Radical research as research at the roots: Practitioner self-image, public relations and ethics

Semantically, radical derives from ‘radix’, the Latin for root. This paper argues that little public relations research goes back to the roots of actual practice and addresses this neglect through a project focusing on practitioner accounts of their work. When considering public relations ethics, practitioner self-images and cultural values become an essential research component. In addressing this neglected area of research, this paper examines the subjective perceptions of public relations practitioners regarding their role, commitments, and responsibilities within the framework of their specific culture and national history. In considering practitioner testimonials about professional integrity, briefs, and goals, especially as members of the society and nation to which they belong, the paper engages with ethical aspects of the practice from a cultural perspective that assumes different cultures can have different ethical expectations. In revealing the impact of features that are often ‘taken for granted’ in one country, the paper uses the example of four generations of practitioners who served one major institution in Israel to suggest how similar research at the professional roots in other nations might enable knowledge of international similarities and difference in relation to ethics in action

May the Best (Looking) Man Win: The Unconscious Role of Attractiveness in Employment Decisions

[Excerpt] In 1972, Karen Dion, Ellen Berscheid, and Elaine Walster set out to determine whether people hold “stereotyped notions of the personality traits possessed by individuals of varying attractiveness.” The results of the study were astonishing: based only on the photographs provided, participants predicted attractive subjects would be happier, possess more socially desirable personalities, practice more prestigious occupations, and exhibit higher marital competence. Their findings were published in an article entitled “What is Beautiful is Good” and gave rise to an enduring theory of the same name. In the decades since the Dion et al. experiment, the “what is beautiful is good” hypothesis has played a particularly meaningful role in occupational studies. Given the high-stakes nature of job acquisition, many researchers have asked, for example, whether attractive job candidates are more likely to be hired than their peers. In short, attractive individuals will receive more job offers, better advancement opportunities, and higher salaries than their less attractive peers—despite numerous findings that they are no more intelligent or capable. This article aims to explore the sources and potential resolution of appearance-based employment decisions. In other words, now that we know appearance-based employment discrimination exists, where does it come from and what do we do about it? Part I examines the psychology of attractiveness, exploring what registers as attractive and what unconscious responses attractiveness commonly evokes. It begins with a definition of beauty in terms of both biological and performed traits and concludes with a discussion of beauty facts versus fictions. Part II provides an overview of existing legal remedies to victims of appearance-based discrimination and explains why legal reform is an ill-suited solution. After ruling out the law, this article concludes that appearance-based employment decisions should be curbed internally, via management and human resources efforts

Positive Energy Representations of the Loop Groups of Non Simply Connected Lie Groups

We classify and construct all irreducible positive energy representations of the loop group of a compact, connected and simple Lie group and show that they admit an intertwining action of Diff(S^{1}).Comment: Available from Springer Verlag at http://link.springer.de

Flat Connections and Quantum Groups

We review the Kohno-Drinfeld theorem as well as a conjectural analogue relating quantum Weyl groups to the monodromy of a flat connection D on the Cartan subalgebra of a complex, semi-simple Lie algebra g with poles on the root hyperplanes and values in any g-module V. We sketch our proof of this conjecture when g=sl(n) and when g is arbitrary and V is a vector, spin or adjoint representation. We also establish a precise link between the connection D and Cherednik's generalisation of the KZ connection to finite reflection groups.Comment: 20 pages. To appear in the Proceedings of the 2000 Twente Conference on Lie Groups, in a special issue of Acta Applicandae Mathematica

Social entrepreneurship: the new narrative for the practice of the social economy

In recent years, the notion of social entrepreneurship and its manifest linkage with the economic development and social change has quickly gained prominence in the general discourse of academics and policymakers. A social justification or motive is a key issue in the account for its existence. In this sense, the expression “social entrepreneurship” is being utilized to describe what has been traditionally known as practices of social economy. However, differences in what is understood as “social” can be observed in both areas. The purpose of this article is to examine and compare the ideas that underlie and operate in the current narratives of social entrepreneurship with those implicit in the traditional rhetoric in the context of social economy. The main results show a wider conception of the term “social” within the discourse of social entrepreneurship than in the social economy area.Social entrepreneurship, social economy, narrative, story.