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This study offers a historical overview of U.S. paper money before and after its nationalization in 1861, drawing attention to its function as a medium of mass communication. Building upon recent scholarship concerning the social construction of money and national currencies, it is argued that U.S. currency is legitimated through visual strategies of rationalization and mystification, whereby the contractual obligations of the state are merged with the sacred bonds of national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically investigates pollution reduction by rationalization hypothesis in China. We study the heterogeneous firm's export effect on water pollution in China. We use China's firm-level data from 2000 to 2012 to estimate the firm's heterogeneity of export effect, composition effect, and technique effect on water pollution. We find that intra-industry agglomeration produces a competition effect, and more productive firms can export with less polluted water. More productive firms can export with less polluted water by reallocating more productive labor from dirty firms. We find an inverted U-shaped relationship between a firm's productivity and water pollution. Intra-industry agglomeration drives up labor productivity; higher productive firms export while producing more polluted water initially. When a firm's productivity is increasing, export activity produces less polluted water. More export induces less water pollution for high productivity firms. We conclude that the mechanism of pollution reduction by rationalization hypothesis does exist for water pollution in China. Trade liberalization causes some firms to become cleaner, even though we observe relatively clean exporting firms and relatively dirty domestic producers at different productivity stages. Productivity-induced rationalization causes water pollution to fall with high firm productivity. Water pollution in different regions has disparities. Eastern area in China is more likely to produce more polluted water than the rest of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self‐excited thermoacoustic instability (SETAI) is a dangerous phenomenon in combustion equipment. While it is widely acknowledged that SETAI behavior is determined by the couple between pressure and heat release oscillation, their phase difference is difficult to predict, which impedes the development of SETAI control technology. With the aim of passive control technology development, this paper conducted experiment on a premixed hedge combustor to explore the mechanism whereby premixed chamber length (LP) and equivalence ratio (φ) collaboratively influence SETAI behavior. Results showed LP mainly affects the pressure mode shape within premixed chamber and consequently alters the phase difference between pressure and flowrate oscillation at combustion chamber inlet. Changing φ gives rise to different reaction time‐lag (τ), thus altering the phase difference between flowrate and reaction heat release oscillation. By introducing this flowrate oscillation, how LP and φ collaboratively determine phase difference between pressure oscillation and heat release oscillation was clarified. The mechanisms identified in this study are consistent with the emerging rationalization of the factors contributing to SETAI, and also provides better understanding on Rayleigh criterion and guidance for SETAI control. With further work on heat release and flow rate measurement, as well as the development on τ description, SETAI can be better predicted and controlled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compensatory consumption has been an increasingly researched yet widely debated area of consumer behaviour over the last 20 years. Extant research formulates the term as overwhelmingly negative, largely due to the simplistic and fragmented conceptualisations assumed in prior work. The purpose of the current paper is to present a comprehensive review of the umbrella term of compensatory consumption, incorporating a continuum of behaviours and accounting for the pre- and post-consumption periods including both positive and negative viewpoints. In addition, expanding upon the theory of need satisfaction, the current paper introduces a novel conceptual distinction between compensation and compromise. Finally, a proposed theoretical framework is presented that differentiates between compensatory and compromisory consumption based on the extent of consumer consciousness, rationality and rationalisation. Future research directions are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I provide an answer to the question "what is it for a reason to be the reason for which a belief is held?" After arguing against the causal account of the reason-for-which connection, I present what I call the rationalization account, according to which a reason R a subject S has for a belief P is the reason for which S holds P just in case R is the premise in S's rationalization for P, where the argument from R to P becomes S's rationalization in virtue of her endorsing it. In order to bring explicitly into view the version of the rationalization account I aim to argue for, I draw two distinctions, one between occurrent and dispositional endorsement and the other between personal and public endorsement. I show that the version of the rationalization account thus clarified receives intuitive support from various cases and survives some formidable objections that might be tempting to level against it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophers' search for the best way to explain human actions has led many to accept a core psychological model that can be supplemented by other forms of action explanation when needed. Rather than settling for this model - where everything ultimately hinges on psychological explanation - this paper argues for a pluralistic view. It does not claim that the psychological view is wrong, only that it is not as universally applicable as it is often taken to be. Explanation-by-norms is suggested as an important form of explanation in its own right. It explains actions by revealing how they conform to norms and patterns and become intelligible in light of them. Explanation-by-norms is shown to be especially salient in the case of slips. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this qualitative study, the authors examined master's-level counselor trainees' reactions to difficult dialogues in the classroom regarding racism, heterosexism/homophobia, and ableism over a 3-year period. Using the Consensual Qualitative Research method as introduced by C. E. Hill, B. J. Thompson, arid E. N. Williams (1997), the data analysis team analyzed narrative and reaction papers submitted during a didactic course on multiculturalism. Behavioral reactions were identified that form the basis for this study: denial, deflection, rationalization, intellectualization, principium, false envy, minimization, and benevolence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of recent studies argue that consumer misbehaviour is common and representative of consumer behaviour overall. Concurrently, a number of leadings scholars have found that consumers employ a number of cognitive techniques of neutralisation to justify or rationalise their behaviour. However, existing studies that explore these two issues in conjunction typically focus on a single form of consumer misbehaviour (e.g. shoplifting). The aim of the current paper is to investigate the extent to which the techniques of neutralisation used by service consumers vary across different forms of deviant consumer behaviour. After providing an overview of extant research into deviant consumer behaviour and of research into the techniques of neutralisation, we detail our methodology. Thereafter, we present our findings to reflect the five forms of deviant consumer behaviour that were most consistently identified by informants (property abuses, verbal abuses during service, post-service negative word of mouth, dishonest actions, and sexual exploitation). The findings reveal that consumers employ various techniques of neutralisation to rationalise or justify their behaviour, leading to the forwarding of 12 propositions. After a discussion of the implications of the study for theorists and practitioners, we conclude the paper with a discussion of the limitations of the study, while highlighting a series of potentially fruitful avenues of future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-twentieth Century, several efforts have been made to rationalize the government budgetary decision making process. Most of these efforts were either incomplete or a failure. This paper provides a behavioral analysis of why it is so hard to rationalize the budgetary decision making process, taking performance-based budgeting (PBB) as an example of a budget innovation that has been proposed for more than 50 years to rationalize the budget process by linking allocations to performance results without being fully implemented. This paper looks at the rationalization of the budgetary process from the lens of non-linear systems models, and analyzes the forces/elements that have made this rationalization an objective hard to attain, emphasizing the policy-making and implementation gap with regard to performance-based budgeting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In real life situations the unreliability of human communication and recollection can have serious social consequences. Businesses and organizations have to sometimes bear business cost due to such cumulative errors as well. In the context of academic scholarship however, varying perceptions and interpretations are regarded as the beginning of a new discourse around a concept or phenomenon. This new understanding is believed to gradually become the part of researcher's language, which later can impact the research orientation of the researcher. This process in most cases leads the researcher to contribute towards the evolution of a phenomenon's understanding or towards its conceptual distortion. Furthermore, the concepts and understandings usually get distorted by presenting them in isolation from their possible alternate rationalizations. This conceptual paper takes into account the issues associated with attempts to ascribe meaning to organizational phenomena. Particular attention will be given to the idea of resistance to organizational change. The paper attempts to draw upon organizational studies scholarship to follow the story of resistance to change and look for the consistencies and inconsistencies in the reporting if any. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to discuss the full rationality of fuzzy choice functions defined on base domain. For this purpose, we introduce weak fuzzy T-congruence axiom. We characterize full rationality of fuzzy choice functions in terms of this axiom and the fuzzy Chernoff axiom. Also, we prove that G-rational fuzzy choice functions with transitive rationalizations satisfying fuzzy Chernoff axiom characterizes their full rationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background This paper uses Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action as a lens through which to examine the development of a local mental health charter. Objective To assess whether the Charter represents the product of a communicatively rational process. Research design and setting The paper is based on an analysis of the text of the Charter, and on documentation relating to its development, including notes of discussion groups used to identify its themes. Findings An analysis of the notes of the discussion groups against the text of the Charter shows that the Charter’s themes are based broadly on the views generated in the discussion groups. However, they also draw on norms derived from wider discourses not reflected in the discussion groups, and exclude other specific local issues. The strength of feeling expressed in the discussion groups is also toned down in the language of the Charter. Discussion The development of the Charter was based on a participatory process that can be said to have contained elements of both communicative and strategic rationality. The strategic rationality involved in translating service users’ views into language that would be acceptable to those working in the system can be seen as necessary for the Charter to succeed in bringing about change. In drawing also on communicatively generated norms from the wider public sphere the Charter can be seen as reflecting a form of generalized communicative rationality. Conclusion The Charter represents a ‘sluice’ by which communicative rationality is drawn into the mental health system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital design and fabrication tools obtain constraints affecting creativity in conceptual design phase. There is a necessity to have a better understanding of issues related to the rationalization process of form, material and fabrication. The objective of this paper is to integrate analogue craft into architectural design studio that can be applicable into various educational setups, in order to increase the algorithmic thinking skills of students, before giving tutorials on the software tools and digital fabrication techniques. The Rule-based Rationalization of Form (RRF) was implemented as a task for a mobile unit design through computational making. The research methodology of RRF consists of four stages, including specifying the design constraints and the rules; the design of the components and the overall form; making the large-scale mock-up; and process evaluation. It was implemented to the second year undergraduate architectural design studios from Fall 2014 to 2016. The data were collected by the process analysis and questionnaire applied to the participants. The output studies were grouped in three, as Modular, Folding and Biomimetic design systems, based on the geometrical characteristics and organizational principles applied in the process. In the light of research objective, algorithmic thinking skills of students were developed through analogue craft, as well as participants obtained a better understanding of issues related to the rationalization process of form, material and fabrication, by testing relationships between the geometry, tools and the materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many normative nonnaturalists find normative naturalism to be completely implausible. Naturalists and nonnaturalists agree, provided they are realists, that there are normative properties, such as moral ones. Naturalists hold that these properties are similar in all metaphysically important respects to properties that all would agree to be natural ones, such as such as meteorological or economic ones. It is this view that the nonnaturalists I have in mind find to be hopeless. They hold that normative properties are just too different from natural properties for it to be possible they are natural properties. I aim to defuse this intuition. "Non-analytic naturalism" has made progress in defusing the intution. According to non-analytic naturalists, normative properties can be represented in thought in two ways, by an ordinary normative concept and by a naturalistic concept, where, the non-analytic naturalist concedes, normative concepts are not, and are not analyzable in terms of, naturalistic concepts. Non-analytic naturalism seems to avoid many of the standard objections to naturalism, but the Just Too Different intuition is resilient in the face of non-analytic naturalism, for even if one thinks that normative concepts are not analyzable at all, one might think that clarity about the concepts can show that naturalism is hopeless. I therefore think it is important for naturalists to address the intuition directly. In this paper, I argue that the intuition plausibly rests on certain characteristic pre-theoretical ways of thinking of the normative properties that we acquire in the ordinary course of moral learning, together with a drive to vindicate these ways of thinking, something of which people may be unaware. This drive to vindicate our ways of thinking is pervasive, and it is characteristic of rational agents. It explains our tendency to think well of those we love, for example, and to think ill of those with whom we are angry. It also explains a strong inclination to form beliefs that, if true, would seemingly vindicate our ways of thinking of normative properties. A result of this, I contend, is the intuition that normative naturalism cannot be true. Yet, as I further argue, the vindication process does not track the truth and the drive to vindicate our states of mind cannot be relied on as a guide to the metaphysics of normativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organisational psychological defences protect the self-esteem and moral integrity of the organisational personality even at the expense of sacrificing the morality of actions. This paper analyses the spectrum of defences used by an oil refinery and its parent company during an oil spill incident. A hypothetical model of defences built on Swajkowski’s four responses to accusations of organisational misconduct – refusals, excuses, justifications and concessions – is tested through this case. On the basis of empirical findings it is obvious that defences delay, impede and interrupt the mitigation and recovery actions of incidents. It is not possible to break the defence behaviour of individuals because it is a built-in psychological mechanism in all humans serving a valuable purpose of dosing the pain of injury. However, it is possible to separate individual and organisational behaviour so that automatic organisational procedures mitigate, recover and, ultimately, prevent incidents. The organisational psychological task of crisis management is to mitigate the organisation’s ego defences, recover from its emotional turmoil and prevent further traumas by making its ego stronger and more flexible. The argument of this paper is that in practice organisational defences act as bumpers against becoming too conscious of the gap between the corporate rhetoric and reality, as subconscious breaks against too fast change demands, and as batteries in their preconscious effort to prepare for the change. Organisational refusals act as bumpers, excuses as breaks and justifications as batteries, while concessions imply that a change towards a more responsible corporation is taking place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how professional values and practices influence the character of nonprofit organizations, with data from a random sample of 501(c)(3) operating charities in the San Francisco Bay Area collected between 2003 and 2004. Expanded professionalism in the nonprofit world involves not only paid, full-time careers and credentialed expertise but also the integration of professional ideals into the everyday world of charitable work. We develop key indicators of professionalism and measure organizational rationalization as expressed in the use of strategic planning, independent financial audits, quantitative program evaluation, and consultants. As hypothesized, charities operated by paid personnel and full-time management show higher levels of rationalization. While traditional professionals (doctors, lawyers, and the clergy) do not differ significantly from executives with no credentialed background in eschewing business-like practices, managerial professionals champion such efforts actively, as do semi-professionals, albeit more modestly. Management training is also an important spur to rationalization. We assess what is gained and lost and the tension that can arise when nonprofits become professionalized and adopt more methodical, bureaucratic procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of fraud cases shocked the economic markets in the recent past. Fraud is an emerging global problem in private and public organizations and it could not distinguish in its occurrence. The detection and prevention of frauds are challenging for the organization due to adopting and the methods with which the fraud is committed by fraudsters. Detecting fraud is not an easy task and requires in depth knowledge about the nature, modus operandi for auditing, investigating agencies responsible for corporate governance. In year 1953, Cressey had explained three attributes (pressure, opportunity and rationalization) of fraud committer with help of "Fraud Triangle". In 2004, Wolfe and Hermanson introduced the "Fraud Diamond Model" with addition of another attribute i.e.; capabilities / expertise. The basic theme of this paper would facilitate understanding the fraud and why it occurs with another attribute i.e; greed. Further, an approach is taken for development of a new model "Fraud Five Stars". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms operating in developing economies are increasingly expected to implement CSR practices aligned with recognized global standards. Drawing on extensive field study data in four Latin American countries, we contribute to business ethics scholarship by making visible and explaining firm shortcomings across social, environmental, and governance goals and activities of CSR. Building on and extending sensemaking literature, we find that leaders and managers responsible for their firms' CSR activities make sense of and justify CSR shortcomings. We specify that justification based on individual, organizational/industry, and macro-environmental influences serves as a mechanism that decouples firms' actual CSR practices from recognized CSR standards. Further, we propose that detachment, involving disconnection from the local operating environment, underlies the CSR shortcomings of firms. We develop a theoretical multi-level model that specifies justification as a mechanism and detachment as an underlying driver of CSR shortcomings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on a case study in the treatment of Physics, that concerns the scientist C.G. Barkla and the J Phenomenon. The 'J phenomenon,' a complicated set of experimental claims and preliminary theoretical forays by the British physicist C.G. Barkla. It was a scientific error on the fringes of orthodox physics which lasted long enough to generate over fifty scientific papers. This article is about scientifc orthodoxy, about how truth is developed and defended and demonstrates that scientific belief systems and codes of scientific practice cannot be conclusively disproven, they cannot be discarded for unambiguous rational reasons alone. The authority of scientific knowledge rests upon grounds different from those offered by the model of the rationality of science implicit in those accounts which conceal the existence and influence of such wider factors as appear to have operated in this case. Barkla's theoretical schemes and polemics were seen as rationalizations for his social commitments, built around, for instance, specific expertise, status with respect to particular reference groups, powers and so on.

The article presents a paper which reports findings from a cross-national study that compares two analytic models pertaining to the diffusion of Western medical practice. Contemporary Western medicine is basically antithetical to traditional beliefs about human nature and causation. Specifically, contemporary, medical practice lies at the forefront of modern culture's emphasis on rationalization. This paper has taken the position that the preliminary adoption of other Western innovations by Third World nations provides a link between Christianization and the diffusion of Western medicalization. An attempt has been made to show that, where Christianity has made marked inroads in an underdeveloped society, seeds are planted for a secular-rational viewpoint. This viewpoint stimulates a positive orientation towards acceptance of scientific, technological approaches to human problems. Use of these approaches, in turn, culminates in a general acceptance of Western medicine. The critical test of this analytic model against its similar counterpart represents what is felt to be the major contribution to literature concerning diffusion of Western medicalization.

The concept of distance rationalizability of voting rules has been explored in recent years by several authors. Roughly speaking, we first choose a consensus set of elections (defined via preferences of voters over candidates) for which the result is specified a priori (intuitively, these are elections on which all voters can easily agree on the result). We also choose a measure of distance between elections. The result of an election outside the consensus set is defined to be the result of the closest consensual election under the distance measure. Most previous work has dealt with a definition in terms of preference profiles. However, most voting rules in common use are anonymous and homogeneous. In this case there is a much more succinct representation (using the voting simplex) of the inputs to the rule. This representation has been widely used in the voting literature, but rarely in the context of distance rationalizability. We show exactly how to connect distance rationalizability on profiles for anonymous and homogeneous rules to geometry in the simplex. We develop the connection for the important special case of votewise distances, recently introduced and studied by Elkind, Faliszewski and Slinko in several papers. This yields a direct interpretation in terms of well-developed mathematical concepts not seen before in the voting literature, namely Kantorovich (also called Wasserstein) distances and the geometry of Minkowski spaces. As an application of this approach, we prove some positive and some negative results about the decisiveness of distance rationalizable anonymous and homogeneous rules. The positive results connect with the recent theory of hyperplane rules, while the negative ones deal with distances that are not metrics, controversial notions of consensus, and the fact that the ℓ1-norm is not strictly convex. We expect that the above novel geometric interpretation will aid the analysis of rules defined by votewise distances, and the discovery of new rules with desirable properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the psychological strategies as well as the rhetorical and discursive arguments developed in organizations and by individuals when they have to cope with the paradoxes and changes related to CSR.Design/methodology/approach This study uses the perspective of the paradox as an analytical framework to parse strategies developed in organizations as they cope with tensions and changes related to CSR. The authors conducted 50 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders and the authors performed a qualitative analysis with the information compiled.Findings The main strategies for dealing with CSR paradoxes and changes consist of developing perceptual and motivational biases as well as explicative heuristic ones through which, from a discursive perspective, a coherent and conciliatory framework is presented with rhetoric that play a fundamental role in justifying CSR as a present hope over a future illusion regardless of the past reality.Originality/value The lesson to be drawn from the exploration is the following: managers and CSR officers need to leave behind fear, anxiety and defensive attitudes and accept the paradox by re-contextualizing the tension as a stimulus for conscious and reflexive confrontation with emotional equilibrium, this being defiantly motivating as a sensemaker. In this way, the approach to the present inconsistencies in CSR should not involve a dismissal of conflictive situations but rather the development of the capacity to transcend the tension emanating from them and to learn to manage organizations from this paradoxical reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seishinshugi 精神主義, a term associated with the work of Meiji Buddhist reformer Kiyozawa Manshi 清沢満之 (1863–1903), is often read as exemplifying a spiritual turn in mid-Meiji Japan, centering an inner realm of private experience in a reaction against the rationalization of the early Meiji period. This paper considers the use of the term seishin in Kiyozawa's early work. It finds him treating seishin in two distinct but connected contexts: as a psychological term, influenced particularly by his reading of English physician William Benjamin Carpenter (1813–1885), and as a philosophical term, in conversation with Hegel's philosophy of spirit. It suggests that an understanding of seishin as developing progressively toward more and more complex forms of consciousness or self-awareness found in both Kiyozawa's psychological and philosophical writing sheds new light on other aspects of Kiyozawa's early career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key function of categories is to help predictions about unobserved features of objects. At the same time, humans are often in situations where the categories of the objects they perceive are uncertain. In an influential paper, Anderson (Psychological Review, 98(3), 409-429, 1991) proposed a rational model for feature inferences with uncertain categorization. A crucial feature of this model is the conditional independence assumption—it assumes that the within category feature correlation is zero. In prior research, this model has been found to provide a poor fit to participants’ inferences. This evidence is restricted to task environments inconsistent with the conditional independence assumption. Currently available evidence thus provides little information about how this model would fit participants’ inferences in a setting with conditional independence. In four experiments based on a novel paradigm and one experiment based on an existing paradigm, we assess the performance of Anderson’s model under conditional independence. We find that this model predicts participants’ inferences better than competing models. One model assumes that inferences are based on just the most likely category. The second model is insensitive to categories but sensitive to overall feature correlation. The performance of Anderson’s model is evidence that inferences were influenced not only by the more likely category but also by the other candidate category. Our findings suggest that a version of Anderson’s model which relaxes the conditional independence assumption will likely perform well in environments characterized by within-category feature correlation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of self-plagiarism frequently elicits skepticism and generates confusion in the research ethics literature, and the ethical status of what is often called “textual recycling” is particularly controversial. I argue that, in general, self-plagiarism is unethical because it is deceptive and dishonest. I then distinguish several forms of it and argue against various common rationalizations for textual recycling. I conclude with a discussion of two instances of textual recycling, distinguishing them in terms of their ethical seriousness but concluding that both are ethically problematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decision-makers frequently struggle to base their choices on an exhaustive evaluation of all options at stake. This is particularly so when the choice problem at hand is complex, because the available alternatives are hard (if not impossible) to compare. Rather than striving to choose the most valuable alternative, in such situations decision-makers often settle for the choice of an alternative which is not inferior to any other available alternative instead. In this paper, we extend two established models of boundedly rational choice, the categorize then choose heuristic and the rational shortlist method, to incorporate this kind of “indecisive” choice behavior. We study some properties of these extensions and provide full behavioral characterizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Previous models of boycott motivation are incomplete because they only consider beliefs and attitudes. This article argues that consumers' proximity to the consequences of the critical actions of a company is the primary trigger of the desire to boycott. As consumers need to justify this desire, they search for supportive arguments. Thus, the arguments consumers give to explain why they are boycotting or not are pre-decisional rationalizations rather than independent rational considerations. Consequently, the paper suggests that scholars need to respecify the antecedents identified in prior studies. These constructs are mediator variables of the indirect influence of proximity on boycott participation. The paper tests the assumptions on the basis of survey data gathered from 544 consumers using the example of a real boycott that was called in response to factory relocation. The model proposed was tested by means of partial least squares regression analysis. The mediation hypotheses were examined using simple and multiple mediation tests. The empirical study confirms that boycott motives are mainly rationalizations of a pre-existing desire to boycott, which is contingent on proximity. Managerial implications and avenues for further research are proposed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I elaborate on the very political dimension of epistemology that is opened up by the radical change of focus initiated by constructivism: from science as knowledge to science as practice. In a first step, this brings me to claim that science is political in its own right, thereby drawing on Mouffe and Laclau's framework of radical democracy and its central notion of antagonism to make explicit what is meant by 'the political.' Secondly, I begin to explore what this intrinsic political dimension of science might entail for democratic thought. I do so by connecting my preliminary explorations in the field of science with Andrew Feenberg's elaborate frame of thought on the democratization of technology. Interestingly, Feenberg is one of the few thinkers who have connected questions of power and ideology, typically treated of within the field of political theory, with a constructivist approach to technological progress. In this sense, this paper can be seen as a first attempt to expand Feenberg's framework of democratic rationalization from the world of technology to the world of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on school choice highlights the extent to which a communitarian impulse informs the way some parents engage with their role as chooser. This suggests that the responsibilities of parents as consumers are often negotiated in collective as well as individualizing terms. Drawing on data from a group of mothers of diverse social class and racial backgrounds, this paper builds on some of these perspectives through deploying elements of a critical discursive analytic approach. Its aim is to explore how some mothers engage with the meaning and practice of school choice. Focusing on the emotional labouring that often underpins mothers' rationalizations of choice, this paper examines the discursive role of emotion in these contexts as a form of social action geared towards achieving certain ends. In turn I discuss the implications of this for thinking through choice as a framing, function and discourse inhabited and performed by mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a common criticism of economic models that depart from the standard rational-choice paradigm - namely, that the phenomena addressed by such models can be ‘rationalized’ by some standard model. I criticize this criterion for evaluating bounded-rationality models. Using a market model with boundedly rational consumers due to Spiegler (2006a) as a test case, I show that even when it initially appears that a bounded-rationality model can be rationalized by a standard model, rationalizing models tend to come with unwarranted ‘extra baggage’. I conclude that we should impose a greater burden of proof on rationalizations that are offered in refutation of bounded-rationality models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freudian psychology has some interesting insights into various ego defence mechanisms that sometimes come into play when an individual is faced with a threat to their self esteem. These mechanisms include concepts like rationalisation and denial. These mechanisms can seriously interfere with an attempt by the Management Accountant to discuss and evaluate a situation and advise on possible corrective action. This paper will discuss some of the ego defence mechanisms that often come into play and provide the management accountant insights into why they might have difficulty in discussing or evaluating unfavourable budget variances that threaten managerial self esteem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines an approach to conspiracy culture that attempts to resolve the conundrum posed by the parallel logics of conspiracy and sociological theorising, without reducing the former to an irrational response to hidden social forces. Rather, from a re-crafting of Weber's rationalisation thesis as an analysis of the developmental logic of theories of suffering, it argues that conspiracy culture is an outcome of the means of moral accounting, or blame attribution, that inform mundane reasoning in modernity, as also are the human sciences. As part of this, the paper sketches a tentative framework of moral accounting in relation to the notion of ‘blame culture’ based in part on a distinction between a culture of blaming and the blaming of culture. This is used to argue that there is nothing irrational about conspiracy culture – or at least no more so than there is about sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses several competing proposals for general normative frameworks that would encompass non-standard models of choice. Most existing proposals equate welfare with well- being. Some assume that well-being flows from the achievement of well-defined objectives, and that those objectives also guide choices; the trick is to formulate a framework in which less-than-completely coherent choice patterns reveal the unobserved objectives. Others are predicated on the contention that well-being, and hence welfare, is directly measurable. Both of those approaches encounter serious conceptual difficulties. An alternative approach, developed by Bernheim and Rangel (2009), defines welfare directly in terms of choice. It entails a generalized welfare criterion that respects choice directly, without requiring any rationalization involving potentially unverifiable assumptions concerning underlying objectives and their relationships to choice. Because useful behavioral theories generally envision a substantial degree of underlying coherence in behavior, that criterion leads to a rich and tractable normative framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops the concept of the ‘continuum of destructiveness’ in relation to organizational corruption. This notion captures the slippery slope of wrongdoing as actors engage in increasingly dubious practices. We identify four kinds of individuals along this continuum in corrupt organizations, who range from complete innocence to total guilt. They are innocent bystanders, innocent participants, active rationalizers and guilty perpetrators. Traditional explanations of how individuals move from bystander status to guilty perpetrators usually focus on socialization and institutional factors. In addition to these factors, we propose that the very distance between an act and its ethical consequences (ethical distance) may also play a determining role – if not always in the same way – in the transition process. Having developed this conceptual argument, we conclude with a discussion of managerial and research implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the sense in which modern societies can be said to be rational. Social rationality cannot be understood on the model of an idealized image of scientific method. Neither science nor society conforms to this image. Nevertheless, critique is routinely silenced by neo-liberal and technocratic arguments that appeal to social simulacra of science. This paper develops a critical strategy for addressing the resistance of rationality to rational critique. Romantic rejection of reason has proven less effective than strategies that conceptualize modern artefacts, systems, and organizations as rationally underdetermined. This approach first appears in Marx's analysis of capitalist economics. Although he lacks the concept of underdetermination, Marx gets around the silencing effect of social rationality with something very much like it in his discussion of the length of the working day. Frankfurt School Critical Theory later blended romantic elements with Marxian ones in a suggestive but ambiguous mixture. The concept of underdetermination reappears in contemporary science and technology studies, now clearly articulated and philosophically and sociologically elaborated. But somewhere along the way the critical thrust was diluted. Critical theory of technology attempts to recover that thrust. Here its approach is generalized to cover the three main forms of social rationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a general and unified framework to discuss individual choice behaviors that are constrained by the individual's internalized norms. We propose a new notion of rationalizability of a choice function that incorporates such constraints, and axiomatically study several norm-constrained choice behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theme of the present paper is the concept of defense. The aim is to explore the possibility of reformulating the concept in a way that is free from any compromise with the drive model. The author first re-examines the classic conception of defense and then identifies specific theoretical elements in the works of Freud (in particular, the notions of external fright, primary defense, and signals of anxiety). These elements can easily benefit from further development in the current scientific context, specifically from reconsideration in the light of modern emotion theories and somatic marker theory (Damasio). The paper thereby identifies a regulating and meaning-attribution system that is deeply embedded in the biological and that can nurture certain somatically marked emotion-expectation-action schemas. It is then proposed that children's progressive mastering of the semantic and linguistic universe determines the grafting of the symbolic sphere onto this biological regulating mechanism. Indeed, it is the acquisition of competency in using verbal forms (especially active-passive and passive-active transformations) and in using metaphor as a meaning-construction mechanism that leads to a vast range of transformation and transfer mechanisms for somatically marked schema. It is therefore possible to account for an individual's idiosyncratic construction of a myriad of contexts and meanings, which can use the emotion system to activate powerful wishing or avoiding forces. This junction of the symbolic with the somatic/biological thus makes it possible to delineate specific defense mechanisms that are similar to those described in the clinical tradition. In particular, the author shows how identification, projection, condensation, and displacement can be reformulated, but also points to the ego's fundamental narrative nature as an area in which the analogous mechanisms of repression, negation, idealization, and rationalization might also easily be located. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies a class of complete but not necessarily transitive preferences which generate demand functions that obey the weak axiom of revealed preference and within which any function obeying the weak axiom can be rationalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theme of this paper is the relationship between emotion, management and organization, specifically, how emotions are transformed by rationalizations, and vice versa. It is argued that managers' tendency to rationalize emotion creates additional emotional dynamics, and that these provide opportunities for organizing reflection. This idea also points to a limitation of approaches that are concerned with how emotions can be managed through emotional intelligence. The study took place during a turbulent period in the history of a company, while it was being taken over. Managers in Hyder plc, formerly the largest stock market listed corporation in Wales, UK, carried a tension into their work roles. This was created from particular emotions (pain and shame) and their rationalizations of, or detachment from, these emotions (self-interest and disinterest). Such tension was a necessary part of maintaining their managerial role under difficult and emotionally charged circumstances. The study also showed how fears about personal position undermined the ability of managers to enact their authority and to act collectively within the organization. The conclusion discusses the relationship between collective emotional dynamics (political relatedness) and the organization of reflection, as well as providing questions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I review some recent treatments of Simpson's Paradox, and I propose a new rationalizing explanation of its (apparent) paradoxicality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we discuss some aspects of Eliaz and Ok 's (Games Econ Behav 56:61-86, 2006) choice theoretical foundations of incomplete preferences. Our aim is to clarify some aspects of their regularity condition for preorders, showing that, as far as rationalization of a choice correspondence alone is concerned, no further restriction is imposed by requiring the preorder to be regular. However, if one is also interested in capturing other observable aspects of the individual's choice procedure, such as Eliaz and Ok's notion of c-incomparability or the notion of behavioral indifference introduced in this paper, then the only option is to use a regular preorder. We also argue that their weak axiom of revealed non-inferiority (WARNI) is too strong a property if our aim is to characterize the rationalizability of a choice correspondence by a (possibly incomplete) preorder. Finally, as we have mentioned above, we introduce the notion of behavioral indifference and argue, not only that Eliaz and Ok's notion of c-incomparability (observable incomparability) can be derived from it, but also that it has a wider range of applicability than their notion of observable incomparability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethical decision-making (EDM) descriptive theoretical models often conflict with each other and typically lack comprehensiveness. To address this deficiency, a revised EDM model is proposed that consolidates and attempts to bridge together the varying and sometimes directly conflicting propositions and perspectives that have been advanced. To do so, the paper is organized as follows. First, a review of the various theoretical models of EDM is provided. These models can generally be divided into (a) rationalist-based (i.e., reason); and (b) non-rationalist-based (i.e., intuition and emotion). Second, the proposed model, called 'Integrated Ethical Decision Making,' is introduced in order to fill the gaps and bridge the current divide in EDM theory. The individual and situational factors as well as the process of the proposed model are then described. Third, the academic and managerial implications of the proposed model are discussed. Finally, the limitations of the proposed model are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article focuses on crisis situations and ideological revaluations. Students of social change and practitioners attempting to predict human behavior have long been interested in changes in systems of belief. In this article the author describes the kinds of situations which have produced ideological changes as well as the mechanisms involved in these revaluations. It has repeatedly been noted that systems of belief tend to be conservative, in the sense of having their status and identity maintained by means of various psychological mechanisms such as suppression of incompatible cues, weighing of conflicting evidence, or rationalization. The present paper is concerned with circumstances under which these supporting mechanisms become totally or partially ineffective, leaving the individual with an invalidated or inoperative ideology. This type of condition is here referred to as a crisis situation. This paper has attempts to spell out the mechanisms involved in this process and their operation, with the premise that clear thinking about the ideology of individuals is a sine qua non for an understanding of the "why" and "how" of social movements.

In the aftermath of the economic crisis that started in 2008, resources have become scarcer than ever in some countries, also in health care. Priority setting and rationalisation of existing resources also affect pharmaceutical innovations, including those that would contribute to what is called personalised medicine. In this paper, we will highlight the ethical issues surrounding rationalisation and its impact on personalised medicine through the lens of the capability approach. Thereby, challenges to and opportunities for personalised medicine will be examined, assessing how they affect patients' 'real options' to access innovative therapies. In our focus on the 'first challenge: citizens and patients' of the so-called Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda, the strength of the capability approach becomes particularly apparent in identifying what different values are at stake in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationalization in the sense of biased self-justification is very familiar. It's not cheating because everyone else is doing it too. I didn't report the abuse because it wasn't my place. I understated my income this year because I paid too much in tax last year. I'm only a social smoker, so I won't get cancer. The mental mechanisms subserving rationalization have been studied closely by psychologists. However, when viewed against the backdrop of philosophical accounts of the regulative role of truth in doxastic deliberation (deliberation about what to believe), rationalization can look very puzzling. Almost all contemporary philosophers endorse a version of the thesis of deliberative exclusivity—a thinker cannot in full consciousness decide whether to believe thatpin a way that issues directly in forming a belief by adducing anything other than considerations that he or she regards as relevant to the truth ofp. But, as I argue, rationalization involves the weighing of considerations that the thinker knows very well are truth-irrelevant or inconclusive. This paper reconciles rationalization with deliberative exclusivity by modeling rationalization as a kind of performative pretense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the roles that Danish government has played in the development of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Denmark has emerged as a first mover among the Scandinavian countries when it comes to CSR. We argue that government has played a pivotal role in making this happen, and that this reflects strong traditions of regulation, corporatism and active state involvement. However, there is no unitary 'Danish model of CSR' being promoted by government. Although Danish society is often associated with a model of consensus, our claim is that Danish government policy on CSR is characterized by a lack of common direction and that we need to approach it on such terms. In order to provide a critical account of 'the Danish model' we apply a governmentality perspective that allows us to stress political difference. We argue that Danish government policy consists of three distinct regimes of practice and show how they subject CSR to different modes of rationalization and action. We conclude that the problem with public policy being split into three is not different as such, but the failure of each regime to recognize the value of the others. As a result, government tends to add to the confusion and opaqueness of CSR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including false but useful beliefs classified on the grounds of epistemic usefulness, sincere rationalization benefits and epistemic status of religious attitudes.

This paper proposes that psychological factors can change managers' beliefs about earnings management when they choose to engage in it. I show that, under certain circumstances, engaging in a small amount of earnings management alters a manager's beliefs about the appropriateness of the act, which may increase the likelihood of further earnings management. Specifically, I predict and find in two experiments that participants who initially choose to manage earnings are motivated to rationalize their behavior. Participants who are exposed to an egregious example of earnings management (commonly the focus of enforcement actions and press reports) have the opportunity to rationalize their behavior through a mechanism called 'advantageous comparison,' where participants compare their behavior against the egregious example and conclude that what they did was relatively innocuous and appropriate. My analysis also indicates that presenting participants with an example of earnings management that is similar to the initial decision they made mitigates advantageous comparison. These results have implications for academics interested in how earnings management, and perhaps fraud, can accrete over time and for regulators and practitioners who are interested in preventing it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]