La pregunta: una experiencia pedagógica de liberación

Desde un análisis crítico y reflexivo de la educación, se hace necesario preguntar por el sentido del lenguaje en los procesos formativos que hacen parte del acordona­miento ideológico de esta sociedad dirigida por la razón instrumental hacia los princi­pios del consumo y la competencia. Poner en este contexto el lugar de la pregunta por el lenguaje es, necesariamente, preguntar por el lugar y el propósito de la pregunta en la educación. ¿Tiene lugar la pregunta en la hegemonía de un modelo capitalista que se extiende a la concepción mercantilista de la educación? ¿Qué intencionalidades le subyacen a la pregunta como acción polí­tica en la que se le da apertura al diálogo con criterios ético, político y propositivo? En este texto, me propongo desarrollar estas inquietudes desde el horizonte de indagación de la pregunta como una ex­periencia pedagógica de liberación, en la cual se trazan retos epistémicos y estéti­cos de relevancia en los propósitos de una educación con responsabilidad social, y en el compromiso de un maestro con claridad práctica y discursiva frente a su papel como sujeto político

A critical study of John Hick's religious pluralism

This study examines the pluralistic hypothesis advanced by the late Professor John Hick viz. that all religious faiths provide equally salvific pathways to God, irrespective of their theological and doctrinal differences. The central focus of the study is a critical examination of (a) the epistemology of religious experience as advanced by Professor Hick, (b) the ontological status of the being he understands to be God, and further asks (c) to what extent can the pluralistic view of religious experience be harmonised with the experience with which the Christian life is understood to begin viz. regeneration. Tracing the theological journey of Professor Hick from fundamentalist Christian to religious pluralist, the study notes the reasons given for Hick’s gradual disengagement from the Christian faith. In addition to his belief that the pre-scientific worldview of the Bible was obsolete and passé, Hick took the view that modern biblical scholarship could not accommodate traditionally held Christian beliefs. He conceded that the Incarnation, if true, would be decisive evidence for the uniqueness of Christianity, but rejected the same on the grounds of logical incoherence. This study affirms the view that the doctrine of the Incarnation occupies a place of crucial importance within world religion, but rejects the claim of incoherence. Professor Hick believed that God’s Spirit was at work in all religions, producing a common religious experience, or spiritual awakening to God. The soteriological dimension of this spiritual awakening, he suggests, finds expression as the worshipper turns away from self-centredness to the giving of themselves to God and others. At the level of epistemology he further argued that religious experience itself provided the rational basis for belief in God. The study supports the assertion by Professor Hick that religious experience itself ought to be trusted as a source of knowledge and this on the principle of credulity, which states that a person’s claim to perceive or experience something is prima facie justified, unless there are compelling reasons to the contrary. Hick’s argument has been extensively developed and defended by philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga and William Alston. This confirms the importance of Hick’s contribution to the philosophy of religion, and further establishes his reputation within the field as an original thinker. It is recognised in this thesis, however, that in affirming only the rationality of belief, but not the obligation to believe, Professor Hick’s epistemology is not fully consistent with a Christian theology of revelation. Christian theology views the created order as pre-interpreted and unambiguous in its testimony to God’s existence. To disbelieve in God’s existence is to violate one’s epistemic duty by suppressing the truth. Professor Hick’s critical realist principle, which he regards as the key to understanding what is happening in the different forms of religious experience, is examined within this thesis. According to the critical realist principle, there are realities external to us, yet we are never aware of them as they are in themselves, but only as they appear to us within our particular cognitive machinery and conceptual resources. All awareness of God is interpreted through the lens of pre-existing, culturally relative religious forms, which in turn explains the differing theologies within the world of religion. The critical realist principle views God as unknowable, in the sense that his inner nature is beyond the reach of human conceptual categories and linguistic systems. Professor Hick thus endorses and develops the view of God as ineffable, but employs the term transcategorial when speaking of God’s ineffability. The study takes the view that the notion of transcategoriality as developed by Professor Hick appears to deny any ontological status to God, effectively arguing him out of existence. Furthermore, in attributing the notion of transcategoriality to God, Professor Hick would appear to render incoherent his own fundamental assertion that we can know nothing of God that is either true or false. The claim that the experience of regeneration with which the Christian life begins can be classed as a mere species of the genus common throughout all faiths, is rejected within this thesis. Instead it is argued that Christian regeneration is a distinctive experience that cannot be reduced to a salvific experience, defined merely as an awareness of, or awakening to, God, followed by a turning away from self to others. Professor Hick argued against any notion that the Christian community was the social grouping through which God’s Spirit was working in an exclusively redemptive manner. He supported his view by drawing attention to (a) the presence, at times, of comparable or higher levels of morality in world religion, when contrasted with that evidenced by the followers of Christ, and (b) the presence, at times, of demonstrably lower levels of morality in the followers of Christ, when contrasted with the lives of other religious devotees. These observations are fully supported, but the conclusion reached is rejected, on the grounds that according to Christian theology the saving work of God’s Spirit is evidenced in a life that is changing from what it was before. Christian theology does not suggest or demand that such lives at every stage be demonstrably superior, when contrasted with other virtuous or morally upright members of society. The study concludes by paying tribute to the contribution Professor Hick has made to the field of the epistemology of religious experience.

Low organisational justice and heavy drinking: a prospective cohort study

Objectives: To investigate whether low perceived organisational injustice predicts heavy drinking among employees. Methods: Data from the prospective occupational cohort study, the 10-Town Study, related to 15 290 Finnish public sector local government employees nested in 2432 work units, were used. Non-drinkers were excluded. Procedural, interactional and total organisational justice, heavy drinking (>=210 g of absolute alcohol per week) and other psychosocial factors were determined by means of questionnaire in 2000-2001 (phase 1) and 2004 (phase 2). Multilevel logistic regression analyses taking into account for the hierarchical structure of the data were conducted and adjustments were made for sex, age, socio-economic position, marital status, baseline heavy drinking, psychological distress and other psychosocial risk factors such as job strain and effort/reward imbalance. Results: After adjustments, participants who reported low procedural justice at phase 1 were about 1.2 times more likely to be heavy drinkers at phase 2 compared with their counterparts with high justice. Low perceived justice in interpersonal treatment and low perceived total organisational justice were associated with an elevated prevalence of heavy drinking only in the socio-demographics adjusted model. Conclusions: This is the first longitudinal study to show that low procedural justice is weakly associated with an increased likelihood of heavy drinking.

Integrating Environmental Justice and Social-Ecological Resilience for Successful Adaptation to Climate Change: Lessons from African American Communities on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay

This research concerns the conceptual and empirical relationship between environmental justice and social-ecological resilience as it relates to climate change vulnerability and adaptation. Two primary questions guided this work. First, what is the level of resilience and adaptive capacity for social-ecological systems that are characterized by environmental injustice in the face of climate change? And second, what is the role of an environmental justice approach in developing adaptation policies that will promote social-ecological resilience? These questions were investigated in three African American communities that are particularly vulnerable to flooding from sea-level rise on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, I found that in all three communities, religious faith and the church, rootedness in the landscape, and race relations were highly salient to community experience. The degree to which these common aspects of the communities have imparted adaptive capacity has changed over time. Importantly, a given social-ecological factor does not have the same effect on vulnerability in all communities; however, in all communities political isolation decreases adaptive capacity and increases vulnerability. This political isolation is at least partly due to procedural injustice, which occurs for a number of interrelated reasons. This research further revealed that while all stakeholders (policymakers, environmentalists, and African American community members) generally agree that justice needs to be increased on the Eastern Shore, stakeholder groups disagree about what a justice approach to adaptation would look like. When brought together at a workshop, however, these stakeholders were able to identify numerous challenges and opportunities for increasing justice. Resilience was assessed by the presence of four resilience factors: living with uncertainty, nurturing diversity, combining different types of knowledge, and creating opportunities for self-organization. Overall, these communities seem to have low resilience; however, there is potential for resilience to increase. Finally, I argue that the use of resilience theory for environmental justice communities is limited by the great breadth and depth of knowledge required to evaluate the state of the social-ecological system, the complexities of simultaneously promoting resilience at both the regional and local scale, and the lack of attention to issues of justice.

Justice envers les enfants et légitimité politique en éducation

L’idée selon laquelle les enfants sont des sujets à part entière de considérations de justice n’est pas très contestée. Les enfants ont des intérêts qui leur sont propres et ont un statut moral indépendant de leurs parents : ils ne sont ni la propriété de ces derniers ni une simple extension de leur personne. Pourtant, les travaux des plus grands théoriciens de la justice en philosophie politique contemporaine ne contiennent pas de discussion systématique du statut moral et politique des enfants et du contenu de nos obligations à leur égard. Cette thèse contribue à remédier à cette omission à travers l’examen de quatre grandes questions principales. (1) Quelles sont les obligations de justice de l’état libéral envers les enfants ? (2) Quels types de politiques publiques en matière d’éducation des enfants sont moralement légitimes ? (3) Jusqu’à quel point est-il moralement acceptable pour les parents de délibérément forger la vision du monde de leurs enfants ? (4) Quels critères moraux devraient guider l’élaboration de politiques en matière d’éducation morale dans les écoles ? Cette thèse est constituée de quatre articles. Le premier, « Political Liberalism and Children’s Education », aborde les questions du fondement normatif et des implications du principe de ‘neutralité éducative’ ou ‘anti-perfectionnisme éducatif’. Selon ce principe, il n’est pas légitime pour l’État libéral de délibérément promouvoir, à travers ses politiques publiques en éducation, une conception particulière de la vie bonne. L’article défend les idées suivantes. D’abord, ledit principe est exclusivement fondé sur des raisons de justice envers les parents. Ensuite, l’anti-perfectionnisme libéral n’est pas, pour autant, ‘mauvais pour les enfants’, puisqu’une vaste gamme d’interventions politiques dans la vie familiale et l’éducation des enfants sont, de manière surprenante, justifiables dans ce cadre théorique. Le deuxième article, « On the Permissibility of Shaping Children’s Values », examine la question de savoir si les parents ont un droit moral de forger délibérément l’identité, la conception du monde et les valeurs de leurs enfants. L’article développe une critique de la conception anti-perfectionniste des devoirs parentaux et propose un nouvel argument libéral à l’appui d’un droit parental conditionnel de forger l’identité de leurs enfants. L’article introduit également une distinction importante entre les notions d’éducation compréhensive et d’« enrôlement » compréhensif. Le troisième article, « Common Education and the Practice of Liberal Neutrality: The Loyola High School Case », défend trois thèses principales à travers une analyse normative de l’affaire juridique de l’école Loyola. Premièrement, il est légitime pour l’État libéral d’adopter un modèle d’éducation commune fort. Deuxièmement, la thèse selon laquelle la neutralité comme approche éducative serait impossible est injustifiée. Troisièmement, il existe néanmoins de bonnes raisons pour l’État libéral d’accommoder plusieurs écoles religieuses qui rejettent le modèle de la neutralité. Le quatrième article, « Which Moral Issues Should be Taught as Controversial? », critique à la fois le critère ‘épistémique’ dominant pour déterminer quels enjeux moraux devraient être enseignés aux jeunes comme ‘controversés’, et à la fois la manière dont le débat sur l’enseignement des enjeux controversés fut construit au cours des dernières années, d’un point de vue substantiel et méthodologique. L’article propose une manière alternative d’aborder le débat, laquelle prend adéquatement en compte la pluralité des objectifs de l’éducation et un ensemble d’autres considérations morales pertinentes.

Screening Diversity: Women & Work in Twenty-First-Century Popular Culture

Screening Diversity: Women and Work in Twenty-first Century Popular Culture explores contemporary representations of diverse professional women on screen. Audiences are offered successful women with limited concerns for feminism, anti-racism, or economic justice. I introduce the term viewsers to describe a group of movie and television viewers in the context of the online review platform Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and the social media platforms Twitter and Facebook. Screening Diversity follows their engagement in a representative sample of professional women on film and television produced between 2007 and 2015. The sample includes the television shows, Scandal, Homeland, VEEP, Parks and Recreation, and The Good Wife, as well as the movies, Zero Dark Thirty, The Proposal, The Heat, The Other Woman, I Don’t Know How She Does It, and Temptation. Viewsers appreciated female characters like Olivia (Scandal), and Maya (Zero Dark Thiry) who treated their work as a quasi-religious moral imperative. Producers and viewsers shared the belief that unlimited time commitment and personal identification were vital components of professionalism. However, powerful women, like The Proposal’s Margaret and VEEP’s Selina, were often called bitches. Some viewsers embraced bitch-positive politics in recognition of the struggles of women in power. Women’s disproportionate responsibility for reproductive labor, often compromises their ability to live up to moral standards of work. Unlike producers, viewsers celebrated and valued that labor. However, texts that included serious consideration of women as workers were frequently labelled chick flicks or soap operas. The label suggested that women’s labor issues were not important enough that they could be a topic of quality television or prestigious film, which bolstered the idea that workplace equality for women is not a problem in which the general public is implicated. Emerging discussions of racial injustice on television offered hope that these formations are beginning to shift.

Experiências de (in)justiça com os professores e comportamentos de desvio na adolescência

Tese de Doutoramento em Psicologia na área de especialidade Psicologia Social

Retour post-isolement en milieu psychiatrique : développement, implantation et évaluation d’une intervention en soins aigus

L’isolement avec ou sans contention (IC) en milieu psychiatrique touche près d’un patient sur quatre au Québec (Dumais, Larue, Drapeau, Ménard, & Giguère-Allard, 2011). Il est pourtant largement documenté que cette pratique porte préjudice aux patients, aux infirmières et à l’organisation (Stewart, Van der Merwe, Bowers, Simpson, & Jones, 2010). Cette mesure posant un problème éthique fait l’objet de politiques visant à la restreindre, voire à l’éliminer. Les études sur l’expérience de l’isolement du patient de même que sur la perception des infirmières identifient le besoin d'un retour sur cet évènement. Plusieurs équipes de chercheurs proposent un retour post-isolement (REPI) intégrant à la fois l’équipe traitante, plus particulièrement les infirmières, et le patient comme intervention afin de diminuer l’incidence de l’IC. Le REPI vise l’échange émotionnel, l’analyse des étapes ayant mené à la prise de décision d’IC et la projection des interventions futures. Le but de cette étude était de développer, implanter et évaluer le REPI auprès des intervenants et des patients d’une unité de soins psychiatriques aigus afin d’améliorer leur expérience de soins. Les questions de recherche étaient : 1) Quel est le contexte d’implantation du REPI? 2) Quels sont les éléments facilitants et les obstacles à l’implantation du REPI selon les patients et les intervenants? 3) Quelle est la perception des patients et des intervenants des modalités et retombées du REPI?; et 4) L’implantation du REPI est-elle associée à une diminution de la prévalence et de la durée des épisodes d’IC? Cette étude de cas instrumentale (Stake, 1995, 2008) était ancrée dans une approche participative. Le cas était celui de l’unité de soins psychiatriques aigus pour premier épisode psychotique où a été implanté le REPI. En premier lieu, le développement du REPI a d’abord fait l’objet d’une documentation du contexte par une immersion dans le milieu (n=56 heures) et des entretiens individuels avec un échantillonnage de convenance (n=3 patients, n=14 intervenants). Un comité d’experts (l’étudiante-chercheuse, six infirmières du milieu et un patient partenaire) a par la suite développé le REPI qui comporte deux volets : avec le patient et en équipe. L’évaluation des retombées a été effectuée par des entretiens individuels (n= 3 patients, n= 12 intervenants) et l’examen de la prévalence et de la durée des IC six mois avant et après l’implantation du REPI. Les données qualitatives ont été examinées selon une analyse thématique (Miles, Huberman, & Saldana, 2014), tandis que les données quantitatives ont fait l’objet de tests descriptifs et non-paramétriques. Les résultats proposent que le contexte d’implantation est défini par des normes implicites et explicites où l’utilisation de l’IC peut générer un cercle vicieux de comportements agressifs nourris par un profond sentiment d’injustice de la part des patients. Ceux-ci ont l’impression qu’ils doivent se conformer aux attentes du personnel et aux règles de l’unité. Les participants ont exprimé le besoin de créer des opportunités pour une communication authentique qui pourrait avoir lieu lors du REPI, bien que sa pratique soit variable d’un intervenant à un autre. Les résultats suggèrent que le principal élément ayant facilité l’implantation du REPI est l’approche participative de l’étude, alors que les obstacles rencontrés relèvent surtout de la complexité de la mise en œuvre du REPI en équipe. Lors du REPI avec le patient, les infirmières ont pu explorer ses sentiments et son point de vue, ce qui a favorisé la reconstruction de la relation thérapeutique. Quant au REPI avec l’équipe de soins, il a été perçu comme une opportunité d’apprentissage, ce qui a permis d’ajuster le plan d’intervention des patients. Suite à l’implantation du REPI, les résultats ont d’ailleurs montré une réduction significative de l’utilisation de l’isolement et du temps passé en isolement. Les résultats de cette thèse soulignent la possibilité d’outrepasser le malaise initial perçu tant par le patient que par l’infirmière en systématisant le REPI. De plus, cette étude met l’accent sur le besoin d’une présence authentique pour atteindre un partage significatif dans la relation thérapeutique, ce qui est la pierre d’assise de la pratique infirmière en santé mentale. Cette étude contribue aux connaissances sur la prévention des comportements agressifs en milieu psychiatrique en documentant le contexte dans lequel se situe l’IC, en proposant un REPI comportant deux volets de REPI et en explorant ses retombées. Nos résultats soutiennent le potentiel du développement d’une prévention tertiaire qui intègre à la fois la perspective des patients et des intervenants.

THERE GOES THE ELECTORAL NEIGHBORHOOD: LOCAL NETWORKS, ATTRIBUTION OF RESPONSIBILITY, AND THE (UN) FAIRNESS OF ELECTIONS

During the last two decades there have been but a handful of recorded cases of electoral fraud in Latin America. However, survey research consistently shows that often citizens do not trust the integrity of the electoral process. This dissertation addresses the puzzle by explaining the mismatch between how elections are conducted and how the process is perceived. My theoretical contribution provides a double-folded argument. First, voters’ trust in their community members (“the local experience”) impacts their level of confidence in the electoral process. Since voters often find their peers working at polling stations, negative opinions about them translate into negative opinions about the election. Second, perceptions of unfairness of the system (“the global effect”) negatively impact the way people perceive the transparency of the electoral process. When the political system fails to account for social injustice, citizens lose faith in the mechanism designed to elect representatives -and ultimately a set of policies. The fact that certain groups are systematically disregarded by the system triggers the notion that the electoral process is flawed. This is motivated by either egotropic or sociotropic considerations. To test these hypotheses, I employ a survey conducted in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala during May/June 2014, which includes a population-based experiment. I show that Voters who trust their peers consistently have higher confidence in the electoral process. Whereas respondents who were primed about social unfairness (treatment) expressed less confidence in the quality of the election. Finally, I find that the local experience is predominant over the global effect. The treatment has a statistically significant effect only for respondents who trust their community. Attribution of responsibility for voters who are skeptics of their peers is clear and simple, leaving no room for a more diffuse mechanism, the unfairness of the political system. Finally, now I extend analysis to the Latin America region. Using data from LAPOP that comprises four waves of surveys in 22 countries, I confirm the influence of the “local experience” and the “global effect” as determinants of the level of confidence in the electoral process.

Teachers' legitimacy: Effects of justice perception and social comparison processes

Background. Teachers’ legitimacy is central to school functioning. Teachers’ justice, whether distributive or procedural, predicts teachers’ legitimacy. Aims. What is still do be found, and constitutes the goal of this paper, is whether unjust treatment by a teacher affects the legitimacy of the teacher differently when the student knows that the teacher was fair to a peer (comparative judgement) or when the student does not have that information (autonomous judgement). Samples. A total of 79 high school students participated in Study 1; 75 high school students participated in Study 2. Methods. Two experimental studies with a 2 justice valence (just, unjust) 9 2 social comparison processes (autonomous judgements, comparative judgements) betweenparticipants design were conducted. Study 1 addressed distributive justice and Study 2 addressed procedural justice. The dependent variable was teachers’ legitimacy. Results. In both studies, situations perceived as just led to higher teachers’ legitimacy than situations perceived as unjust. For the distributive injustice conditions, teachers’ legitimacy was equally lower for autonomous judgement and comparative judgement conditions. For procedural injustice, teachers’ legitimacy was lower when the peer was treated justly and the participant was treated unfairly, compared with the condition when the participants did not know how the teacher treated the peer. Conclusions. We conclude that teachers’ injustice affects teachers’ legitimacy, but it does it differently according to the social comparisons involved and the type of justice involved. Moreover, these results highlight that social comparisons are an important psychological process and, therefore, they should be taken into account in models of justice.

What can the philosophy of science contribute to the ethics of science and technology?

Nascida para permitir que seus criadores possam atender suas próprias necessidades, a técnica científica sempre desempenhou papel significativo na civilização humana. Este é o contexto em que podemos vislumbrar o advento da tecnociência moderna, que tem contribuído significativamente para o incremento do controle humano sobre a natureza. Este estudo tem por objetivo analisar, sob o enfoque da bioética, reflexões sobre como a filosofia da ciência entende a neutralidade da ciência e sua convergência com a racionalidade epistêmica, bem como relacionar essas reflexões ao processo de tomada de decisões na administração da tecnociência. O estudo levantou dúvidas sobre a capacidade do conhecimento tecnocientífico para legitimar e justificar as decisões no âmbito dos sistemas de ciência e tecnologia nacionais, sinalizando assim a necessidade de promover ligação entre a auto-regulação tecnocientífico e hetero-regulação bioética. ______________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT

Visual Insight in Geometry

According to a traditional rationalist proposal, it is possible to attain knowledge of certain necessary truths by means of insight—an epistemic mental act that combines the 'presentational' character of perception with the a priori status usually reserved for discursive reasoning. In this dissertation, I defend the insight proposal in relation to a specific subject matter: elementary Euclidean plane geometry, as set out in Book I of Euclid's Elements. In particular, I argue that visualizations and visual experiences of diagrams allow human subjects to grasp truths of geometry by means of visual insight. In the first two chapters, I provide an initial defense of the geometrical insight proposal, drawing on a novel interpretation of Plato's Meno to motivate the view and to reply to some objections. In the remaining three chapters, I provide an account of the psychological underpinnings of geometrical insight, a task that requires considering the psychology of visual imagery alongside the details of Euclid's geometrical system. One important challenge is to explain how basic features of human visual representations can serve to ground our intuitive grasp of Euclid's postulates and other initial assumptions. A second challenge is to explain how we are able to grasp general theorems by considering diagrams that depict only special cases. I argue that both of these challenges can be met by an account that regards geometrical insight as based in visual experiences involving the combined deployment of two varieties of 'dynamic' visual imagery: one that allows the subject to visually rehearse spatial transformations of a figure's parts, and another that allows the subject to entertain alternative ways of structurally integrating the figure as a whole. It is the interplay between these two forms of dynamic imagery that enables a visual experience of a diagram, suitably animated in visual imagination, to justify belief in the propositions of Euclid’s geometry. The upshot is a novel dynamic imagery account that explains how intuitive knowledge of elementary Euclidean plane geometry can be understood as grounded in visual insight.

RACISM IN DIGITAL ERA: DEVELOPMENT AND INITIAL VALIDATION OF THE PERCEIVED ONLINE RACISM SCALE (PORS V1.0)

Racism continues to thrive on the Internet. Yet, little is known about racism in online settings and the potential consequences. The purpose of this study was to develop the Perceived Online Racism Scale (PORS), the first measure to assess people’s perceived online racism experiences as they interact with others and consume information on the Internet. Items were developed through a multi-stage process based on literature review, focus-groups, and qualitative data collection. Based on a racially diverse large-scale sample (N = 1023), exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses provided support for a 30-item bifactor model with the following three factors: (a) 14-item PORS-IP (personal experiences of racism in online interactions), (b) 5-item PORS-V (observations of other racial/ethnic minorities being offended), and (c) 11-item PORS-I (consumption of online contents and information denigrating racial/ethnic minorities and highlighting racial injustice in society). Initial construct validity examinations suggest that PORS is significantly linked to psychological distress.

O Kwaryp de Kanutari : uma abordagem linguística e etnográfica

Tese (doutorado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Letras, Departamento de Linguística, Português e Línguas Clássicas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Linguística, 2015.

Long-term Success of Family Firms: Investigating Specific Aspects of Firm-level Entrepreneurship and Individual-level Antecedents

Long-term success of family firms is of utmost social and economic importance. Three of its determinants are in the center of this Dissertation: firmlevel entrepreneurial orientation (EO), managers' entrepreneurial behavior, and value-creating attitudes of non-family employees. Each determinant and respective research gaps are addressed by one paper of this cumulative dissertation. Referring to firm-level EO, scholars claim that EO is a main antecedent to firms' both short- and long-term success. However, family firms seem to be successful across generations despite rather low levels of EO. The first paper addresses this paradox by investigating EO patterns of long-lived family firms in three Swiss case studies. The main finding is that the key to success is not to be as entrepreneurially as possible all the time, but to continuously adapt the EO profile depending on internal and external factors. Moreover, the paper suggest new subcategories to different EO dimensions. With regard to entrepreneurial behavior of managers, there is a lack of knowledge how individual-level and organizational level factors affect its evolvement. The second paper addresses this gap by investigating a sample of 403 middle-level managers from both family and non-family firms. It introduces psychological ownership of managers as individual-level antecedent and investigates the interaction with organizational factors. As a central insight, management support is found to strengthen the psychological ownership-entrepreneurial behavior relationship. The third paper is based on the fact that employees' justice perceptions are established antecedents of value-creating employee attitudes such as affective commitment and job satisfaction. Even though family firms are susceptible to nonfamily employees´ perceptions of injustice, corresponding research is scarce. Moreover, the mechanism connecting justice perceptions and positive outcomes is still unclear. Addressing these gaps, the analysis of a sample of 310 non-family employees reveals that psychological ownership is a mediator in the relationships between distributive justice perceptions and both affective commitment and job satisfaction. Altogether, the three papers offer valuable contributions to family business literature with respect to EO, entrepreneurial behavior, and value-creating employee attitudes. Thus, they increase current understanding about important determinants of family firms' long-term success, while opening up numerous ways of future research.