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The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which, in the five integrated community teams for adults with learning disabilities (CTLDs) in an English county-wide service, the use of psychotropic medication for service users was based on the presence of an appropriate mental health condition or epilepsy.

Adult participants were recruited following referral to one of the CTLDs for assessment, treatment and/or support of a possible mental health and/or behavioural need. Data were collected about participant characteristics and psychotropic medication 12 months after recruitment.

While a total of 42 (78 per cent) of the 54 participants were apparently prescribed regular or PRN (as required) psychotropic medication, only 24 (57 per cent) of these individuals had a recorded past or current mental health condition or epilepsy for which such medicine could be appropriate.

There were several limitations: the sample size was small and its representativeness was uncertain; and data collection was compromised by barriers to explicit knowledge exchange within and across the learning disability service.

While recent guidance about the use of psychotropic medication is welcome, minimising inappropriate use requires more comprehensive person-centred interventions (including crisis management plans), underpinned by imaginative, but feasible, data collection methods and integrated formulations. Investment is needed in developments that support multi-disciplinary and inter-agency working to promote “good practice” by CTLDs in responding to referrals for possible mental health and/or behavioural needs.

Complementing recent large studies of primary care (General Practitioner) records, this is the first examination of the use of psychotropic medication by service users in English CTLDs.

Needs of people following acquired brain injury vary over their life-course presenting challenges for community services, especially for those with “hidden” neuropsychological needs. Characterisation of subtypes of rehabilitation service user may help improve service design towards optimal targeting of resources. This paper aims to characterise a neuropsychologically complex group of service users.

Preliminary data from 35 participants accepted for a holistic neuropsychological rehabilitation day programme were subject to cluster analysis using self-ratings of mood, executive function and brain injury symptomatology.

Analysis identified three clusters significantly differentiated in terms of symptom severity (Cluster 1 least and Cluster 2 most severe), self-esteem (Clusters 2 and 3 low self-esteem) and mood (Cluster 2 more anxious and depressed). The three clusters were then compared on characteristics including age at injury, type of injury, chronicity of problems, presence of pre-injury problems and completion of rehabilitation. Cluster 2 were significantly younger at time of injury, and all had head injury.

Results suggest different subgroups of neuropsychological rehabilitation service user, highlighting the importance of early identification and provision of rehabilitation to prevent deterioration, especially for those injured when young. Implications for design of, and research into, community rehabilitation service design for those with “hidden disability” are considered.

The paper findings suggests that innovative conceptual frameworks for understanding potentially complex longer term outcomes are required to enable development of tools for triaging and efficient allocation of community service resources.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

Entangled Political Economy, the idea that the economy and the polity are a nexus of interrelations often with unplanned outcomes, is close to the concept of economics that Adam Smith presents, a concept which was not shaped by strict discipline barriers. I show that Adam Smith analyzes the nature and causes of the wealth of nations by analyzing the interaction of the economy with politics, ethics, and the law. In particular, Smith presents each of these systems as a network of relations with all the other systems: the economy is entangled not just with the polity, but also with other systems of behavior such as the law and morality. Adam Smith may help expand the horizons of the entangled political economy analysis and the explanatory powers of economics.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

This paper attempts to trace and describe the role played by the government sector – the state – in promoting economic growth in Western societies since the Renaissance. One important conclusion is that the antagonism between state and market, which has characterised the twentieth century, is a relatively new phenomenon. Since the Renaissance one very important task of the state has been to create well‐functioning markets by providing a legal framework, standards, credit, physical infrastructure and – if necessary – to function temporarily as an entrepreneur of last resort. Early economists were acutely aware that national markets did not occur spontaneously, and they used “modern” ideas like synergies, increasing returns, and innovation theory when arguing for the right kind of government policy. In fact, mercantilist economics saw it as a main task to extend the synergetic economic effects observed within cities to the territory of a nation‐state. The paper argues that the classical Anglo‐Saxon tradition in economics – fundamentally focused on barter and distribution, rather than on production and knowledge – systematically fails to grasp these wider issues in economic development, and it brings in and discusses the role played by the state in alternative traditions of non‐equilibrium economics.

This chapter discusses the evolution of German views on public debt 1850–1920, referring to three strands of secondary literature: (1) German retrospectives on public finance, (2) the historical literature with a public choice perspective, and (3) contributions to public/constitutional law, mainly referring to Lorenz von Stein. The skeptic view of public debt endorsed by authors of the second half of the period is shown to be related to politico-economic issues of state agency combined with new state functions, rather than to the rejection of Dietzel’s Proto-Keynesian macroeconomic reasoning.

This paper intends to argue against the idea of an asocial business arena by reiterating the original philosophical underpinnings of theories on the creation of society, societal institutions and the relationship between society and societal institutions. This paper posits that business and ethics, though initially aligned, have been systematically maligned and distorted. The authors present a theoretically justified argument that business and ethics can and should seamlessly exist in the same realm.

This is a theoretical study that endeavors to go back to the original theories on business and society to challenge the view that business ethics is an oxymoron. For this purpose, the authors survey and interpret the scholarly works of Adam Smith, Aristotle and John Locke.

Given the economic debacles faced by the USA and the world economy in the past two decades, this study argues that one significant factor for these financial disasters could be that the original ideas about self-interest, societal interest, the free market system and the relationship between society and its constituting components, i.e. individuals, groups and institutions, have been distorted over time. Based on the interpretation of the original ideas around business and society, the authors find that some distortion of the original theories have indeed occurred.

This study is going against a well-established prevalent idea that business ethics is an oxymoron. It is claimed that the endoxa about business and its place in society often represents misinterpretations of the original ideas on the relationship between business and society. The originality of this work lies in challenging this dangerous idea by revisiting by journeying back in philosophical history to cut through the ideological scar tissue and reach the original arguments surrounding society and societal institutions.

Revisiting Carroll’s classic corporate social responsibility (CSR) pyramid framework, this paper aims to evolve a novel synthesis of ethics and economics. This yielded an “integrative CSR economics”.

This theory paper examined how to conceptually set up CSR theory, argue its ethical nature and establish its practical, social and empirical relevance. Economic analysis reached out from contemporary institutional economics to Smith’s classic studies.

The paper reconstructed all of Carroll’s four dimensions of CSR – economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibilities – through economics. The paper discounted a core assumption of much CSR research that economic approach to CSR, including the instrumental, strategic “business case” approach to CSR, were unethical and lacked any foundations in ethics theory. Integrative CSR economics reframes research on viability and capability requirements for CSR practice; redirecting empirical research on links between CSP (corporate social performance) and CFP (corporate financial performance).

The paper focused on Carroll as the leading champion of CSR research. Future research needs to align other writers with integrative CSR economics. Friedman or Freeman, or the historic contributions of Dodd, Mayo, Bowen or Drucker, are especially interesting.

The paper set out how integrative CSR economics satisfies the “business case” approach to CSR and develops practical implications along: a systemic dimension of the market economy; a legal-constitutional dimension; and the dimension of market exchanges.

Integrative CSR economics creates ethical benefits for society along: a systemic dimension of the market (mutual gains); a legal-constitutional dimension (law-following); and the dimension of market exchange (ethical capital creation). Social benefits are not only aspired to but also are achievable as a business case approach to CSR is followed.

The paper’s main contribution is a new synthesis of economics and ethics that yields an “integrative CSR economics”.