Dynamics of Science-based entrepreneurship

This article introduces the rationale for the special issue, summarizes the main themes covered by the papers presented and suggests areas for further research. Previous research has focused on the creation of Science-based entrepreneurial firms (SBEFs) but there is little research relating to their growth and the challenges in ensuring growth occurs. At the macro-level, there is a need to distinguish general versus specific policies and how these vary between different institutional environments. At the firm level, there is a need to consider the factors influencing the development of boards, the growth of SBEFs and their dynamics in terms of acquisitions and IPOs.     

The Ethical Health Lawyer: An Empirical Assessment of Moral Decision Making

Writing in 1999, legal ethics scholar Brad Wendel noted that "[v]ery little empirical work has been done on the moral decision making of lawyers." Indeed, since the mid-1990s, few empirical studies have attempted to explore how attorneys deliberate about ethical dilemmas they encounter in their practice. Moreover, while past research has explored some of the ethical issues confronting lawyers practicing in certain specific areas of practice, no published data exists probing the moral mind of health care lawyers. As signaled by the creation of a regular column "devoted to ethical issues arising in the practice of health law" in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , the time to address the empirical gap in the professional ethics literature is now. Accordingly, this article presents data collected from 120 health care lawyers. Presenting this population with a number of hypothetical scenarios relating to how they would respond when confronting an ethical dilemma without an obvious solution or when facing a situation in which their personal values were in tension with their professional obligations, this article represents a first step toward better understanding how lawyers who practice in health care settings understand and resolve the moral discomfort they encounter in their professional lives.     

Correlates of Joining a Sexual Harassment Class Action

Researchers have proposed a variety of factors that influence the decision to seek legal relief in response to sexual harassment, but have generally failed to test these proposals empirically. The present study aims to address this gap by investigating the decision to join a class-action lawsuit. Participants were female professionals at a nationally based financial services firm, who either participated in or opted out of a sexual harassment class-action proceeding against the company. Five variables emerged as significant correlates of joining the class: organizational climate, turnover, financial dependence, PTSD, and primary appraisal. Dominance analysis identified contextual factors as the most important correlate. Theoretical and practical implications for the role of these factors in joining a class action are discussed.

Privacy,trust and policy-making: Challenges and responses

The authors contend that the emerging ubiquitous Information Society (aka ambient intelligence, pervasive computing, ubiquitous networking and so on) will raise many privacy and trust issues that are context dependent. These issues will pose many challenges for policy-makers and stakeholders because people's notions of privacy and trust are different and shifting. People's attitudes towards privacy and protecting their personal data can vary significantly according to differing circumstances. In addition, notions of privacy and trust are changing over time. The authors provide numerous examples of the challenges facing policy-makers and identify some possible responses, but they see a need for improvements in the policy-making process in order to deal more effectively with varying contexts. They also identify some useful policy-making tools. They conclude that the broad brush policies of the past are not likely to be adequate to deal with the new challenges and that we are probably entering an era that will require development of “micro-policies”. While the new technologies will pose many challenges, perhaps the biggest challenge of all will be to ensure coherence of these micro-policies.     

Science,passion and polemics

He has written thirteen books, including: The State of the Masses,with Richard Hamilton; Under the Gun,with Peter Rossi and Kathleen Daly; and, most recently, Homelessness and Health,with Dee Weber, and Address Unknown.     

Empirical criteria for the determination of suicide manner of death

A 16-item instrument was constructed as a tool to assist medicolegal official in their investigations and certifications of suicidal deaths. The Empirical Criteria for the Determination of Suicide (ECDS)--derived from a combined set of the 22 criterion items of the Operational Criteria for the Determination of Suicide (OCDS) and 33 other items obtained from experts and the professional literature--was constructed and validated by using 126 suicide and accident cases obtained from 70 medical examiner participants. Analysis of the cases confirmed that suicide is a manner of death in which there is evidence of both self-infliction and intention to die. The 16 items retained in the ECDS discriminated suicides from accidents best in relation to self-infliction and intention. In analysis of its concurrent validity, the ECDS instrument predicted 100% of the suicides and 83% of the accidents, thus correctly identifying 92% of all cases.