•SMEs play a vital role in shaping the environmental behaviours of individuals, communities, and other businesses.•A series of global crises are leading to a transformation in the social contract for ...business.•We identify opportunities for putting climate action at the heart of a renewed social contract between business and society.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are key actors in climate change mitigation and adaptation. Their aggregate emissions are significant, and they are disproportionately affected by climate impacts, including extreme weather events. SMEs also play a vital role in shaping the environmental behaviours of individuals, communities, and other businesses. However, these organisations have been largely neglected by climate policies across all levels of government. A series of global crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, war in Europe and the Middle East, and energy price spikes, have posed an existential threat to millions of SMEs, while also acting as a catalyst for the reconfiguration of the social contract between business, society and the state, both temporary and more long-term. In this article, we make the case for increased focus on the governance of SME decarbonisation to address this turbulent context. We outline key challenges facing public policymakers and other governance actors, compare strategic options, identify evidence gaps that hinder effective interventions, and highlight implications for research. In doing so we set out key elements of a renewed social contract for business, society and state relations.
Dentistry's social contract is at risk Moeller, Jamie; Quiñonez, Carlos R
The Journal of the American Dental Association (1939),
05/2020, Volume:
151, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The implications of the social contract for medicine and those it serves has been debated by bioethicists, political scientists, and physicians. Far less attention, however, has been given to ...dentistry's social contract.
The existing literature from medicine is used to explore the social contract and the role of dentistry in today's society, focusing on several areas of interest.
The authors' analysis discusses the history of the social contract and its implications for professionalism. The authors examine the failure of the dental profession to adequately address population needs and inequities in oral health, situating this in the context of an increasingly commodified, commercialized, cosmetically oriented, and proprietary culture in the profession. The authors highlight the important role of organized dentistry in facilitating change and renewing the social contract.
The authors conclude that reforms are necessary for dentistry to remain a profession.
The authors' findings may inform oral health policies and underscore the need for change among dental providers and organized dentistry to maintain dentistry's professional status.
Objective: The present study examined patterns and psychosocial correlates of coronavirus guideline adherence in a U.S. sample (N = 500) during the initial 15-day period advocated by the White House ...Coronavirus Task Force. Method: Descriptive and correlational analyses were used to examine the frequency of past 7-day adherence to each of 10 guidelines, as well as overall adherence. Guided by a disposition-belief-motivation model of health behavior, path analyses tested associations of personality traits and demographic factors to overall adherence via perceived norms, perceived control, attitudes, and self-efficacy related to guideline adherence, as well as perceived exposure risk and perceived health consequence if exposed. Results: Adherence ranged from 94.4% reporting always avoiding eating/drinking inside bars/restaurants/food courts to 13.6% reporting always avoiding touching one's face. Modeling showed total associations with overall adherence for greater conscientiousness (β = .191, p < .001), openness (β = .098, p < .05), perceptions of social endorsement (β = .202, p < .001), positive attitudes (β = .105, p < .05), self-efficacy (β = .234, p < .001), and the presence versus absence or uncertainty of a shelter-in-place order (β = .102, p < .01). Age, self-rated health, sex, education, income, children in the household, agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, perceived exposure risk, and perceived health consequence showed null-to-negligible associations with overall adherence. Conclusions: The results clarify adherence frequency, highlight characteristics associated with greater adherence, and suggest the need to strengthen the social contract between government and citizenry by clearly communicating adherence benefits, costs, and timelines.
Armed conflicts resulting from a broken social contract are protracted, intricate, and often systemic. When they finally end, negotiations alone do not eliminate the underlying causes of violence. In ...the past, many negotiated solutions failed because the driving forces of political and social violence persisted, and negotiations did not result in a genuine peace process. Against this background, dialogue and mediation approaches are gaining support for the goal of bringing lasting peace to intra-state conflicts. They too have their pitfalls, if considered the better alternative without reflection. For the peace process in Afghanistan, the comparative analysis of the three approaches of negotiation, dialogue and mediation is above all a case for wise linkage.
Agreements or familiarly known as contracts is the basis for various aspects of business activities. Contracts in the Indonesian Civil Code (ICC) are called agreements, which is one of the sources of ...engagement whose provisions are the subject of Book III concerning Contracts of ICC. The experts on contract law, diametrically have divided their views on the term ‘agreement’ with ‘contracts’. According to Peter Mahmud Marzuki as quoted by Agus Yudha Hernoko, he provided a critical view of the differences between these terms, namely: In the Anglo-American mindset, an agreement in Dutch is known as overeenkomst and in English it is known as an agreement which has a broader meaning than a contract, due to the fact that it includes matters relating to business or non-business. Therefore, Agreements related to business are called contracts, while those that are not related to business are only called agreements. Based on the results of the comparative study, it is known that the contract law arrangements in the ICC are not as complete and not as up-to-date as Singapore's contract law. This is because since the ICC was first promulgated in Indonesia, it has never been modernized. In order to minimize legal problems, both due to empty and vague norms, the results of the comparison of contract law can help construct additional arrangements both for a holistic-comprehensive study of contract law and for making business contracts that are required to be updated.
Ideas of responsibility pervade social life, underpinning forms of governance, subjectivities, and collective relations. Inspired by current analyses of neoliberal projects of 'responsibilisation', ...this paper examines modes of responsibility that extend, challenge, or co-exist with neoliberal ideals. Our aim is twofold: first, we wish to broaden current scholarly understandings of how neoliberal 'responsible' subjects are nested within multiple frames of dependencies, reciprocities, and obligations. Secondly, we articulate a framework for conceptualising responsibility that places responsibilisation alongside relations of care and social contract ideologies-three modes of inter-relationship that we see as underlying the 'competing responsibilities' inherent in contemporary social life.
This paper proposes the concept of “spatial sovereignties” to understand the governance of squatted spaces, using the case study of Hamburg's autonomous Rote Flora. Referring very loosely to theories ...of the “excess flesh” of the homo sacer in the state of exception, the paper then inverts these classic theories by instead interrogating a situation where non‐state actors establish their own states of banishment and political exception. These “excess spaces” are not created when the “excess flesh” of the banned subject is stripped of sovereignty, but rather when radical actors, possessing full agency and privilege, intentionally establish their own biopolitical self‐administration. This ultimately constitutes what I posit as a new form of “spatial sovereignty”, wherein self‐banned subjects refuse the social contract to instead carve out alternative forms of sovereignty grounded in squatted excess spaces, which ultimately also develop autonomous forms of self‐governance, justice, and self‐surveillance within sites of alternative citizenship.
Zusammenfassung
In diesem Beitrag wird das Konzept der „Spatial Sovereignty“ („räumlichen Souveränität“) vorgeschlagen, um die Governance besetzter Räume anhand des Fallbeispiels der autonomen Roten Flora in Hamburg zu verstehen. In Anlehnung an die Theorien des „Excess Flesh“ des homo sacer im Ausnahmezustand werden diese klassischen Theorien umgedreht und stattdessen auf eine Situation angewendet, in der nicht‐staatliche Akteure ihre eigenen Bedingungen der „Verbannung“ und der politischen Ausnahme gestalten. Diese „Excess Spaces“ („Räume des Exzesses“) entstehen nicht, wenn das „Excess Flesh“ des verbannten Subjekts seiner Souveränität beraubt wird, sondern wenn radikale Akteure mit voller Handlungsfähigkeit und Privilegien bewusst ihre eigene biopolitische Selbstregierung etablieren. Dadurch wird letztlich konstituiert, was ich als eine neue Form Spatial Sovereignty („räumlicher Souveränität“) betrachte; eine Souveränität, in der sich selbst verbannte Subjekte dem Gesellschaftsvertrag verweigern, um stattdessen alternative Formen der Souveränität zu schaffen, die in besetzten „Excess Spaces“ begründet sind, die schließlich auch autonome Formen der Selbstverwaltung, der Gerechtigkeit und der Selbstüberwachung innerhalb von Orten alternativer Bürgerschaft entwickeln.
In light of recent doctrinal changes, we examine the confused state of U.S. insider trading law, identifying gaps that permit certain market participants to trade on the basis of material nonpublic ...information, and contrast U.S. insider trading doctrine with the European approach. We then explore the ethical implications of the status quo in the U.S., explaining why the dominant legal justifications for prohibiting classical insider trading and misappropriation—the fiduciary duty and property rights theories—fail to account for the wrongfulness of insider trading by eavesdroppers and certain tippees. We refute common arguments for legalizing insider trading, including arguments that insider trading is a victimless crime and that the practice promotes efficiency. We explain why insider trading constitutes the moral wrong of cheating, grounding our theory in the legitimate expectations of market participants. Having considered Kantian deontology in other work, we find that virtue ethics theory offers a helpful albeit rough framework for assessing the morality of insider trading independent of its legality. We also find that social contract theories, with norms of equality of opportunity and moral desert, provide a compelling ethical basis for retaining, clarifying and broadening current legal prohibitions against insider trading.
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