1,864 research outputs found

    Relationship Quality in the Context of Computer-Mediated Communication - A social constructionist approach

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    This paper contributes to possible answers to the question: What are the effects of computermediated communication on relationship qualities in organizations? To answer this question without oversimplifying the phenomena an adequate research methodology has to be found. First, the interrelationship between computer-mediated communication (CMC) and relationship quality is reviewed. CMC-theory will be described from three main perspectives and the risks and chances for relationship quality will be shown. The review indicates that most studies in the field are founded on a positivistic basis. Relationships are treated as static dyads neglecting contextual factors. Thus, the insight into relational processes in computerized environments remains limited. As an alternative a research methodology based on the epistemological stance of social constructionism is proposed. It will be explained, how the researchers’ view can be broadened by applying the method of the ‘narrative interview’ in practice based studies in computer-mediated contexts. In the concluding part, the contribution of this approach to research and practice will be discussed.Computer-mediated communication, relationship quality, social constructionism

    Achieving mutual understanding in intercultural project partnerships : co-operation, self-orientation, and fragility

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    Communication depends on cooperation in at least the following way: In order to be successful, communicative behavior needs to be adjusted to the general world knowledge, abilities, and interests of the hearer, and the hearer's success in figuring out the message and responding to it needs to be informed by assumptions about the communicator's informative intentions, personal goals, and communicative abilities. In other words, interlocutors cooperate by coordinating their actions in order to fulfill their communicative intentions. This minimal assumption about cooperativeness must in one way or another be built into the foundations of any plausible inferential model of human communication. However, the communication process is also influenced to a greater or lesser extent, whether intentionally and consciously or unintentionally and unconsciously, by the participants' orientation toward, or preoccupation with, their own concerns, so their behavior may easily fall short of being as cooperative as is required for achieving successful communication

    Role of questioning in the communication of nursery school children

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    ROLE OF FAIRY TALES RECEPTION IN DEVELOPMENT OF CRITICAL THINKING OF PRIMARY SCHOOL LOWER GRADE STUDENTS

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    Continual development of critical thinking of students is one of the crucial tasks of efficient teaching. Without constant encouragement of students’ critical thinking, there is no gaining their intellectual independence in the process of acquiring, deepening, expanding and creative application of knowledge. The paper explicated possibilities of using fairy tales reception for the purposes of encouraging and developing critical thinking of primary school lower grade students. Dynamics of fairy tales narration, their overall structure, but also the development of this literary genre (from the folk genre, over the authorial one strongly relying on the oral, to the authorial with much more authenticity) are extremely compatible with the outline that the literary reception theory defined for reception process. In addition, the reception process that we formulate methodically in teaching (forming expectations’ horizon, presenting predictions and assumptions, reading and assessing aesthetic distance) has been recognized as a framework system of critical thinking: evocation, understanding of meaning and reflection.  Article visualizations

    Spirituality and business: An interdisciplinary overview

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    The paper gives an interdisciplinary overview of the emerging field of spirituality and business. It uses insights from business ethics, theology, neuroscience, psychology, gender studies, and philosophy to economics, management, organizational science, and banking and refers to different religious convictions including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, the Baha'i faith, and the North-American aboriginal worldview. The authors argue that the materialistic management paradigm has failed. They explore new values for post-materialistic management: frugality, deep ecology, trust, reciprocity, responsibility for future generations, and authenticity. Within this framework profit and growth are no longer ultimate aims but elements in a wider set of values. Similarly, cost-benefit calculations are no longer the essence of management but are part of a broader concept of wisdom in leadership. Spirit-driven businesses require intrinsic motivation for serving the common good and using holistic evaluation schemes for measuring success. The Palgrave Handbook of Business and Spirituality, edited by the authors, is a response to developments that simultaneously challenge the “business as usual” mindset

    Rationality and institutions : an inquiry into the normative implications of rational choice theory.

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    I aim to analyze in this dissertation what a desirable basic institutional structure looks like from the perspective of rationality. While the main topic is thus normative in nature, I start by clarifying in the first part what the notion of rationality exactly entails. I do so by focusing explicitly on the economic conception of rationality, according to which a rational individual is motivated to serve his self-interest on the basis of cost-benefit calculations. Such a Homo Economicus is characterized by his intentional and instrumental actions, his perfectly informed beliefs and his exogenously given and egoistic preferences. In my view, however, this model is inadequate if one aims to understand what it means to be rational. The requirements that actions should be instrumental, beliefs should be based on perfect information and preferences should be exogenously given and egoistic in nature turn out to be overly demanding in this respect. That is why I propose to drop these assumptions in what I label the minimal conception of rationality. Since the latter turns out to be very formal indeed, I propose two further alternatives, which focus not so much on the choice of means to achieve certain goals, as they focus on the choice of these goals themselves. According to the first, broad conception, actions are rational if they are based on good reasons, which are further qualified as well-informed beliefs and autonomous preferences. According to the second, expressive conception, actions, beliefs and preferences are rational if they express the things the individual at hand cares about. The latter requires that individuals can reflect upon and identify with their reasons, which implies a capacity to reflect upon and distance themselves from their own bundle of preferences. In the second part of this dissertation, I try to show the value and limitations of these conceptions by applying them to the context of large-scaled elections. In this respect, it becomes immediately clear that the economic conception fails to explain why quite a lot of people go out and vote. After all, since a single vote has only an infinitesimal impact on the electoral result, it does not enable people to serve their interests or realize their goals. This leads to the so-called voting paradox, according to which no rational individual will decide to vote. The standard solution is to assume that individuals vote because they derive satisfaction from the very act itself. However, this strategy is rather ‘ad hoc’ and does not explain how people vote once they find themselves inside the voting booth. The expressive conception of rationality does better in this respect. It suggests that people vote because they care about democracy in general or about a specific political candidate or ideology. Since they conceive of themselves as being a good citizen (or a good socialist), they express this aspect of their identity by going out to vote (for the socialist party). In the third part of this dissertation, I analyze more fully the normative implications of the different conceptions of rationality. More specifically, I try to answer the question which basic institutional structure is desirable if one assumes that people are by and large rational. This immediately shows that both the normative issue (what should institutions look like) and the explanatory issue (how do rational individuals act) are closely connected. In my view, proposals regarding institutional design and reform should be based on empirically adequate models of individual actions and motivations. This search for a realistic utopia goes against the conventional strategy of most economists. They rely on the Homo Economicus model, even if this fails to explain individual behavior. To explain more fully what the normative implications are of the counterfactual assumption that all people are economically rational, I focus on the work of James Buchanan. In his theory of constitutional choice, he argues in favor of a minimal state whose only task is to make sure that the market functions properly. Buchanan thus favors strict constitutional limitations for governments, which tend to expand beyond legitimate borders as soon as politicians and public servants are allowed to serve their own interests. In my view, however, the abovementioned criticisms of the Homo Economicus model have theoretical as well as normative implications. After all, the empirically supported fact that a majority of individuals does not act in economically rational ways creates more room for legitimate government intervention. Expressively rational citizens will, for example, more easily agree on the necessity and desirability of a collective provision of certain public goods. In addition, expressively rational politicians and public servants can be more easily trusted to serve the public interest rather than their narrowly defined self-interest. As an alternative to Buchanan’s one-sided focus on economic rationality (at the individual level) and the market (at the institutional level), I focus on the work of Samuel Bowles en Herbert Gintis. More specifically, I explore their work on the phenomenon of strong reciprocity, which refers to the widespread tendency of people to reward prosocial behavior and punish antisocial behavior, even if this is costly for themselves. Since this is clearly economically irrational, Bowles and Gintis propose to complement the Homo Economicus model with the Homo Reciprocans model. This model, which comes close to the expressive conception of rationality, is able to incorporate the insight that social norms surrounding reciprocity, cooperation and fairness are crucial in regulating interactions. At the normative level, Bowles and Gintis stress that such norms often lead to socially desirable outcomes, since they enable people to live in harmony without relying on coercive and costly government interventions. This suggests that the debate between proponents of the market on the one hand and the state on the other hand neglects the importance of communities where people spontaneously interact on the basis of generally prosocial norms. As such, the insights of Bowles and Gintis lead to a defense of a basic institutional structure in which markets, states and communities mutually complement and reinforce each other. They also justify a general optimism as regards to the capacity and motivation of people to try and improve the rules and institutions that govern their everyday lives.rationality; institutions; public choice theory; rational choice theory; paradox of voting;

    The Usefulness of Yoga Towards Interconnected Environmental Liberation

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    There are a great number of interpretations of the term Yoga today, often being an elusive term. Yet we must recognize the importance of questioning which interpretation can provide us with a clear lens into its meaning, given the legacy of colonialism which has warped our understanding of it. Yoga has a great deal to offer us, and some of its imperative offerings for us today are its ethical principles, particularly the dissolution between the opposition of self and other. This paper employs the principles of nonviolence, non-stealing, and moderation from the yamas (external ethics) of Patanjali’s eight-fold path, as well as loving-kindness from Buddhism. Using a decolonial framework, we see that some of the initial definitions of Yoga have come from a divisive perspective, dissonant with its most common Sanskrit translation to literally mean “union.” Even the lines drawn between the dharmic traditions skew them away from the multiplicity model that had existed before colonial involvement. With unconscious intentions to define these traditions from a Western perspective, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism were deemed religions independent of one another, similar to the way colonial powers kept practices divided based on religious definition for Western practitioners. By zeroing into Hinduism, for example, it is evident that this term was simply fabricated to define the indigenous practices of those living around the Indus River and land past it from the European perspective. Yet these dharmic practices were often responses to one another, as they intermingled and informed one another throughout their evolution upon the Indian subcontinent. As such, they can be understood to be interdependent with one another. The ethics contained within them as well have been that of non-division between the surrounding environment and animals, lacking the notion of the superiority of humans over non-humans, similar to the lack of superiority of one spiritual path over another. It is this perspective of union which has the potential to refashion our relationship with the other, as Yoga works to both demolish the ego and any false divisions it convinces us exist. The main illusory division which has contributed to violence and theft from the non-human world is that of our innate humanness, which is one of the ego’s last efforts while being deconstructed by yogic practices. This is how it may be useful for our modern-day struggle to achieve climate and animal justice. In particular, our survivalist fear-based power struggle with the non-human world has clouded us from seeing that we must surrender to the interdependent truth of compassion if we are to heal the wrongs we have committed to the supposed “other.” If we consider the outrageous breeding and cyclical murder of cows and bulls for dairy, a byproduct of their reproductive cycle which is wholly unnecessary for human consumption, we can see the dire necessity to inhabit greater compassion for non-humans. It is this very negligence which continues to plummet Earth’s potential to remain our habitable home, as animal agriculture accounts for unimaginable levels of resource depletion and produces all spectrums of illnesses within humans upon exposure or consumption. Only by receding from this violence can we understand that loving-kindness requires surrender of our survivalist nature and redirection towards ethical alternatives as often as possible. In this way, we can remain accountable to deconstruct our inherently divisive ego and achieve collective freedom

    Contract and Collaboration

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