45 research outputs found
POSIWID and determinism in design for behaviour change
Copyright @ 2012 Social Services Research GroupWhen designing to influence behaviour for social or environmental benefit, does designers' intent matter? Or are the effects on behaviour more important, regardless of the intent involved? This brief paper explores -- in the context of design for behaviour change -- some treatments of design, intentionality, purpose and responsibility from a variety of fields, including Stafford Beer's "The purpose of a system is what it does" and Maurice Broady's perspective on determinism. The paper attempts to extract useful implications for designers working on behaviour-related problems, in terms of analytical or reflective questions to ask during the design process
Appeals to evidence for the resolution of wicked problems: the origins and mechanisms of evidentiary bias
Wicked policy problems are often said to be characterized by their âintractabilityâ, whereby appeals to evidence are unable to provide policy resolution. Advocates for âEvidence Based Policyâ (EBP) often lament these situations as representing the misuse of evidence for strategic ends, while critical policy studies authors counter that policy decisions are fundamentally about competing values, with the (blind) embrace of technical evidence depoliticizing political decisions. This paper aims to help resolve these conflicts and, in doing so, consider how to address this particular feature of problem wickedness. Specifically the paper delineates two forms of evidentiary bias that drive intractability, each of which is reflected by contrasting positions in the EBP debates: âtechnical biasâ - referring to invalid uses of evidence; and âissue biasâ - referring to how pieces of evidence direct policy agendas to particular concerns. Drawing on the fields of policy studies and cognitive psychology, the paper explores the ways in which competing interests and values manifest in these forms of bias, and shape evidence utilization through different mechanisms. The paper presents a conceptual framework reflecting on how the nature of policy problems in terms of their complexity, contestation, and polarization can help identify the potential origins and mechanisms of evidentiary bias leading to intractability in some wicked policy debates. The discussion reflects on whether being better informed about such mechanisms permit future work that may lead to strategies to mitigate or overcome such intractability in the future
Synthesising Corporate Responsibility on Organisational and Societal Levels of Analysis: An Integrative Perspective
This article develops an integrative perspective on corporate responsibility by synthesising competing perspectives on the responsibility of the corporation at the organisational and societal levels of analysis. We review three major corporate responsibility perspectives, which we refer to as economic, critical, and politico-ethical. We analyse the major potential uses and pitfalls of the perspectives, and integrate the debate on these two levels. Our synthesis concludes that when a society has a robust division of moral labour in place, the responsibility of a corporation may be economic (as suggested under the economic perspective) without jeopardising democracy and sustainability (as reported under the critical perspective). Moreover, the economic role of corporations neither signifies the absence of deliberative democratic mechanisms nor business practices extending beyond compliance (as called for under the politico-ethical perspective). The study underscores the value of integrating different perspectives and multiple levels of analysis to present comprehensive descriptions and prescriptions of the responsibility phenomenon
Iron Behaving Badly: Inappropriate Iron Chelation as a Major Contributor to the Aetiology of Vascular and Other Progressive Inflammatory and Degenerative Diseases
The production of peroxide and superoxide is an inevitable consequence of
aerobic metabolism, and while these particular "reactive oxygen species" (ROSs)
can exhibit a number of biological effects, they are not of themselves
excessively reactive and thus they are not especially damaging at physiological
concentrations. However, their reactions with poorly liganded iron species can
lead to the catalytic production of the very reactive and dangerous hydroxyl
radical, which is exceptionally damaging, and a major cause of chronic
inflammation. We review the considerable and wide-ranging evidence for the
involvement of this combination of (su)peroxide and poorly liganded iron in a
large number of physiological and indeed pathological processes and
inflammatory disorders, especially those involving the progressive degradation
of cellular and organismal performance. These diseases share a great many
similarities and thus might be considered to have a common cause (i.e.
iron-catalysed free radical and especially hydroxyl radical generation). The
studies reviewed include those focused on a series of cardiovascular, metabolic
and neurological diseases, where iron can be found at the sites of plaques and
lesions, as well as studies showing the significance of iron to aging and
longevity. The effective chelation of iron by natural or synthetic ligands is
thus of major physiological (and potentially therapeutic) importance. As
systems properties, we need to recognise that physiological observables have
multiple molecular causes, and studying them in isolation leads to inconsistent
patterns of apparent causality when it is the simultaneous combination of
multiple factors that is responsible. This explains, for instance, the
decidedly mixed effects of antioxidants that have been observed, etc...Comment: 159 pages, including 9 Figs and 2184 reference
Two sides of the same coin? An investigation on the effects of frames on tax compliance and charitable giving
Despite tax compliance being mandatory and charitable giving being voluntary, both can be seen as two sides of the same coin. Paying taxes and making monetary donations are two complementary ways to financially provide for the common good. Using goal-framing theory, an experimental study with a mixed-factorial design (Nâ=â435) was conducted to test the effects of different frames on the intention to pay taxes and make charitable donations. Our results showed that for real taxpayers (i.e., for employees, self-employed, and entrepreneurs, but not for students) using a gain goal frame as a support to the normative goal frame was only effective in increasing intended tax compliance, whereas a supporting hedonic goal frame was only effective in increasing donation intention. In addition, it was found that gain and hedonic goal frames worked differently according to the prevailing motivation behind tax compliance and charitable giving. When the intrinsic motivation was already high, frames were ineffective (in the tax context) or even counter-productive (in the charitable giving context). In the presence of extrinsic motivations, instead, frames are especially effective.Social decision makin
Libertarian paternalism and health care policy:a deliberative proposal
Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler have been arguing for what they named libertarian paternalism (henceforth LP). Their proposal generated extensive debate as to how and whether LP might lead down a full-blown paternalistic slippery slope. LP has the indubitable merit of having hardwired the best of the empirical psychological
and sociological evidence into public and private policy
making. It is unclear, though, to what extent the implementation of policies so constructed could enhance the
capability for the exercise of an autonomous citizenship.
Sunstein and Thaler submit it that in most of the cases in
which one is confronted with a set of choices, some default
option must be picked out. In those cases whoever devises
the features of the set of options ought to rank them according to the moral principle of non-maleficence and
possibly to that of beneficence. In this paper we argue that
LP can be better implemented if there is a preliminary
deliberative debate among the stakeholders that elicits their
preferences, and makes it possible to rationally defend
them