The United States is typically seen as an outlier in health spending when compared with other advanced nations. Recent improvements in health accounting in lower- and middle-income countries suggest some common features with the high and pluralistic spending in the United States. The author discusses recent developments and findings in health accounting outside the Organization for Economic Coo...

This paper explores many of the underlying forces that have encouraged societies to become increasingly pluralistic and global in outlook. In the past, methods of in-country quality assurance have presented boundaries for students and professionals. An array of efforts to reduce cultural boundaries through various methods of quality assurance are reviewed in this paper. These include mutual rec...

Management scholars have examined the ethical decision-making process of individuals in organizations but, with a few notable exceptions, have largely failed to undertake a careful analysis of the role of culture. In this note I explore the impact of individualism and collectivism on three basic aspects of ethical decision making—the perception of moral problems, moral reasoning, and behavior. ...

If a community recognizes a set of moral values and commitments as compelling, as virtues, these become the foundations of moral discourse in that community. Other statements, new moral claims, and so on-as long as they are not absorbed into the set of shared virtues-have no or little standing. And, while there are frequently differences in interpreting the exact meanings and implications of pr...

I suggest a pluralistic account of folk psychology according to which not all predictions or explanations rely on the attribution of mental states, and not all intentional actions are explained by mental states. This view of folk psychology is supported by research in developmental and social psychology. It is well known that people use personality traits to predict behavior. I argue that trait...

Organizations are awash in a wide range of practices that are guided by a variety of goals, values, assumptions, and identities. New enterprise systems are consistent with many of these practices, yet conflict with others. Using institutional theory, we show how the congruence with the institutional logics associated with an ERP implementation affects the local responses to the system. This ins...

This article aims to present a condensed overview of major trends in Brazil, establish a general taxonomy of models of health management and planning, based on the international scene and support the proposal for a communicative planning. In a context of democratization,argues for a pluralistic conception and concludes that the various currents, albeit with different perspectives and referrals ...

I propose a reinterpretation of Peirce’s theory of pragmaticism which sees it to cater a general methodological approach, as well as a historical counterpoint, to a multiplicity of issues arising in contemporary social and behavioural sciences. This interpretation deflects methodological individualism but integrates co-evolution, abduction and triadic forms of emergence into it. It follows that...