Early Christian Ethics

G.E.M. Anscombe famously claimed that ‘the Hebrew-Christian ethic’ differs from consequentialist theories in its ability to ground the claim that killing the innocent is intrinsically wrong. According to Anscombe, this is owing to its legal character, rooted in the divine decrees of the Torah. Divine decrees confer a particular moral sense of ‘ought’ by which this and other act-types can be ‘wrong’ regardless of their consequences, she maintained. There is, of course, a potentially devastating counter-example. Within the Torah, Abraham is apparently commanded by God to slaughter and set fire to his innocent son, Isaac. For attempting to do so, he is praised in the Biblical passage and by later Jewish and Christian commentators. This paper examines rabbinic and early Christian analyses of the story and finds that it was not unambiguously held by these interpreters that God absolutely prohibits killing the innocent, until the time of Augustine, whose position on the story evolved over time

Theories of (Management?) Fashion: the Conributions of Veblen, Simmel, Blumer, and Bourdieu

Recentl fashion phenomena in the field of management have received growing attention by scholars and management practitioners alike. Much of the existing management fashion literature however operates without providing a clear conceptual and theoritical fonction. It tends to build on common-sense notions of fashion and overlooks the significant contributions in the sociological tradition of fashion theorizing. This paper aims at making a contributions to closing the "theory gap" in the discussion of management fashion by presenting four of the major contributions to the sociological tradition of fashion theorizing. First, I briefly outline the fashion writings of Veblen, Blumer, Simmel, and Bourdieux. I then try to integrate the different theoretical positions in a discussion of fashion's double role for social change as well as for reproduction of social structures. In the third section, I try outline, which elements from the sociological fashion theories outlined in this paper should be included in the recent discussion of management fashion

Importing Diversity Management : Corporate Discourses in France and Germany

The last years have seen the idea of Managing Diversity (MD) travelling from the U.S. to Europe and gaining popularity with a growing number of European companies. In this paper, we look at the ways in which the 38 largest French and German companies have taken up elements of the MD discourse and integrated them into their annual reports and corporate web sites. We find that the firms in our sample do not present the coherent MD discourses one would expect in a U.S. setting, but a kind of patchwork, wich relates elements of an overall MD discourse to elements that are more closely related to the particular social and cultural contexts the firms are operating in. Building on an explorative comparative analysis we try to identify both pressures for the adoption of the U.S. model and forces that lead towards a stronger adaptation of the underlying ideals to local contexts. We develop different possibilities for the future development of MD practice in a European context and highlight a set of decisions companies have to answer when they want to put the transformational potential of MD into action

Resisting Radical Organisational Change: an Analysis of Power, Routines and Individual Rationality

The Following paper deals with resistance to radical organisational change and different ways to explain this phenomenon. Our goal is to show in which way a theoritical perspective concentrating on power, routines and individual rationality can contribute to a better understanting of resistance. First we address the change from a mechanistic to an organic mode of organisation as a particular example of radical organisational change. In the second part of our paper, we develop a conceptual framework which helps to analyse resistance and tries to remedy some of the short comings of more traditional approaches.In the third section, we apply our model to three cases of resistance drawn from a large empirical study on change processes in a major Swiss media corporation. Finally, we propose some conclusions regarding the nature of radical organisational chang

Fashion in the Management of Knowledge

Knowledge management' (KM) figures among the most popular recent conceptual innovations in business management. In this article, we analyze the recent surge of KM from a fashion perspective. We present an analysis of the emerging discourses building on the term "knowledge management" in management periodicals throughout the 1975-1998 period and use our findings to challenge some of the currently held assumptions regarding the nature, triggers and rhetorics of management fashion

The decline of the male breadwinner model? A comparison of family models and the domestic division of labour in Britain, West-Germany and the Netherlands

Im Mittelpunkt der vergleichenden Laenderstudie steht die haeusliche Arbeitsteilung und insbesondere die Frage, ob sich nur die Rolle von Frauen als Konsequenz der wachsenden weiblichen Partizipation am Arbeitsmarkt geaendert hat, oder ob auch Maenner eine entsprechend groessere Beteiligung an haeuslichen Aufgaben und Pflichten zeigen. Zentrale Frage ist daher, inwieweit die haeusliche Arbeitsteilung mit der Arbeitsmarktpartizipation von Maennern und Frauen zusammenhaengt oder ob diese weiterhin prinzipiell durch die Geschlechtsrolle bestimmt wird. Die Autorin diskutiert zunaechst drei theoretische Erklaerungsansaetze fuer die geschlechtsspezifische Arbeitsteilung: Humankapitaltheorien, Patriarchatstheorien und feministische Institutionentheorien. Im empirischen Teil untersucht sie die Verbreitung und Auspraegung des maennlichen 'Brotverdiener-Modells' in Westdeutschland, Grossbritannien und den Niederlanden, wozu sie auf Daten des 'International Social Survey Programme' (ISSP) von 1994 zurueckgreift. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Frauen - wenn auch laenderspezifisch unterschiedlich - immer noch die Hauptverantwortung fuer die haeusliche Arbeit tragen. Die Autorin eroertert vor diesem Hintergrund die Staerken und Schwaechen der drei theoretischen Erklaerungsansaetze zur geschlechtsspezifischen Arbeitsteilung. (ICI)German title: Der Niedergang des 'Der Mann als Brotverdiener'-Modells?: ein Vergleich von Familienmodellen und die haeusliche Arbeitsteilung in Grossbritannien, Westdeutschland und den NiederlandenAvailable from UuStB Koeln(38)-20030106936 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman

Gewerkschaften und Oekologie Forschungs- und Betriebsprojekte zu nachhaltiger Entwicklung

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Joachim Beerhorst: Aus- und Weiterbildung fuer Hauptamtliche der IG Metall: Gewerkschaften und Oekologie: Voraussetzungen und Konsequenzen 'nachhaltiger Entwicklung'. Vorbemerkungen zum Anlass und zur Konzeption des Seminars (1-4); Eckart Hildebrandt: Gewerkschaften und Nachhaltigkeitsdiskurs: Was ist soziale Nachhaltigkeit? (5-16); Sabine Krueger: Gewerkschaften und NGOs im Rio-Nachfolgeprozess. Chancen, Bedingungen und Potentiale sozial-oekologischer Buendnisse (17-20); Stefan Straub, Andreas Hammer: Projekt Naturfreunde - IG BAU (21-22); Hans-Gerhard Mendius: 'Neue Arbeitsplaetze - aber wie?' Ansatzpunkte beschaeftigungs- und umweltorientierter Kleinbetriebsfoerderung (23-26). Vorstellung oekologisch orientierter Praxisprojekte: Heinz Pfeffer: AG 'Regenerative Energien' (28-31); Lutz Oschmann: Projekt 'Konversion' -Arbeitskreis 'Alternative Produktion' (32-34); Udo Bangert: Der betriebliche AK Umwelt (35-43); Dietmar Selg, Michael Presser: 'Mit dem Rad zur MTU' (44-52); F. Bettelhaeuser: 'Das sozial- und umweltvertraegliche Schiff' (53-57)SIGLEAvailable from http://skylla.wz-berlin.de/pdf/1999/p99-501.pdf / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekDEGerman

Die Verbesserung des Gesundheitszustandes zeitlich dienstuntauglicher Wehrpflichtiger ein wichtiger Beitrag zur Landesverteidigung

DB Leipzig(101) - Di 1992 B 7276 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman