Northeastern University London

Employee turnover (ET) is a major issue faced by firms in all business sectors. Artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning (ML) prediction models can help to classify the likelihood of employees voluntarily departing from employment using historical employee datasets. However, output responses generated by these AI-based ML models lack transparency and interpretability, making it difficult for HR managers to understand the rationale behind the AI predictions. If managers do not understand how and why responses are generated by AI models based on the input datasets, it is unlikely to augment data-driven decision-making and bring value to the organisations. The main purpose of this article is to demonstrate the capability of Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations (LIME) technique to intuitively explain the ET predictions generated by AI-based ML models for a given employee dataset to HR managers. From a theoretical perspective, we contribute to the International Human Resource Management literature by presenting a conceptual review of AI algorithmic transparency and then discussing its significance to sustain competitive advantage by using the principles of resource-based view theory. We also offer a transparent AI implementation framework using LIME which will provide a useful guide for HR managers to increase the explainability of the AI-based ML models, and therefore mitigate trust issues in data-driven decision-making.

Abstract Wellbeing and sustainability are at the center of development studies and economics, being the kernel of theories and policies. Analyzing such complex phenomena implies taking into account both the economic and business spheres. In this regard, the human and local dimensions of development have assumed central importance in determining definitions, measurements, and policies and reveal decisive implications for economic ethics and long‐term development perspectives. This work intends to draw a theoretical excursus on the nexus between the human, sustainable, and local dimensions of development and wide‐ranging business theories. For this scope, the paper adopts a pluralistic approach for determining diverse conceptual insights. Entangling holistic lenses, this study explores the theoretical foundations, measurements, and experiences that have characterized the recent development theory and applied evidence in economics and business. The review detects some evidence in the global and the Italian experiences that can reveal important lessons for theorists, policymakers, and practitioners in development, sustainability, and business.

This article discusses early modern prayer books, focusing on the Book of Common Prayer. It shows that the early modern prayer book was a work in progress — not only revised but revisable — and this was publicly known and popularly discussed. The history of the prayer book is a history of struggles between rival forms and uses, between languages and revisions; and is tied deeply to the shifting occupancy of the English throne. The article also considers the question of how early modern worshipers used their prayer books.

In discussions of the emotions, it is commonplace to wheel out examples of (for instance) people who know that rollercoasters aren’t dangerous but who fear them anyway. Such cases are well known to have been troubling for cognitivists who hold the emotions are (at least in part) judgments or beliefs. But more recently, it has been argued that the very theories that emerged from the failure of cognitivism (perceptual theories and other neo-cognitivist approaches) face trouble as well. One gets the sense that the theory that can accomplish this will win a crucial point over its competitors. In the present paper I offer a new approach to making sense of the normative tension to which recalcitrant emotions give rise. Interestingly, the approach is one that can be adopted by anyone willing to grant that emotions are themselves governed by norms.

Although the Greek concept of kairos (καιρός) has undergone a recent renewal of interest among scholars of Renaissance rhetoric, this revival has not yet been paralleled by its reception into the history of political thought. This article examines the meanings and uses of this important concept within the ancient Greek tradition, particularly in the works of Isocrates and Plutarch, in order to understand how it is employed by two of the most important political thinkers of the sixteenth century: Thomas Elyot and Niccolò Machiavelli. Through such an investigation this paper argues that an appreciation of the concept of kairos and its use by Renaissance political writers provides a fuller understanding of the political philosophy of the period.

In Utilitarianism, first published in 1861, John Stuart Mill explains that ‘utilitarianism requires [one] to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator’. The impartiality requirement has been a central tenet of most iterations of utilitarianism since then and is one of the more contentious issues when it comes to evaluating its plausibility as an ethical theory. Can we, really, take an impartial approach to ethical decision-making? And, what's more, should we? In What We Owe the Future, MacAskill does not explicitly identify himself as a utilitarian [and indeed suggests that one need not even be a consequentialist to accept the position he defends (p. 241)], but one can nonetheless read the text as a radical interpretation of the idea that our ethical decision-making should be impartial (e.g. p. 5). MacAskill argues for a position that he calls ‘longtermism’, which involves a commitment to at least two propositions. First, that we have a moral responsibility to act in such a way as to improve the lives of future generations. Secondly, that doing so should be a priority for us now.

We review a class of adverse environmental externalities that accompany consumption and procreation. We also identify externalities that are traceable to socially embedded preferences for family size. Those preference structures can give rise to a heightened demand for children, exacerbating the environmental externalities households impose on future generations. Our analysis exposes weaknesses in basing family planning programmes entirely on individuals' reproductive rights. We use ecological data to obtain a feel for the size of global environmental externalities. We estimate the size of world population the biosphere can support at the standard of living enjoyed in the World Bank's list of high middle-income countries. Today's global population and future population projections far exceed our estimate, implying that the UN's Sustainable Development Goals are in all likelihood unsustainable. We conclude that family planning has been undervalued greatly by national governments and international agencies. Our purpose is to pose questions that continue to be neglected in the development literature. We do not offer forecasts nor make policy recommendations.

Certain puzzling cases have been discussed in the literature recently which appear to support the thought that knowledge can be obtained by way of deduction from a falsehood; moreover, these cases put pressure, prima facie, on the thesis of counter closure for knowledge. We argue that the cases do not involve knowledge from falsehood; despite appearances, the false beliefs in the cases in question are causally, and therefore epistemologically, incidental, and knowledge is achieved despite falsehood. We also show that the principle of counter closure, and the concomitant denial of knowledge from falsehood, is well motivated by considerations in epistemological theory—in particular, by the view that knowledge is first in the epistemological order of things.

Abstract After Plato’s Forms, and Aristotle’s substances, the Stoics posit the fundamental reality of lekta, the meanings of sentences, distinct from the sentences themselves. It is the first time in the tradition of Western philosophy that what is signified is properly distinguished from signs and signifiers. This book explores the many implications of this distinction which gives an existential autonomy to lekta. Language can only ever express meanings, but what happens to meanings which are there, ready to be said but which are never actually expressed? The book analyses the deep shift in ontological paradigm required by the presence of lekta in reality. A unique, complex, and consistent cosmic view is revealed in which the lekta are the keystones of the structure of reality. This means that we cannot not speak or think in terms of lekta, and for this reason, they are all there is to say. The Stoic position has ignited many fiery debates in antiquity and in modern times. The Stoics were the first to be concerned with questions about language and grammar, and the first to put the relation of language to reality at the heart of the enquiry into human understanding, and the place of man in the cosmos. These questions remain central to this day in life and philosophy.

Egypt stands as a showcase for a practice of private tutoring which severely impedes quality of education. Teachers compel students to pay for additional private tutoring, putting increased financial strain on the poorest members of society. Based on an original dataset on primary education in public schools, this paper joins empirical data and evolutionary theory to study the impact of policies to alleviate Forced Private Tutoring (FPT). Our model explains the limited impact of increases to teachers’ wages in 2012. We identify alternative policies which foster a FPT-free social norm and improve the quality of education in public schools.

Carey has argued that there is a system of core numerical cognition – the analog magnitude (AM) system – in which (approximate) cardinal numbers are explicitly represented in iconic format. While the existence of this system is beyond doubt, this paper aims to show that its representations cannot have the combination of features attributed to them by Carey. According to the argument from abstractness, the representation of the (approximate) cardinal number of a collection of individuals as such requires the representation of individuals as such, and this in turn requires non-iconic format, from which it is concluded that the explicit representation of the (approximate) cardinal number of some individuals requires non-iconic representational format. In support of the first premise, an account is given of what approximate cardinal numbers might be (namely, quantifiers), and in support of the second, a direct argument is articulated and defended. Finally, in response to an objection, a second argument (from parts) for the central thesis is provided. While the discussion is couched in the terms of Carey’s work, the considerations it adduces are perfectly general, and the conclusion should therefore be taken into consideration by all those aiming to characterize the AM system.

Peer-to-peer programs are growing in popularity in higher education (HE) due to institutions’ increased interest in engaging students as partners in learning and teaching. This study explores one institution’s approach to engaging level 5 and level 6 undergraduate students as teaching assistants (TAs) in engineering to support the first-year transition and academic success. The study focuses on the effect of the pilot program on the peer mentors i.e. the TAs, rather than on the peer mentees. An online questionnaire was designed to investigate TAs’ experiences of participating in a student-staff role, and the impact the role had on their academic and non-academic skills development. The findings show that the TA role contributed to enhanced subject understanding and transferable skill development, particularly communication and learning skills. The main attribute valued by TAs was helping others and making a positive impact, contributing to their sense of belonging.

Although the distinction between counsel and command in Hobbes’s works, especially Leviathan , has been often acknowledged, it has been little studied. This article provides background and analysis of this critical distinction by placing it in conversation with the works of Henry Parker and in the context of the English Civil War, especially as regards the discussion of prudence, interests and crisis. In so doing, three conclusions can be drawn. First, it becomes clear that for both Parker and Hobbes, counsel serves as a foundation to their arguments about the placement and function of sovereignty. Second, in grounding their arguments about sovereignty in the discourse of counsel, both authors – intentionally or unintentionally – undermine the previously critical discourse of counsel. Finally, we see that especially Hobbes’s engagement with and overthrow of the discourse of counsel profoundly alters of the terms and focus of modern political debate, moving from a ‘monarchy of counsel’ to a discussion of political sovereignty.

This first comprehensive account of the utilitarians' historical thought intellectually resituates their conceptions of philosophy and politics, at a time when the past acquired new significances as both a means and object of study. Drawing on published and unpublished writings - and set against the intellectual backdrops of Scottish philosophical history, German and French historicism, romanticism, positivism, and the rise of social science and scientific history - Callum Barrell recovers the depth with which Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, George Grote, and John Stuart Mill thought about history as a site of philosophy and politics. He argues that the utilitarians, contrary to their reputations as ahistorical and even antihistorical thinkers, developed complex frameworks in which to learn from and negotiate the past, inviting us to rethink the foundations of their ideas, as well as their place in - and relationship to - nineteenth-century philosophy and political thought.

Nonparametric regression is developed for data with both a temporal and a cross-sectional dimension. The model includes additive, unknown, individual-specific components and allows also for cross-sectional and temporal dependence and conditional heteroscedasticity. A simple nonparametric estimate is shown to be dominated by a GLS-type one. Asymptotically optimal bandwidth choices are justified for both estimates. Feasible optimal bandwidths, and feasible optimal regression estimates, are also asymptotically justified. Finite sample performance is examined in a Monte Carlo study.

This article offers a timely, critical analysis of the male gaze upon sportswomen in male Chinese fans’ consumption of sporting megaevents. We use the most popular Chinese-language sports fandom platform, Hupu, as the data repository and scrutinise the threads of male Hupu users’ postings about two elite sportswomen at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics as the case studies. Drawing on feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA), we elucidate the discursive strategies that male Chinese fans adopt to sexualise sportswomen and trivialise their accomplishments. The research findings showcase how China’s sports fandom has evolved as a masculine terrain, where men’s visions of asymmetrical gender power relations are discursively negotiated and rationalised.

When interacting with supervisors, employees often engage in emotion regulation (i.e., surface acting and deep acting), and the consequences may extend beyond work boundaries. Based on the spillover-crossover model and the strength model of self-control, we examined the relationship between employee emotion regulation during supervisory interactions and marital well-being (i.e., spouse's perceived marriage quality and satisfaction). Two survey studies using Chinese employee-spouse dyads showed that employees' surface acting was positively related to ego depletion. Surface acting was found to be negatively related to spouses' perceived marital well-being through the serial mediating roles of both ego depletion and social undermining behavior. Moreover, leader-member exchange (LMX) relationship quality moderated the association between surface acting and ego depletion such that the relationship was weaker for employees with a high-quality LMX relationship compared with those with a low-quality LMX relationship. These findings extend theory and research on emotion regulation to employee-leader interactions and contribute to future research and theory-building on emotion regulation, leadership, and work-family integration. Practical implications for leaders, organizations, and employees were discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Unconventional reservoirs, including gas shales and tight gas sands, have gained prominence in the energy sector due to technological advancements and escalating energy demands. The oil industry is eagerly refining techniques to decipher these reservoirs, aiming to reduce data collection costs and uncertainties in reserve estimations. Characteristically, tight reservoirs exhibit low matrix porosity and ultra-low permeability, necessitating artificial stimulation for enhanced production. The efficacy of the stimulation hinges on the organic material distribution, the rock’s mechanical attributes, and the prevailing stress field. Comprehensive petrophysical analysis, integrating standard and specialized logs, core analyses, and dynamic data, is pivotal for a nuanced understanding of these reservoirs. This ensures a reduction in prediction uncertainties, with parameters like shale volume, porosity, and permeability being vital. This article delves into an intricate petrophysical evaluation of the Nene field, a West African unconventional reservoir. It underscores the geological intricacies of the field, the pivotal role of data acquisition, and introduces avant-garde methodologies for depth matching, rock typing, and the estimation of permeability. This research highlights the significance of unconventional reservoir exploration in today’s energy milieu, offering a granular understanding of the Nene field’s geological challenges and proffering a blueprint for analogous future endeavours in unconventional reservoirs.

Abstract An effective higher education market should increase educational standards. For universities to fulfil this role, students need reliable information about the teaching on offer at different universities, but no such data are currently available. We define a measure of teaching that weights contact hours by their intensity and collect a new data set that allows comparison of teaching across universities and across three departments. No two universities offer identical teaching. There is large variation in contact hours and even larger variation in teaching intensity, across both universities and departments. We combine our data with existing data to investigate the relationship that teaching has with university and student characteristics. We find that how much teaching students receive is uncorrelated with tuition fee; that teaching has little predictive power in explaining student satisfaction; and that physics students consistently receive more teaching than either economics or history students.

This study is an investigation of international marketing channel modes, relationship with an export company's network of business, e-business activity, and marketing channel performance. An initial case study of three international enterprises was followed up with a questionnaire survey based on a model derived from the literature and the results of the case organisations. The main influences identified from the questionnaire survey were local market conditions and the level of cooperation between channel members. The main differences detected among the network's structural relationships resulted from differing degrees of centralisation. Different channel modes resulted in different degrees of mutual trust, centralisation, profitability, and formality in the relationship between an enterprise and its overseas contacts. The level of electronic business activity was positively related to the level of cooperation with channel partners and to the sales performance of the channel.