Zoekresultaten

Comparing sustainability to a good life and well-being: overlap, differentiations and indefinite overlap

In our society, sustainability has emerged as a major concept in our daily lives and activities, e.g. from reducing the environmental impact of our foods to corporate social responsibility in doing business, and social impact of our activities. The original idea of sustainability was to address human development within social, ecological, and economic boundaries. Nowadays, however, sustainability is more and more extended to other areas of our lives, including aspects of a good life and well-being. The aim here was to compare sustainability, a good life, and well-being and determine their overlap, differentiations, and indefinite or undecided overlap when considering the original definitions. Following from the definition of sustainability, a good life, and well-being, I analyze the overlap, differentiations, and indefinite overlap of these concepts. With this comparison, I show that sustainability is clearly adapting to include more aspects of a good life and well-being (approximately 26% overlap), but is limited to do so from its original definition. I conclude that overlap between concepts exists and by being relatively different they are fundamentally supportive to one another and need to be applied accordingly to further support sustainable development.

Organization theory and philosophy

The topic of this paper is the constructivism-realism debate, construed as an example of the intrusion of philosophy into science. Against this intrusion I maintain that philosophical problems are not only different from scientific and practical ones. They are also problematic in themselves. That is why their import into our scientific and practical work only creates confusions that hinder us in our work. The aim of the paper is to show that the philosophical problems that create those confusions need a Wittgensteinian therapeutic treatment. The method of the paper consists in comparing what philosophers (or philosophising scientists) say we do with what we actually do. After giving an example of what happens when a rightly respected scientist starts philosophizing, the method is applied, first, to the relation between language and the world and, second, to the relation between theories and the world. In the first application a story about three umpires is used to distinguish language and discourse, between questions of meaning (of the words we use) and questions of truth (of the things we say). In the second application a comparison between maps and theories is used to show the difference between assessing the truth of descriptive statements and explanatory theories. The examples of the umpires and maps are introduced by Weick and in both cases I show that neither constructivist nor metaphysical realist conclusions follow.

Understanding Game-based Approaches for Improving Sustainable Water Governance : The Potential of Serious Games to Solve Water Problems

More value to defining quality

There are lots of definitions of quality, and also of quality in education. Garvin (1984)discerns five approaches: the transcendental approach, the product-oriented approach, the customeroriented approach, the manufacturing-oriented approach and the value-for-money approach. Harvey and Green (1993) give five interrelated concepts of quality as: exceptional, perfection (or consistency), fitness for purpose, value for money and transformative. A new definition of quality is needed to explain recent quality issues in higher education. This article describes a quality concept with four constituents: object, standard, subject and values. The article elaborates on the values. Four value systems derived from Beck and Cowan (1996) are transformed into four value systems on quality and quality management: control, continuous improvement, commitment and breakthrough. These value systems make it possible to explain some recent developments in quality management in higher education.

Which value type promises more value in marketing communications?

This study is based on research focused on the importance of values in marketing communication. It looks into the effects of self-transcendent values as used by purpose brands, in comparison to self-enhancement values. In this context, values are important life goals on which the attitudes and actions of people in various situations are based. The results of an experiment (N = 1000) set up to this end show that self-transcendental values are considered to be more important than self-enhancement values. Also, the use of self-transcendental values leads, both directly and indirectly, to stronger perceived product quality, a more positive brand attitude and increased consideration to buy than the use of self-enhancement values. The indirect and positive effect of values on the dependent variables is the result of mediation through consumer brand identi cation. The current study complements previous research conducted into the importance of different value types in consumer behavior and provides new insights into which value type is more bene cial for purpose marketing efforts.

Socio-psychological perspectives on the potential for serious games to promote transcendental values in IWRM decision-making

Modern day challenges of water resource management involve difficult decision-making in the face of increasing complexity and uncertainty. However, even if all decision-makers possessed perfect knowledge, water management decisions ultimately involve competing values, which will only get more prominent with increasing scarcity and competition over resources. Therefore, an important normative goal for water management is long-term cooperation between stakeholders. According to the principles of integrated water resource management (IWRM), this necessitates that managerial decisions support social equity and intergenerational equity (social equity that spans generations). The purpose of this discussion is to formulate preliminary recommendations for the design of serious games (SGs), a potential learning tool that may give rise to shared values and engage stakeholders with conflicting interests to cooperate towards a common goal. Specifically, this discussion explores whether SGs could promote values that transcend self-interest (transcendental values), based on the contributions of social psychology. The discussion is organized in the following way. First, an introduction is provided as to why understanding values from psychological perspectives is both important for water management and a potential avenue for learning in SGs. Second, a review of the description of values and mechanisms of value change from the field of social psychology is presented. This review highlights key psychological constraints to learning or applying values. Based on this review, recommendations are made for SGs designers to considerwhen developing games forwatermanagement, in order to promote transcendental values. Overall, the main conclusions from exploring the potential of value change for IWRMthrough SGs design are as follows: 1-SGs design needs to consider how all values change systematically; 2-SGs design should incorporate the many value conflicts that are faced in real life water management, 3-SGs could potentially promote learning by having players reflect on the reasoning behind value priorities across water management situations, and 4-value change ought to be tested in an iterative SGs design process using the Schwartz's Value Survey (SVS) (or something akin to it).