific community. The findings show that this shared information practice is not static but continually evolves as members negotiate what is, or not, important for the group.

The research provides novel insights into the underlying dynamics of the emergence, management, and sustainability of a shared information practice within a contemporary mothers group on Facebook.

This paper aims to explore the evolution of the notion of peremptory norms (Jus Cogens) in international law through the work of the International Law Commission on unilateral acts.

The study depended on analyzing the work of the International Law Commission on two topics: Unilateral Acts 2006 and Reservations to treaties 2011 to reveal the relation between jus cogens and unilateral acts.

Jus cogens restrict unilateral acts like treaties due to the recognition of the importance and necessity of the concept of Jus cogens in protecting the fundamental interests of the international community.

States must be compatible with jus cogens when making any reservation on a treaty and also when taking any unilateral act.

This paper reveals the importance of jus cogens in promoting the values of the international community and the need of such notion to protect the common interest of that community.

The research sought to expand the conceptual understanding of the antecedents of decision-making under ethical conditions. This study aims to better understand the relationships among need for cognition (NFC), the individual ethical positions of ethical idealism and ethical relativism, organizational and professional socialization, work-related norms and ethical perceptions.

The study compared the impact of environmental influences (i.e. socialization and work-related norm) and individual temporally stable characteristics (i.e. NFC and ethical position) on ethical perceptions. The research surveyed marketers and tested a hypothesized model using structural equation modeling.

NFC influences marketers’ individual ethical position, their professional socialization and their work norms. The work norms of marketers are influenced by individual ethical position and organizational socialization, but not by professional socialization. Professional socialization is influenced by ethical idealism and not ethical relativism.

A judgmental sampling technique was used and the findings cannot be generalized to other populations.

This research provides managers with alternative tools to encourage compliance with professional and corporate guidelines. If managers are seeking an enduring positive influence on work norms, they should be as concerned about the thinking of their employees and their employees’ ethical positions as they are with the vocational rules their subordinates adopt.

Society will benefit from better understanding the different ways in which the ethical perceptions of individual employees are influenced and the various ways in which managers can contribute to ethically responsible corporations.

Although NFC has been examined in other vocational and decision-making contexts, its influence on individual ethical position, vocational socialization and work-related norms has not been empirically examined in ethical contexts for business decision-making.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The paper aims to extend deliberation on legal and political aspects of debate over globalisation versus cosmopolitanism into the field of jurisprudence – philosophy of law. It gives particular attention to questions of the legitimacy of international law and emerging forms of economic governance for business enterprises, soft law, rule of law, accountability and human rights.

In terms of research method, the paper proceeds from normative, as opposed to empirical studies. The paper develops arguments connected with cosmopolitan jurisprudence, a value-based frame of reference for corporate social responsibility. In legal and moral philosophy, normative statements derive from arguments concerning what states of affairs ought to be, how they are to be valued, which things and actions are good or bad. Normative claims contrast with positive (descriptive or explanatory) claims with respect to types of theories, beliefs or propositions. Value is both independent of fact and, at the same time, of an objective nature.

A cosmopolitan jurisprudence frame of reference for economic governance treats human communities as interdependent and takes seriously the human rights obligations and ethical and legal responsibilities of international business enterprises presupposed by international rule of law. In contrast to globalisation jurisprudence, the cosmopolitan philosophy of international law seeks justificatory ground, not only exclusively for traditional forms of centralised governmental authority but also for decentralised, polycentric, private and hybrid public–private forms of authority.

The paper demonstrates the insufficiency of just describing, as political science and economics does, the emergence of new arrangements for global economic governance. As well, it is insufficient for management theory to propose instrumental strategies for managing various stakeholder interests at play in emerging forms of governance. Efforts of empirical researchers in documenting, classifying and providing empirical analysis of power shifts do not provide moral justifications or groundings of legitimacy from human rights and rule of law. The paper shows how a cosmopolitan jurisprudence standpoint is a fertile theoretical source for addressing such justificatory issues.

In the context of a rapidly globalising economy, the justification of responsible business conduct across borders and cultures is more and more becoming a pressing practical concern. Increasingly, private actors are operating in authoritative positions, fulfilling governing functions once perceived to be the exclusive domain of nation-states.

The paper suggests that more important than focusing exclusively on descriptive, coercive and instrumental features of law, and seeking some overarching sanctions system that would necessitate pledging allegiance to a global super-sovereign, is cultivating social awareness of the importance of non-instrumental internal dispositions of actors to respect the normative obligatory nature of norms. The intrinsic value of rule of law and human rights provides a vital intellectual pathway for surmounting legitimacy gaps in global economic governance.

The paper breaks new ground by developing a cosmopolitan jurisprudence as an alternative to globalisation jurisprudence. This new articulation of cosmopolitan jurisprudence serves to provide analysis of philosophical justifications for emerging soft law syndicates that purport to establish obligations for business enterprises and other participants towards soft law regimes touching upon sustainability and human rights responsibilities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how decisions of managers and administrators of online communities on norms and rules affect the sense of virtual community (SOVC), which is an important factor of the quality of online information.

The study followed a two-level research design based on 970 online community members, nested within 36 online communities. Data collection consisted of two stages: first a web survey of a sample of online community members was conducted, followed by a web survey of administrators of the same online communities. A two-level hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

The empirical results suggest that prominence of rules under the condition of members’ participation in their creation, presence of reputation mechanisms, and content moderation contribute significantly to the SOVC , while presence of lighter sanctions and interactive moderation do not.

Since this study is based on web forums, the validity of the proposed hypotheses for other types of online communities cannot be firmly established. Additional elements of online community management could be considered for a stronger system-level explanation of the SOVC.

The study demonstrates that online community administrators need to be considerate in creating and enforcing norms, as their decisions have an impact on the SOVC and consequently on the quality of online information.

The literature considers many factors of the SOVC but none of the previous studies have considered how community management is associated with this phenomenon.

The paper aims to study the role of norms and values in the microfinance sector.

The paper provides a combination of narrative with argument and analysis.

A classification of the sector is proposed, mapping the institutions along two axes: the profit motive (profit vs not‐for‐profit) and the decision‐making style (centralized vs un‐centralized). Some microfinance institutions base their interactions on rigid norms or rules; while others are based on values. It is argued that the private sector will tend to produce the operating rules of the microfinance system while the not‐for‐profit institutions that are using an inclusive decision‐making process are more likely to influence the ethical norms in the sector. Nevertheless, this classification is not static as recent events in South‐India shows that norms, such as the interest rates, can be politically and emotionally invested to the point that they are about to become values in the sector.

The conclusions drawn help in understanding the interactions between the various actions in microfinance. Exploiting the full range of the possibilities of those different structures may be valuable for a fully successful development in India.

Reports about therapeutic communities usually focus on specific therapeutic activities: the various ways of the community functioning correctively, the communal-personal dynamics of the community, the dramaturgically graspable problems and the operating and integrative function of the staff. There is relatively little attention paid to the features of the structure composed of the systems of norms and values of these communities. The purpose of this paper is to focus on this normative dimension of the culture of a therapeutic community.

The authors wish to show this focus with the developmental process of the system of values, rules and norms of the therapeutic community of Thalassa House in Budapest, thinking mainly in self-psychological and ethical paradigm.

The way of operating values, norms and rules – the systems of metanorms – creates the cognitive matrix in which members of the community are both acting and perceiving parties, simultaneously suffering and interpreting the communal occurrence of self-pathologies. It develops the cooperative potential of the community along this “ethical” dimension. In the view, the structure of rules, norms and values operated in the culture of relationships of the community, as a consciously elaborated collective agent, has a specific effect in the healing of self-pathologies.

In the view, the efficiency of the actuation of norms depends primarily on the emergence of metanorms, that is of the ”how” of the application of norms. The values of the metanorms can be found both in the circumstances of the birth of self-according to the attachment theory and in the world of dialogical ethics.

The purpose of this article is to challenge the balanced budget practices of U.S. state governments and offer alternatives that may lead to better fiscal, economic and policy outcomes. We contend that the norm of balance may be leading U.S. states to make fiscal decisions that result in less-than-ideal outcomes, especially during economic downturns.

This is a normative article. We examine the scholarly evidence regarding balanced budget practices to assess the appropriateness of balanced budget norms. We also examine the fiscal rules followed by Eurozone countries to draw potential lessons for U.S. states.

We conclude that state governments should move away from strict norms of budget balance and seek more flexible approaches. We suggest that instead of following strict rules and norms of balance, U.S. states should consider implementing escape clauses, debt and deficit ceilings, and fiscal councils. We also suggest that the Federal Reserve be open to lending directly to states during fiscal crises to ensure that states have access to affordable credit.

The balanced budget norm has become ingrained in U.S. state budgeting practices, so much so that public officials and scholars alike rarely question it. The novel contribution of our article is to question this practice in a systematic way and propose alternative approaches.

This paper seeks to argue the relevance of knowledge management (KM) to the development of social capital, and to enhancing the capacity to take effective action in human social systems.

The study applies a pluralistic definition of knowledge (including subjective beliefs in minds and objective claims expressed in language) to show that most forms of social capital reduce to knowledge.

First, social capital mostly comprises knowledge (trust, beliefs, rules, and norms). Second, the capacity to individually and collectively learn (in networks) is therefore arguably the most important form of social capital, even if rarely acknowledged as such in the literature. Third, because of the importance of learning and innovation to the production of social capital in society and organizations, KM has an important role to play in related development efforts.

The paper introduces social capital constructivism. Practicing it to strengthen social capital can enhance the capacity to take effective action in human social systems. This points to a new value proposition and functional orientation for KM: to enhance the human capacity to take effective action by fostering the growth and development of social capital.

The thesis reveals social capital as consisting mostly of knowledge, and shows how KM can enhance a human capacity to take effective action in social systems by fostering the production of social capital itself.