In critiquing Prosperity, Paul Davies raises five objections. These are: (a) inclusion of social objectives in mandatory business purpose statements; (b) the assertion that the envisaged adoption of purpose statements is “embarrassingly simple”; (c) use of the law to shield directors from adverse reactions from their shareholders; (d) the entity and managerial conception of the company; and (e) regulatory or court approval of corporate purposes. These objections are contrary to what Prosperity is advocating – a strengthening not weakening of board accountability to shareholders; a proprietary not entity view in which firm objectives are aligned with, not divergent from, those of shareholders; and freedom of choice and plurality of purposes unconstrained by regulatory, court or government intervention. Davies erroneously believes that Prosperity seeks to promote communal or social objectives. On the contrary, purpose statements assist companies with making their commitments credible.  They are enabling not prescriptive or restrictive. They apply equally to private as well as communal or social objectives and they are potentially as significant in enhancing value for shareholders as other parties. Davies himself sets out how companies can make their purpose statements legally binding in an “embarrassingly simple” way without requiring any change to company law.

To wit, we have three specific goals here. First, we want to review the activities of the three-hatted pollster. We do this to provide greater context for each type of pollster. Some of us are all three; others are some combination of these. Any pollster worth their salt must at least be a data scientist, or they risk losing credibility.

Second, we explore the role of the pollster in society. Ultimately, what is the purpose of the pollster? In our view, pollsters are critically important in any democracy. We believe this is often overlooked due to the ranking frenzy after every electoral cycle. Here, we put the profession into proper perspective.

And third, we discuss the use of non-survey, or alternative data, inputs as proxy measures for public opinion. We provide a framework for pollsters to think through them in a critical manner. Validation is a key concept which we introduce here – one more tool for the data scientist.

The search for purpose and meaning is common to the work of many twentieth-century psychologists. It seems to operate as an overarching motivation or metamotivation for a career rather than as a specific motivation for a transition. Purpose tends to emerge and be discovered, whereas meaning is a constructed system of beliefs that is built over time around the search for purpose. Choices that lead to the discovery and construction of one’s “true nature” or “authentic self” or “essential identity” can give purpose and meaning to one’s life. The search for purpose and meaning in work is discussed in light of the retrospective interviews with twenty-four elite performers in three domains (business, sports, and music) who successfully and repeatedly transitioned to higher positions within their field.

This chapter revisits the Expert Transition Cycle presented in Chapter 3 from the perspective of how identity changes. Five stages of the Expert Transition Cycle operate during transition. Intention orients and clarifies choices and provides drive. Inquiry holds open the transition process with criteria for choice and discrimination based upon intention. Exploration actively investigates the familiar and the new elements of identity, roles, social situations, work opportunities, beliefs, and performance. Commitment narrows and targets the choices made regarding those elements. Integration modifies and adapts the identity to include new elements, knowledge, experience, and beliefs. Each stage of the Expert Transition Cycle is reviewed in light of the operation of the transition experiences, such as cognitive flexibility and purpose. This is discussed in light of the retrospective interviews with twenty-four elite performers in three domains (business, sports, and music) who successfully and repeatedly transitioned to higher positions within their field.

Self concept is an evolving sense of self that encompasses work, expression of potential, and purpose for being. Self concept is more encompassing than identity, and includes motivations, beliefs such as self-efficacy, attributions and construals, mental models of self, and social roles. Self concept grows and evolves through life and transitions, but only seldom does the whole self concept come up for review and revision. Narrative construction provided an approach to examining how the stories individuals tell about themselves shape and help create their evolving self concept. The evolution of self concept is reviewed in light of the operation of the transition experiences – cognitive flexibility, generative intelligence, personal intelligences, motivation, and purpose through the use of retrospective interviews with twenty-four elite performers in three domains (business, sports, and music) who successfully and repeatedly transitioned to higher positions within their field.

Australia’s income tax legislation has always contained some form of general anti-avoidance rule. Australia’s general anti-avoidance provisions are located in pt IVA ITAA36. Part IVA replaced the former general anti-avoidance provision contained in s 260 ITAA36, which applied to arrangements that were made or entered into up to 27 May 1981. Part IVA applies to ‘schemes’ entered into after that date. Part IVA is a complex statutory regime that consists of a number of interconnected provisions. The provisions have been amended on several occasions over the years and currently comprise ss 177A to 177R. This chapter discusses the background to the introduction of pt IVA and focuses on the operation of its core provisions. It is important to be aware that significant amendments to pt IVA were introduced by Tax Laws Amendment (Countering Tax Avoidance and Multinational Profit Shifting) Act 2013 (Cth). These amendments were designed to address certain weaknesses in the provisions that had been identified in various cases. They apply to schemes other than those that were entered into, or commenced to be carried out, before 16 November 2012.

As scholars and activists seek to define and promote greater corporate political responsibility (CPR), they will benefit from understanding practitioner perspectives and how executives are responding to rising scrutiny of their political influences, reputational risk and pressure from employees, customers and investors to get involved in civic, political, and societal issues. This chapter draws on firsthand conversations with practitioners, including executives in government affairs; sustainability; senior leadership; and diversity, equity and inclusion, during the launch of a university-based CPR initiative. I summarize practitioner motivations, interests, barriers and challenges related to engaging in conversations about CPR, as well as committing or acting to improve CPR. Following the summary, I present implications for further research and several possible paths forward, including leveraging practitioners’ value on accountability, sustaining external calls for transparency, strengthening awareness of systems, and reframing CPR as part of a larger dialogue around society’s “social contract.”

Once the Court has established that an interference with a Convention right meets the requirement of lawfulness, the second main requirement for the interference to be justifiable is that it pursues a legitimate aim. The express limitation clauses of the Convention further do not only require the aims pursued to be legitimate, but they also provide exhaustive lists of the aims which can legitimately be served. Although the test of legitimate aim does not play a large role in the Court’s review of justification for restrictions, this Chapter addresses the application and interpretation of the legitimate aim requirement. Special attention is paid to the situation of a discrepancy between stated and real aims and the situation where more than one aim is pursued. In addition, Article 18 ECHR is discussed, which states that restrictions cannot be applied for any other purpose than that for which they have been prescribed. The Merabishvili case and the requirements defined therein are central to this discussion.

What do people care about? Psychological work on well-being has long emphasized (1) happiness, sometimes described as “pleasure,” and (2) eudaimonia, sometimes described as “flourishing” and associated with a sense of purpose or meaning. More recent work has explored (3) “psychological richness,” understood to call for a diversity of experiences and perspectives, including experiences that challenge and alter one’s preferences and values. This work is directly relevant to certain admittedly rare decisions that might alter our “core” – our conception of our identity and what we care most about. As examples, consider a decision to become a monk, to change one’s nationality, to have a child, or to get divorced. “Opting” situations raise serious challenges for decision theory, because one’s preferences and values cannot be held constant. If people’s preferences would be different depending on whether they opt, which choice is best? The right choice, I suggest, requires a shift from preference satisfaction to welfare. To decide whether to opt, people must ask: What would make their lives better? That question immediately leads to another one: What is the right conception of welfare? That might be a hard question, but it is the correct one; pleasure, purpose, and psychological richness are relevant to the answer.

The goal of this chapter is to examine the rules that relate syntactic and semantic representations to each other in adverbial (adjoined) clauses. The following types of adverbial clause relations are discussed, using evidence from English, Spanish, Yaqui and other languages: concessive, conditional, reason, temporal, purpose, manner and means. The chapter sheds light on the complexities of adverbial relations between clauses and how such complexities can be captured in Role and Reference Grammar.

Creating a map to healthy aging. Discoveries I never knew. Real joy. New ways to age, going deeper, finding greater meaning. Even amidst sorrow, a love of life. Chapter summarizes key aging discoveries and what makes for good aging. Words of Lucille, at 102: “I’m not sure what follows this precious life on earth, but my faith gives me, not fear, but a grand sense of wonder about it. In life and death, we have only to do one thing: Simply, let love in.

Retirement, for some, can be one of the biggest risk factors for death. Deficits of retirement include short-term memory declines. Worsening in mobility. Increase in chronic medical conditions and mental health problems. Studies document that retirees are 40% more likely to have a heart attack or stroke than those who don’t retire. There is need to change the culture around work to consciously adapt to needs and desires of older workers. Rename retirement “repurposing.” Rather than retirement, find a repurposed career that recognizes our need for autonomy, mastery and purpose as we age. Research shows when real-life companies have made adjustments (shorter work days; environmental changes to relieve arthritis pain or low vision) for older workers, the overall productivity of the company increases!. Need to prepare for retirement when you are still young. Live for something that matters. Build new social relationships. Make play part of life. Studies show that retiring can improve health but only if post-retirement activities are purposeful, stimulating, and active.

In this chapter, I present Aristotle’s arguments in his books on Physics defending the claim that there is purposiveness in nature independent of thinking, foresight and deliberation. Hegel’s arguments for objective purposiveness are correctly understood only in light of those of Aristotle. In fact, I argue that the sense in which teleology is for Hegel the truth of mechanism (and, ultimately, of causality) is the sense in which, for Aristotle, final causes are the cause of ‘that which comes to be by nature’ and the cause of other kinds of causes (matter, efficient causes and even form) being where they are and having the effects that they eventually have. The chapter revises Aristotle’s understanding of this connection.

This chapter presents the general argument of the book and its main methodological assumptions. The book offers a close reading of the examination of the concept of purpose in The Science of Logic. The concept is understood abstractly, but nevertheless as a causal concept, by means of which we think about what the intrinsic reference to an end means and implies. The chapter clarifies in what sense the approach developed in this book is metaphysical and also what the importance of a better appreciation of Hegel’s chapter on this concept for a correct understanding of the goals and, particularly, the achievements of his entire Science of Logic is.

[4.1] The fundamental object of statutory interpretation is to ascertain the ‘intention’ of Parliament, or the ‘legislative intent’, in relation to the statute being construed. Legislative intent is an objective notion, representative of the constitutional relationship between the arms of government. The phrase can be misleading as the word ‘intent’ suggests something subjective. But it is clear that legislative intent is not the collective, or individual, subjective mental states of individuals involved in the making of legislation. The so-called intent of Parliament is to be ascertained from applying the principles of statutory interpretation to a piece of legislation.

[8.1] The law of statutory interpretation directs us to ascertain the ‘purpose’ of an Act when construing a provision of that Act. This is one of the few general principles of statutory interpretation law that is the subject of a legislative mandate, though the common law has developed an equivalent principle. The mandate is that we must have regard to the purpose of an Act and choose the construction that promotes or best achieves that purpose. This does not warrant neglect of the statutory text or context, but instead requires the interpreter to have regard to the purpose in the context of the broader analysis of text and context required by the rules of statutory interpretation. Sometimes the purpose will be critical to the task of attributing meaning and sometimes it will be of little value. The value that purpose can provide to the task may depend on the degree of specificity with which it can be expressed. Many Acts embody multiple purposes or the purpose of the Act may be general. For these reasons, the purpose of the provision being construed can be more helpful for the interpretative task than the purpose of the Act as a whole.