Digital Commons Network^™

The Ethics Behind Efficiency, Jonathan B. Wight

Economics Faculty Publications

The normative elements underlying efficiency are more complex than generally portrayed, and rely upon ethical frameworks that are generally absent from classroom discussions. Most textbooks, for example, ignore the ethical differences between Pareto efficiency (based on voluntary win-win outcomes) and the modern Kaldor-Hicks efficiency used in public policy assessments (in which winners gain more than losers lose). For the latter to be ethically palatable, society must have in place basic institutions of justice, transparency, and accountability. Normative economics thus requires a pluralist approach that includes considerations of virtue and duty, closer to Adam Smith’s Enlightenment conceptions. This surprising finding should …

Otra Piel, La Misma Piel: Contacto Y Aparición En Cuatro Textos Que Abordan La Última Dictadura Cívico-Militar (1976-1983), Karina Elizabeth Vázquez

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

En este ensayo propongo una exploración inicial de lo que entiendo como "poética de la aparición" en Lengua madre (2010), de María Teresa Andruetto, Diario de una princesa montonera (2012), de Mariana Eva Perez, ¿Quién te crees que sos? (2012), de Ángela Urondo Raboy, y Aparecida (2015), de Marta Dillon, textos todos que apelan al diálogo con el intertexto o paratexto visual. Lejos de la exhaustividad académica y más acorde con un clima actual de temor y desconcierto, con un futuro que se proyecta gris en el horizonte, estas palabras no tienen por objeto impregnar el presente con una exégesis …

Communicating Mobility And Technology: A Material Rhetoric For Persuasive Transportation (Book Review), Daniel L. Hocutt

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

Humans are so enmeshed in mobility systems that they identify with themselves through those systems. In Communicating Mobility and Technology: A Material Rhetoric for Persuasive Transportation, Ehren Pflugfelder (2017) uses the term "automobility" to describe both "the specific kinds of mobility afforded by independent, automobile-related movement technologies" and "the complex cultural, bodily, technological, and ecological ramifications of our dependence on separate mobility technologies" (p. 4). Given identities enmeshed in ecologies of systems involving human and nonhuman actors through which transportation emerges, automobility is described as a "wicked problem" to be solved, in part, by technical communicators and communication designers naming …

Real, Intended Change: Business Movements?, Gill Robinson Hickman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

We are well aware that the economy, environment and organizations in today’s global context are highly interdependent and interconnected. This interdependence contributes to the blurring of lines among business, nonprofit and government entities to the extent that new forms of organization are emerging to tackle socioeconomic and sociopolitical issues that only the political system and social movements confronted in the past.

James MacGregor Burns proclaimed in his groundbreaking book, Leadership, that the effectiveness of leaders “will be tested by the achievement of purpose in the form of real and intended [emphasis added] social change.”¹ Burns explained that social …

Augustine's Punishments, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

During Augustine's life, government authorities were generally friendly to the Christianity he came to adopt and defend. His correspondence mentions one imperial magistrate in Africa, Virius Nicomachus Flavianus, a pagan vicar of Africa who seemed partial to Donatist Christians whom Augustine considered secessionists. Otherwise, from the 390s to 430, assorted proconsuls, vicars, and tribunes sent from the imperial chancery and asked to maintain order in North Africa were willing to enforce government edicts against Donatists and pagans. To an extent, Augustine endorsed enforcement. He was troubled by punitive measures that looked excessive to him, yet scholars generally agree with Peter …

Bringing Mothers And Fathers Together: Undergraduate Studies In Anthropology And Sociology, Angela Castañeda, Matthew Oware

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

As social scientists in a combined Sociology and Anthropology department at a small liberal arts institution, we approach research questions on mothering and fathering from our respective disciplines. In the summer of 2014 we made plans to experiment with a first year seminar that would bring our distinct courses together: Oware’s Man Up: Unpacking Manhood and Masculinity, and Castañeda’s Global Perspectives on Reproduction and Childbirth. In the fall of 2014, we combined our courses over two-weeks to discuss the roles of fathering and mothering in our research agendas. As we suspected, our courses were unevenly represented on their own with …

Prediction In The Processing Of Repair Disfluencies: Evidence From The Visual-World Paradigm, Matthew Warren Lowder, Fernanda Ferreira

Psychology Faculty Publications

Two visual-world eye-tracking experiments investigated the role of prediction in the processing of repair disfluencies (e.g., “The chef reached for some salt uh I mean some ketchup . . .”). Experiment 1 showed that listeners were more likely to fixate a critical distractor item (e.g., pepper) during the processing of repair disfluencies compared with the processing of coordination structures (e.g., “. . . some salt and also some ketchup . . .”). Experiment 2 replicated the findings of Experiment 1 for disfluency versus coordination constructions and also showed that the pattern of fixations to the critical distractor for disfluency …

The Role Of Encoding Strategy In Younger And Older Adult Associative Recognition: A Think-Aloud Analysis, Mark C. Fox, Zachary Baldock, Sara P. Freeman, Jane M. Berry

Psychology Faculty Publications

Older adults have especially poor recognition memory for word pairs, and recent research suggests this associative deficit manifests primarily in older adults’ higher rates of false alarms compared to younger adults. This could result from older adults either failing to generate meaningful (deep) mediators at study, or failing to benefit from having generated deep mediators at test. Younger and older adults performed a recognition memory task for words and word-pairs. A think-aloud analysis of their spontaneous encoding strategies (e.g., repetition, shallow mediators, and deep mediators) revealed that generation of deep mediators did not differ between younger and older adults, and …

Crime, Morality, And Republicanism, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

One of the abiding concerns of the philosophy of law has been to establish the relationship between law and morality. Within the criminal law, this concern often takes the form of debates over legal moralism--that is, "the position that immorality is sufficient for criminalization" (Alexander 2003: 131). This paper approaches these debates from the perspective of the recently revived republican tradition in politics and law. Contrary to what is usually taken to be liberalism's hostility to legal moralism, and especially to attempts to promote virtue through the criminal law, the republican approach takes the promotion of virtue to be one …

Evaluating Treatments And Interventions: What Constitutes “Evidence-Based” Treatment?, Lisa Jobe-Shields, Amanda Costello, Carrie Jackson, Rochelle F. Hanson

Psychology Faculty Publications

This chapter provides an overview of the evidence-based treatment (EBT) paradigm, beginning with definitional issues, followed by a discussion on use of the iterative process and the importance of strong academic–practice partnerships to inform the development, selection, and implementation of EBTs. The discussion then turns to the importance of attaining, measuring, and sustaining fidelity to the treatment models; and identifying common barriers to sustained EBT use. Drawing from our expertise related to interventions for children and adolescents, a few dissemination/implementation models are highlighted as examples of current efforts to achieve sustained use of EBTs among practitioners, within agencies, and across …

Local Ballot Will Be Different, Thomas J. Shields

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

Registered voters in the City of Richmond recently received an envelope from the Registrar’s Office with the words “Notice of Redistricting Changes” printed in red. For the first time since 1992, voters in Richmond and most of eastern Henrico County will not be voting in the 3rd Congressional District.

Typing With Emg Using Myoware, L. Elizabeth Crawford, Dylan T. Vavra

Psychology Faculty Publications

In this tutorial, we show how to create a simple at-home electromyography (EMG) system that will sense muscle activation from the surface of the skin and use it to send a keypress to a computer, bypassing the keyboard. We used a classic MaKey MaKey and a MyoWare sensor to accomplish this, along with a bit of coding. First, we show how to accomplish this using one MyoWare sensor. Then, we show how to add a second sensor to the system. For our purposes we used two sensors, but the methods described in this tutorial can be used to add any …

Criticism On The Map, Timothy Barney

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

On the evening of November 9, 1989, thousands stormed the entry points of the wall marking the historic split between West Berlin and East Berlin, the archetypal symbol of the bipolar Cold War. Meanwhile, President George H.W. Bush sat with Secretary of State James Baker, fielding questions from reporters in the Oval Office. On his desk, a binder of briefing information was opened to a standard State Department map of Cold War Germany. Throughout the hastily arranged press conference, the president often gestured toward the map, even tapping on it to emphasize his points about a "whole and free Europe" …

Eye-Tracking And Corpus-Based Analyses Of Syntax-Semantics Interactions In Complement Coercion, Matthew W. Lowder, Peter C. Gordon

Psychology Faculty Publications

Previous work has shown that the difficulty associated with processing complex semantic expressions is reduced when the critical constituents appear in separate clauses as opposed to when they appear together in the same clause. We investigated this effect further, focusing in particular on complement coercion, in which an event-selecting verb (e.g., began) combines with a complement that represents an entity (e.g., began the memo). Experiment 1 compared reading times for coercion versus control expressions when the critical verb and complement appeared together in a subject-extracted relative clause (SRC) (e.g., The secretary that began/wrote the memo) compared to …

Female Farming Systems, Elizabeth Ransom, Wynne Wright, Carmen Bain

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Female farming systems draws attention to women's (re)productive roles in agriculture, with particular attention to questions of power, equity, and empowerment. Female farming systems as an organizing concept highlights what was a surprisingly neglected field of study until the 1970s and provides insights into the gendered nature of agriculture. In the past and the present the term “farmer” presumes a male identity. Globally, women have often been marginalized from farming by denying them access to the material resources needed for success such as land, labor, and capital. Due to a variety of reasons there is a feminization of agriculture underway, …

Gender And Scholarly Publishing: What Students Need To Know, Lucretia Mcculley

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

As women and gender studies students emerge as citizens of the world, how can we educate them on scholarly communication issues? What role, if any, does gender play in successful scholarly publishing? How is open access publishing affecting global access to scholarship on gender? How do students’ lives on the Web influence their understanding of copyright?

Women and gender studies students need to understand the economics and legal aspects of scholarship, both as consumers and content creators. They need to be able to thoughtfully discuss who owns information, who controls it and who has access to it. Students also need …

Diploma Thesis: Do Women Represent Women?, Vladimira Dostalova

Jepson School of Leadership Studies Research Symposium

There is an implicit assumption behind advocating for women in elected offices that descriptive representation of women lead to a corresponding political output. This would mean that gender is one of the indicators of legislative behavior. To examine the role of gender in the substantial representation of women, I focus on the agenda setting process, which I measure as the sponsorship of group interest legislation. Data include all bills introduced in lower Houses of ten states, which provide necessary variance to control for party effect, overall ranking of the status of women, and level of women’s presence in a state …

Realignment: A Century Of Political Evolution, Abigail Huth

Jepson School of Leadership Studies Research Symposium

The Republican Party was founded to oppose the expansion of slavery. For decades, African Americans supported the party of Lincoln, while the Democratic Party rallied against “Black Republicans”. Now Black voters overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party. How did this transition happen? What began this shift? We have explored several milestones that we believe have led to this significant realignment. The evolving politics and policies of both Republicans and Democrats come into play when analyzing this transition. Events involving Theodor Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, and Lyndon B. Johnson present as significant turning points in the realignment of …

The Ethics Of Environmentalism For The Individual Consumer, Molly Collins

Jepson School of Leadership Studies Research Symposium

Climate change harms the health of the environment and the well-being of humans. It is the poor choices of individual consumers that contribute to climate change conditions. I argue that it is immoral to cause harm to others, thus climate change is an ethical dilemma for individual consumers. Enforcement of climate change policies are therefore justified, as individuals who cause harm through consumer behavior are liable to punishment. I begin with a pluralistic discussion of harm, before discussing the duties of individuals to make choices that will mitigate the current harms of climate change and the wrong moral assumptions that …

Group Analytics In Adam Smith's Work, David M. Levy, Sandra J. Peart

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The link between occupation and character began with David Hume and extended by Adam Smith in service to their attack on the doctrine of innate national character. Worker's awareness of the relative approbative rewards to occupation is central to Smith's competitive labor market equilibrium. When the division of labor is extended by growth, the variance of character increases. With this insight Smith was able to offer a race-blind theory of civilization, something that escaped even Hume. 19th century anthropological focus on the variance of character can be seen as a racialization of Smith's work.

Party Capability And The U.S. Courts Of Appeals: Understanding Why The “Haves” Win, John Szmer, Donald R. Songer, Jennifer Barnes Bowie

Political Science Faculty Publications

While many studies have examined party capability theory, few have empirically examined the potential causal mechanisms underlying the theory. We do this by combining quantitative analyses with qualitative data drawn from interviews with over 60 US courts of appeals judges. We find that the “haves,” or repeat players, hire better lawyers and that these lawyers independently contribute to the success of the repeat players. We also find that the advantages of the haves extend to all parties, though to a lesser extent than the advantages enjoyed by the US government. These results remain robust after controlling for ideology.

Tell Me A Story: Bridging The Gap Between University Of Richmond Students And Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center Residents, Sylvia Gale

Storytelling and Social Change

Dear Reader,

We are sixteen University of Richmond students who registered for a class called Storytelling and Social Change in the second semester of our first year of college. Our class explores the ways that stories—particularly life narratives—contribute to a community’s shared or imposed sense of identity, and considers whether and how storytelling is a tool for social change. As part of our class, we completed a Community Based Learning Project in which we worked with sixteen residents at Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center to build relationships through stories. The goals of our storytelling workshop were:

1. Build a healthy …

Understanding Academic Patrons’ Data Needs Through Virtual Reference Transcripts: Preliminary Findings From New York University Libraries, Margaret Smith, Jill Conte, Samantha Guss

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

New York University (NYU) Libraries has an extremely high-volume chat reference service. This popularity presents a unique opportunity for gaining insight into library patrons’ conceptualizations of their data reference needs and how these needs are changing. Through analysis of three years’ worth of chat transcripts, we began to explore user needs and familiarity related to locating secondary data and statistics, performing data analysis, and using existing data services. Ultimately, we focused our analysis on requests for census data. This article discusses, in detail, the methods, preliminary results, limitations, and proposed next steps of our investigation. Our final goal is to …

The Ethics Problem: Toward A Second-Best Solution To The Problem Of Economic Expertise, David M. Levy, Sandra J. Peart

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The collective action problem of economic experts was diagnosed acutely by Knight and Pigou in the 1930s. The interest of economists as a group is in pursuing the public good of truth; the interest of an individual economist is in pursuing the private good of happiness. Pigou’s example is the pursuit of political influence. Deviation from truth-seeking devastates the theory of governance as objective inquiry laid out by Knight and John Rawls, as we saw in the eugenic era. We reformulate the Knight–Rawls position as truth-seeking contingent on a presupposed system. The best case for the Knight–Rawls position is transparency, …

3.14 Rio 2016 And The Birth Of Brazilian Transparency, Pat Barr, Albert Flores, Kat Gavin, Shaun Freiman, Tyler Klink, Carter Nichols, Ann Reid, Rina Van Orden

Law Student Publications

Brazil’s modern democracy is but three decades old. With the Brazilian people now taking to the streets in protest at public corruption, the government is enacting new laws and learning to effectively enforce them. The nation is thus feeling the growing pains of an emergent commitment to transparency. In this, the window between Brazil’s hosting of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, it is timely to ask what the spotlight of these two events has revealed about the nation’s anti-corruption measures. How is the government responding to exposed corruption risk? Will the Olympics ultimately make good …

3.14 Rio 2016 And The Birth Of Brazilian Transparency, Andrew B. Spalding

Law Faculty Publications

Brazil’s modern democracy is but three decades old. With the Brazilian people now taking to the streets in protest at public corruption, the government is enacting new laws and learning to effectively enforce them. The nation is thus feeling the growing pains of an emergent commitment to transparency. In this, the window between Brazil’s hosting of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, it is timely to ask what the spotlight of these two events has revealed about the nation’s anti-corruption measures. How is the government responding to exposed corruption risk? Will the Olympics ultimately make good …

Anchors, Habitus, And Practices Besieged By War: Women And Gender In The Blockade Of Leningrad, Jeffrey K. Hass

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

As war challenges survival and social relations, how do actors alter and adapt dispositions and practices? To explore this question, I investigate women's perceptions of normal relations, practices, status, and gendered self in an intense situation of wartime survival, the Blockade of Leningrad (1941–1944), an 872-day ordeal that demographically feminized the city. Using Blockade diaries for data on everyday life, perceptions, and practices, I show how women's gendered skills and habits of breadseeking and caregiving (finding scarce resources and providing aid) were key to survival and helped elevate their sense of status. Yet this did not entice rethinking “gender.” To …

The Geography Of Learning: Ferrari Gestione Sportiva 1929-2008, Mark Jenkins, Stephen Tallman

Management Faculty Publications

This article considers the mechanisms that permit and enhance the movement of highly tacit component (technical) knowledge and geographically sticky architectural knowledge across borders and between clusters and firms. We address a number of critical research questions that relate to intra- and inter-locational knowledge transfer. We use a theory-driven, longitudinal, single case study to develop a conceptual framework to examine and describe how shifting the geography of knowledge sourcing can facilitate architectural change by following the transformation of one business unit within a specialist global organization through a series of evolutionary steps that involved internalizing new component knowledge from other …

Management Theory And Social Welfare: Contributions And Challenges, Thomas M. Jones, Thomas Donaldson, R. Edward Freeman, Jeffrey S. Harrison, Et. Al

Management Faculty Publications

In this Introduction to the Special Topic Forum on Management Theory and Social Welfare, we first provide an overview of the motivation behind the special issue. We then highlight the contributions of the six articles that make up this forum and identify some common themes. We also suggest some reasons why social welfare issues are so difficult to address in the context of management theory. In addition, we evaluate means of assessing social welfare and urge scholars not to make (or imply) unwarranted “wealth creation” claims.

Corporate Social Performance And Economic Cycles, Jeffrey S. Harrison, Shawn L. Berman

Management Faculty Publications

Do firms respond to changes in economic growth by altering their corporate social responsibility programs? If they do respond, are their responses simply neglect of areas associated with corporate social performance (CSP) or do they also cut back on positive programs such as profit sharing, public/private housing programs, or charitable contributions? In this paper we argue that because CSP-related actions and programs tend to be discretionary, they are likely to receive less attention during tough economic times, a result of cost-cutting efforts. However, the various CSP performance areas vary in terms of their resource requirements and their influence on financial …