L. Klaus

Recent findings suggest impaired motor skill development during infancy in children later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, it remains unclear whether infants at high familial risk for ASD would benefit from early interventions targeting the motor domain. The current study investigated this issue by providing 3-month-old infants at high familial risk for ASD with training experiences aimed at facilitating independent reaching. A group of 17 high-risk (HR) infants received 2 weeks of scaffolded reaching experiences using “sticky mittens,” and was compared to 72 low-risk (LR) infants experiencing the same or alternative training procedures. Results indicate that HR infants – just like LR infants – show an increase in grasping activity following “sticky mittens” training. In contrast to LR infants, evidence that motor training encouraged a preference for faces in HR infants was inconclusive.

This article responds to the review of Hemphill and Lillevik, “The Global Economic Manifesto: A Retrospective.” It aims to contribute to the worldwide discussion of global accepted norms and values of corporate behavior by addressing universal ethical principles and implementation strategies. A focus is set on the means of specifying values to serve the action orientation of an organization and its management. Since external normative expectations rise in context of the upcoming Post-2015 Development Agenda, corporate responses need to take local specifics as well as international accepted norms into account. Therefore, a distinctive implementation design is outlined. Key strategic steps contain elements such as awareness of common values, differing consequences due to cultural environments and economic conditions, integration of practical experience to gain impact-related insights, and fostering global leadership education. Consequently, corporate value management approaches and Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda are connected through universal values.

Most corporate stakeholders agree that Corporate Responsibility (CR) ought to be part of modern business management and practice. Academic work has been seminal to a fruitful and collaborative relationship between business and society. A closer examination of the contemporary academic narratives on CR, however, reveals a plethora of positions orbiting this complex construct, rendering it and its applications opaque, amorphous, and contested. The bewildering array of conceptualizations and applications leads not only to unintended consequences but also to concrete negative outcomes for most stakeholders. In this study, we map the conceptual landscape of CR in academia by systematically analyzing 120 audio and video recordings of university sponsored or endorsed CR-focused workshops, business meetings, interviews, lectures, conference presentations, roundtable events, and debates deposited at the media repository iTunesU and held between 2010 and 2014. The recordings were analyzed using Content Configuration Analysis, a qualitative analysis method related to content and thematic analyses. Our results show how business ethics in academia are often debated in opposition to or independent from business and economic concerns. We highlight seven major shortcomings within this conceptual space, relating to conceptual disunion, Eurocentrism, lack of specificity with regard to domains, stakeholder bias, areas of application, and normativity. Recommendations to overcome some of these shortcomings are presented to develop policy-relevant and change-oriented approaches to CR, which would make academic work on business ethics more applicable to globalized business and business practices, as well as to further develop collaborative partnerships between academia, business, and society.

It is shown by means of four examples that the demarcation between law and morals has become problematical. The study of more recent developments in ethics and in law indicates that in both fields the relevance of discourse and consent has grown. Though both law and morals aim at agreement their degree of dependance on it differs. The definition of law and morals suggested in this article is based on this view. Legitimate law consists of norms, which besides fulfilling other conditions have attained a certain degree of consent. On the other hand one can only talk of social morals when a very high degree of consent has been reached. The consequences of this definition are explained by means of the examples presented at the beginning.

Cattaneo défend l'hypothèse que ce sont en premier lieu les théories de Thomasius concernant le droit criminel qui constituent la transition de l'absolutisme éclairé au libéralisme. L'auteur confronte cette hypothèse à celle de Klippel qui range Thomasius parmi les philosophes du droit naturel défendeurs de l'absolutisme, et il en tire la conclusion suivante: Les apports importants de Thomasius au développement d'une doctrine libérale du droit criminel ne permettent pas de le qualifier comme fondateur de la théorie du libéralisme sauf à préconiser une sorte de pré-libéralisme de formation spécifiquement thomasienne