Distributing Responsibility for Wrongdoing Inside Corporate Hierarchies: Public Judgments in Three Societies

The decision rules individuals use to judge wrongdoing committed inside corporations and other hierarchical organizations are not well understood. We explore this issue by asking random samples of individuals in Moscow, Tokyo, and Washington, D. C., to respond to four short vignettes describing acts of wrongdoing by people in corporations. The vignettes are experiments that manipulate the actor's mental state, the actor's position in the organization, and whether the actor's decision was influenced by others in the organization. We examine (1) the distribution of responsibility among people in the organization, (2) how individual responsibility affects the attribution of responsibility to the organization itself, and (3) cross-national differences in attributions. We find that both what the actors did (their deeds) and the position they occupied (their roles) significantly influence the responsibility attributed to them. The responsibility attributed to the organizations themselves is a function of the responsibility attributed to the actors inside the organization, but not a function of the independent variables in the experiments. Cross-national differences emerge with respect to the responsibility assigned both to individuals and to the organizations themselves. We discuss implications of these results for past and future work.     

Apnea, glial apoptosis and neuronal plasticity in the arousal pathway of victims of SIDS

Of 27,000 infants whose sleep-wake characteristics were studied under the age of 6 months, 38 died unexpectedly 2-12 weeks after the sleep recording in a pediatric sleep laboratory. Of these infants, 26 died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), and 12 of definitely identified causes. The frequency and duration of sleep apneas were analysed. Sleep recordings and brainstem histopathology were studied to elucidate the possible relationship between sleep apnea and neuropathological changes within the arousal system. Immunohistochemical analyses were conducted using tryptophan hydroxylase (TrypH), a serotonin synthesizing enzyme, and growth-associated phosphoprotein 43 (GAP43), a marker of synaptic plasticity. The terminal-deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) method was used for apoptosis. The pathological and physiological data were correlated for each infant. In the SIDS victims, statistically significant positive correlations were seen between the number of TrypH-positive neurons in the dorsal raphe nucleus of the midbrain and the duration of central apneas (p = 0.03), between the number of TUNEL-positive glial cells in the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus (PPTN) and the average number of spines in GAP43-positive neurons in the PPTN (p = 0.04). These findings in the dorsal raphe nucleus of the midbrain and PPTN, that play important roles in the arousal pathway suggest a possible link between changes in arousal and SIDS.     

Identification and phylogenetic analysis of hepatitis C virus in forensic blood samples obtained from injecting drug users

Injecting drug users (IDUs) are a high-risk group for contracting hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections. In Japan, data on the prevalence of those blood-borne viruses among IDUs are very limited. Blood samples were obtained from 12 cadavers of IDUs sent to Nagoya City University for the purpose of judicious autopsy and two alive IDUs with hepatitis C referred to a local hospital at the same period. The viruses were detected by polymerase chain reaction and phylogenetic analysis was performed. Two (16.6%) of the 12 autopsy cases were positive for HCV, but no case was positive for either HBV or HIV. Phylogenetic analysis of the two HCV isolates revealed that one was classified into genotype 1b and another was genotype 2b. Furthermore, nucleotide sequences of two isolates recovered from IDUs with hepatitis C were identical, that indicated the transmission of HCV between them, and those HCV were phylogenetically classified into genotype 2a. The prevalence of HCV infection among IDUs in Japan, despite the case of judicious autopsy, seems to be high, but HIV infection seems to be rare. The transmission of HCV between IDUs was demonstrated, and this indicates that phylogenetic analysis would applicable to also forensic analysis. HCV isolates identified in this study did not phylogenetically segregate, thus multiple transmission route of HCV among IDUs seems be exist in Japan.