Personal Self-interest Research Articles

For the Country, the Corporation and the Métier: Alternative Drivers Among Practitioners in Private Sector Aid

The financialization of development and the outsourcing of aid work to contracted businesses are strengthening the role of alternative drivers among practitioners engaged in international development work. These relate to but also transcend the dichotomy between altruism and personal self-interest, which often frames scholarly research on aid worker motivations. Focusing on consultants and development finance experts, this article highlights three institutional impetuses that guide practitioners’ work. They are concerned with the international competitiveness of donor operations, the stakes of one’s employer in cross-sectoral partnerships and the reputation and position of one’s professional sub-field. Consultants and development finance experts also highlight considerable staff movements across non- and for-profit institutions. In the increasingly complex architecture of aid interventions, such boundary-crossers operate in a new space of development brokerage, as mediators between public and private sector actors.

The scarlet V: how women with dyspareunia negotiate postfeminist discourses of sexual agency

Young women must often contend with cultural scripts dictating neoliberal/postfeminist ideals of female sexual agency, including the ability to act in accord with one’s personal sexual self-interest. The aim of this study was to explore how young women (n = 26) living with dyspareunia (pain experienced during penetrative sexual activity) negotiate these ideals. We found that in addition to discussing traditional discourses that assign value to women in accordance with their perceived sexual virtue, women judged themselves according to the degree to which their behaviour reflected sexual agency. Women perceived to be sexually agentic were, for the most part, lauded, while those perceived to lack sexual agency were either denigrated (in the case of high sexual activity) or seen as deficient (in the case of low sexual activity). The inability to be penetrated without pain significantly limited women’s sexual repertoires. Contrasting their sexual agency with that of other women and of their past selves, women expressed feelings of disempowerment. Conceptualising agency as a spectrum rather than something that one has or lacks, as well as actively cultivating the potentialities of sexual ‘transgression’, may allow young women to resist heteronormative sexual hierarchies - including those rooted in a a postfeminist ethos.

The Ghost of John Hart Ely

The ghost of John Hart Ely haunts the American liberal constitutional imagination. In spite of the failure long ago of any progressive constitutional vision in an increasingly conservative Supreme Court, Ely’s conjectures about the superiority of judges relative to legislatures in the protection of minorities and the policing of the democratic process remain second nature. Indeed, they have been credible enough among liberals to underwrite an anxious or even hostile attitude toward judicial reform. In order to exorcise Ely’s ghost and lay it to rest, this Article challenges his twin conjectures. First, the Article argues that there is little historical and no theoretical basis for the belief that courts will outperform legislatures in overcoming even deeply entrenched historic discrimination against deserving minorities — even as courts act to entrench the power of undeserving ones, like the powerful and wealthy today. Second, the Article contends that Ely’s almost complete failure to anticipate the inaction of the judiciary in policing the democratic process — except when judges assist their own ideological allies — is devastating for his theory, which depended precisely upon an empirical prediction. Ely’s conjecture about the comparative superiority of judges in policing the democratic process has proved untrue because he ignored ideological affiliation (focusing exclusively on personal self-interest) in supposing that, with their independence and life tenure, judges are less likely to act in self-dealing fashion than politicians. And the deepest reason for the ideological affiliation of judges, who often exacerbate what many take to be the worst pathologies of democratic exclusion, is that identifying what arrangements count as more rather than less democratic is itself a matter of intense ideological division. If Ely’s two conjectures fail, nothing remains to support the conclusion that judges deserve excess countermajoritarian power, leaving democracy’s shortcomings to be remedied within democratic politics — which is, in turn, the most desirable future of liberal constitutionalism.

From 9/11 to 1/6: Lessons for Congress from Twenty Years of War, Legislation, and Spiraling Partisanship

Two decades on from the September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks, and in the wake of the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 (1/6), it is appropriate to appraise Congress’s performance over the past twenty years in providing “for the common Defence. This invited symposium essay finds the record mixed. Going forward, Congress certainly can and urgently must summon its foresight, civic courage, and institutional resolve to do a better job providing for the common defense while also doing its constitutional duty to “insure domestic Tranquility.” Part I of this essay takes stock overall. Congress helped the nation to mitigate the foreign terrorist threat more effectively than most probably expected immediately after 9/11. That is the good news. But Congress has done worse regarding the domestic terrorist threat than almost anyone twenty years ago would have predicted. Additionally, Congress has provided the Executive Branch a predictable but dangerously expansive degree of latitude in national security. Part II of this essay sets out particular lessons learned and actionable steps toward national and institutional redemption. These recommendations center on stemming the spiraling partisanship that now—worse than any foreign actor—threatens the nation’s ability to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Legislators must lead opinion: they must show integrity and put constitutional conscience ahead of partisan and personal self-interest. Congress will better play its constitutional role by asserting more confidently and carefully its abundant national security constitutional authorities vis-a-vis the Executive Branch. This essay recommends that Congress vigorously examine Executive claims about intelligence and use of force; reclaim its powers over use of force by repealing and replacing existing statutory Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMFs); reigning in standing statutory grants of emergency authority to the President; legislate with future threats and risks in mind; and enact a framework statute on to prevent repeat of the kind of radical secret reinterpretations of the law that were part of the post-9/11 era's most searing scandals regarding surveillance and torture.

Material Heuristics and Attitudes Toward Redistribution

ABSTRACT According to the material-heuristics hypothesis, people’s socioeconomic position affects their perceptions about the socioeconomic environment, including how society distributes opportunities and rewards and to what extent people are responsible for their own economic situation. These perceptions, in turn, affect attitudes toward wealth redistribution. In contrast to the material-heuristics hypothesis are the more familiar material self-interest hypothesis, which relates redistributive attitudes to one’s personal interest in gaining or losing from redistribution; and the self-serving reasoning hypothesis, according to which perceptions of how society distributes opportunities and rewards are a consequence rather than a cause of attitudes toward redistribution, which are, in turn, driven by material self-interest. All three hypotheses connect socioeconomic position and attitudes toward redistribution, but only the material-heuristics and the self-serving reasoning arguments account for why perceptions of the causes of wealth and poverty vary across economic groups and why this variation matters for attitudes toward redistribution. Ignoring the role of such perceptions can lead to the simplistic attribution of attitudes toward redistribution to personal self-interest.

Publication and Citation Analysis of Medical Doctors' Residency Master's Theses Involving Animal Experiments on Rats in Turkey.

The number of non-human animals used in research has increased in line with advances in medical technology, although it has previously been shown that these experiments demonstrate poor human utility. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of animal studies on rats that were performed as part of medical doctors' residency master's theses prepared in Turkey between January 2006 and December 2015. The number of thesis-derived published papers from each year, as well as the subsequent citation rate of these papers, was determined. Results from 34% of the 656 analysed studies (226/656) were published as papers in PubMed-indexed journals. These 226 studies got 1803 subsequent citations in total. Citation counts were statistically significantly different in 2009 and 2010, as compared to 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2015. Previous studies showed that the usual main objective for carrying out animal studies in Turkey was the preparation of a thesis or the furthering of an academic career (i.e. personal self-interest). In the current study, the publication rate and the number of subsequent citations of these thesis-derived papers were both low, and thus, the contribution of these animal studies to scientific progress is doubtful. It is recommended that institutional research ethics committees should be much more highly selective in approving the use of animals for the purposes of student thesis preparation.

Leningrad City Health Department and Leningrad Front Military Sanitary Department: Problems of Interaction in 1941–1942

The article covers the problems of relations between the Leningrad City Health Department and the Military Sanitary Department of the Leningrad Front in 1941–1942. The medical institutions of the Front Evacuation Point were located within city limits due to the unfavorable combat situation. This led to conflicts between military and civilian medical agencies, both at the stage of medical support of military mobilization and deployment of a network of evacuation hospitals in the first months of the war and later. The lack of clarity on subordination, rights, and obligations had a negative impact on the deployment and ongoing activities of evacuation hospitals, the conduct of anti-epidemic measures, and personnel policies. This could undermine the combat capacity of the troops and, ultimately, threatened Leningrad. However, attempts to redistribute powers between civilian and military medical institutions were not motivated by personal self-interest of their leaders, but by the interests of the service personnel. Most likely, personal responsibility for implementing instructions of parent bodies forced them to concentrate all control in their hands to use resources promptly to avoid lengthy inter-agency coordination. Despite difficult relations and differences, the health care system of blockaded Leningrad was able to solve its main task: to ensure the sanitary and epidemiological well-being of troops and the population and to restore combat losses of the army units defending the city.

Real-world Data to Generate Evidence About Healthcare Interventions

It is increasingly recognised that evidence generated using “real-world data” (RWD) is crucial for assessing the safety and effectiveness of health-related interventions. This, however, raises a number of issues, including those related to (1) the quality of RWD, and of the scientific methods used to generate evidence from it, and (2) the potential for those gathering and using RWD be driven by commercial, political, professional or personal self-interest. This article is an application of the framework presented in this issue of ABR (Xafis et al. 2019). Please refer to that article for more information on how this framework is to be used, including a full explanation of the key values involved and the balancing approach used in the case study at the end to demonstrate how those generating or using RWD can make use of values when deliberating about ethical issues.

Not in My Backyard: Personal Politics and Resident Attitudes toward Tourism

This research looks at the relationship between political libertarianism and personal self-interest, as informed by the concept of NIMBYism (not-in-my-backyard) that underlies much of the resident attitude toward tourism literature. Based on a comprehensive survey of more than 500 residents from Charleston, South Carolina, a city heavily dependent on tourism, the research determined, as the literature would predict, that general views toward tourism were highly dependent on where one lives. However, for specific tourism issues, one’s personal political views tended to trump geography. Application of theory and suggestions for tourism policy makers are provided.

Motivational (con)fusion: Identity fusion does not quell personal self-interest.

We question whether altruistic motivation links identity fusion and extreme self-sacrifice. We review two lines of research suggesting that the underlying motivation is plausibly egoistic.

THE ASSOCIATION OF ISLAMIC BASED CARING MODEL AND COMMITMENT TO ORGANIZATION IN STAFF NURSES

Background: Strong organizational commitment is needed by hospitals to attract and retain nursing staffs in order to consistently deliver good quality of nursing services. The decrease in organizational commitment among nurses can cause many losses to the organization, including increased organizational spending, breakdown in patient care, and cause performance trends that appear not for the benefit of the organization or unit, but more for personal self-interest.
 Objective: To analyze the relationship of the application of Islamic Based Caring (IBC) model with organizational commitment among nurses.
 Methods: This was a correlation analytic research with cross sectional design. There were 108 nurses selected using a proportionate stratified random sampling. Islamic Based Caring was measured using a questionnaire developed based on the theory of Suhartini Ismail (2016), and organizational commitment was measured using a questionnaire developed based on the concept of Caldwell, O’Reilly & Chatmann (1990) and Mowday, Porter dan Steers (1982) in Asmaningrum (2009). Logistic regression and forward stepwise (conditional) method were used for data analysis.
 Results: There was a statistically significant correlation of a healing presence (p=0.000), caring relationship (p=0.010), caring environment (p=0.045) and belief in God (p=0.000). Belief in God (Allah SWT) has the highest correlation (OR=6.660) with organizational commitment among nurses.
 Conclusion: There is a positive and significant relationship between the implementation of Islamic Based Caring with the organization's commitment among nurses.

The Rationality of Radical Islam

WHY DO ISLAMIST RADICALS ENGAGE in high-cost/risk activism that exposes them to arrest, repression, and even death? At a group level, it appears perfectly rational: zealous contention places enormous pressures on adversar­ies and increases the likelihood that the group will achieve its objective. Robert Pape’s study of suicide terrorism provides some empirical evidence that extreme forms of activism do indeed produce concessions from opponents.1 Yet, although extreme tactics may be deployed as part of a logical, coherent, and rational strategy to maximize group goals, is it “rational” for the individual per­petrators? Why not free-ride off the efforts of others rather than jeopardize personal self-interest? We argue that radical Islamic groups offer spiritual selective incentives to individuals who are concerned with the hereafter. Although some radical Is­lamists are compelled by economic incentives or personal psychological needs that may have nothing to do with religious conviction (the need for revenge against perceived oppressors, a need for a sense of empowerment, or a desire for prestige), religion matters for many. In cases where individuals take spiri­tuality seriously, movement ideologies offer strategies for fulfilling divine duties and maximizing the prospects of salvation on judgment day. In essence, these ideologies serve as heuristic devices or templates that outline the path to salvation. Where individuals believe that the spiritual payoffs outweigh the negative consequences of strategies in the here and now, high-cost/risk activ­ism is intelligible as a rational choice.

Conflict of interest and professional ethics

In general terms, we can face a conflict of interest every time that we have to deal with competing goals and responsibilities. In a more specific sense, however, such a conflict is understood as a situation where a personal self-interest could unduly interfere with professional responsibilities. This situation appears particularly blameworthy, when public interest and protection of fundamental individual rights are involved. According to the Italian Code of medical deontology, conflict of interest is in itself a condition that a physician may well happen to experience and not ipso facto a violation of legal or moral rules. As a condition, it entails the necessity to make decisions which should always comply with an unquestionable priority: the best interest of the patient must always come first and professional behaviour can never be conditioned by improper benefits of economic or other nature. Full disclosure is required, whenever conflicts of interest may impinge upon the diagnostic or therapeutic prescriptions or the possible relationships with industries and institutions [1]. It is also worth observing that a physician is very often an employee. The employer's and the patient's interest may not coincide and this can generate a conflict of loyalties. The distinction between external and internal goods, proposed by the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, helps clarify this ethical challenge. By external goods, we understand those goods, such as money, power and fame, that can be achieved as a result of the practice, but are not a component of its standard of excellence and tend to be enjoyed exactly as a private property. Internal goods, on the contrary, correspond to the very fundamental goals and essence of the practice and tend to be a good for all those, who are involved in it [2]. In the present “market society”, physicians are frequently faced with possible conflicts of interest in their prescriptions, but paediatricians are particularly vulnerable when they must decide how their patients should be fed. In the case of breast-feeding, the standard on which the internal good of excellence relies has been already set in the WHO's International Code of 1981: «Health workers should encourage and protect breast-feeding» and «no financial or material inducements» should be offered «to health workers or members of their families» nor accepted by them to promote the use of other products beyond their real need [3].

Financial capacity in older adults: a growing concern for clinicians.

Older people with cognitive impairment and/or dementia may be particularly vulnerable to diminished financial decision-making capacity. Financial capacity refers to the ability to satisfactorily manage one's financial affairs in a manner consistent with personal self-interest and values. Impairment of financial capacity makes the older individual vulnerable to financial exploitation, may negatively affect their family's financial situation and places strain on relationships within the family. Clinicians are often on the front line of responding to queries regarding decision-making capacity, and clinical evaluation options are often not well understood. Assessment of financial capacity should include formal objective assessment in addition to a clinical interview and gathering contextual data. Development of a flexible, empirically supported and clinically relevant assessment approach that spans all dimensions of financial capacity yet is simple enough to be used by non-specialist clinicians is needed.

Perlindungan Hukum Nasabah terhadap Kerugian Akibat Pengalihan Asset Berdasarkan Prinsip Penyingkapan Tabir Perseroan ((Piercing The Corporate Veil) dalam kaitannya dengan Pertanggung Jawaban Komisaris ( Studi PT. Bank Century.,Tbk)

Against a Limited Company in Banking in accordance with the form of business entity and legal entity that is the Law No.. 40 of 2007 on Limited Liability Company and the Law No.. 10 of 1998 concerning Banking can be used as a basis for assessing the application of the principle of legality Piercing The Corporate Veil in the case of PT. Bank Century Tbk. and organs Piercing The Corporate Veil aims for the creation of wealth and prosperity not only for organ (direksi, shareholders, and the commissioner) of the company, but also for all stakeholders (customers, investors, creditors, employees). After reviewing the case of PT. Bank Century Tbk is known that there are some legal issues that occurred and resulted in the company and stakeholders at a disadvantage, in which the organ PT. Bank Century Tbk together misusing authority and take advantage of banks to personal self-interest. The problems that can be identified are as follows: How does the function and position of commissioner of PT Bank Century Tbk in order to protect customer funds users, the commissioners responsibility for customer losses by shifting assets on the basis of the company's attitude veil (piercing the corporate veil), the effort commissioners should be done along with other directors to deal with customer losses caused by the transfer of assets. Results of research that has been done shows that PT. Bank Century Tbk proven to have committed an unlawful act of the early establishment of PT. Bank Century Tbk. Efforts should be made in the application of the responsibility to the stakeholders, namely with the implementation of the principle of piercing the corporate veil. The principle of piercing the corporate veil is one of the efforts of the Government to provide justice to the stakeholders, which saw the implementation of the responsibility of the company personally organ came to abolish private property with limited liability of the organ (limited liability). This is a descriptive analytical study aimed to obtain a thorough and systematic application of the principle of piercing the corporate veil of PT Bank Century Tbk associated with the statutory provisions. The method used is normative, the research focuses on the study of literature in the form of secondary data to determine how the application of the principle of piercing the corporate veil in PT. Bank Century Tbk.Keywords : Piercing The Corporate Veil, Bank, Company Limited.

'The Tender Instinct is the Hope of the World': Human Feeling and Social Change Before Empathy

Abstract Social feeling is understood as the foundation of civil society, an emotional connectivity that underlies pro-social action. These 'ordinary affects' are commonly expressed in the concept of empathy, a transpersonal state of emotional extensiveness. But this term was only introduced into Anglophone cultures in the first decade of the twentieth century, gaining purchase on social explanation over twenty years later. This essay examines competing understandings of social feeling in this period of transition, which resisted situating it in relation to those individual processes of perception, 'inner imitation' and projection that spoke of empathy's origin in aesthetic theory. By contrast, psychologists, sociologists and political theorists invoked an innate capacity for association and 'fellowship' - the 'gregarious' and 'herd' instincts - with altruism as the expression of that transindividual formation in externally directed action. In these models, emotional extensiveness was tangled up with questions of creaturely sociability, the dynamics of collectivity and mutual tenderness, moving beyond the problem of perceiving 'other minds' to imagine the inner states of others in their social embeddedness. Hence they speak to contemporary concerns with our capacity to respond to 'distant suffering', the everyday consolations of association and human presence, and the ability to effect social change.Key words social feeling, empathy, collective psychology, sociology, new liberalism, Wilfred Trotter, William McDougall, George Arthur Tansley, Sigmund FreudHuman feeling has long been part of the discourse of civil society and futures thinking. It can be seen in the language of social hope that has characterised Barak Obama's political rhetoric on the one hand, and in the 'compassionate conservatism' of the right, on the other.1 Its reverse is mirrored in the recurring expressions of concern for the failure of citizens to act in the common interest in social commentary. In the UK this has been articulated in the Conservative Party's rhetoric of 'broken Britain' and mirrored in the coalition government's expressed aim to establish a 'big' society,2 but it is also evident in public debate concerning the integrity of the representatives, structures and practices of public institutions, business and government. The perceived failures of social feeling identified in commentary on street crime and riot at one end of the social scale, and financial corruption, bankers' bonuses and politicians colluding with media moguls at the other are no longer painted onto an epic canvas of evil and pathology but one scaled down to petty human failures: greed, arrogance, selfishness. Just as riot has become disembedded from the repertoires of purposeful collective political dissent, the concerted pursuit of systemic privilege through public roles and institutions is conceived in terms of individual anomaly. To fail to act in the common interest is a failure of ordinary emotion, then: a lack of the emotional connectivity through which an individual subdues personal motivation and self-interest in favour of the public good. Harnessed to an emotional register, sociality becomes a matter not just of recognising common cause - an act of thought predicated on mutually shared interests or purpose - but of being bound to an imaginary relating to a commonality of predicament, experience and affective response. It is that 'social feeling' which appears to harness individuals' actions to a common future.In the present day, this commonality of feeling is usually expressed in the concept of empathy. Despite the notorious variability of the term3 the ability to share the emotional experiences of others, to feel 'at one' with their affective responses, is in many countries part of a common curriculum: in Canada, the US, Australia and the UK, for example children are taught empathy as part of emotional literacy in schools.4 The Roots of Empathy programme originating in Canada in 1996, which aims to increase pro-social feeling by teaching children to understand others' emotion, was introduced in England and Wales in February 2013. …

Special Interests in Pain Medicine: Then, Now, and Forever?

The history of pain management has been, among other things, certainly “colorful.” A relatively small number of authors have endeavored to trace the historical roots and progression of the field [1–4], as it has traditionally been one that has considered itself forward-looking and “progressive.” However, the question of the extent to which pain management has actually progressed—particularly in recent years—is one that is receiving increasing attention [5–7]. To answer the challenge, we must ask ourselves, “Exactly what constitutes progress?” As is so often the case, the answer to this proposition depends on whom is asked. In the early days of pain medicine (and medicine in general), there were only two stakeholders involved. The “profession” of medicine involved a covenant between the virtuous physician and his patient, without regard to personal risk, self-interest, or financial gain [8]. Indeed, the physician and his patient, in and by themselves, constituted the institution of medicine. Over time, however, progressively more stakeholders have intruded on the sanctity of the pain physician–patient relationship. To the detriment of the suffering patient, these stakeholders have not been particularly interested in “virtue” as articulated by Aristotle [9]. Rather than functioning under any semblance of medical ethics, these …

Self, Identity, and Reactions to Distal Threats: The Case of Environmental Behavior

This article examines self-relevant processes that sustain behaviors that have little or no direct implications for people’s well-being. When outcomes are low in direct personal relevance, far in the future, or only weakly linked to one’s present behavior, imagined personal incentives may not be enough to motivate behavior. Under such circumstances, people may nonetheless perform actions that are linked to their identity, self-evaluation, or public image. Using pro-environmental behavior as an exemplar, we examine self-processes that are involved when people engage in behaviors that do not directly affect their personal self-interest.

Finances in the Older Patient With Cognitive Impairment

Financial capacity can be defined as the ability to independently manage one's financial affairs in a manner consistent with personal self-interest. Financial capacity is essential for an individual to function independently in society; however, Alzheimer disease and other progressive dementias eventually lead to a complete loss of financial capacity. Many patients with cognitive impairment and their families seek guidance from their primary care clinician for help with financial impairment, yet most clinicians do not understand their role or know how to help. We review the prevalence and impact of diminished financial capacity in older adults with cognitive impairment. We also articulate the role of the primary care clinician, which includes (1) educating older adult patients and their families about the need for advance financial planning; (2) recognizing signs of possible impaired financial capacity; (3) assessing financial impairments in cognitively impaired adults; (4) recommending interventions to help patients maintain financial independence; and (5) knowing when and to whom to make medical and legal referrals. Clearly delineating the clinician's role regarding identification of financial impairment could establish for patients and families effective financial protections and limit the economic, psychological, and legal hardships of financial incapacity on patients with dementia and their families.

Expansion of Liability under Public Nuisance

1 * Executive Director, Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth, Northwestern University. Phone: (312) 503-0290; Email: hbutler@law.northwestern .edu. ** Foundation Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law. 3301 N. Fairfax Dr. Arlington, VA 22201Phone: 703-993-9484; Fax: 703-993-8088; Email: Tzywick2@gmu .edu; Web: http:// mason.gmu .edu/ ~tzywick2/ . Searle Center Public Nuisance Roundtable