Growing Environmental Activists: Developing Environmental Agency and Engagement Through Children’s Fiction.

We explore how story has the potential to encourage environmental engagement and a sense of agency provided that critical discussion takes place. We illuminate this with reference to the philosophies of John Macmurray on personal agency and social relations; of John Dewey on the primacy of experience for philosophy; and of Paul Ricoeur on hermeneutics, dialogue, dialectics and narrative. We view the use of fiction for environmental understanding as hermeneutic, a form of conceptualising place which interprets experience and perception. The four writers for young people discussed are Ernest Thompson Seton, Kenneth Grahame, Michelle Paver and Philip Pullman. We develop the concept of critical dialogue, and link this to Crick's demand for active democratic citizenship. We illustrate the educational potential for environmental discussions based on literature leading to deeper understanding of place and environment, encouraging the belief in young people that they can be and become agents for change. We develop from Zimbardo the key concept of heroic resister to encourage young people to overcome peer pressure. We conclude with a call to develop a greater awareness of the potential of fiction for learning, and for writers to produce more focused stories engaging with environmental responsibility and activism

Effects of White Space in Learning via the Web

This study measured the effect of specific white space features on learning from instructional Web materials. The study also measured learners' beliefs regarding Web-based instruction. Prior research indicated that small changes in the handling of presentation elements can affect learning. Achievement results from this study indicated that in on-line materials, when content and overall structure are sound, minor differences regarding table borders and vertical spacing in text do not hinder learning. Beliefs regarding Web-based instruction and instructors who use it did not differ significantly between treatment groups. Implications of the study and cautions regarding generalizing from the results are discussed.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

A Framework for Organizational Compliance Management Tactics

Abstract. Organizational compliance with laws, industrial standards, procedures and enterprise architectures has become a highly relevant topic for both practitio-ners and academics. However, both the fundamental insights into compliance as a concept and the tactics for bringing an organization into a compliant state have been described in a fragmented manner. Using literature from various disciplines, this paper presents two contributions. First, it describes the fundamental concepts regarding compliance. Second, it presents a framework in which the various tactics for achieving organizational compliance can be positioned

The Behavioral Roots of Information Systems Security:Exploring Key Factors Related to Unethical IT Use

Unethical information technology (IT) use, related to activities such as hacking, software piracy, phishing, and spoofing, has become a major security concern for individuals, organizations, and society in terms of the threat to information systems (IS) security. While there is a growing body of work on this phenomenon, we notice several gaps, limitations, and inconsistencies in the literature. In order to further understand this complex phenomenon and reconcile past findings, we conduct an exploratory study to uncover the nomological network of key constructs salient to this phenomenon, and the nature of their interrelationships. Using a scenario-based study of young adult participants, and both linear and nonlinear analyses, we uncover key nuances of this phenomenon of unethical IT use. We find that unethical IT use is a complex phenomenon, often characterized by nonlinear and idiosyncratic relationships between the constructs that capture it. Overall, ethical beliefs held by the individuals, along with economic, social, and technological considerations are found to be relevant to this phenomenon. In terms of practical implications, these results suggest that multiple interventions at various levels may be required to combat this growing threat to IS security

Heroism and Eudaimonia: Sublime actualization through the embodiment of virtue

The philosophical roots of eudaimonia lie in “Aristotle’s view of the highest human good involving virtue and the realization of one’s potential … It begins with Aristotle’s emphasizing choice and suggesting that virtue, which is central to eudaimonia, involves making the right choices” (Deci and Ryan, J Happiness Stud 9(1):1–11, 2008, pp. 4, 7). Although the Aristotelian meaning of ‘virtue’ is somewhat contested (Keyes & Annas, 2009), its association with heroic action as an ideal state is immediate. Eudaimonic happiness “actively expresses excellency of character or virtue” (Haybron, 2000, p. 3). Heroism and heroes have been considered to be the pinnacle of human excellence and virtue in history. In his reading of Merleau-Ponty’s 1948 address of heroism, Smyth (2010, p. 178) notes that “the hero is someone who ‘lives to the limit … his relation to men and the world’”. Allison and Goethals (2014, p. 167) concur that, “The human tendency to bestow a timeless quality to heroic leadership is the culmination of a pervasive narrative about human greatness [emphasis added] that people have been driven to construct since the advent of language”. This peak state, and the idea of transcendence that is associated with it, go to the basis of the word ‘eudaimonia’, the ‘daemon’, i.e., being taken over by the ‘good spirit’ (Bošković and Šendula Jengić, 2008; Froh et al, 2009)