In "Just Results", Ralph D. Ellis provides an authoritative solution to one of the major problems in the field of public policy. Until now, analysts and planners have had no practical or accurate means of incorporating qualitative social concerns into the traditional quantitative formulas used in policy making. By introducing a justice factor -- a quantitative measure for social values -- Ellis opens the door for more balanced policy decisions.

Using concrete, real-world examples, Ellis shows how policy analysts can better account for the use value -- or practical measurable utility -- of universally agreed-upon social benefits such as life, health, safety, and environmental preservation when making cost-benefit analyses. In this way, policymakers, and by extension, society as a whole, can avoid making unjust tradeoffs between important social values and comparatively frivolous economic benefits.

Drawing on philosophical works on justice from Kant through John Rawls, this book is informed by a theoretical defense of distributive justice that emphasizes diminishing marginal utility, thus favoring the poor. "Just Results" is a stimulating and highly applicable book that will be of great interest to philosophers, political scientists, policy analysts and planners.

Foundations of Civic Engagement is a comprehensive survey and reassessment of the entire field of social and political philosophy. Suitable for use as a primary text for courses on political thought, this book explores the basic arguments of the most important historical and contemporary figures and offers a thematic critique and integration of these philosophies. This dynamic book includes in-depth discussions of Ancient Greek, modern and contemporary theories of communitarianism, social contract, feminism, classical liberal rights-based approaches, African American philosophy, postmodernism, Marxism, critical theory, and theories of communicative actions (e.g. Habermas). Throughout philosophical history, there is a tension between social development of the political person-as in personalist, communitarian, feminist, postmodern, and Continental thought-and the abstract contractual principles needed for impartial justice and freedom of conscience. This chasm can be bridged to some extent by combining ideal contractualism with the tools of feminist theory, discourse ethics, and critical theory. Foundations of Civic Engagement evaluates these tensions, as well as the criticisms and response to criticism for each theory, in order to promote open dialogue, analysis, and a realistic assessment of each philosophy.

Construction Site Management and Labor Productivity Improvement: How to Improve the Bottom Line and Shorten the Project Schedule provides common-sense management practices that are easy to implement to avoid events leading to productivity and schedule degradation. With more than 70 years of combined experience, Thomas and Ellis have monitored more than 200 active construction projects measuring labor productivity, calculating losses of productivity, and documenting the events leading to those losses. The book is divided into four parts and contains around 100 practices for improving construction performance. Part 1 describes the commonly recurring causes of site inefficiency. Part 2 provides a straightforward planning procedure and a simple procedure for developing an efficient site layout plan. Part 3 covers weather mitigation, material management, workforce management, sequencing, congestion, and subcontractor management. Part 4 addresses schedule acceleration, environmental compliance, and project evaluation. Each practice is explained in detail so that it can be correctly applied and the expected outcome is clear. The practices are illustrated with case studies and numerous photographs. Written primarily for practicing engineers and contractors, these ""how to"" practices can be readily implemented to efficiently manage site operations of all sizes.

Pushing back against the potential trivialization of moral psychology that would reduce it to emotional preferences, this book takes an enactivist, self-organizational, and hermeneutic approach to internal conflict between a basic exploratory drive motivating the search for actual truth, and opposing incentives to confabulate in the interest of conformity, authoritarianism, and cognitive dissonance, which often can lead to harmful worldviews. The result is a new possibility that ethical beliefs can have truth value and are not merely a result of ephemeral altruistic or cooperative feelings. It will interest moral and political psychologists, philosophers, social scientists, and all who are concerned with inner emotional conflicts driving ethical thinking beyond mere emotivism, and toward moral realism, albeit a fallibilist one requiring continual rethinking and self-reflection. It combines 'basic emotion' theories (such as Panksepp) with hermeneutic depth psychology. The result is a realist approach to moral thinking emphasizing coherence rather than foundationalist theory of knowledge.

Pushing back against the potential trivialization of moral psychology that would reduce it to emotional preferences, this book takes an enactivist, self-organizational, and hermeneutic approach to internal conflict between a basic exploratory drive motivating the search for actual truth, and opposing incentives to confabulate in the interest of conformity, authoritarianism, and cognitive dissonance, which often can lead to harmful worldviews. The result is a new possibility that ethical beliefs can have truth value and are not merely a result of ephemeral altruistic or cooperative feelings. It will interest moral and political psychologists, philosophers, social scientists, and all who are concerned with inner emotional conflicts driving ethical thinking beyond mere emotivism, and toward moral realism, albeit a fallibilist one requiring continual rethinking and self-reflection. It combines 'basic emotion' theories (such as Panksepp) with hermeneutic depth psychology. The result is a realist approach to moral thinking emphasizing coherence rather than foundationalist theory of knowledge.