Personal Misconduct Research Articles

On Freedom from Remorse (Avipratisāra/Avippaṭisāra): Its Place on the Well-Trodden Path from Moral Discipline to Samādhi Meditation

The primary objective of this study is to shed light on the role and significance of freedom from remorse (avipratisāra/avippaṭisāra) in the cultivation of Buddhist concentration (samādhi) meditation. The study delves into the progression from avipratisāra/avippaṭisāra to samādhi, examining how moral discipline influences an individual’s conscience and, consequently, meditation. We commence by examining the well-established path of cultivation leading toward samādhi. A comprehensive study was undertaken to understand the term avipratisāra/avippaṭisāra, its significance for Buddhist meditation, the context in which it originated, and the various English translations that have been provided for it. Furthermore, a comparison is made between avipratisāra/avippaṭisāra and a seemingly synonymous term, kaukṛtya/kukkucca, with areas being sought where one or the other tends to be (or is exclusively) used within the discourse about Buddhist ethics and meditation. From various Buddhist scriptures, it is suggested that a morally disciplined individual typically progresses through a series of states, starting with freedom from remorse and potentially leading to concentration (samādhi). Avipratisāra/avippaṭisāra is pivotal in fostering positive meditative states, serving as a catalyst that propels individuals from negative emotions to wholesome ones on the Buddhist path. By contrast, both vipratisāra/vippaṭisāra and kaukṛtya/kukkucca are identified as basically synonymous words for disturbing emotions with somewhat different contexts of use, the elimination of such emotions being necessary if individuals are to progress on their spiritual journey. Avipratisāra/avippaṭisāra plays a crucial intermediary role bridging Buddhist ethics and meditation. Moral discipline and the subsequent understanding and confession of any personal misconduct are integral to fostering freedom from remorse. Such freedom not only paves the way to deeper meditation but also fortifies one’s confidence in Buddhist teachings, and so provides a foundation for true spiritual progress.

Personal Misconduct Elicits Harsher Professional Consequences for Artists (vs. Scientists): A Moral-Decoupling Process

Recent years have brought increased accountability for personal misconduct, yet often, unequal consequences have resulted from similar offenses. Findings from a unique archival data set (N = 619; all university faculty) and three preregistered experiments (N = 2,594) show that the perceived artistic-versus-scientific nature of the offender’s professional contributions influences the professional punishment received. In Study 1, analysis of four decades of university sexual-misconduct cases reveals that faculty in artistic (vs. scientific) fields have on average received more severe professional consequences. Study 2 demonstrates this experimentally, offering mediational evidence that greater difficulty morally decoupling art (vs. science) contributes to the phenomenon. Study 3 provides further evidence for this mechanism through experimental moderation. Finally, Study 4 shows that merely framing an individual’s work as artistic versus scientific results in replication of these effects. Several potential alternative mechanisms to moral decoupling are tested but not supported. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

One of These Things is Not Like the Other: How Firms’ Post-Misconduct Actions Differ by Misconduct

To mitigate potential negative consequences of corporate misconduct to the firm, CEO changing of the guard (dismissal and replacement) is commonly used to signal that the firm is remedying the underlying cause of its misconduct. However, scholars have yet to disentangle the outcomes on this type of corrective action in different misconduct contexts. Accordingly, in this study, we theorize the degree of CEO attribution for misconduct, whether it be dispersed or concentrated, helps to better understand differences in firm changing of the guard actions for misconduct. We test our arguments on two misconduct contexts (CEO personal misconduct and firm-level financial misconduct) and find that CEO dismissal and successor type are influenced by misconduct context-attribution type and firm performance moderates these relationships. Thus, we provide a deeper understanding of theory on corporate misconduct and changing of the guard actions.

CEO Personal Reputation and Financial Misconduct

CEO Personal Reputation and Financial Misconduct

Accountability Asset Recovery: A Leadership & Sustainability Initiative Receivership Is NOT Releasership

For the effective recovery of qualified assets, Receivership is NOT releasership, that is to say the improper disposition of recovered assets. Insolvency practitioner overreach has become macro critical to the stability of the global financial system. Introduction to the Problem, Its Root Causes and Institutional Concern “There are Institutions that are just not there.” Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Finance Minister of Nigeria. The absence of institutional capacity for Receivership has caused Receivership practice to lie in the gap in the region of an unobservable externality, whereby personal misconduct being practiced has gone unchecked until most recently. “We have seen cases where civil society organizations, (CSOs), were extremely active proposing solutions, giving ideas and where they were listened to; cases where eventually they ended up being sort of captured by organizations that were so devious and insidious and smart about enrolling it into their own purposes.” IMF Managing Director and Chair, Christine Lagarde

The Flipkart Story in India: From the Start to Walmart

Flipkart was launched in 2007 as an online platform for selling books by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal. Ten years later, the e-commerce company had 54 million active users and 100,000 plus sellers and had sold 261 million units. The founders had taken several steps to garner this growth, by making investments in technology, undertaking high-decibel advertising campaigns and promoting attractive offers on products sold on the platform. Despite the growth, the company was not making profits, and investors like Tiger Global were unhappy. Tiger Global Management brought in Kalyan Krishnamurthy to Flipkart in 2016, and a year later, Kalyan became the chief executive officer (CEO), replacing co-founder Binny who got promoted as group CEO. In May 2018, American retailer Walmart paid USD 16 billion to buy out Flipkart and in the same month, Sachin exited the venture by selling his shares for USD 1 billion. Seven months later, Binny was forced to resign on charges of personal misconduct. As these events unfolded, Flipkart was no longer the company founded by the Bansals. The case highlights critical issues in the Flipkart growth story and helps readers understand the nuances in managing stakeholders, including customers and investors.

The Market Price of Managerial Indiscretions

To what extent should investors be concerned about the personal behavior of the top managers of the companies they invest in? In a study published recently in the Journal of Financial Economics, the authors shed light on this question by examining the market responses to revelations of over 300 cases of personal misconduct by senior executives and directors, including episodes of domestic violence, DUIs, extramarital affairs, and public dishonesty. In so doing, they provide suggestive evidence of how “tone at the top” can affect corporate policy by way of its culture and how a manager's reputation spills over to that of the firm.The authors' findings show that the companies employing these executives experienced meaningful financial and product market penalties following the disclosure of their unethical behavior. Following the revelation of an indiscretion, investors suffered immediate losses in shareholder wealth—on the order of 4% in cases involving CEOs—and the company's stock continued to underperform during the ensuing year, with total losses amounting to 12 %–14% of firm value. Such companies also tended to lose joint venture partnerships and major customers following these scandals, thereby forcing them into lower‐margin lines of business. The authors also find that such companies were more likely later to commit fraud and be targeted in shareholder class‐action lawsuits.The offending managers themselves were disciplined by the labor market for their missteps in that they faced a higher likelihood of dismissal, and those who were retained earned around $400,000 less pay following the indiscretion. Nevertheless, it is notable that a majority of these executives were not fired, implying that their supervising boards felt they contributed more value to the firm than the damage they caused through their off‐the‐job behavior. Interestingly, the board members supervising these executives were also held accountable for managerial indiscretions in that they received less shareholder support in director elections following the scandals.

Ties That Bound: Founding First Ladies and Slaves by Marie Jenkins Schwartz

Reviewed by: Ties That Bound: Founding First Ladies and Slaves by Marie Jenkins Schwartz Sara Brooks Sundberg Ties That Bound: Founding First Ladies and Slaves. By Marie Jenkins Schwartz. ( Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Pp. viii, 420. $35.00, ISBN 978-0-226-14755-0.) In this engaging study, Marie Jenkins Schwartz examines the lives of early First Ladies as slaveholders. Slaveholding among the nation's First Ladies has received limited scholarly attention when compared with the scholarship about their husbands. For no era is this truer than for the founding generation. In particular, Schwartz focuses on the slaveholding experiences of Martha Washington, Martha Jefferson, Jefferson's daughter Patsy Jefferson Randolph, and Dolley Madison. Schwartz argues that examining slaveholding among these early First Ladies provides a richer picture of not only the women but also their husbands and slaves. According to the author, these elite women presided over shared domestic spaces that "required ongoing negotiations" among black and white people (p. 2). These negotiations "created a peculiar world of their own—a world that reveals much about class, race, and gender in the early nation" (p. 2). Drawing on a variety of sources, including letters, memoirs, presidential papers, house plans, historical scholarship, and the First Ladies exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, Schwartz demonstrates that these First Ladies perceived slaves as vital to their family's economic interests, and they acted accordingly. For example, Martha Washington disagreed with her husband's decision to free his slaves at her death. Fearing for her own safety from slaves who might wish to see her dead and recognizing that her plantations did not need all the slaves the family possessed, Martha freed her deceased husband's slaves early. She failed to provide them with anything to begin their new lives, however, and her actions resulted in the painful separation of Washington's slaves from family members still working on the plantation. Much of the literature about early First Ladies emphasizes their roles as helpmates, hostesses, and heroines in behalf of their country and their husbands' political careers. Schwartz refines our understanding of their roles by illuminating how slaves facilitated their mistresses' success. She reminds us that slaves prepared the elaborate food for Dolley Madison's influential White House receptions. Even the story of Madison's heroism in saving Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington during the War of 1812 is complicated by Schwartz's explanation that Madison's slaves played an important role in saving the piece. Schwartz argues that these details are significant because "[e]rasing enslaved blacks from the story implies that black people played no role in forging America. Focusing wholly on free whites suggests that the American story is theirs alone" (p. 280). One of the strengths of Ties That Bound: Founding First Ladies and Slaves is that first families' slaves emerge as discrete individuals with stories of their own. Ties That Bound's most important contribution is refocusing our attention on First Ladies as slaveholders and revealing how slaveholding influenced their roles. When pondering Patsy Jefferson Randolph's contribution to the role of First Lady for her father, Thomas Jefferson, Schwartz notes that Randolph did not publicly challenge Jefferson's relationship with his slave Sally Hemings. [End Page 432] Randolph, Schwartz argues, became "the first of a number of First Ladies who have stood by a President in the face of public allegations of personal misconduct" (p. 207). Maintaining focus on the First Ladies' slaveholding rather than the better-known and well-documented presidents poses a challenge. Even if Schwartz sometimes leaves her readers with the desire to learn more from the First Ladies themselves, Ties That Bound illuminates a crucial dimension of their lives that merits scholarly attention. This book deserves a wide readership and is informative for both popular and scholarly audiences. Sara Brooks Sundberg University of Central Missouri Copyright © 2018 The Southern Historical Association

Investigating the Reliability and Factor Structure of Kalichman's "Survey 2: Research Misconduct" Questionnaire: A Post Hoc Analysis Among Biomedical Doctoral Students in Scandinavia.

A precondition for reducing scientific misconduct is evidence about scientists' attitudes. We need reliable survey instruments, and this study investigates the reliability of Kalichman's "Survey 2: research misconduct" questionnaire. The study is a post hoc analysis of data from three surveys among biomedical doctoral students in Scandinavia (2010-2015). We perform reliability analysis, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis using a split-sample design as a partial validation. The results indicate that a reliable 13-item scale can be formed (Cronbach's α = .705), and factor analysis indicates that there are four reliable subscales each tapping a different construct: (a) general attitude to misconduct (α = .768), (b) attitude to personal misconduct (α = .784), (c) attitude to whistleblowing (α = .841), and (d) attitude to blameworthiness/punishment (α = .877). A full validation of the questionnaire requires further research. We, nevertheless, hope that the results will facilitate the increased use of the questionnaire in research.

Three Buddhist Texts from Dunhuang

Abstract“Three Buddhist Texts from Dunhuang” provides an introduction to and translation of texts that are representative of the larger genre of Chinese Buddhist medical literature. These examples are indigenous Chinese Buddhist scriptures dating to the early ninth century. They were recovered in the early twentieth century at Dunhuang in western China. Although they often draw from Indian Buddhist sources, these texts are local Chinese products and are characterized by etiologies and therapeutics drawn from both Indian Buddhist traditions and Chinese worldviews. In these texts, disease is alternately the result of personal immorality, divine retribution, and collective misconduct. The prescribed therapies are also multiple, but consistently social in nature. These include worshiping buddhas and Buddhist deities, performing repentance rituals, copying Buddhist scriptures, sponsoring meals, and refraining from immoral behavior. As manuscripts essentially discoveredin situ, these texts provide valuable insight into on-the-ground worldviews, concerns, practices, and institutions in far western China. With their composite nature, drawing from established Indian Buddhist scriptures, folk beliefs, and governmental fiats, they are also suggestive of the strategies behind indigenous textual production.

‘…I TAKE POLITICAL RESPONSIBILITY!’: THE THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL RELATION BETWEEN MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND MINISTERIAL RESIGNATIONS IN GERMANY

How is the doctrine of ministerial responsibility applied in the decisions of German ministers (not) to resign? This question arises from an empirical puzzle as well as from a theoretical contradiction. Despite the prominent principle of ministerial responsibility, empirically, the ‘personal consequences' of ministerial scandals in their area of responsibility, display a large variance. Some ministers resign because of rather trifling affairs, others stay in office in spite of serious scandals. Taking into consideration the delegation relationship between the executive and the parliament, in view of the principal‐agent theory, a minister's resignation due to major political or personal misconduct is to be expected. On the other hand, the actual constitutional configuration of ministerial responsibility casts theoretical doubts on the ministerial loss of office. The quantitative analysis of 133 resignation issues in the years 1949 to 2009 reveals that ministerial responsibility bears no relevance to the decision whether to resign or not. Indeed, when the cause of the resignation issue is directly connected to ministerial responsibility, the probability of a resignation even decreases.

The Sicuro File: A Personal Perspective on the Struggle over Portland State University's Most Controversial President

Although the Portland State University (PSU) community looked to the inauguration of President Natale Sicuro in 1986 as a turning point for a struggling institution, the administration faced a set of unsettling controversies. These included the president's support of a student government leader facing personal misconduct allegations, an effort to elevate a deficit-plagued intercollegiate football program to Division I status, heavy-handed attempts to limit the autonomy of the student newspaper, costly renovations to the presidential mansion, and deficits and questionable expenses in the president's account at the Portland State Foundation. Historian and PSU faculty member David A. Horowitz recounts how a broad university coalition played a part in the State Board of Higher Education's decision to solicit a presidential resignation in the fall of 1988. Sicuro's tenure reflected the growing clash between the values and practices of the corporate market and the principles associated with an autonomous academy.

Trust and Distrust in Conflicting Situations: Legal Case Review of Antecedents of Distrust

It is considered that the root cause of a conflicting situation is trust and distrust relationships. To pursue effective negotiations, trust must be built and distrust managed. In the past 10 years, a lot has been studied about trust, but not much has been written about distrust. This paper uses a case study approach to examine the antecedents, behaviors, and consequences in 10 legal cases in Hong Kong, where distrust is generally regarded as the root cause of the problem in the cases. The findings have identified that when people do not want to meet, company affairs or meetings cannot be continued, and when there is a doubt of personal misconduct, there is a clear signal of distrust. Thus, distrust leads to steps taken to reduce our vulnerability in an attempt to protect our interests, such as winding up of a company. In a negotiation, certain procedural facilities and steps should be considered and taken beforehand to disallow the conflict to escalate into a matter that can only be resolved by arbitrati...

Tapping the Reservoir: Mutual Fund Litigation Under Section 36(a) of the Investment Company Act of 1940

In the wake of the 2003 mutual fund scandal, numerous lawsuits have been filed against mutual fund officers, directors and investment advisers. Many of these lawsuits allege violations of section 36(a) of the Investment Company Act of 1940. Section 36(a) provides a federal cause of action for a breach of fiduciary duty involving personal misconduct in respect of any investment company. The interpretation of this phrase, however, remains unsettled. After examining relevant legislative history and case law, the Article argues that the federal courts should fashion federal law as to what fiduciary duties are owed under section 36(a), drawing on analogous state law as appropriate. This approach would allow federal courts to tailor fiduciary duty standards for the unique investment company structure as opposed to simply applying state fiduciary duty standards developed for traditional corporations. The Article also argues that the involving personal misconduct standard of section 36(a) should be interpreted to include more than just self-dealing and personal impropriety, as some courts have suggested. Specifically, along the lines of the business judgment rule, the standard should encompass any decision that was not made on an informed basis, in good faith and in the honest belief that the action taken was in the best interests of the company. This interpretation strikes the appropriate balance between attracting competent individuals to serve as fund directors and holding fund directors accountable. This interpretation would also extend business-judgment-rule-type protection to investment advisers, a result warranted by the risk-taking nature of portfolio management.

A survey of newly appointed consultants' attitudes towards research fraud

Objective—To determine the prevalence of, and attitudes towards, observed and personal research misconduct among newly appointed medical consultants. Design—Questionnaire study. Setting—Mersey region, United Kingdom. Participants—Medical consultants appointed between Jan 1995...

Client Advocacy in Action: Professional and Environmental Factors Affecting Israeli Occupational Therapists' Behaviour

Client advocacy refers to various expressions of taking a stand such as representing and supporting the interests of clients and of populations with special needs, informing them of their rights in particular situations, making sure they have all the necessary information to make an informed decision, safeguarding their rights, and promoting legislation, policy and social awareness that may affect care and quality of life through education and public activism. The purpose of the present study is to examine situations in which occupational therapists identify the need for their involvement on behalf of clients, and identify factors that affect their behaviour when they protect, represent or inform clients about their rights. In-depth ethnographic interviews were conducted with 12 Israeli registered occupational therapists representing a variety of professional specializations and work settings. From the analysis of the results three main themes were identified as follows: a) the interviewees view themselves as “guardians of morals” in relation to personal, professional and social misconduct, b) occupational therapists become advocates when mediation is needed to represent clients' functional abilities, and c) the role of client advocacy is affected and shaped by occupational therapists' perceptions and experiences of the interdisciplinary team.

‘Accountability’, Hospital Doctors and Disciplinary Procedures

In the first part of this paper, the significance of the word ‘accountability’ is explored in relation to the employment of hospital doctors, as in‐practice doctors and management attach very different meanings to it. The paper takes the view that, essentially, management views doctors as particularly expensive and difficult senior employees, while doctors see themselves as accountable only to their patients. In the second part, the processes for disciplining doctors are described in relation to the three main types of problem — sickness; personal misconduct; and professional misconduct and incompetence.

Dementia in the elderly: the role of the general practitioner.

Advanced dementia is found in 15-20% of people above 80 years of age. Some of these cases are due to diseases which can be treated, but in the majority the aetiology is still unknown and consequently there is no cure. Alzheimer’s disease or dementia of Alzheimer’s type is the most common cause of dementia, and multiinfarct dementia is another common type. Risk factors for the former are heredity, female sex, and age, age being the most powerful one (1). The number of demented will therefore increase. Atrial fibrillation and hypertension are related to multiinfarct dementia. However, moderate hypotension is likely to impair cerebral blood flow in hypertensive individuals, and therefore antihypertensive drug treatment may also be harmful (2). Recently, the rationale of the division between Alzheimer’s disease and multiinfarct dementia has been questioned, since the pathological changes in the brains of demented old persons are of mixed senile and vascular aetiology in at least 40 YO (2). Senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles often accompany dementia of Alzheimer’s type. However, in some cases of dementia such pathological changes are missing, and in some normal elderly persons the pathological changes are found. Therefore the senile plaques, the neurofibrillary tangles, and the amyloid depositions formed in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients are probably accompanying features only, and not the cause of the disease (3,4). The clinical picture of dementia has been divided into various forms. Cortical and subcortical forms have been described. Recently, single photon emission tomography has indicated that, based on the localization of the lesion in the brains, one can distinguish three clinical forms of dementia. One is Alzheimer’s disease, in which progressive amnesia, spatial disorientation, and aphasia are typical findings. The second is dementia of frontal type, giving change in personality with personal and social misconduct. The third form is progressive supranuclear palsy, in which physical and mental symptoms develop together and in general consist of slowness and lack of efficiency in physical and mental function ( 5 ) . The diagnosis of dementia will have to be made by the general practitioner in most cases. Only a small portion of the patients can be referred to the psychogeriatrician or to an assessment unit. A number of studies have shown considerable disagreement between the clinical diagnosis of dementia and the pathological one. The discrepancies occur when the clinical diagnosis has been performed in hospital (6). However, the general practitioner has several advantages over the hospital-based doctor in the evaluation of these patients. H e will often have a longterm knowledge of the patients, he can employ the primary health-care team in the investigation of the patient, and he has the opportunity to visit the patient in hidher home. The general practitioner should have a standardized procedure for his examination. First of all, acute confusion or mental depression must be detected. These conditions may or may not be superimposed on dementia. As a rule, acute confusion is secondary to a medical or surgical condition, or it may be a reaction to mental stress. Treatment of the

Discipline of Attorneys for Personal Misconduct

Discipline of Attorneys for Personal Misconduct

Academic Tenure and Retrenchment: the US experience

It was clear to the authors that financial reasons can legitimate the dismissal of a tenured academic; in addition, as Professor Robert Carr, then Chairman of the AAUP Committee on Academic Freedom, acknowledges in the foreword to this work, academic profession itself readily concedes that a professor can be dismissed for 'adequate cause,' including such grounds as incompetence, neglect of duty, and gross personal misconduct [2]. A 1972 survey showed that 100% of public and private universities had such tenure plans [3]. A much more recent survey by the American Council of Education [4] shows that in 1979-80 64.4% of all university faculty enjoyed tenure, and that it is inching up a point or two every year. It was only 51% in 1969 and is expected to be 77% by 1986 [5]. Such averages need to be treated with some care: at the most prestigious institutions the figure may be much higher. It is, for example, already 78% at the University of California. Tenure plans which meet the general criteria cited by Byse vary widely in their explicitness from one institution to another. Their terms are generally set out in university statutes, by-laws or faculty handbooks. In recent years it has become more frequent for them also to be embodied in 'contracts' negotiated with the union representing the faculty, in those few universities-rarely among the more prestigious-which have embraced collective bargaining. As we shall see later, attempts are now being made in such institutions to go into considerable detail of the circumstances in which 'financial exigency' can be invoked. The details of the 'tenure plan' may cover such matters as: (1) how tenure is achieved, the length of probation and the criteria to be satisfied; (2) what procedures have to be adopted if it is to be refused; (3) the nature of 'adequate cause'; (4) the procedures for termination: hearings, notice, appeals. Great importance is attached to full and public process, involving consideration, and preferably determination, by other faculty members rather than by the administration. In the long history of contention about such matters, these procedural protections have been viewed as more important than the spelling out of 'adequate cause'. It is generally accepted, however, that 'adequacy' means 'related to professional performance', as 299