Disclosure of HIV status and stigma in rural communities in Brazil: A conundrum for researchers

Étude de cas / Case study

Social networks and occupational choice: the endogenous formation of attitudes and beliefs about tax compliance

The paper analyses the emergence of group-specific attitudes and beliefs about tax compliance when individuals interact in a social network. It develops a model in which taxpayers possess a range of individual characteristics – including attitude to risk, potential for success in self-employment, and the weight attached to the social custom for honesty – and make an occupational choice based on these characteristics. Occupations differ in the possibility for evading tax. The social network determines which taxpayers are linked, and information about auditing and compliance is transmitted at meetings between linked taxpayers. Using agent-based simulations, the analysis demonstrates how attitudes and beliefs endogenously emerge that differ across sub-groups of the population. Compliance behaviour is different across occupational groups, and this is reinforced by the development of group-specific attitudes and beliefs. Taxpayers self-select into occupations according to the degree of risk aversion, the subjective probability of audit is sustained above the objective probability, and the weight attached to the social custom differs across occupations. These factors combine to lead to compliance levels that differ across occupations.

'Doctor, Doctor...' entrepreneurial diagnosis and market making

Doctor-patient jokes are universally popular because of the information asymmetries within the diagnostic relationship. We contend that entrepreneurial diagnosis is present in markets where consumers are unable to diagnose their own problems and, instead, may rely on the entrepreneur to diagnose them. Entrepreneurial diagnosis is a cognitive skill possessed by the entrepreneur. It is an identifiable subset of entrepreneurial judgment and can be modeled – which we attempt to do. In order to overcome the information asymmetries and exploit opportunities, we suggest that entrepreneurs must invest in market making innovations (as distinct from product innovations) such as trustworthy reputations. The diagnostic entrepreneur described in this paper represents a creative response to difficult diagnostic problems and helps to explain the success of many firms whose products are not particularly innovative but which are perceived as offering high standards of service. These firms are trusted not only for their truthfulness about the quality of their product, but for their honesty, confidentiality and understanding in helping customers identify the most appropriate product to their needs.

No country for honest men: political philosophers and real politics

There are limits on the duty to tell the truth. Sometimes, because of the undesirable consequences of honesty, we are morally required not to reveal certain truths and can even be required to lie. In this article, we explore the implications of this uncontroversial claim for the practice of political philosophers. We argue that, given the consequences of misunderstandings and misrepresentations that might occur, political philosophers will sometimes be under a moral duty not to disseminate their research and, in highly exceptional cases, have a moral duty to lie outright.

Coalition Formation through Motivation and Trust

Cooperation is the fundamental underpinning of multi-agent systems, allowing agents to interact to achieve their goals. Where agents are self-interested, or potentially unreliable, there must be appropriate mechanisms to cope with the uncertainty that arises. In particular, agents must manage the risk associated with interacting with others who have different objectives, or who may fail to fulfil their commitments. Previous work has utilised the notions of motivation and trust in engendering successful cooperation between self-interested agents. Motivations provide a means for representing and reasoning about agents' overall objectives, and trust offers a mechanism for modelling and reasoning about reliability, honesty, veracity and so forth. This paper extends that work to address some of its limitations. In particular, we introduce the concept of a clan: a group of agents who trust each other and have similar objectives. Clan members treat each other favourably when making private decisions about cooperation, in order to gain mutual benefit. We describe mechanisms for agents to form, maintain, and dissolve clans in accordance with their self-interested nature, along with giving details of how clan membership influences individual decision making. Finally, through some simulation experiments we illustrate the effectiveness of clan formation in addressing some of the inherent problems with cooperation among self-interested agents.

Beyond ethics : a community platform to secure moral integrity

Stakeholders perceive the role of accountants to reflect trust, honesty, impartiality, fairness and transparency. The aim of this paper is to explore avenues to strengthen the moral integrity of professional bodies and their members. The resulting recommendations include a community or "milieu" approach.

Fiscal responsibility and Australian Commonwealth, State and Territory government budgets

The government sector in Australia has seen the introduction of accrual accounting principles in recent years. However, this process has been complicated by the presence of two alternative financial reporting frameworks in the form of a) the Government Finance Statistics (OFS) uniform framework and b) the accrual accounting rules specified in Australian professional accounting standards, principally AAS 31. While a variety of cash and accrual based measurements are available pursuant to these frameworks, there has been no prescription of the manner in which the alternative measures should be presented. This paper presents the findings from a case study of the 2005-06 annual budgets prepared by the Australian Commonwealth government and the governments of the six Australian States and the two Australian Territories. The study examined the headlined financial outcome (general government sector budget surplus or deficit) announced in the budget papers of the nine governments. Findings indicate the adoption of varying measurement bases and a consequent lack of inter-government comparability. A number of variations to the measurements prescribed in the accounting frameworks were also observed. The paper analyses these government budget surplus and deficit numbers in the context of fiscal responsibility, the Commonwealth government's Charter of Budget Honesty and the AASB's current GAAPIGFS Convergence project.

Color signals in the Black Grouse (Tetrao tetrix) : signal properties and their condition dependency

Recent progress in techniques of quantifying between‐individual differences of color‐based ornaments has revealed undiscovered possibilities for research in sexual selection. We present how the color spectra data can be comprehensively used for studying the importance of sexual ornaments in the black grouse and how these ornaments are related to a male condition. For this, we used both correlative field and experimental data. Field data indicated that older males had more chromatic coloration than yearlings. Blue chroma of males was correlated with male mating success. We experimentally manipulated yearling birds with testosterone implants and found that testosterone‐implanted males had impaired expression of several sexual ornaments: 10 months after the implantation, both structural‐based blue and carotenoid‐based red eye comb coloration were diminished, as well as lyre (tail) length. However, the manipulation did not affect vital traits under natural selection (wing length or body mass). Our data indicate that structural color is an important trait in sexual selection in this lekking species. Importantly, the data also indicate that male sexual ornaments are more susceptible to environmental conditions than the other male traits, thus showing their heightened condition dependency compared with the other traits mediating the honesty of signaling.

Borderline personality disorder - an overview for emergency clinicians

The diagnosis of borderline personality disorder frequently underlies self-harm and suicidal presentations to the emergency department. Borderline pathology combined with high levels of comorbidity, stigma, and treatment uncertainty, increase the challenges of caring for someone with this diagnosis in an emergency setting. Attributes such as black-and-white thinking and splitting may compromise an already precarious situation. The maintenance of safety requires prioritisation and necessitates a practical and respectful approach, which avoids notions of attention-seeking behaviour. Clinical assessment should distinguish between self-harm and suicide attempts where possible and take into account acute on chronic risk. The emergency clinician will need to consider the degree of containment required in the emergency department and is encouraged to maintain transparency and honesty with the client regarding treatment decisions. If hospitalisation needs to be considered, clinicians should take into account immediate therapeutic benefit versus the counter-therapeutic risk of dependency and regression. Overall, it is reasonable for clinicians to aim for clients to return to their pre-crisis level of functioning, and beneficial for clinicians to approach this client group with therapeutic optimism.

Does testosterone determine dominance in the house sparrow Passer domesticus? An experimental test

Badges of status function in many birds within a social context to establish dominance hierarchies and reduce antagonistic encounters. In order to maintain the honesty of the signalling system, such badges must be costly to produce or to maintain. The chest bib of the house sparrow functions as a badge of status and changes in size are known to be controlled by testosterone levels. We sought to test the relative importance of testosterone as opposed to bib size in determining dominance within a group of male house sparrows. We did this by manipulating testosterone levels independently during both breeding and post-breeding seasons in experimental birds and examining the effect of testosterone titre, as well as corticosterone titre relative to bib size on dominance levels. Dominance hierarchies within the groups were tested during both the breeding and post-breeding phases. We compared the results of these tests with dominance among intact (unmanipulated) birds. Results suggested that the breeding season dominance levels were largely determined by testosterone levels as well as bib size, whereas the post-breeding dominance levels were determined by postbreeding testosterone titre and previous breeding season dominance level. Within unmanipulated birds, basal corticosterone levels were significantly, negatively correlated with dominance level, but only during the breeding season. The influence of breeding season dominance on post-breeding dominance suggests social history is important in determining dominance interactions as well as current testosterone levels and bib size.

Business ethics and accounting students : Australia, South Asia and East Asia

Recent corporate collapses around the world show that there are no national boundaries for these occurrences. Australian corporate collapses including HIH Insurance, One.Tel, Ansett Australia and Harris Scarfe have raised public expectations of investigation of the causes of collapses (Mirshekary, Yaftian & Cross, 2005). The main reason for the collapse of HIH was mismanagement, with an emphasis more on the directors’ personal qualities such as integrity, honesty and morality rather than tougher legislation and rules. Accounting students are our future business leaders. The teaching of ethics in the classroom to multicultural groups of students provides an opportunity to facilitate the sharing of knowledge, and to increase interaction and debate around different approaches to ethics among students from different countries.
This study uses previous literature to explain the attitudes of accounting students towards academic and business/accounting ethics at an Australian university which is a multi-campus institution undertaking programs and activities at regional, national, international levels and by distance education.
This study reports the results of cross-cultural investigations of students’ ethical perceptions on moral values, academic and accounting/business vignettes, given that all students share the same learning opportunities, knowledge of ethics and interaction with their peers and lecturers. The results indicate no significant differences in responses between the students from Australia, South Asia and East Asia.

Australian farmers' and food processors' values

Purpose – The aim of this exploratory study was to examine and compare a range of business values held by farmers and food processors.

Design/methodology/approach – Questionnaires with a section on business values were posted to 200 farmers and 200 food processing businesses in Victoria, Australia, with response rates of 44 per cent (n=69) and 31 per cent (n=48), respectively, achieved.

Findings – The most important of the 28 value items for farmers were high quality produce, honesty, and caring for employees. For processors, the most important values were quality products, customer value, and caring for employees. Between group differences reached statistical significance for one-third of the items. In particular, processor businesses valued innovation and convenience products more highly and had a stronger process orientation than did farming businesses. Environmental sustainability, caring for the community, and providing healthy products were more integral to farming than processing businesses.

Research limitations/implications – The main limitation was the small sample sizes, although it is likely that response bias was not high. Future research could survey a larger sample of food industry representatives and examine the values held by other food industry sectors.

Practical implications – This information could increase the effectiveness of communications with industry groups on a range of issues and in the formulation of appropriate health and environmental policies.

Originality/value – To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to compare the values of farmers and food processors. This information is particularly important for those in the food industry and health and environmental policy makers.

Strategic male signalling effort in a desert-dwelling fish

Males often use elaborate courtship displays to attract females for mating. Much attention, in this regard, has been focused on trying to understand the causes and consequences of signal variation among males. Far less, by contrast, is known about within-individual variation in signal expression and, in particular, the extent to which males may be able to strategically adjust their signalling output to try to maximise their reproductive returns. Here, we experimentally investigated male courtship effort in a fish, the Australian desert goby, Chlamydogobius eremius. When offered a simultaneous choice between a large and a small female, male gobies spent significantly more time associating with, and courting, the former, probably because larger females are also more fecund. Male signalling patterns were also investigated under a sequential choice scenario, with females presented one at a time. When first offered a female, male courtship was not affected by female size. However, males adjusted their courtship effort towards a second female depending on the size of the female encountered previously. In particular, males that were first offered a large female significantly reduced their courtship effort when presented with a subsequent, smaller, female. Our findings suggest that males may be able to respond adaptively to differences in female quality, and strategically adjust their signalling effort accordingly.

Metaphors, stigma and the ‘Alzheimerization’ of the euthanasia debate

This paper reports the findings of an unobtrusive research inquiry investigating the possible use and misuse of Alzheimer’s disease in public policy debate on the legalization of euthanasia. The component of the study being reported identified the problematic use of five key metaphors: the Alzheimer metaphor, which in turn was reinforced by three additional metaphors – the epidemic metaphor, the military metaphor, and the predatory thief metaphor; and the euthanasia metaphor. All metaphors were found to be morally loaded and used influentially to stigmatize Alzheimer’s disease and mediate public opinion supporting the legalization of euthanasia as an end-of-life ‘solution’ for people with the disease. It is contended that, in the interests of promoting intellectual honesty and giving proper recognition to the extraordinary complexity of the issue, the problematic use and influence of metaphoric thinking in the public debate about Alzheimer’s disease and euthanasia needs to be made transparent, questioned and challenged.

Adolescent victims with an intellectual disability : perceived credibility in cases of sexual abuse

The study aimed to assess perceptions of the credibility of adolescent victims with intellectual disability. Results revealed that victim and participant characteristics influenced perceptions of the credibility of the victim and verdict responses. Findings related to the level of ID, type of offence, perceptions of competency, honesty, suggestibility, and gender of victim and participant.