Responsibility Obligations Research Articles

‘Politics begins as ethics’: Levinasian ethics and Australian performance concerning refugees

This essay begins by outlining Emmanuel Levinas's radical conception of ethics. Levinas invokes/declares an absolute and primary obligation of responsibility to the human Other, whom he figures hyperbolically as invoked by the epiphany of the encounter with ‘the face of the Other’. This encounter with alterity founds not only ethics, but subjectivity itself, in Levinas’ conception. I apply Levinas's concept to the refusal of responsibility, of unqualified hospitality and asylum, exercised by the Australian Government under John Howard. The essay argues that the rich and varied response of Australian theatre and performance to this refusal was, however, broadly ethical. Its form of politics was to produce affective rather than ideological transformations in the audience. I examine a selection of performance and theatre work that uses different performance strategies to explore how this was achieved. The essay also outlines Levinas's objection to art conceived as representation of the face of the Other, and his delineation of the ethical mode of embodied discourse he calls ‘the saying’, which can be seen in moments of performance as an embodied, affective and interactive mode.

The Corporate Social Responsibility Continuum as a Component of Stakeholder Theory

There has been much discussion in recent decades about the extent of a firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) obligations (see, for example, Van Marrewijk, 2003). Beginning with Friedman’s 1962 shareholder primacy perspective, whose sole focus was on the firm’s responsibility to its owners, and moving to a stakeholder primacy perspective, an expanded notion of a firm’s obligations to all relevant stakeholders, not just owners, the topic has been debated by many management and marketing scholars (see, for example, Donaldson and Preston, 1995; Greenley and Foxall, 1998; Miles and White, 1998; Mintzberg et al., 2002; Polonsky, 1995; Polonsky et al., 2002; Sirgy and Lee, 1996).

Your company and the producer responsibility obligations (packaging waste) regulations 1997

The paper desaibes the requirements of the Regulations as they apply to a conventional UK surface coatings monufacturer; types of packaging, recovery and recycling options, effect of imports and exports, exemptions including ‘special producers’, specific calculations, levies and annual costs, and reference to applicable legislation.

Logistics Implications of the UK Packaging Waste Regulations

ABSTRACT This paper examines the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations introduced by the UK Government in 1997. The impact that these Regulations will have on the levels of freight transport activity associated with the collection and redistribution of packaging waste to recovery/recycling facilities is calculated. Findings indicate that the Regulations will lead to a 14% increase in freight vehicle kilometres attributable to packaging waste. The extent to which greater use of reusable containers could help to reduce packaging waste-related transport activity is also modelled. Details arc given of how businesses are responding to the Regulations and how some companies are adapting their logistics systems to incorporate the recovery and recycling of packaging waste as well as replacing disposal packaging with reusable containers. Interviews and case–study material carried out as part of the research are used to support this discussion.

BOOK REVIEW: THE PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY OBLIGATIONS (PACKAGING WASTE) REGULATIONS — A CONSULTATION PAPER, 1996. Department of the Environment, Department of Trade and Industry, Scottish Office and Welsh Office, xi + 149 pp, free of charge (pbk)

BOOK REVIEW: THE PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY OBLIGATIONS (PACKAGING WASTE) REGULATIONS — A CONSULTATION PAPER, 1996. Department of the Environment, Department of Trade and Industry, Scottish Office and Welsh Office, xi + 149 pp, free of charge (pbk)

Ethics in Nursing and Health Care Reform: Back to the Future?

Reflection on the relationship of ethics in the nursing profession and current efforts to reform health care is a kaleidoscope of varied pieces and patterns. Current reform efforts at the federal and state levels point to nursing's social mandate--to help serve society's interests in the areas of health and sickness care. Because ethics in nursing has historically contained themes of reformation of institutional and professional values, responsibilities, relationships, and power with a goal of assuring patient welfare, the nursing profession can look to its past for the ethical resources it will require as it participates in the present moment of health care reform. Two major themes of nursing obligation return to the work of Florence Nightingale, administrator, statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale's foundational views of nursing included the development of healing environments as a nursing responsibility and nurses' obligations to protect patient confidentiality. Both themes point to an ethics of institutional and social obligations as well as obligations to individual patients. These themes are juxtaposed in current discussions of ethics in nursing and in today's debates about the value foundations of reforming the delivery of health care. Tensions in nursing among loyalty to patients, to physicians, to self, and to employing agencies provide a context for the development of ethics in nursing over the past century and nursing's participation in health care reform today. Early twentieth century nursing ethics texts contain a potpourri of topics under the rubric of ethics. Nursing virtues of loyalty and obedience, heavily influenced by religious and military traditions, were foundational to the development of nursing obligations. An uneasy tension was already evident in these early discussions of ethics in nursing between promoting patient welfare as a primary emphasis and promoting the welfare of nurses through adequate reimbursement, suggesting that the welfare of nurses and patients is interrelated. Ethics in practice focused primarily on loyalty to physicians and to employing institutions. Nursing was largely dependent in reality on the prevailing ethics and values of medicine and bureaucratic institutions such as hospitals, where most nurses' training took place. A separate ethics for the nursing profession was discouraged by influential physicians even as nursing leaders struggled to professionalize nursing. In the 1930s and 1940s broader humanistic themes emerged that pointed to nurses' obligations as citizens of the community and the world. Nursing leaders encouraged nurses to participate in politics in order to facilitate the achievement of nursing and health care goals. The theme of citizenship was explicit even in the first efforts by the American Nurses Association (ANA) to develop a nursing code of ethics in the late 1920s, although the first ethics code for nurses was not officially approved by the ANA until 1950. …

Social Responsibility Ethics: Doing Right, doing Good, doing Well

The ethics of social responsibility is discussed in reference to six case vignettes drawn from forensic psychology. A definitional model of social responsibility is proposed, and two unequal components of the concept—respect for the individual and concern for social welfare—are identified. The sources of ethical conflict in regard to social responsibility are enumerated. Scholarly criticism of the value orientation of forensic psychology is reviewed, and forensic psychology is contrasted with social policy advocacy efforts made by organized psychology. The social responsibility obligations of psychologists in the microethical sphere, where their actions affect individuals, are diffentiated from the obligations psychology has when operating in the macroethical sphere of social policy. The ethical problems inherent in policy advocacy brought about by individual psychologists working with individuals are underscored: the inevitable element of deception, the violation of role integrity, and the circumvention of social structures and institutions that safeguard the rights of individuals.

The consciously rejected child: legal and social issues.

With increasing frequency, we are observing the phenomenon of the parentally abandoned or rejected child. This can in large measure be attributed to several social/historical developments in American society (Crandall and Grossberg, 1978). Important factors contributing to the phenomenon include the much publicized "breakdown" of traditional family structures; increasing divorce rates; the urbanization of the American population, which creates a cloak of social anonymity; and the establishment of a state/federal welfare bureaucracy, which in part supplants the caretaking functions traditionally carried out by parents. Children who become the victims of parental abandonment find themselves in circumstances in which they come to the attention of an remain, at least for a time, the responsiblity of the legal system and the mental health professions. The interaction of these two institutions, with their overlapping obligations of responsibility toward protecting children, often creates its own problems. Problems arise in part from the somewhat different "interests" of children whom the legal and mental health professions seek to protect and in part from a lack of mutual understanding and knowledge concerning the respective goals, duties, and professional obligations of the two professions. By becoming familiar with the complexity of legal issues which surround the topic of intrafamily relationships in general and parental rights in particular, the psychiatric practitioner can anticipate certain problems which might occur during the course of treatment and can in some instances specify conditions or introduce safeguards in order to minimize the impact of legal intrusions upon the treatment program. The following discussion is designed to help the practitioner to achieve these goals.

Correlates of Aged Parents' Filial Responsibility Expectations and Realizations

The concept of responsibility refers to adult offsprings' obligations to meet the needs of their aging parents. It emphasizes duty and is usually associated with protection, care, and economic support (Schorr, 1960). Specific varieties of responsibility include personal contact with parents, financial aid to them, shared living arrangements, and assistance in meeting their daily needs. Recent extensions in life expectancy have produced considerable generational overlap so that today the obligations of responsibility have become all the more a reality for greater numbers of families (Nye & Berardo, 1973; Simos, 1970). Blenkner (1965) discussed filial as a kind of developmental stage stemming from the resolution of a filial crisis, which typically occurs in the middle years. Filial maturity is achieved when offspring realize that parents are becoming dependent upon them. Related Literature