In the rapidly evolving field of wireless power transfer (WPT), achieving systems that combine efficiency with reliability is crucial. This paper presents a simulation-based approach using CST Studio Suite to optimize WPT systems for wireless battery chargers in electric bikes. The study fixes the size of both the transmitter and receiver coils, the spacing between turns, and the number of coil turns, with a set distance of 20mm between the transmitter and receiver coils. CST Studio Suite is employed to determine (...) the parameters of resonance capacitors and the optimal switching frequency to enhance WPT efficiency. This powerful simulation tool allows researchers and engineers to design resonance compensation circuits more effectively, optimizing power transfer efficiency. The simulation conducted with CST Studio Suite confirms its effectiveness in designing a WPT system, achieving an impressive peak efficiency of 99.61% at the resonant frequency. The paper demonstrates CST Studio Suite's capability to accurately predict WPT system performance by developing detailed electromagnetic models and fine-tuning simulation parameters to reflect real operating conditions. Iterative simulations resulted in optimized practices, validated by select results that highlight the method's effectiveness and showcase an optimal balance between system complexity and efficiency. These findings provide a strategic framework for future WPT system development, offering practical guidance for researchers and industry professionals aiming to advance WPT technology. (shrink)

Catholic social teaching frames a practical, political tradition, historically embodied and directed toward the dignity of the person, solidarity, and the common good as essential to social justice. It aims not only to convert the Church but to be an agent of change in societies globally. Yet despite over 130 years of condemnations by CST of violence, exploitation, and other forms of social injustice, scourges like poverty, war, racism, and sexism still blight human existence. The work of the Belgian theologian (...) Johan Verstraeten offers resources for a view of social movements as agents of the transformation of social institutions and structures. Social movements can provoke and enhance the formation of justice as an institutional virtue, disposing institutions to better foster solidarity and the common good. (shrink)

“Ubuntu/Botho/Hunhu” is a philosophical concept commonly used in Sub-Saharan Africa, arising out of the Bantu languages of its peoples. It is familiar in South Africa and Zim- babwe, for example, and through it, reference is made both to the way of being human and to the morality of the actions performed by people. Understood from the philosoph- ical perspective, Ubuntu as an ethic is dignity-based. Naturally, Ubuntu is not the only metaphysical and moral worldview present in the diversity of contemporary (...) sub-Saharan Africa, for given the presence of Catholic Christian believers, “Catholic Social Teaching” (CST) is also encountered. In countries like South Africa and Zimbabwe, Catholic parlia- mentarians are involved in State apparatuses, as members of provincial and municipal legislatures, and judicial officers may be of the Catholic tradition. Given the holistic nature of the human, it is a significant challenge for the believer to abandon their axiological systems when entering the public sphere. Like the African Ubuntu/Hunhu tradition, CST is dignity-based, although the arguments from within each for the attainment of dignity are divergent. Whilst acknowledging the inherent dignity of the person in both traditions, this study takes a different approach by highlighting contrasts. In divergences, human dignity and relationships in society will be explored, as the study extends novel moral actions for the good of the Ubuntu-inspired society. (shrink)

Against the background of the 2022 national elections in the Philippines, in which the Church failed in the moral fight against the return of the Marcoses and the continuation of the Duterte regime in power, this article makes a social discernment as to why the Church has not succeeded in its social mission in shaping the social consciousness of the Filipino people. Why has the Catholic social tradition not taken root in the Philippine soil and in the Filipino soul? The (...) author argues that the Church has located itself in the center rather than grounding itself in the margins. The author proposes a reappropriation of the Catholic social tradition from the margins to more dynamically transform Philippine society. (shrink)

. Software testing is a very important phase in the development of software. Testing includes the generation of test cases which, if done manually, is time consuming. To automate this process and generate optimal test cases, several meta-heuristic techniques have been developed. These approaches include genetic algorithm, cuckoo search, tabu search, intelligent water drop, etc. This paper presents an effective approach for test data generation using the cuckoo search and tabu search algorithms. It combines the cuckoo algorithm's strength of converging (...) to the solution in minimal time along with the tabu mechanism of backtracking from local optima by Lévy flight. The experimental results show that the algorithm is effective in generating test cases optimally and its performance is better than various earlier proposed approaches. (shrink)

CST is widely disregarded in the academic and public discourse. This essay argues that this is the case for two related reasons. Firstly, CST is based on the pre-Enlightenment approach to moral philosophy, virtue ethics, while the mainstream in business ethics favours the rule-based approaches consequentialism and deontology and their variants. Secondly, mainstream approaches also have adopted a positivist epistemology where theories represent the Truth that must not be questioned: they have become ideologies. This paper argues that CST, mainly through (...) the virtue ethical doctrine of the mean, is saved from having become an ideology and is much closer to the ideal of science as a self-questioning system than the mainstream in business ethics. This essay explains this counter-intuitive conclusion by tracing the history of CST and embedding it in an epistemic discussion and then suggesting what business ethics could take from CST to regain the all-important discursiveness it once had. (shrink)

This paper introduces Catholic Social Teaching-inspired (CST-inspired) work organization based on a qualitative explorative study conducted with 11 Catholic business leaders from Hungary. The schematic model of CST-inspired work organization suggests that this alternative form of work organization (AFWO) is based on adhering to the principles of human dignity and the dignity of work. Catholic business leaders apply initiatives and business practices that (i) support the work-life balance and family lives of their employees, (ii) create a homely working environment, and (...) (iii) sustain employee retention and practice a humane dismissal, if needed, within the framework of CST-inspired work organization, to promote their employees' personal development. In return, Catholic business leaders experience noneconomic rewards like (i) a good working atmosphere, (ii) employee loyalty, and (iii) employees contributing beyond what has been formally agreed. The findings of the study that promoting human dignity and the dignity of work pay off may encourage not only Christians but any business leader. (shrink)

Causal Set Theory (CST) is a promising approach to fundamental physics that seems to treat causation as a basic posit. But in exactly what sense is CST causal? We argue that if the growth dynamics is interpreted as a physical process, then CST employs relations of actual causation between causal set elements, whereby elements bring one another into existence. This is important, as it provides a better sense of how CST works, highlights important differences from general relativity---where relations between spacetime (...) points are typically seen as cases of mere causal connectibility rather than actual causation of the relevant type---and points toward a specific understanding of the emergence of spacetime within CST. (shrink)

Coherence Structure and Translation (CST) develops a category-theoretic framework for cross-realm coordination between physical processes, mental experience, and formal structures such as language, logic, and mathematics. The central problem: how do these three domains cohere in everyday acts of perception, communication, and measurement — and what goes structurally wrong when they fail to do so? CST answers this question by identifying six coherence principles (O1–O6) and showing that their violations correspond to six typed breakdown patterns (B1–B6). The six breakdowns are: (...) (B1) collapse — illegitimate identification of physically and mentally described states; (B2) incommunicability — the privacy of qualia as a translation failure; (B3) route divergence — incompatible outcomes across distinct translation paths; (B4) modular instability — failure of coherence under sequential composition; (B5) scope error — application of translations outside their valid domain; (B6) disunity — failure to integrate locally coherent pieces into a global whole. CST is not a metaphysical theory of what the three domains ultimately are. It specifies what any account committed to their joint usability must preserve on declared interfaces. The framework is practice-relative and empirically assessable: the six principles generate concrete diagnostics for the explanatory gap in philosophy of mind, neural decoding protocols in cognitive neuroscience, calibration failures in measurement practice, context-window sensitivity in large language models, and the binding problem in consciousness research. The paper is self-contained with an extended categorical appendix. It is intended as a companion to a forthcoming paper on Structural Panmentalism (SPM), which develops the ontological dimension of the framework. (shrink)

Civil Sphere Theory (CST) provides a more dynamic, cultural, and democratically oriented model of contemporary society than either conflict or modernization theory. Civil spheres expand and contract in contradictory ways. Utopian periods of utopian repair trigger defensive efforts that primordialize and exclude. Late 20th century civil repair generated new relations of economic production and more multicultural modes of integration. Early 21rst century reactions have highlighted dangers, demanding more cultural homogeneity amidst rising concerns about inequality. There is increasing disillusionment about the (...) possibility for democratic progress. (shrink)

In Catholic social thought (CST), work that is exploitative, immoral, or hopelessly monotonous can be labeled alienating: its performance makes the worker a stranger to her own, God-given human nature. CST traditionally understands sex work, which directs the human sexual faculties to ends other than the unitive and procreative, as a paradigmatic example of alienating work, and this paper will not disagree. Instead, I will show how accepting sex worker advocates’ claim that “sex work is work” reveals that while sex (...) work is indeed alienating by CST’s standards, many forms of paid work available today are alienating in similar ways. Listening to sex worker advocates helps CST strengthen its critique of alienating work while acknowledging sex workers’ moral agency. (shrink)

This chapter explores how online communication, particularly on social media, reshapes the reputational incentives that motivate speakers to communicate truthfully. Drawing on costly signalling theory (CST), it examines how online contexts alter the social mechanisms that sustain honest communication. Key characteristics of online spaces are identified and discussed, namely (i) the presence of novel speech acts like reposting, (ii) the gamification of communication, (iii) information overload, (iv) the presence of anonymous and unaccountable sources and (v) the increased reach and persistence (...) of online communication. Both epistemic pitfalls and potential benefits of these features are discussed, identifying promising avenues for further empirical investigation, and underscoring CST's value for understanding and tackling online misinformation. (shrink)

What contributions could we expect from Catholic Social Teaching (CST) on human dignity in relation to the dignity of work? This essay begins with an explanation of CST and its relevance for secular audiences. It then proceeds to identify the main features of human dignity based on the notion of imago Dei in CST. Next comes an analysis of the dignity of work in CST from which two normative principles are derived: the precedence of duties over rights and the priority (...) of the subjective dimension of work over the objective dimension. Afterwards, the “right to work” and the “rights of workers” are engaged with from this normative perspective, particularly within the context of globalization. (shrink)

This essay inquires whether digitally transformed work can be virtuous and under what conditions. It eschews technological determinism in both utopian and dystopian versions, opting for the premise of free human agency. This work is distinctive in adopting an actor-centric and explicitly ethical analysis based on neo-Aristotelian, Catholic social teaching (CST), and MacIntyrean teachings on the virtues. Beginning with an analysis of digital disruption, it identifies the most salient human advantages vis-à-vis technology in digitally transformed work and provides philosophical anthropological (...) explanations for each. It also looks into external, organizational characteristics on both the macro and the micro levels of digitally transformed work, underscoring their ambivalence (efficiency and profits vs. exclusion and exploitation, flexibility and freedom vs. standardization and dependency) and the need to mitigate their polarizing effects for the sake of shared flourishing. The article presents standards for virtuous work according to neo-Aristotelian, CST, and MacIntyrean frames and applies them to digitally transformed work, giving rise to five fundamental principles. These basic guidelines indicate, on one hand, actions to be avoided and, on the other, actions to be pursued, together with their rationales. (shrink)

The aim to provide a causal theory of spacetime is not new. The overall program, however, was largely deemed unsuccessful, chiefly due to criticism voiced by Smart (Monist 53:385–395, 1969), Nerlich (Br J Philos Sci 33(4):361–388, 1982) and Earman (Synthese 24:74–86, 1972). Recently, Baron and Le Bihan (Noûs 58:202–224, 2023) have argued that developments in contemporary physics should make us reconsider this verdict. More precisely, they argue the emergence of spacetime from causal set theory (CST), where “the metric structure of (...) spacetime can be recovered from its causal structure” (Baron and Le Bihan 2023, 2), “suggests a very natural way to reformulate the causal theory of spacetime” (ibid., 9)—an account which they end up dubbing the non-identity causal theory. This paper questions the success of Baron and Le Bihan’s non-identity theory. It is shown that (1) the specific grounding Baron and Le Bihan propose for timelike and spacelike relations is not plausible even when charitably reconstructed; and (2) that a causal theory of spacetime based on general relativity is just as successful for establishing a non-identity theory as a theory based on CST. In short then, we argue that the causal theory of spacetime proposed by Baron and Le Bihan is supported just as well (or badly) by the physics that already took centre stage in the original discussions of the causal theory of spacetime. (shrink)

This article explores the teaching of Fratelli tutti as an integrating document of the papacy of Francis. Exploring the title as greeting and imperative, the authors make a case for exploring FT as both a development of the themes of earlier social encyclicals and as an attempt to explore an integral humanism for a new age facing economic, environmental, migratory, and social-conflictual challenges. The article lays out a summary of these main themes of Francis’s social teaching. Nonetheless, the authors conclude, (...) the integral planetary humanism that Francis calls for, and is so needed, is itself a radically incomplete project. A common home is not possible without a recognition of a common kinship, yet without deep reflection on women’s experience, the inclusion of women as full subjects and agents of CST, and greater attention to race, the document cannot fully embody the spirit and logic of its own message of gift, inclusion, and co-belonging. (shrink)

This reflection focuses on what insights Catholic Social Teaching can provide for corporate governance. I argue that the ‘standard’ agency theory is overly reductionist and insufficiently incorporates important economic limitations as well as human frailty. As a result, such agency theory insufficiently distinguishes firms from markets, which can easily relativize how we treat others and facilitate rationalization of unethical behavior. I then explore how three pillars of CST—human dignity, solidarity, and subsidiarity—can help overcome these limitations. CST proposes a vision of (...) the business corporation as a community of persons, working together in cooperative business relationships toward the shared purpose of contributing to human flourishing. (shrink)

Meaningful work is both a moral issue and an economic one. Studies show that workers’ experience of meaninglessness in their jobs contributes to job dissatisfaction which has negative effects to business. If having a meaningful work is essential for the well-being of workers, providing them with one is an ethical requirement for business establishments. The essay aims to articulate an account of meaningful work in the Catholic social teachings. CST rejects the subjectivist and relativist notion of work which affirms the (...) absolute freedom of individuals to choose their commitment and goals, even if this includes experiencing satisfaction in dehumanizing work. First, the paper will present a summary account of some of the current views on meaningful work from the objective-normative approach. This will be followed by a systematic treatment of the meaning and value of work in the CST, the similarities and differences it has with alternative views, and its implications for the way we promote meaningful work. The paper will argue that by recognizing the subjective and objective dimensions of work and affirming that although the two are inseparable, the former takes priority over the latter; CST develops a holistic, comprehensive, and coherent account of meaningful work which overcomes some of the difficulties that are usually encountered in dealing with this issue from a purely objective approach. (shrink)

Beyond different starting points, stakeholder theory and Catholic Social Thought share many compatible perspectives when analyzing the role of the firm in economic activity, especially regarding the attention of the firm to different social and economic actors. Additionally, ST bears limitations regarding its ethical and anthropological foundation, and also about the legitimation of the different stakeholders’ interests. Therefore, ST lacks clear criteria to solve possible conflicts of interest between stakeholders. This paper analyzes the potentiality of ST, widely accepted in corporate (...) management, to integrate CST principles in order to solve those conflicts. At the same time, the paper studies the possibility of finding in the principles of CST an anthropological and ethical foundation for ST. This foundation could be the source of criteria to discuss the levels of legitimation and prioritization between stakeholders´ interests, especially when those interests collide. (shrink)

The rapid expansion of Big Data has transformed contemporary society, shaping decision-making in business, government, healthcare, education, scientific research, and public life. Ethical discussions surrounding Big Data have largely focused on privacy, informed consent, data protection, and emerging claims regarding data ownership. While these approaches address important concerns, they remain insufficient for evaluating the broader social responsibilities and moral obligations associated with the collection, aggregation, and use of data. This article examines Big Data ethics through the lens of Catholic Social (...) Teaching (CST) and argues that stewardship provides a more comprehensive normative framework for addressing the ethical challenges of the data-driven age. Drawing on key principles of CST, including stewardship, the common good, solidarity, and the universal destination of goods, the article critiques the growing tendency to conceptualize data primarily through the framework of private ownership and individual control. It argues that the unique characteristics of Big Data—including its replicability, non-rivalrous nature, and value derived from aggregation—complicate traditional property-based approaches and invite alternative models of governance. Building on this analysis, the article proposes that certain forms of Big Data may be understood as a shared resource or “common heritage of humanity,” whose benefits should be directed toward human flourishing and the common good. Just as “Laudato Si'” highlights our interconnectedness within the biosphere, this parallels our interconnectedness within the datasphere—the digital ecosystem—underscoring the necessity of stewardship in both domains. The article further explores the practical implications of a stewardship framework through support for data commons, open data initiatives, open government data, corporate social responsibility, and civic participation in data-driven research and policymaking. (shrink)

In this paper we propose a formal theory of metaphors called Constrained Semantic Transference [CST]. We start from the assumptions that metaphors are characterized by the description of one domain, called the target domain, in terms of another domain, called the source domain; and that a metaphor works by transferring a set of structural relationships from the source domain to the target domain coherently.Starting from these assumptions, we formally define the concept of T-MAPs which are partial coherent mappings from the (...) source domain to the target domain. We also define two operators, called Augmentation and Positing Structure that extend a given T-MAP by adding new structure to the target domain. (shrink)

E. F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful is one of the most succinct elaborations of Catholic social teaching (CST) and ‘distributism’ – construed as an alternative to both capitalism and socialism. Extending the logic of Polanyi, both market and state, and their right- and left-wing ideological expressions, are shown to be contending forms of collectivism – in that both aggregate the agency of disembedded ‘billiard ball’ individuals. Schumacher’s socio-economic vision is rooted in Livelihood and is orthogonal to both left and right, (...) creating an opportunity for an alternative to modernity involving patterns of embedded production, consumption and reproduction (family, household and place-bound community). ‘Smallness’ and ‘localness’ speak to forms of embedded social capital that are ‘sticky’, viscous and relational, more ascriptive and less fluid. But for precisely this reason, the political agenda implicit in Schumacher’s vision is not only post-liberal, but explicitly both covenantal and Christian. It requires the ontology of sovereign, self-actualizing individuals to be reconnected and constrained through a transcendent relationality with God. Small is Beautiful is shown to be diametrically opposed to the eco-modernist, gnostic and sometimes even transhumanist worldview of global environmentalism. (shrink)

Catholic health care is one of the key places where the church lives Catholic social teaching (CST). Yet the individualistic methodology of Catholic bioethics inherited from the manualist tradition has yet to incorporate this critical component of the Catholic moral tradition. Informed by the places where Catholic health care intersects with the diverse societal injustices embodied in the patients it encounters, this book brings the lens of CST to bear on Catholic health care, illuminating a new spectrum of ethical issues (...) and practical recommendations from social determinants of health, immigration, diversity and disparities, behavioral health, gender-questioning patients, and environmental and global health issues. (shrink)

It has been suggested that causal set theory is particularly accommodating to a structuralist interpretation. In this paper, we will evaluate this claim, focusing on a recent version of structuralism proposed by Wüthrich (2012, 2024). We show that structuralism of this variety conflicts with the standard dynamics of causal set theory, and that removing this conflict may require reworking the dynamics. We also show that a structuralist interpretation along these lines requires metaphysically privileging the dynamical aspect of the theory. We (...) consider three potential ways forward for a structuralist, but suggest that matters are difficult: two of these likely require reworking CST and one invokes controversial metaphysical assumptions. (shrink)

We address how the leaders of a Catholic business school can articulate and assess how well their schools implement the following six principles drawn from Catholic social teaching : produce goods and services that are authentically good; foster solidarity with the poor by serving deprived and marginalized populations; advance the dignity of human work as a calling; exercise subsidiarity; promote responsible stewardship over resources; and acquire and allocate resources justly. We first discuss how the CST principles give substantive content and (...) meaning to the Good Goods, Good Work, and Good Wealth framework in The Vocation of the Business Leader and then discuss their congruencies and tensions with the UNGC and UNPRME principles. Next, we describe the Catholic Identity Matrix, an assessment tool that provides a quantitative and qualitative portrait of how well a Catholic business school integrates, within the scope of its mission and capacities, the three goods and related CST principles in its strategies, policies, activities, and processes. The concluding section discusses implications for ongoing UNGC and UNPRME assessment, reporting, and development efforts, and addresses the generalizability of our approach to business schools who draw their inspiration and moral principles from other faith-based or secular traditions. (shrink)

This article draws upon 100 years of writings which are referred to as the Catholic Social Tradition (CST). Using this tradition as a guide, the nature of work is explored along with the principles and virtues which vitalize the deepest dimension of work — how it affects the dignity of the human person. It develops five operational ethical principles which can be applied to questions of workplace ethics. Organizational policies and programs that seem consistent with CST are also discussed.

Catholic Social Teaching aspires to an economy that serves needs, upholds justice, and inculcates subsidiarity. But it suffers from a significant omission—it fails to look “inside” the business organisations that comprise the fundamental building blocks of the economic system. It is therefore ill-equipped to suggest how businesses could be reformed to meet these aspirations. MacIntyre’s Thomistic Aristotelian account of the relationships between goods, virtues, practices and institutions provides resources that could enable CST to overcome this lacuna. This paper describes the (...) MacIntyrean account and compares it with CST’s existing categories. It then analyses the case of the Lloyds Banking Group. This allows not only diagnosis, but potentially a prescriptive account of how virtue may be “crowded-in” to business organisations. The paper concludes by suggesting that this approach might make a distinctive contribution to CST, and hence enable CST to make an even more significant contribution to business ethics. (shrink)

In this paper the machinery and results developed in [Awodey et al, 2004] are extended to the study of constructive set theories. Specifically, we introduce two constructive set theories BCST and CST and prove that they are sound and complete with respect to models in categories with certain structure. Specifically, basic categories of classes and categories of classes are axiomatized and shown to provide models of the aforementioned set theories. Finally, models of these theories are constructed in the category of (...) ideals. (shrink)

We explore offshore outsourcing through the lenses of Catholic Social Teaching (CST). First, we review the outcomes of the 30-year debate in business ethics on issues related to offshore outsourcing. We then cluster authors into two groups—the justice-centered approach and the welfare-centered approach—corresponding to different perspectives on the ethical challenges of offshoring. In the second part, we present and apply the four fundamental principles of the CST (human dignity, subsidiarity, solidarity and the common good) to offshoring, in dialogue with the (...) previous debate. The unity and interconnection among the CST’s fundamental tenets provide a cohesive framework that integrates the points made by the justice-centered and welfare-centered approaches, while introducing the principle of solidarity, more focused on the worker as a person and their flourishing. CST also stresses the need to initiate processes oriented toward structural changes for the sake of human dignity and the common good. (shrink)

Although work–family conflict is highly relevant for both families and businesses, scarce attention has received from business ethics perspective. This article focuses on the latter, presenting a set of relevant insights from Catholic Social Teaching (CST). After reviewing the foundations and principles presented by CST regarding work–family relationships, a set of normative propositions are presented to develop work–family policies and for a correct personal work–family balance. It is argued that business responsibility with employees’ family should be considered as a part (...) of Corporate Social Responsibility. In addition, the applications of these principles and propositions can lead to a mutual enrichment of both business and family. (shrink)

Reciprocity theory (RT) and costly signaling theory (CST) provide different explanations for the high status of pro-community altruists: RT proposes that altruists are positively and negatively sanctioned by others, whereas CST proposes that altruists are attractive to others. Only RT, however, is beset by first- and higher-order free rider problems, which must be solved in order for RT to explain status allocations. In this paper, several solutions to RT’s free rider problems are proposed, and data about status allocations to Ecuadorian (...) Shuar pro-community altruists are analyzed in light of RT and CST. These data confirm that perceived pro-community altruists are indeed high status and suggest that (1) community residents skillfully monitor the altruism of coresidents, (2) residents who engage in opportunities to broadcast desirable qualities are high status only to the extent that they are considered altruistic, and (3) individuals who sanction coresidents based on coresidents’ contributions to the community are themselves relatively high status. To a greater extent than CST, RT straightforwardly predicts all of these results. (shrink)

Thomas Piketty argues that the decline of the clerical class in early modern Europe led to a “void” in societal consciousness. Moderns subsequently filled this void by the sacralization of private property, precipitating the current popular acceptance of chasmic wealth disparities. This essay adapts and revises Piketty’s thesis by framing it within the Lockean natural rights tradition and Catholic social teaching (CST). For both Locke and CST, private property has never been a “secular” phenomenon, but always a product of ritualized (...) labor. Locke, Leo XIII, and John Paul II understand property as the result of a clerical process through which humans act on God’s behalf in utilizing God’s creation, mixing transcendence with immanence through work. This theological postulate is crucial for challenging current regimes of inequality, because it presents wealth inequality as a sacrilegious liturgy in which the wealthy are de facto renegade priests. (shrink)

The connections between Adam Smith and Catholic Social Teaching raise several questions. The principle of subsidiarity adopted in CST, according to which higher associations should not replace subordinate organizations on what the latter can do, seems to be in line with the idea that governmental intervention in the market sphere should be restricted to the minimum required, in line with what is typically seen as Smith’s view. But the principle of the common good would also recommend intervention from political authorities (...) in order to ensure that the common good is achieved. Here I shall argue that this question must be addressed taking into account another principle of CST, the principle of solidarity, and also the basic principle of CST, regarding human dignity. To do so, it is necessary to understand how the various principles of CST spring from the notion of imago Dei in CST, which is behind the notion of human dignity. This leads to a relational conception of human beings which can be fruitfully articulated with Smith’s moral philosophy and political economy. (shrink)

Neuroscientists, psychologists, educators, and management scholars propose that the current emphasis on intellect and reason in education and business over values such as love, connectedness, and compassion are at the root of many business ethical failures and societal problems. They argue not that reason should be abandoned in education and business management but rather that it needs to be balanced with values such as love because these attributes are innately human, enabling wise decision-making. This is a difficult task in the (...) context of the current ethos of intellect and reason that dominates education and management. To correct the imbalance, we must explore ways of preparing future managers to accept the relevance and importance of learning to develop and embody love. Through our research, we provide an experience of community love by creating a caring, receptive, personal container. We engaged in the practice of Collaborative Autoethnography, integrating the Nguni South African concept of Ubuntu, to explore, research, and demonstrate the experience of love in a community setting. To support this practice, we framed it against the background of integrative justice, focusing on authentic engagement without exploitative intent as per Santos and Laczniak’s (2015) Integrative Justice Model (IJM) and built upon some common contexts from which love is considered such as Catholic Social Thought (CST) and indigenous cultures. We analyzed why and how love might be implemented in education and management and how Collaborative Autoethnography can be applied in connecting with others to research, learn from, and build upon the experience of love and connectedness. (shrink)

This article proposes a theory of the firm based on the concept of common good provided by the Aristotelic-Thomistic and Catholic Social Thought traditions, with particular attention given to the concept of work. We argue that the incorporation of a concept of work, based on the A-T and CST traditions, provides a better understanding of the firm´s common good in terms of sociability, cooperation, personal fulfillment and friendship. In this manner, taking into account an A-T and CST concept of work, (...) we provide a better understanding of different aspects in which the common good can be achieved within the firm. (shrink)

Catholic Social Teaching takes a rather cautious view toward the value of the ideas of Adam Smith, due to his emphasis on negative political and economic liberty. Detractors of Smith within CST point to what they consider to be deficiencies within his works: an impoverished moral anthropology, a lack of concern for the common good, and markets untethered to human needs. Defenders of Smith within CST tend to emphasize the material benefits that derive from Smithian institutions, such as economic growth, (...) improvements in standards of living, and the new opportunities that arise from cultures focused on innovation. This paper argues that Smith’s ideas have real value for CST. However, this value primarily lies in his moral psychology. While not denying the dangers of business activity for our moral lives, Smith also helps us to understand the possibility of the moral corruption of those who wield political power, thus providing an indirect defense of political and economic liberty that coheres with important Christian ethical notions found in CST. This is the case even though CST does not consistently recognize concerns surrounding the dangers of wielding political power—and thus Smith’s arguments offer real challenges to CST as well. This paper further suggests that these basic insights are relevant regardless of one’s favored institutional arrangements. (shrink)

The development of the various themes of Catholic Social Teaching is based on numerous papal documents and ecclesiastical statements. While this paper provides a summary of a number of these documents, this paper focuses on two themes: the common good and care of the environment, and on three documents authored by Pope John Paul II in 1990, by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, and by Pope Francis in 2015. By analyzing these documents from an engineer’s perspective, the author proposes a (...) model for Socially Responsible Engineering. The proposed model is intended to serve as a guide for engineering students and practicing engineers of all faith traditions and to those with no faith tradition at all who wish to incorporate CST in the daily conduct of their personal and professional lives; to provide guidance for the professional the author terms the aspiring Socially Responsible Engineer; and to offer engineers a preferred alternative to the undesirable aspects of the technocratic paradigm. While intended primarily for engineers, this document also serves as a guide for those with expertise in social justice and who, by gaining a better understanding of the thought processes of engineers, can become better mentors for engineering students and practicing engineers seeking to incorporate CST into their daily lives. (shrink)

This study examines from an ethical framework the circumstances of workers who are engaged in non-professional services that are offered through corporations that are organized to serve high volume of costumers. Drawing on the relevant ethical teachings of the Catholic social tradition (CST), it explores some practices, strategies, and policies that could address the problems experienced by many service providers in the United States today. CST refers to a wide variety of documents of the magisterium of the Catholic Church which (...) respond to the changing social and economic challenges of the modern world. The study argues that the primacy of the person, love and subsidiarity, sense of community, and respect for worker’s rights and unionism in CST are not only moral principles that uphold intrinsic human goods, they are likewise instrumental to operational effectivity because they promote job satisfaction, smooth interpersonal relationship, and long-term commitment with the company. They enable service providers to work efficiently, deliver exceptional service, and act as conduit between the customers and the business establishment, rather than simply being caught between their conflicting demands. (shrink)

Even though management scholars have offered several views on the process of corporate sustainability, these efforts have focused mainly on the technical aspects of sustainability while omitting the fundamental role played by individual moral competences. Therefore, previous work offers an incomplete and somewhat reductionist view of corporate sustainability. In this article, we develop a holistic framework of corporate sustainability in which both the moral and technical aspects of sustainability are considered. We do so by integrating the ethical, normative perspective of (...) the Catholic social teaching with the competitive view of the natural resource-based view. This framework highlights the importance of CST principles and ideas in developing executive moral competences such as moral sensitivity and awareness, and moral cognition and motivation. Moral competences, in turn, influence the organizational selection of environmental strategies, giving leaders the intrinsic motivation to promote both a longer-term stance on corporate sustainability efforts and a relentless search for greener business models. Such strategies move the firm closer towards achieving environmental sustainability. Hence, by bridging the individual, normative-ethical with the organizational, implementational levels of corporate sustainability, our framework provides a more realistic, coherent, and complete perspective on the complex process of achieving corporate sustainability. (shrink)

In an effort to assess the latest thinking in the Roman Catholic Church on economic matters, we examine the newest encyclical by Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) for guidance concerning marketing and business strategy. Core ethical values, consistent with historical Catholic Social Teachings (CST), are retained. However, some important nuances are added to previous treatments, and, reflecting the mind of the current Pontiff, certain points of emphasis are shifted to account for recent global developments. Key areas (...) of consistency and differences (as we perceive them) are spelled out along with some brief commentary on the evolution of the CST position on matters of importance to business decision makers. We close our analysis with a brief discussion of how the lessons of the encyclical can be applied to selected marketing problems embedded with ethical issues, including some criteria for evaluating marketing programs. Finally, we note some editorial commentary published in the wake of the letter’s release along with our own summation. (shrink)

Human–computer interaction (HCI) continues to privilege human-centered paradigms even as interactive life unfolds under posthuman conditions, producing a latent ontological misalignment. Consumer-grade sleep-tracking technologies (CSTs) make this ontological tension especially visible: sleep is embodied yet exceeds self-aware experience, rendering it an instructive limit case for phenomenologically informed HCI research. To explore this tension, we systematically identified and analyzed a corpus of 120 peer-reviewed CST publications (2014–2024) across interdisciplinary venues, treating HCI sleep-tracking research itself as an empirical site. Through a critical (...) interpretive synthesis, we analyze how sleepers are enacted through datafication, infrastructural coupling, and algorithmic interpretation. Our findings show that CST research materializes multiple posthuman figures cyborgian, nomadic, and agential realist even as HCI discourse continues to presume a coherent phenomenological subject. This posthuman multiplicity exposes a tension within HCI’s predominant phenomenological inheritance and necessitates engagement with a broader deconstructive lineage. Building on this analysis, we introduce a _posthuman design constellation_, an ethico onto epistemological tool for conceptualizing how multiple posthuman enactments co-exist within a single sociotechnical arrangement and challenge the presumptive singularity of the phenomenological subject. (shrink)

In this paper we start from the assumption that in a metaphor, or an analogy, some terms belonging to one domain (source domain) are used to refer to objects other than their conventional referents belonging to a possibly different domain (target domain). We describe a formalism, which is based on the First Order Predicate Calculus, for representing the knowledge structure associated with a domain and then develop a theory of Constrained Semantic Transference [CST] which allows the terms and the structural (...) relationships of the source domain to be transferred coherently across to the target domain. We show how metaphors and analogies can be characterized in CST in such a way that many of their cognitive properties con be explained.We then propose a theory of Approximate Semantic Transference [AST] which is a computational version of CST and is derived from it by replacing the coherency requirement with approximate coherency. We show how AST can be used as a basis for designing models of cognitive processes involved in comprehending metaphors and analogies. (shrink)

The author considers the capacity of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) to contribute to the public debate about health care and then remarks on the capacity of CST to assist in the formation of “intentionally Christian institutions.” The author argues for two main points. First, there are some serious obscurities in CST's account of the derivation and interrelation of various rights. Hence, it is not altogether clear what ideal CST is seeking to promote in the public order. Second, the author argues (...) that there is a serious political conflict in CST's commitment to both subsidiarity and the preferential option for the poor. He also claims that it does not follow from these criticisms that CST is useless as a guide for the formation of “intentionally Christian institutions.” Reflection on financing in the light of subsidiarity and the preferential option suggests that there is a need for Christian wealth-producing institutions and schemes of investment that will provide subsidium for healthcare enterprises. In the final portion of the paper, the author sketches out a few dimensions of that sort of vision. (shrink)

Businesses today face the dual challenge of achieving organizational effectiveness while fostering human flourishing in a morally pluralistic world. Moral systems offer guidance, yet differ widely in their precepts and societal impact. This paper argues that contemporary business ethics requires more than ad hoc value statements or profit-driven codes of conduct; it calls for a robust ethical framework capable of uniting diverse stakeholders and sustaining long-term success. Engaging with a range of moral traditions, we propose Catholic Social Teaching (CST) as (...) a particularly rich development of virtue ethics that integrates classical insights with actionable principles for organizational life. Grounded in human dignity, solidarity, subsidiarity, participation, and the common good, CST offers a normative system that not only enhances business performance but also strengthens the social bonds on which thriving economies depend. By demonstrating how CST's virtue-based approach aligns organizational practices with universal human values, this paper presents a pathway toward a more ethically grounded and human-centered business paradigm—one that builds community, inspires purpose, and contributes to the common good. (shrink)

In this article, the author applies complex systems theory (CST) to help understand why, after 14 years of management scholar advocacy for a paradigmatic shift in management behavior, the field of management has been unable to move away from a technocentric paradigm. Using four principles of complex adaptive systems (CAS), the author shows that focusing exclusively on business behavior limits our attention to symptoms rather than the broader system of interacting agents whose collective behaviors legitimize and support an economic paradigm. (...) By drawing on complexity and critical systems theory, the author then develops a three-phased process model that provides a preliminary conceptualization of what it might take to shift the business paradigm. The success of this shift is dependent on a consequential shift at the societal level, the interaction of which speaks to the implications for business as a recipient of this broader shift and, more important, its role as an agent in the process of creating new opportunities that sustain the life-supporting environmental and social systems. Through this model, the author presents important implications for policy makers and management theory. (shrink)

This essay is an interreligious study of the spirituality of work and its implications for business ethics. It considers the normative/doctrinal teachings on human work in the "Bhagavadgita" (BG) and Catholic Social Teaching (CST). Inasmuch as the focus of this study is the spirituality of work, it does not present an in-depth and comprehensive comparison of Hindu and Catholic religions. Similarities and differences between the texts under consideration will be examined, but such examination will be limited to the most critical (...) and relevant points. It will begin by exploring a Hindu spirituality of work based on the BG. The paper will analyze salient ideas and relevant passages in the text that tackle the religio-spiritual significance of our daily engagement in the world through paid work from a Hindu perspective. A discussion on major themes in CST that resonate with the BG’s teachings on work will follow. These themes will serve as analytical elements that will frame an interreligious spirituality of work from the two points of view. The interreligious analysis will demonstrate that, as far as the BG and CST are concerned, the spirituality of work can be a unifying force, a locus for cross-cultural dialogue, and a bridge between different beliefs. Next, the essay will tackle the implications of a Hindu-Catholic spirituality of work for business ethics. It will explain how the two textual traditions deepen our understanding of work by providing answers to the questions: Why must we work? What is the right attitude to work? And how does our work connect us with other beings and with our ultimate end? Finally, the conclusion will demonstrate how the findings of this study relate to and enhance the outcomes of current research on the spirituality of work. Finding common ground in how different religions regard work would enable business professionals and managers to truly value diversity and inclusiveness, and to respond ethically to the expression of religions in an increasingly pluralistic workplace. (shrink)

We characterize and discuss the “dearth of the author”: a problem that emerges when AI-based creativity support tools (CSTs) allow their users to produce highly detailed output artifacts—such as lengthy written stories, or high-resolution pieces of visual art—from very small amounts of input (e.g., brief textual prompts). When small amounts of user input are extrapolated by a CST into a highly detailed output, the CST itself has to make many creative decisions that would otherwise fall to the user, disrupting the (...) usual close relationship between input intentionality and output detail in the creative process and yielding output artifacts that contain much more of the tool’s than the user’s creative signature. Though users of such tools are often able to inject more intention into the output through the adoption of more sophisticated creative practices, these high-intentionality practices tend to be more effortful than the default modes of use of AI-based CSTs, and the use of such practices is not always immediately apparent in the output artifacts. We analyze the dearth of the author from an information-theoretic perspective, focusing on the informational ratio between intent and meaning in creative artifacts; examine implications of the dearth of the author, including homogenization of creative outputs and rhetorical confusion around the “soulfulness” or “soullessness” of art produced with AI assistance; and suggest strategies for mitigating the dearth of the author in future AI-based CSTs. (shrink)