Ecological Virtue: Articulating Tolerance as a Mutual-Respect Between Human Being and Environment

This paper elaborates the meaning of eco-tolerance in the context of ecological community between human and environment. Tolerance is often discussed as theological conception related to the relationship between religion (religious virtue) or socio-political conception related to the relationship between community or identity (political virtue). But how to build a tolerant relationship between human and their environment? What kind of wisdom that we need? I discuss about tolerance as an ecological wisdom or, “ecological virtue”, and a need for human to become a moral subject who has an ecological insight. I will elaborate ethical arguments from the perspective of virtue ethics, one of important disciplines in normative ethics, and environmental ethics, the most important branch in applied ethics, which describe that humans really need to have a mindset of ecocentric oriented, be wise and respectful toward the nature and the environment, build a mutual respect relationship, tolerance is not only a main value in political community, but also a main value in ecological community in a mutual respect ecosystem atmosphere and the existence of mutual recognition between human and nature

The global village: online cross-cultural communication and HRM

Purpose &ndash; The purpose of this paper is to examine relational and task dimension of online communication and the associated emotional experience. Design/methodology/approach &ndash; This paper examines four categories of work outcomes: emotional experiences of work, work attitudes, work dynamics and work behaviours; and links each to the cross-cultural online communication context.Findings &ndash; It was found that diversity-oriented HRM can reduce the cultural fault-lines betweenindividualist and collectivist (IC) cultures, and thereby positively moderate the relationship between cross-cultural online communication and affective, cognitive and behavioural outcomes.Practical implications &ndash; Diversity-oriented HRM can capitalize on an organisation&rsquo;s cultural diversity and avoid cross-cultural misunderstandings. In a more practical sense, the research purports that combined use of IC HRM practices can produce greater efficiency and effectiveness inonline communications worldwide.Originality/value &ndash; The paper provides an insight into the potential implications of increased use of information technology on cross-cultural communication, and human resource management. The significance of diversity-oriented human resource management in managing these implications is also highlighted.<br /

Managing formation of competitive human capital in project-oriented companies

The most important assets in project-oriented companies are knowledge and experience that are in its human capital. The goal of our quantitative correlation study is to gain insight on the role of the effective use of intellectual capital concerning the financial performance of the airlines in Kazakhstan through Project Management tools. Leading airlines in Kazakhstan provided information about human capital management through an online survey organized by SurveyMonkey. Airline HC's performance is based on the Intelligent Value-Added Index (VAIC) method and theoretical framework. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was used to test a hypothetical relationship between variables. The results of our study showed a strong significant positive relationship between human capital management and the financial performance of airlines in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The results also show that the success of airlines depends on the expertise and competitive knowledge of its human capital

The Chain of Quality through Integrated Product Development

Today, it is almost impossible to find a manufacturer who has not been significantly influenced by the quality culture, but it is evident that some are doing more to improve their product quality than others are. The so-called "Chain of Quality" through integrated product development is a useful metaphor since it recognises that quality is a continuing topic of attention throughout the product development process and that discrete, quality related activities in the process are inter-linked. Depending upon how the product development process is modelled, the chain can be viewed as open or closed with single or parallel threads. In this paper, the overall purpose of the chain, the nature and identity of its many links and the relationship of the chain to the product development process will be discussed. In so doing, this paper will present an overall picture of important product development strategies and practices that can have a key impact on product quality

Freedom, Reason and History: The Hegelian heritage in Gadamer and Habermas.

Freedom, Reason and History: The Hegelian heritage in Gadamer and Habermas. This essay aims at an elaboration of the theme of freedom by taking into account Gadamer"s and Habermas"s appropriation of Hegel. I will approach this theme by dividing it into three main topics: 1) The question of historical reconstruction of the idea(s) of freedom, 2) The question of justification of the idea of freedom, 3) The question of application (of the idea of freedom). The question of historical reconstruction will deal with the Gadamerian appropriation of Hegel"s idea of freedom in his concept of tradition. This will be confronted with Habermas"s twofold critique against Gadamer. Habermas claims that "tradition" could not be understood in a critical, that means, freedom-oriented way. He also claims that even a critical tradition would be one of many traditions, which leads to relativism. The question of justification will deal with Habermas"s and Gadamer"s approach to Hegel"s conception of freedom through recognition. The Habermasian approach to the Hegelian theme is a non-contextualised one, thereby aiming at a non-relative foundation for critical thinking. The third topic relates to the Gadamerian and also Habermasian question of how to apply a certain (non-contextual) freedom-based concept of recognition to different contexts. These last two topics relates to a Habermasian question of how to critically examine the freedom-potentials of a given context by using "freedom through recognition" as an ideal type, or standard

Extending, broadening and rethinking existing research on transfer of training

Research on transfer of training has a long history, with thousands of empirical studies since the 1950s investigating whether, and under which conditions, knowledge and skills acquired during training are subsequently used in the work environment (see reviews by Baldwin and Ford, 1988, Blume et al., 2010 and Burke and Hutchins, 2007). The generation of such an abundance of research can be linked to organisations’ fundamental and ongoing concern to ensure that their employees possess the necessary knowledge and skills from their employer to maintain a competitive advantage and thrive economically. Training and development is, however, extremely costly to organisations, which has created the need to determine the effectiveness of training, and the conditions under which transfer of training is optimal. A recent overview of “what really matters” for successful transfer of training (Grossman & Salas, 2011), aimed at a training and development readership, summarized the most influential variables emerging from this vast body of research. Based on the expectation that the list of factors which may contribute to influence transfer could always be extended and that it would be impractical to incorporate every single factor in research designs, the authors recommended a shift in future research towards deeper investigations of the conditions under which selected variables are more or less influential in their relationship with training. This Special Issue contributes to this important research agenda and extends it further through the inclusion of a diverse collection of conceptual contributions and reviews, from several scientific disciplines, a plurality of theoretical perspectives and a range of methodological approaches. Expanding the theoretical grounding underpinning empirical work on transfer of training and scrutinizing existing conceptualizations of the notion of transfer is timely in light of widespread concerns from organisations about minimal return on investment in training, and repeated evidence in the transfer of training literature of an enduring “transfer problem”. The aim of this article is to explore the value of extending, broadening and rethinking existing research on transfer of training. The benefits of extending research on transfer of training is considered first, through examining how the contributions of this Special Issue add to the existing literature on transfer of training, and the implications of the new insights for addressing the “transfer problem”. How transfer of training research could be broadened, thus enriched, through incorporating ideas from recent literature on transfer of learning is considered next. Finally, proposals to rethink transfer as boundary crossing from an activity theory perspective are scrutinized for their potential to better understand the learning that takes place at the boundaries of training and work environments. The article concludes by elaborating on the conceptual value of a refocus on ‘transfer of learning from training’ within a perspective of adaptive learning, and a call for cross-fertilisation with the extensive theory grounded literatures on transfer of learning and boundary crossing

Is there something like bio-dynamic breeding?

In this paper the differentiation made within the concept of naturalness will be used to explain the different approaches in breeding within the organic movement. The differentiation of the concept will result into a framework, which will be used as a tool to describe and explain the elements of bio-dynamic animal breeding. Bio-dynamics is a practical result out of the anthroposophical worldview. Bio-dynamics developed its own way to judge about relationships in the physical world, used its own language to express the holistic approach in agriculture and focused on additional relationships within the world

Rade, Development, and the Broken Promise of Interdependence: A Buddhist Reflection on the Possibility of Post-market Economics

Bhutan's stated intention of keeping the value of happiness central to the development process is a suitable counter to the values and karma that prevail in most development strategies and ideals. Given present day realities of unprecedented, accelerating changes and paradigmatic shifts in economic, political, and social practices, any successful strategy for integration into global development processes must be creative in nature. It must, in other words, consist of an ongoing improvisation that is at once virtuosic and virtuous and that brings both greater resolution and resolve into the development process. In this essay the author wants to contribute to this effort by considering the broad landscape of development and trade concepts and practices and their implications for the trajectory of innovations needed to insure that development processes and greater economic interdependence are, indeed, liberating. The auhtor starts by reflecting on the context of present day patterns of development, raising some issues related to history and scale in assessing the effects of increasing global interdependence. He suggestes that present day patterns and scales of globalization have both generated and been generated by the extremely rapid and practically irreversible commodification of subsistence needs—a commodification that (paraphrasing Ivan Illich) has the effect of institutionalizing entirely new classes of the poor. Beyond a critical threshold and unless redirected—that is, informed by radically different values—present day patterns of interdependence will continue bringing about the conversion of communities that have been faring well into aggregates of individuals in need of welfare. Unchecked, the promise of globally extended, deep community will be broken

Toward an epistemology of mysticism: Knowing God as mystery

While some philosophers suggest that mystical experience may provide evidence for belief in God, skeptics doubt that there is adequate warrant for even accepting the claim of a mystical experience as evidence for anything, except perhaps for some kind of mental instability. Drawing from the work of Gabriel Marcel, I argue that the pervasive philosophical skepticism about the evidential status of mystical experiences is misguided because it rests on too narrow a view about ways of knowing and about what can count as evidence for belief in the divine. I illustrate the advantages of Marcel\u27s approach by applying it to the respective spiritual journeys of Augustine of Hippo and Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali. I then argue that Marcel\u27s framework improves on contemporary analytic approaches because it captures more accurately the kind of knowledge that mystical experiences convey as reported by the subjects who claim to have them