Substantive Commitment Research Articles

Why is health improvement policy so difficult to secure?

Many governments seek to improve population health, and some seek to reduce health inequalities. Yet, there remains a large gap between their policy statements and actual outcomes. Perennial questions in public health research include: why is this gap so large, why does it endure, and what can be done to close it? This essay uses political science and policy studies insights to address these questions, focusing on the distinctive issues that relate to (1) broad aims like 'prevention', (2) specific strategies for health improvement, or (3) new events. On the one hand, the idea of 'prevention' has widespread appeal, when governments think they can save money or reduce inequalities by preventing problems happening or worsening. While health protection seeks to inoculate populations against communicable diseases, health improvement strategies, including 'Health in All Policies' (HiAP),primarily address non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Further, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic highlights the unequal spread of ill health, showing that preventive health ideas should be at the core of policy. On the other hand, there is a large gap between rhetorical and substantive commitment to prevention, a continuous HiAP implementation gap, and a tendency for COVID-19 health protection to overshadow health improvement. Explaining each problem clearly helps to identify the factors that generally undermine prevention policies and those specific to more detailed strategies like HiAP or events like COVID-19. We do not prioritise leadership or 'political will' as the policymaking problem. Instead, we identify the systemic factors that apply to even the most sincere, competent, and energetic policymakers. Health improvement policy is typically undermined by a lack of: clarity about what prevention means in practice; congruity between the prevention agenda (emphasising the need for major change to policy and policymaking) and routine government business; and, capacity to overcome obstacles to policy change.

Media coverage of corporate social irresponsibility and audit fees: International evidence

This study uses a large sample of firms from 35 countries to examine how media coverage of corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) affects audit fees. We document a positive and significant relationship between media coverage of CSI and audit fees. Further evidence indicates that this positive relationship is less pronounced for firms with a higher level of commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance but is more pronounced for firms domiciled in countries with stronger investor protections, higher regulatory quality and higher CSR disclosure requirements. Taken together, these findings support the conjecture that CSI media coverage increases auditors' risk and thereby increases audit fees. Moreover, our findings suggest that the effect of media coverage of CSI on audit fees varies with country‐level institutional characteristics and the degree of firms' substantive commitment to CSR performance.

When entrepreneurial rhetoric meets strict regulations: Implications for the valuation of health science firms

AbstractResearch SummaryHealth science firms have long product development horizons and need regulatory approval for market entry. In communicating with investors, they may use entrepreneurial orientation (EO) rhetoric to emphasize their strategic and behavioral commitment to product innovation and market entry. However, because EO rhetoric constitutes a soft‐information signal rather than evidence of substantive commitment, investors may suspect firm insiders using such rhetoric of impression management. The solution, we argue, is EO rhetoric sustained over time, which produces more reliable information for investors—in contrast to occasional increases in EO rhetoric, which invite skeptical scrutiny. Nevertheless, investors' potential concerns regarding changes in EO rhetoric can be mitigated by concurrent hard‐information signals that carry signaling costs or penalty costs for false signaling.Managerial SummaryEntrepreneurial orientation (EO) rhetoric can reduce information asymmetry between managers and investors. In strictly regulated contexts such as health science industries, using such rhetoric may be challenging. For firms embracing entrepreneurial strategies and behaviors, maintaining EO rhetoric over time is critical to overcoming skepticism that it is merely “cheap talk.” For investors, this study also suggests that health science firms maintaining higher EO rhetoric over time deserve higher valuations, given the variety of benefits an EO can have for health science firms. If a health science firm aims to ramp up its EO rhetoric, managers should be aware that investors may interpret the increase as impression management and should confront this interpretation head‐on—for instance, by simultaneously increasing entry commitment or corporate social responsibility.

Student experiences of democratic education and the implications for social justice

Using data from a case-study school as a springboard, this article explores how enactments of democratic education might both problematise and illuminate new possibilities for the way we conceptualise social justice in education. Nancy Fraser’s tripartite framework of social justice is used to analyse in-depth interviews with students aged 14–16 from a democratic school in the United Kingdom. The article makes two key arguments: first, it highlights the interdependence of ‘recognition’ and ‘representation’ and, consequently, calls on mainstream policy and practice to make a substantive commitment to participatory democracy as part of the ‘inclusive education’ agenda. Second, it points to the tensions between ‘redistributive’ justice and other social justice aims which may be particularly stark in democratic education (and other progressive education) spaces. The article suggests that a strengthened relationship between democratic schools and research communities would offer a crucial contribution to collective critical reflection on social justice in education.

How well has part-time work on return from maternity leave been accepted in the workplace? Learnings from allied health professional managers in Queensland Health.

Objective The aim of this study was to explore allied health professional (AHP) managers' implementation of the right to request part-time hours on return from maternity leave in Queensland Health (QH) hospitals. Methods Qualitative data were collected via interviews with AHP managers from a cross-section of professions with variations in workforce size and gender composition. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and analysed thematically. Results Twenty-one of a potential 40 AHP managers agreed to participate in the study (response rate 53%). The main finding was that the implementation of part-time work arrangements was being driven by regulation and work was being managed without complementary changes to established workplace practices or adequate organisational support. Conclusion The use of regulatory instruments to implement part-time work in organisations without complementary work redesign, change management and organisational support suggests that there are significant barriers to this type of flexible working arrangement (FWA) becoming accepted workplace practice for AHPs in QH. A whole-of-organisation approach is needed to make FWA a reality. What is known about the topic? Research has underlined the importance of implementation and management rather than simply the adoption of FWA policies. However, there have been few reports about AHP management of part-time hours on return from maternity leave. What does this paper add? This paper provides information specifically about the management response to part-time work entitlements for AHP in QH. It indicates that managers are implementing part-time work because it is a regulatory requirement, but often without a substantive commitment to FWA complementary redesign of services or sufficient organisational support. What are the implications for practitioners? Complementary work redesign measures and resources are needed to make workplaces genuinely flexible rather than just superficially consistent with regulatory requirements.

Substantive Toleration and Viewpoint Discrimination

Under modern Supreme Court doctrine regarding the First Amendment freedom of speech, the court distinguishes between content-based regulations of free speech that involve viewpoint discrimination versus content-based regulations that only involve subject-matter or topic discrimination. Viewpoint discrimination occurs when government action is triggered depending on which side of a topic the individual supports. Subject-matter or topic discrimination occurs when government action is triggered whenever a topic/subject-matter is discussed without regard to the person’s views on that topic/subject-matter. While any form of content-based discrimination by government is troubling, viewpoint discrimination is a more troublesome form of content discrimination because it involves the government taking sides in a debate. Most of the time this distinction is clear, but occasionally categorizing a regulation has given the Court some problems. While the holdings in the cases may be defensible, one set of cases from 1988 – 2007 seem to involve strained reasoning: Boos v. Barry, Finley v. National Education for the Arts, and Morse v. Frederick. A second, more recent set of cases from 2017 – 2019 seem to adopt reasoning contrary to these three cases: Matel v. Tam and Iancu v. Brunetti. The 2015 case of Walker v. Texas Department of Transportation, which also includes viewpoint discrimination issues, also has problematic reasoning. One way to understand these cases is to note that in the earlier set of cases a majority of the Supreme Court had a predisposition, if possible, to uphold traditional moral values in society despite some impact on a pure marketplace of ideas rationale. The second set of cases involves a changed predisposition among the Court majority to adopt a purer marketplace of ideas methodology that government should tolerate all kinds of speech without regard to the problematic moral values embedded in that speech. Both these approaches have problems in practice. This can be seen by considering three kinds of moral philosophies: (1) a moral philosophy based on upholding traditional moral values; (2) a moral philosophy based on “procedural toleration” of tolerating all kinds of speech without regard to any problematic moral values embedded in that speech; and (3) a moral philosophy based on “substantive toleration.” Some persons hear the word “tolerance” and they think it means all values are relative and that every person’s views are equally entitled as a procedural matter to be viewed as legitimate from a moral perspective. In contrast, other persons understand that “tolerance” involves a substantive commitment to treating other persons with equal concern and respect, and that individuals who espouse non-tolerant “nativist” or “cultural supremacists” notions violate this substantive commitment to tolerance. Because “nativist” or “cultural supremacist” notions violate a substantive commitment to tolerance, from the perspective of “substantive tolerance” their views should not be entitled to equal concern and respect and their pleas for tolerance of their perspectives should be rejected. The thesis of this article is that persons should adopt “substantive toleration” as the moral philosophy to which to aspire. From this perspective, a tolerant person has no obligation to, and indeed should not, tolerate intolerant attitudes in others. Viewpoint discrimination law should take this insight into account in resolving the problematic case reasoning of the viewpoint discrimination cases of the last four decades.

How to translate artificial intelligence? Myths and justifications in public discourse

Automated technologies populating today’s online world rely on social expectations about how “smart” they appear to be. Algorithmic processing, as well as bias and missteps in the course of their development, all come to shape a cultural realm that in turn determines what they come to be about. It is our contention that a robust analytical frame could be derived from culturally driven Science and Technology Studies while focusing on Callon’s concept of translation. Excitement and apprehensions must find a specific language to move past a state of latency. Translations are thus contextual and highly performative, transforming justifications into legitimate claims, translators into discursive entrepreneurs, and power relations into new forms of governance and governmentality. In this piece, we discuss three cases in which artificial intelligence was deciphered to the public: (i) the Montreal Declaration for a Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence, held as a prime example of how stakeholders manage to establish the terms of the debate on ethical artificial intelligence while avoiding substantive commitment; (ii) Mark Zuckerberg’s 2018 congressional hearing, where he construed machine learning as the solution to the many problems the platform might encounter; and (iii) the normative renegotiations surrounding the gradual introduction of “killer robots” in military engagements. Of interest are not only the rational arguments put forward, but also the rhetorical maneuvers deployed. Through the examination of the ramifications of these translations, we intend to show how they are constructed in face of and in relation to forms of criticisms, thus revealing the highly cybernetic deployment of artificial intelligence technologies.

Regulatory influences on CSR practices within banks in an emerging economy: Do banks merely comply?

Bangladesh has enjoyed remarkable economic growth for the last two decades primarily driven by an export-led development strategy, foreign remittances and greater empowerment of women. However, parallel to this, the socio-economic conditions (e.g., widespread poverty, poor accountability and inequality), climate change risks and environmental pollution result in the nation’s vulnerability. Over more than two decades, the practice of voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its reporting by firms in Bangladesh has developed and increased, but the need for regulatory guidelines for CSR practices continues. We investigate whether banks in Bangladesh embrace CSR practices to follow the regulatory guidelines issued by the central bank or if they develop CSR practices opportunistically and politically. We provide evidence from 21 semi-structured interviews with managers of banks in Bangladesh and from published sources. The findings indicate that CSR activities are prompted by: CSR regulations by the central bank (Bangladesh Bank); congruency between banks’ goals and the regulator; support offered by the central bank; and the quest to maintain effective relationships with other stakeholders, such as the government and political leaders. The findings also show that CSR practices become decoupled from regulatory expectations and that managers ‘dress up’ reported information by bypassing regulatory guidelines when responding to demands from powerful stakeholders, such as board members and political elites. Banks do not respond aggressively to CSR regulation, for example, with challenges and attack-type responses, as these responses are culturally unacceptable. The findings imply that decoupling occurs, and that it is unlikely that regulation will minimize this behaviour because there is a lack of political will, an absence of accountability and there appears to be a lack of substantive commitment ethical conduct amongst powerful board members. Despite regulatory efforts, we find that exploitative practices continue in line with cultural norms in the banking environment in Bangladesh.

Beyond Realism and Antirealism ---At Last?

This paper recapitulates my four primary lines of argument that what is wrong with scientific realism is not realist answers to questions to which various anti-realists give different answers, but instead assumptions shared by realists and anti-realists in framing the question. Each strategy incorporates its predecessors as a consequence. A first, minimalist challenge, taken over from Arthur Fine and Michael Williams, rejects the assumption that the sciences have a general aim or goal. A second consideration is that realists and antirealists undertake a mistaken, substantive commitment to a separation between mind and world, which allows them to frame the issue in terms of how epistemic “access” to the world is mediated. A third strategy for dissolving the realism question challenges its underlying commitment to the independence of meaning and truth, a strategy pursued in different ways by Donald Davidson, Robert Brandom, John McDowell, John Haugeland, and myself. The fourth and most encompassing strategy shows that realists and antirealists are thereby committed to an objectionably antinaturalist conception of scientific understanding, in conflict with what the sciences themselves have to say about our own conceptual capacities.

On Ritalin, Adderall, and Cognitive Enhancement: Metaethics, Bioethics, Neuroethics

In this article, I argue that the neuroethics of cognitive enhancement can help us bridge the explanatory gap between metaethics and bioethics ( qua normative, applied ethics) and throw light on the classic gap between moral beliefs and neural correlates of brain processes. Insofar as it unveils the irreducibility of first-person propositional attitudes (esp. moral beliefs and judgments), neuroethics allows for justifying cosmetic, pharmacological interventions so as to bring about human enhancement, regardless of descriptive accounts of its neural correlates and independently of the cognitivist, noncognitivist or hybrid inputs of metanormative theories. Precisely because it cannot provide the ultimate grounds for any conservative, libertarian or liberal attitudes towards cognitive enhancement, neuroethics is better conceived in terms of a Rawlsian-like wide reflective equilibrium, procedurally and without any specific substantive commitment to any moral or comprehensive doctrine of sorts.

‘New’ nations: resource-based development imaginaries in Ghana and Ecuador

Recently there have been increasing instances of the return of the state as the central agent of development in resource-rich nations globally. Characterised by both a rhetorical and substantive commitment to increasing control over national resource revenues, this so-called new/neo-extractivism has attracted a debate concerning the extent to which it offers a viable alternative to the imperatives of neoliberal resource extraction. Using two examples, this paper analyses the ways in which the Ghanaian and Ecuadorean states discursively imagine such structural transformations. It highlights the value in analysing the politics of language for strengthening studies of neo-extractivism.

Pushing the Boundaries of Sustainable Supply Chain Management Research

In recent years, sustainability in supply chains has become a topic of strategic priority for supply chain management. Still, doubts have been raised about the substantive commitment of large, international corporations to really improve global social welfare and to preserve the natural environment. The objective of this panel symposium is to stimulate and inspire new managerial approaches to achieve substantive sustainable improvements in supply chains. It offers a platform for exchanging first ideas and, thereby, stimulates research on sustainable supply chain management to move to the next level. The panelists will, among others discuss questions such as (1) how to enable corporations to give substantial weight to environmental protection and social welfare?; (2) how to move beyond our dominant Western perspective on sustainability and consider the values of different societies, in particular different value systems in emerging economies?; and (3) how to change the strategies and structures of supply chains such that they become truly sustainable?

Status: Insights from Organizational Sociology

Status has become an increasingly influential concept in the fields of organizational and economic sociology during the past two decades. Research in this area has not only helped explain behavior within and between organizations, but has also contributed to our understanding of status processes more generally. In this review, we point to the contributions of this field in terms of the determinants of status, the effects of status, and the mechanisms by which these effects are produced. We next appraise the way in which a network approach has contributed to our formal understanding of status positions and status hierarchies. We then highlight recent studies that demonstrate the value of studying the structures of status hierarchies themselves rather than focusing solely on the actors within them. After suggesting potential directions for future research, we conclude by calling for renewed efforts to translate concepts and theories across levels of analysis and substantive commitment in order to build more general theories of status processes.

Nurse workload in implementing a tight glycaemic control protocol in a UK hospital: a pilot time‐in‐motion study

The cumulative time that critical care nurses spend implementing a tight glycaemic control (TGC) protocol was estimated in a time-in-motion (TiM) study conducted in a hospital in the UK. TGC protocols were introduced to the critical care setting to reduce hyperglycaemic events in high-risk patients. The time burden to critical care nurses of implementing such protocols has not yet been studied in the UK. A prospective TiM pilot study was conducted in an eligible UK intensive care unit by four protocol-trained observers over five consecutive weekdays from 3 to 7 November 2008. Three nurses were also interviewed on site to gather their attitudes and perceptions about the benefits of and time associated with administering a TGC protocol. Independent observers shadowed nurses, observing when a blood glucose measurement was taken, when each predefined subtask was completed and the duration of each task. Semistructured interviews with nurses were conducted in-person and one-on-one by a trained study member. Considered together, the episodic median duration of all TGC activities was 6·65 min. Across a total shift, nurses devoted approximately 7% of their time to administering a TGC protocol. Nurses perceived that a TGC protocol is beneficial to patient safety and outcomes in a critical care setting but acknowledged that the tasks can be mildly to moderately tedious. This TiM analysis indicated that the additional responsibility of implementing a TGC protocol represents a substantive commitment of nursing time in a critical care setting. The episodic data of our pilot study in the UK contributes further evidence that TGC protocols may be arduous to maintain and constitute a substantial investment of nursing time.

Globalization and Commitment in Corporate Social Responsibility

This article examines why global corporate social responsibility (CSR) frameworks have gained popularity in the past decade, despite their uncertain costs and benefits, and how they affect adherents’ behavior. We focus on the two largest global frameworks—the United Nations Global Compact and the Global Reporting Initiative—to examine patterns of CSR adoption by governments and corporations. Drawing on institutional and political-economy theories, we develop a new analytic framework that focuses on four key environmental factors—global institutional pressure, local receptivity, foreign economic penetration, and national economic system. We propose two arguments about the relationship between stated commitment and subsequent action: decoupling due to lack of capacity and organized hypocrisy due to lack of will. Our cross-national time-series analyses show that global institutional pressure through nongovernmental linkages encourages CSR adoption, but this pressure leads to ceremonial commitment in developed countries and to substantive commitment in developing countries. Moreover, in developed countries, liberal economic policies increase ceremonial commitment, suggesting a pattern of organized hypocrisy whereby corporations in developed countries make discursive commitments without subsequent action. We also find that in developing countries, short-term trade relations exert greater influence on corporate CSR behavior than do long-term investment transactions.

Social justice: Defending Rawls’ theory of justice against Honneth’s objections

This article argues that Honneth’s ‘plural conception of justice’, founded on a theory of recognition, does not succeed in distancing itself from Rawls’ liberal theory of justice. The article develops its argument by evaluating three major objections to Rawls’ liberalism raised by Honneth in his recent articles on justice: namely, first, that the parties responsible for choosing principles of justice are too individualistic and their practical reasoning too instrumentalist; second, that by taking as its ‘object-domain’ the negative liberty of persons, Rawls’ theory fails to promote the actual realization of liberty; and finally, that Rawls’ method of principle justification undermines the ‘priority’ of its Kantian ‘formality’ by presupposing a substantive commitment to a conception of individual good. Arguing that Honneth’s interpretation of Rawls’ theory contains important errors, the article concludes that both theories share the basic intention of securing for all citizens the material and institutional conditions for the actualization of otherwise merely formal liberties or, in Honneth’s terms, mutual self-realization.

Making migrant domestic work visible: The rights based approach to migration and the ‘challenges of social reproduction’1

ABSTRACT In recent years, the production of a gendered and racialised underclass of non-citizen domestic workers has come to play an increasingly important role in meeting the socially reproductive needs of middle class Malaysian households. This article considers the extent to which rights based approaches to migrant worker rights endorsed by both International Organisations and regional and local (Malaysian) nongovernmental organisations are sufficient in tackling the problems and issues faced by female migrants employed as domestic workers. The first part of the article critically engages with the dominant ‘rights based approach to migration’ endorsed, in particular, by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) suggesting that this approach fails to make a substantive commitment to gender justice, not least, because of the way in which domestic work remains a largely invisible and frequently unrecognised form of employment. The second part of the article draws upon data collected from key activist organizations engaged in struggles on behalf of migrant domestic workers in Malaysia. This discussion is situated within the broader context of debates over the role of economic rights within feminist understandings and critiques of human rights and ‘rights based approaches’. Noting the dominance of the issue of violence against women (VAW) within feminist human rights discourse, I argue that whilst the VAW framework is a useful tool for understanding how and why women migrants may be vulnerable to abuse, it is perhaps not enough and there is a need to think more critically about how questions of women's economic status and ‘rights’ feature in discussions of the gendered and racialised nature of (care) work in the global economy.

The political philosophy of Walzer’s social criticism

This article calls for a critical re-evaluation of Walzer’s theory of justice. It argues that there is a deep tension between Walzer’s social criticism and his complex equality. Social criticism is based on the normative value of a connected and ‘whole’ self, and complex equality is based upon a value pluralism that threatens to fragment this sense of wholeness. Walzer therefore commissions a tacit premise, borrowing from the same ‘political philosophy’ that he explicitly repudiates, and which social criticism is intended to supplant. This premise is a Kantian-inspired conception of self; brought to the argument as an a priori premise and thus in violation of Walzer’s own stated commitment to ‘internalism’ and ‘interpretation’. Furthermore, this same conception of self is the moral source of Walzer’s substantive commitment to the universal value of pluralist political regimes. The article closes with a suggested reconciliation of the inherent tension within Walzer’s theory.

Federalists, Federalism, and Federal Jurisdiction

This Article provides a new interpretation of the origins of three central obsessions of federal-courts and constitutional-law scholarship: the question whether lower federal courts are constitutionally required; the relative powers of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the lower federal courts to define federal jurisdiction; and judicial supremacy. The Article argues that the extension of federal judicial power to the lower federal courts was a crucial element of the Federalists’ project of building national supremacy into the Republic’s structure. Chief Justice John Marshall, like many other federalist theorists who were affiliated with the Federalist Party, viewed the lower federal courts as essential to the establishment of a union in which national supremacy was instantiated through judicial structure. Marshall and his fellow federalists/Federalists shared a substantive commitment to structure – namely, a judiciary-centric federalism. In the early nineteenth century, most notably in two cases involving the Second Bank of the United States – Bank of the United States v. Deveaux (1809) and Osborn v. Bank of the United States (1824) – the Marshall Court carried out through case law what the political branches had been unable to do following the election of 1800: grant the lower federal courts the power to hear all cases arising under federal law. Judge-made doctrines therefore operated as a substitute for a legislative grant of jurisdiction, and federal courts throughout the period opposed Congress’s attempts to claim ultimate authority over federal jurisdiction. The traditional story of the Marshall Court’s nationalism has overlooked both this link between law and politics and the importance of the lower federal courts to early republican beliefs about federal structure.

Introduction. The Minimalist Program and the concept of Universal Grammar

This volume offers a collection of brief and orginal articles that aim at developing the minimalist approach to language. In this introduction, we would like to discuss certain issues concerning the Minimalist Program and the concept of Universal Grammar as well as to present the contributions of the volume. The term minimalism is typically associated to certain artistic tendencies whose work is said to be stripped down to its most fundamental features. In the linguistic agenda developed by Noam Chomsky and others since the early nineties, this term is endowed with the same aesthetic concern of searching for the most fundamental features of grammatical theory, but it crucially adds a substantive commitment to investigate to what extent language is—in a sense we clarify below—a perfect system.