Individual Self-development Research Articles

Gandhian principles in social work practice: ethics revisited.

Social work as an expression of culture is a highly value-laden activity. The emergence of many new ethical issues resulting from technological and scientific advancements suggests a need for greater attention to values and ethics. In this article the authors argue that the thought of Mahatma Gandhi, as revealed in his social activism, is relevant to social work ethics and a resource for its ethical enrichment. Principles such as seeking truth through service to others, individual self-development, nonviolent social action, and material simplicity could enhance the current NASW Code of Ethics.

Research Tools for Evaluating the Effects of a Vocational Horticulture Program on the Self-development of Female Inmates

Quantitative evaluation of horticulture vocational-therapy programs is becoming more and more critical as professionals in the area of people-plant interactions try to document the value of their programs. Evaluation tools to assess self-development of individuals studying such factors as self-esteem, life satisfaction, and locus of control have long been used in the social science disciplines. Many of these tools, either in their original forms or with some adaptations, can be successfully used to measure changes in self-development of individuals participating in horticulture programs.

Feminist Challenges to the New Familialism: Lifestyle Experimentation and the Freedom of Intimate Association

The new familialists argue that the decline of the intact two-parent family is responsible for our most pressing social problems and advocate public policies designed to promote family stability and discourage divorce and nonmarital births. This essay defends the freedom of intimate association and argue that family stability, while an important good, must be balanced with other goods such as equality and justice within the family, happiness, and individual self-development.

Dimock's philosophy of administration

Marshall E. Dimock was a self-confessed non-conformist who valued individualism and individual self-development above all other values. For him a philosophy of administration is more than a science or art and “must deal with institutional goals and objectives, with social values and individual growth, as well as with the paraphernalia of organizing and running things, which are only “incidental.”(1) He warned that “over specialization of the individual makes him dull and lacking capacities for administrative growth”(2)and decried the parochialism of behaviorists, logical positivists and other methodologists. At the core of his thinking about problems of administration, management and organization was what he regarded as the fundamental importance of “moral philosophy” although he recognized that “the political economist who epitomizes moral philosophy is regarded as a regrettably nonconformist and excessively individualistic relic of a past age.”(3)

A Feminist View of Equality and Its Implications for Affirmative Action

Affirmative action generates so much controversy that very often proponents and opponents both fail to understand the other’s position. A recent work by Michel Rosenfeld convincingly argues that the incommensurability of the opposing sides is based on fundamental disagreements about the meaning of such concepts as equality and justice: “the affirmative action debate is not between persons who are ‘pro-equality’ and others who are ‘anti-equality’. Both the most ardent advocates of affirmative action and its most vehement foes loudly proclaim their allegiance to the ideal of equality.” Within a liberal framework, two conceptions of equality are commonly defended—formal and substantive equality of opportunity. Both conceptions assume background conditions of the scarcity of goods, a need to compete for educational, social and economic benefits, and the value of rewards for fair competition as a means to individual self-development and self-realization. In the first section, I outline each conception briefly, summarize the sorts of affirmative action each defends, and show that the irreconcilability of the opposing sides is ultimately grounded in different conceptions of the self. I then go on to argue that both conceptions limit our understanding of selves and ultimately constrain attempts to achieve equality in a context in which individuals are also members of groups with identities formed in historical contexts of discrimination.

Marketing in the Changing World: A Course Emphasizing the Role of the Individual in the Marketing Environment

In this article, the author describes the rationale, learning objectives, and content of a nontraditional marketing course which emphasizes individual self-development in the context of the broader marketing environment. Reactions to the course from academicians, businesspeople, and students are also presented. Marketing educators may consider adding the course or parts of it to marketing curricula to fill topical gaps which may exist.

Should a Feminist Choose A Marriage-Like Relationship?

Is “living together” in a marriage-like relationship compatible with the feminist ideal of individual self-development? Paradoxically, while the structure and social-historical context of marriage-like relationships seems in fundamental conflict with the goal of autonomous self-development, the development of individuality also seems to be better fostered by living with a significant other in a committed relationship than by living alone. This paradox is resolved through the suggestion of a three-stage account of self-development: inauthentici-ty, autonomous being oneself, and autonomous being with others. At the third stage, living together in a marriage-like relationship is one social format in which autonomous relating to others is possible. Unless the partners have attained the second stage, however, such a relationship will be destructive rather than conducive to individuality.

Dorothea Dix and Jane Addams: From Transcendentalism to Pragmatism in American Social Reform

This article examines the contributions of Dorothea Dix and Jane Addams to American social reform in terms of the political and ultimately philosophical commitments of American culture. As social reformers, both Dix and Addams belong to one side of a basic bipolarity in American liberalism, in which their common concern with cultural standards and individual self-development sharply divides them from a more self-regarding concern with maximizing individual and group interests. The differences between the two women reflect Addams's—and the settlement-house movement's— response to the transformation of antebellum America into an industrialized and culturally pluralistic urban society. In particular, these differences closely parallel the transition from the moral certainty and self-reliance of Emerson's Transcendentalism to the collective action and moral inquiry of Dewey's Pragmatism.