Hans Kelsen as Outliner: The Defence of a Radical Norm Theory

In his first treatise on legal theory, Hauptprobleme der Staatsrechtslehre (1911), Hans Kelsen seeks to recast legal norm theory in a way that would eliminate from the theory the imperative, with what Kelsen sees as its moral connotations. The result, Kelsen’s sanction theory, is not entirely successful. It leaves in place the imperative vis-à-vis legal officials, with obligations imposed on officials to implement sanctions. In the 1930s, Kelsen returns to the issue, radically recasting legal norm theory by introducing empowerment as the fundamental modality and obligation as merely derivative, a view that prevails in the second edition of the Reine Rechtslehre (1960).

Emerging illiberal norms: Russia and China as promoters of internet content control

This article contributes to the understanding of authoritarian states as norm entrepreneurs of content control norms. These emerging norms challenge the norm literature, which disregards illiberal norms and illiberal actors as norm entrepreneurs. This article focuses on two distinct but coexisting strategies that Russia and China apply for promoting and developing internet governance norms. It shows that these countries use a combination of socialization and persuasion strategies. They employ a sequencing strategy of regional coalition-building in order to create support, after which they expand a norm's range via international organizations. These norm entrepreneurs adapt their strategies to different target groups based on the degree of internalization of the norm. The article shows that a reassessment of norm theory in a broader context allows for extension to illiberal norms and illiberal actors, but also shows the limits since the applicability of strategies such as naming and shaming should be questioned.

The Relationship between Contact-Free Services, Social and Personal Norms, and Customers’ Behavior for the Sustainable Management of the Restaurant Industry

People worldwide are experiencing increasingly complex social issues, and ways of life are changing. This study analyzes the relationship between contact-free service value, personal and social norms, and customers’ behavioral intentions for sustainable restaurant businesses, demonstrating a direct association of the value and extended norm theory. Structural equation model analysis was performed to verify causality between variables; multi-group analysis was performed to confirm the moderating effects of menu price using AMOS; and frequency analysis, descriptive statistical analysis, and reliability analysis were performed using SPSS. The data were collected from Koreans aged 18 years and above (310 responses). The results revealed that contact-free service value positively affects personal norms, and personal norms positively affect behavioral intentions. In addition, social norms positively affect personal norms and behavioral intentions. In particular, it was found that social norms greatly influence personal norms. Finally, the menu price moderated the relationship between social and personal norms. These results present a variety of academic and practical implications, and this is especially meaningful for analyzing the association between contact-free service value and norm theory in the food service industry.

Issue-Driven Progress in Business Ethics: When the Responsibility to Protect Values Requires Companies to Introduce New Norms

<p>This article is about when a company should introduce a new ethical norm. By using the Value–Belief–Norm theory, I argue that the<i> </i>more an ethical issue threatens an ethical value and the more a company has an ethical responsibility to protect such value against such threat, then the more desirable it is for a company to establish ethical norms to protect that particular value. The introduction of a new ethical norm then becomes more desirable when the threat from such an ethical issue increases and/or the ethical responsibility of the company increases. Distinguishing seven characteristics of an ethical issue and four conditions of a company’s ethical responsibility helps in identifying the situation in which a company should introduce a new ethical norm. The resulting framework, with corresponding guidelines, explains why and when progress in business ethics is needed.</p>

Issue-Driven Progress in Business Ethics: When the Responsibility to Protect Values Requires Companies to Introduce New Norms

<p>This article is about when a company should introduce a new ethical norm. By using the Value–Belief–Norm theory, I argue that the<i> </i>more an ethical issue threatens an ethical value and the more a company has an ethical responsibility to protect such value against such threat, then the more desirable it is for a company to establish ethical norms to protect that particular value. The introduction of a new ethical norm then becomes more desirable when the threat from such an ethical issue increases and/or the ethical responsibility of the company increases. Distinguishing seven characteristics of an ethical issue and four conditions of a company’s ethical responsibility helps in identifying the situation in which a company should introduce a new ethical norm. The resulting framework, with corresponding guidelines, explains why and when progress in business ethics is needed.</p>

Applying Value-Belief-Norm Theory to Investigate Students' Waste Prevention Behaviour

Even though the increasing amount of waste is one of the biggest environmental challenges we currently face, surprisingly little is known about the psychological factors of waste prevention behaviour. The purpose of the study is to examine whether students‘ waste prevention behaviour can be predicted by the Value-Belief-Norm theory. In this paper, we report results from a questionnaire study of 221 students aged from 18 to 26 years. It was found that the Value-Belief-Norm theory could indeed explain students‘ waste prevention behaviour. As expected, findings indicate that high endorsement of biospheric values is associated with a strong ecological worldview, which was related to an increased awareness of environmental consequences. Those beliefs led to stronger personal norms, which were associated with more frequent waste prevention behaviour. Understanding students‘ waste prevention behaviour and the factors predicting it is a key step that could help to reduce the amount of waste that is generated. It is particularly relevant among students because higher education environment could be an effective place to increase students‘ pro-environmental behaviour and connect this behaviour with their values, beliefs and norms.

Toward a Theory of Offense: Should You Feel Offended?

The feeling of being offended, as a moral emotion, plays a key role in issues such as slurs, the offense principle, ethics of humor, etc. However, no adequate theory of offense has been developed in the literature, and it remains unclear what questions such a theory should answer. This paper attempts to fill the gap by performing two tasks. The first task is to clarify and summarize the questions of offense into two kinds, the descriptive questions (e.g., what features differentiate offense from similar moral states like anger?) and the normative questions (e.g., what are the conditions for taking offense to be apt?). The second task is to answer these questions by developing what I call ‘the violated norm theory of offense’. According to this theory, feeling offended entails that the norm one endorses is judged to be violated by the offender. Appealing to the violated norm enables this theory to answer the descriptive questions (e.g., taking offense differs from anger because of features like not requiring victims and the difficulty of animal offense) and the normative questions of offense (e.g., taking offense is apt only if the violated norm is universalizable).