Clinical Pathways to Ethically Substantive Autonomy

There is no shortage of support for the idea that ethics should be incorporated into the academic and professional curriculum. There is a difference, however, between, on the one hand, teaching professionals about ethics, and, on the other, demanding that they give ethical expression to the range of professional skills they are expected to apply daily in their work. If this expression is not to be perfunctory, ethical judgement must be genuinely integrated into the professional skill set. The mark of integration in this regard is the capacity for autonomous judgement. Ethical autonomy cannot be achieved by a mechanical, rule-bound and circumstance-specific checklist of ethical do’s and don’ts, and it is only partially achieved by a move from mechanistic rules to ‘outcome based’ processes. Rather, professional ethical autonomy presupposes not only a formal understanding of the requirements of an ethical code of conduct, but a genuine engagement with the substantive values and techniques that enable practitioners to interpret and apply principles confidently over a range of circumstances. It is not then, that ethical skill is not valued by the legal profession or legal education, or that the shortfall of ethical skill goes unacknowledged, it is rather that the language of professional ethics struggles to break free from the cautious circularity that is the mark of its formal expression. To require a professional to ‘act in their client’s interests’, or ‘act in accordance with the expectations of the profession’ or act ‘fairly and effectively’ are formal, infinitely ambiguous and entirely safe suggestions; to offer a substantive account of what, specifically, those interests might be, or what expectations we should have, are rather more contentious. Fears of dogma and a narrowing of discretion do, of course, accompany the idea of a search for ethical substance, and caution is to be expected in response to it. Notwithstanding these anxieties, there would appear to be no coherent alternative to the aspiration to substantive autonomy, and this must remain the goal of teaching legal ethics. In light of this, the problem facing educationalists is then perhaps expressed more diplomatically in terms of how ethical skill might be substantively developed, imparted, and integrated into a genuinely comprehensive conception of professional skill. Clinical education can go a long way to solving this problem: exposure to the practical tasks of lawyering is the surest and best way of raising consciousness in this regard: ‘Hands-on’ is good - and consciousness-raising is a step in the direction of autonomy, but raw experience and elevated awareness is not enough. We know that our most influential theories of learning tells us that it is in the process of reflection upon problem solving that the practitioner begins to take autonomous control of skill development. In the view of the author, reflection, requires content and direction, and in this paper, with the aid of three models of skill integration inspired by Nigel Duncan’s detailed analysis and video reconstruction of the ethical and technical skill deficiencies brought to light by R v Griffiths, we attempt to specify what might be understood in this regard: Reflective content refers to the discrete interests and values that compete to produce tension in what we will refer to the ‘matrix’ of concerns that feature in all forms of dispute resolution; reflective direction points to an engagement with the resources and techniques that can empower critical and autonomous judgment. In the context of a clinical process broadly structured by the insights of Wenger and by Rest’s model of ethical skill, guided reflection so specified thus serves as an interface between on the one hand, indeterminate ethical form, and, on the other, the substantive ethical wisdom to be found in the repository of values that underpin the very idea of the legal enterprise

Academic freedom: in justification of a universal ideal

This paper examines the justification for, and benefits of, academic freedom to academics, students, universities and the world at large. The paper surveys the development of the concept of academic freedom within Europe, more especially the impact of the reforms at the University of Berlin instigated by Wilhelm von Humboldt. Following from this, the paper examines the reasons why the various facets of academic freedom are important and why the principle should continue to be supported

Journal of African Christian Biography: v. 1, no. 3-4

A publication of the Dictionary of African Christian Biography with U.S. offices located at the Center for Global Christianity and Mission at Boston University. This issue focuses on: 1. David Lonkibiri Windibiziri. 2. Abiodun Babatunde Lawrence. 3. Dominic Ignatius Ekandem. 4. Recent Print and Digital Resources Related to Christianity in Africa

WAGE AND HUMAN CAPITAL IN EXPORTING FIRMS IN MOROCCO

We study the relationship of wages and education and training practices in Morocco in a context of trade and liberalisation reforms in a matched worker-firm data of eight exporting firms in two industrial sectors: Metallurgical-Electrical industries and Textile-Clothing. We find that the specific characteristics of the surveyed firms little affect worker wages. Moreover, the textile sector does not appear to be a significant channel for promoting skills in the economy. The minimal wage legislation is found to exert a positive pressure on wages. Also, some evidence of gender wage gap exists in the data. In these data, the effects of education and experience on wages are quite limited below the third quantile of wages, as well as the role of apprenticeship. In contrast, On-the-Job Training (OJT) much contributes to labour productivity as measured by wage levels. Most of the OJT is concentrated in the Metallurgical-Electrical industries. Education is positively correlated to OJT. Moreover, estimates of explanatory relationships of task organisation (chain gangs, teams, supervision and executive workers) show the powerful sector and educational determinations of job organisation in the firms. Then, our results suggest that the impact of worker education may take indirect routes and not only appear through education coefficients in wage regressions.wage, returns to human capital, matched worker-firm data, quantile regressions, Tunisia

Reconciling the Debate on People Analytics in Academia and Practice

People analytics depicts the algorithmization of human resources management characterized by the data-driven automation and support of people-related processes or tasks. On the one hand, people analytics promises productivity increases through optimizing workforce planning, hiring, or talent development. On the other hand, the extensive data collection and analysis of employees’ behaviors can be perceived as invasive, raising privacy concerns. This debate cannot only be explained by diverging norms and values, for example, practitioners realizing commercial opportunities while being criticized by academic commentaries. Instead, an alternative explanation suggests that the opposing views can be reconciled by diving into the conceptual differences regarding what analytical methods and data sources people analytics entails. Hence, this paper proposes the conceptions of operational and strategic people analytics based on a literature review of academics’ and practitioners’ literature. Four propositions about these conceptions’ privacy and performance implications are derived. Future research should empirically validate these propositions

Development Plan - Preliminary Long-Range Plan 1981-87

https://digitalcommons.pvamu.edu/long-range-development-plan/1017/thumbnail.jp

It Ain't Social, It Ain't Capital and It Ain't Africa

Two concepts have dominated the social sciences over the past decade. In the lead is globalisation. Not far behind is social capital. One attempts to deal with contemporary realities at the international level; the other at national or lower levels. The two rarely meet. For, as has been frequently observed, in raising the virtues of civil society to pedestal status, social capital has studiously ignored questions of power, conflict, the ruling elite and the systemic imperatives of (contemporary) capitalism. Though fundamentally flawed as a concept and equally flexible as the global financial system that it takes as its metaphor, globalisation cannot be so indicted. 1 For globalisation seeks to address the nature of the world at the turn of the millennium, by grounding concepts in prevailing empirical realities, and unavoidably confronts issues of control and dissent. By contrast, social capital purports to reign over a domain that ranges, even for a single author and leading promoter of social capital, Robert Putnam (1993 and 2000), from twelfth century Italy to twentieth century United States. Concepts with such scope of ambition should be treated with caution if not contempt. At a more polemical level, in drawing comparison wit