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The subject of Jihad has been a fiercly debated topic in the past few decades. Contradictory translations have been adopted by differing religious groups and political camps. In some quarters Jihad has been associated with violence and war. Other quarters perceive the Jihad to mean a striving within oneself and the struggle for self‐improvement. In this paper, the historical and contemporary perspectives of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam regarding Jihad are outlined. The evolution of the meaning of Jihad in each religion is clarified and similarities and dissimilarities among the three religions are highlighted. Various forms of Jihad are presented. The paper, however, argues that true Jihad means an active participation in social improvement and economic development. In addition, the paper provides implications of Jihad for business and organizations.

The relation between moral judgements, policy decisions and economic implications is a challenging subject for analysis, especially when the isues are the arms race and war‐fighting capabilities. How to translate moral judgements into policy decisions with their economic consequences is a complex and troublesome question because of the enormous stakes for national and worldwide survival. The problem confronting us is clearly illustrated by the US Catholic bishops' pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace, May 1983, which addressed the moral dimension of the nuclear arms race and warfare without coming to grips adequately with the issues of policy decisions and economy which their moral conclusions raised. Their later pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the US Economy, November 1986, compounded their failure by omitting to confront directly the economic implications of translating their moral conclusions into practical policies. The economic side of the arms race is a concern which must be recognised and addressed if policy decisions are to be made effective. The harshest critics of The Challenge of Peace have noted this failure realistically to confront policy decisions in terms of geopolitical, strategic and economic consequences.

Against the backdrop of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) policy – an instrument with which the UN seeks to protect vulnerable civilians from gross violations of human rights – this study examines the application of R2P in the Libyan intervention and the various efforts to replicate similar claim to intervene in Syria. While proposing that the roles of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) is increasingly influential to the success of an intervention, this study asks the question: what are the general conditions for success of R2P application in Libya and Syria during the period 2011-2014?

In its examination of the policy and scholarly works that have informed, justified and evaluated the processes and outcomes of the principles of R2P policy, this paper used relevant search terms for conditions for success of humanitarian military intervention (COSI). Specific keywords such as R2P, BRICS and humanitarian intervention are scrutinised for relevance to the research question. Documents that failed to satisfy the criteria of research quality were excluded, whereas the key problems and findings identified in each studied document were tabulated into inclusion and exclusion.

Despite the role of BRICS in the Libyan and Syrian interventions, existing literature failed to explicitly make this connection, although much of the literature agreed on a number of general conditions for success. This paper problematise the relationship between success and BRICS role. One of the reasons for this is the emerging nature of the literature that is beginning to appreciate the plausibility that the BRICS influences the success of an intervention.

This piece synthesises studies that focus on COSI with preference for works that engaged this study’s case countries. Much rich data which even until now are always in need of close examination emerged during data collection, making it useful to craft a third part for BRICS-focused literature that has informed the R2P debate.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a critique of value sensitive design (VSD) and to propose an alternative approach that does not depart from a heuristic of value(s), but from virtue ethics, called virtuous practice design (VPD).

This paper develops a philosophical argument, draws from a philosophical method (i.e. virtue ethics) and applies this method to a particular case study that draws from a narrative interview.

In this paper, authors show how an approach that takes virtue instead of value as the central notion for aiming at a design that is sensitive to ethical concerns can be fruitful both in theory and in practice.

This paper presents the first attempt to ground an approach aimed at ethical technology design on the tradition of virtue ethics. As such, it presents VPD as a potentially fruitful alternative to VSD.

This paper considers the dark side of organisational effectiveness and the processes by which and organisation can move into a state of crisis. The paper sets out a series of arguments around the relationships between people and processes and the manner in which they contribute to the incubation of crises within organisations. The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to many of the issues that are raised in this issue of the journal and calls for more research that explores the relationships between effectiveness and failure.

The paper draws upon a range of literatures to set out the case for considering the negative aspects that surround organisational attempts at achieving effectiveness. In particular, it considers the role of both people and processes in a symbiotic relationship within the incubation of crisis. The paper highlights the importance of innovative practices in bypassing organisational controls.

The paper outlines issues around management practices that serve to focus the attention of practitioners on the ways in which they can contribute inadvertently to the failure of the organisation. In particular, it highlights some of the potential vulnerabilities that can exist within the organisation and which, if unchecked, will result in failure.

The paper highlights the need for further research within the field of organisational effectiveness around the ways in which crises can be incubated as part of the normal processes around effective working.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

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.

Presents the scientific methodology from the enlarged cybernetical perspective that recognizes the anisotropy of time, the probabilistic character of natural laws, and the entry that the incomplete determinism in Nature opens to the occurrence of innovation, growth, organization, teleology communication, control, contest and freedom. The new tier to the methodological edifice that cybernetics provides stands on the earlier tiers, which go back to the Ionians (c. 500 BC). However, the new insights reveal flaws in the earlier tiers, and their removal strengthens the entire edifice. The new concepts of teleological activity and contest allow the clear demarcation of the military sciences as those whose subject matter is teleological activity involving contest. The paramount question “what ought to be done”, outside the empirical realm, is embraced by the scientific methodology. It also embraces the cognitive sciences that ask how the human mind is able to discover, and how the sequence of discoveries might converge to a true description of reality.

Here Marx's philosophy is dissected from the angle of bourgeois capitalism which he, Marx, sought to overcome. His social, political and economic ideas are criticised. Although it is noted that Marx wanted to ameliorate human suffering, the result turned out to be Utopian, contrary to his own intentions. Contrary to Marx, it is individualism that makes the best sense and capitalism that holds out the best hope for coping with most of the problems he sought to solve. Marx's philosophy is alluring but flawed at a very basic level, namely, where it denies the individuality of each person and treats humanity as “an organic body”. Capitalism, while by no means out to guarantee a perfect society, is the best setting for the realisation of the diverse but often equally noble human goals of its membership.

This paper attempts to trace and describe the role played by the government sector – the state – in promoting economic growth in Western societies since the Renaissance. One important conclusion is that the antagonism between state and market, which has characterised the twentieth century, is a relatively new phenomenon. Since the Renaissance one very important task of the state has been to create well‐functioning markets by providing a legal framework, standards, credit, physical infrastructure and – if necessary – to function temporarily as an entrepreneur of last resort. Early economists were acutely aware that national markets did not occur spontaneously, and they used “modern” ideas like synergies, increasing returns, and innovation theory when arguing for the right kind of government policy. In fact, mercantilist economics saw it as a main task to extend the synergetic economic effects observed within cities to the territory of a nation‐state. The paper argues that the classical Anglo‐Saxon tradition in economics – fundamentally focused on barter and distribution, rather than on production and knowledge – systematically fails to grasp these wider issues in economic development, and it brings in and discusses the role played by the state in alternative traditions of non‐equilibrium economics.